Life on the Tube April 5, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden , trackbackThis morning, I got up as usual, got on the tube at Euston, and spent the next 20 minutes stuck in a sardine can with all the other sweaty and slightly nervous suits as 'signal failure at Victoria' meant we got to move 100 metres and then wait. When the train finally pulled into Warren Street, and I found that I'd spent half an hour getting a distance I could walk in 15 minutes, I decided to call it quits and work from home. As a freelancer, with a tolerant client, and no major meetings today, I'm able to do that, but many of the people on that train will be late for work, possibly with pay docked or important deadlines missed. This doesn't happen often, but at least once a month my journey to or from work extends from its normal hour and a quarter to well over two – from tolerable to impractical.
Even hour each way is a huge amount of time to spend thumb twiddling, novel reading, or blackberrying. This is not to blame the transport system, which has improved vastly in the 7 years I've been in London, but instead to question the whole idea of working so far from home.
I do it because I freelance, because the assignment is good in all other ways, because I'm going out of London and so most of my journey is in a half-empty train. And its only a short-term arrangement. I could not make a lifestyle of it.
Is this really the best way to spend time? Can we think of nothing better to do?
Could businesses and employees make it a priority when selecting staff and jobs, to be within, say, a thirty minute commute?
Why do people tolerate excuses that 'there was a bad traffic jam' or 'the circle line was down' when staff, supplier or client are late?
Would a payroll tax on long-distance staff make a difference, taking the cost to the environment into the company benefiting from it?
How about making short distances fairly cheap, and longer ones disproportionately expensive? It costs me £1.50 to get to Victoria (about 5 miles) and only another £9 to get to Gatwick (about 35 miles).
The unfortunate answer is that in fact people don't mind commuting much. This is obvious by the way that we do it in our thousands. We accept the huge waste of our time and energy, the stress and the discomfort. Moving people as quickly and efficiently as possible over quite extreme distances every day is a major priority of our politicians, and on the whole, they do it well enough.
Sadly, its bad enough to moan about, but not bad enough to rebel against.
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