Disruption Second Take
A major strike on the Tube in London is announced for today. From Today Tuesday 19h00 to Thursday 19h00 there will be no Tube services in London if the strike goes ahead as announced. This will mean that thousands of commuters and travelers will be forced to search for alternatives.
We already had this once this year. The heavy (12cm : ) snowfall from February 2nd brought a major disruption to London’s transport network and an extra day of for thousands of Londoners. This event was covered in posts here and here.
And again this disruption will change the rush hour for two days. Maybe everyone will be using the riverboat service, as the Major Boris Johnson has arranged for all of us to travel for free.
We’ll see how London and Londoners will manage the situation. In terms of routines it will definitely be different.
Transport for London promotes cycling and walking; this is the cheapest option for them. Walking maps are available from the tfl.gov.uk site. The maps are not very good and hardly any better as a normal tourist guide. Maybe another project would actually be a bit more successful here. The shortwalk project is aiming at promoting the information about distances between inner London tube stations. While doing some research the people behind the project discovered that sometimes it is actually quicker to walk than squeezing into the tube. A nice map visualizes this.
Image by shortwalk
Other option is to plan your journey as a walk on walkit.com or even Google Maps could help you find the shortest route…
A micro blogger community has formed and collects a variety of suggestions and options to beat the strike. A good collection of them is available on TimesOnline. Unlike with the snowfall in February, people seem to be determined to get in to work tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes and whether or not Londoner can make it again a positive disruption of their weekly rhythms.
First Images start to emerge on the web, Image from Canary Wharf. A new central London transport map on Flickr, click for details:
Image from carltonreid’s photostream
