What's The Optimum Speed For London Underground Trains?

By Alphr Last edited 65 months ago

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What's The Optimum Speed For London Underground Trains?

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The tube is far, far too fast. 61% faster than it needs to be, in fact. So, all those times you’ve been hunched on a tube train stuck in a tunnel, wondering how you’re going to explain to your boss why you’re late — well, the problem was that you were going too quickly.

Let us explain. It all comes down to some rather clever maths. According to a study conducted by Dr Marc Barthelemy, a statistical physicist at the CEA research centre in Saclay, the fact that our tube trains are travelling so quickly (an average of 21mph, in case you were wondering), is causing bottlenecks throughout other areas of London’s public transport system.

That’s fine if you’re the kind of commuter who hops on one tube, travels a few stops and hops off again, but if your journey is slightly more convoluted — for example, if you get a train into London before hopping on the tube — then this is where problems arise. As Dr Marc Barthelemy explains, “The fact is that these [transport] networks are coupled with each other. Optimising something on one network can bring bad things on another network.”

Movin’ too fast

The London Underground is guilty of doing exactly this. By moving passengers in and out of London so quickly, it decreases congestion in the centre of the capital, but causes congestion around the edges of the city by overloading the connecting transport networks, such as trains and buses. According to the research, the ideal speed for the Underground would be 13mph — approximately 1.2 times the average speed of road traffic in the capital. Slower, as it turns out, would be faster. Who would have thought it?

London is quite different to many other cities, though, and slowing down inner-city transport links wouldn’t work wonders for every city worldwide. Want to find out exactly why, and see how fast our underground is compared to Moscow, Paris, Berlin and New York? Then head on over to Alphr.com for a more detailed look at why the London Underground is just too darn fast.

Image: drivethrucafe used under Creative Commons

Last Updated 09 October 2018