aspies in jam-packed tube trains

We just went to London for a weekend meet-up. It is still aspie unfriendly to travel in. We would be supposed to enjoy its labyrinthine layers of transport modes + its dense frequent services. But the density of human bodies in tube trains, even at weekends, is directly at odds with the autistic problem with crowding. You are jammed in almightily thick dense crowd in a confined space.

We found the buses not a solution to avoiding this tube experience. Despite their nominal frequency they were unpredictable. A 188 caught in Greenwich started with a piece of driver impatience, "you can't walk from here to there?" meaning that when he was backed up behind another bus he had expected us to walk up to him to get on, exactly what they don't let us do in Edinburgh, than himself to have to pull up: even though you must be in the right to await the bus at the stop. Message gone in to Transport For London about that: drivers expecting unannounced things is wrong both for autistics and for folks from other cities!

The info on the stop illogically failed to tell us it went to Canada Water tube, but showed it went to the Elephant + Castle: much further on but on the tube line we wanted. Then an unknown long duration roadworks in Deptford badly slowed it down, it was over by Canada Water so we did not get off there, but straight after there it hit another delay + lane closure because of a mass charity walk that was on around Canada Water/Bermondsey that day. So we had been on this bus over an hour when we abandoned it at Bermondsey tube station, still far from town, had to pick our way through traffic caps + walkers to get into the station, and for a journey in sardine conditions on 2 lines.

Then yesterday, Sunday! We took a 55 successfully from Old Street to the start of Oxford Street for a walk from there which ended up at the Kensington museums, across city from King's Cross where we needed to get our train home. After only 1 other bus use in the day we were still far short of our daily fare cap, in the Oyster fare system, so that tube would cost twice as much as bus. There was no direct bus, but there almost was: 14, to Russell Square, close enough to King's Cross to walk from. But one going to Russell Square never came. In a half hour wait, the only one that came was only going to Piccadilly Circus! So we had to conclude the route was suffering a problem + not running reliably, + to take our tube journey for £3.30 instead of bus for £1.50 - that by TFL's operational failure instead of our choice, causing us a higher fare - and we were in maximum sardines conditions, carriages packed as full as was physically possible to be, the entire way. On a Sunday! and for 9 stops' distance from South Kensington to King's Cross.

We never had it like that in Barcelona. London continues to live with a crazy problem even as it grows its network bigger and bigger. You could not plan to take there and on the tube, any autistic with an inability to cope at all in the presence of big or heaving crowds. As the buses let folks down as we found, they would need the expense of taxis.

A second city centre seems to be emerging by 2022 in the East End, stretching from around the Olympic Park, where some media + Sadlers Wells plan to open bases, to the Canary Wharf which is already the new banking hub. Will it change the transport experience in the older city? Does the tube overcrowding show the city bursting out of itself? Interested by the parallel, that it seems like modern and much bigger scale version, of the history of how Edinburgh added its New Town to its then-overcrowded Old Town.

Maurice Frank
23 Sep 2019