London transport explained in nine graphs - by Jim Waterson
Welcome to London Centric where we’ve been enjoying the longer evenings. Yes, it’s not even the winter solstice but sunset in the capital tonight will be a few seconds later than yesterday, signalling that summer is almost on its way.
There’s a festive selection box of exclusive stories coming up later this week for paid subscribers – but for now I want to talk transport.
Transport is what makes London tick, drives its economy, and makes it possible for this chaotic mess of nine million people to function as a city. If you can’t get around London in a fast and affordable way then you’ll have to turn down jobs, meet fewer friends, and reduce your mental horizon. Investment in transport can make a real difference to the lives and health of the city’s residents. And if you stare long enough at the tea leaves of London’s transport data you can see the signs of the city that the capital has become: Ageing, more static and increasingly skint.
Every year Transport for London releases a massive data dump that sums up the state of the capital’s transport system. You might have seen some cherry-picked press released lines in other outlets but at London Centric we savour such documents and have taken some time to mull them over. What follows are the most intriguing and unusual details digested from hundreds of pages of data.
