First in a two-parter, looking at the capital's best and worst underground stations.
Our sprawling underground system has much to commend it, but we all get irked by some of the shittier corners. So, we asked the simple question: 'which is the crappiest Tube station' on our Facebook wall. 419 votes later (via comments or 'likes' for comments), we have a definitive answer. Well, as definitive as any cobbled together, non-scientific, impromptu Facebook poll can ever be.
Here's the top ten crummiest stops on the network
Station | Votes |
Bank | 143 |
Elephant & Castle | 61 |
Covent Garden | 33 |
Green Park | 27 |
Finsbury Park | 24 |
Camden Town | 21 |
Tottenham Court Road | 18 |
Russell Square | 10 |
Mile End | 10 |
Holborn | 9 |
One station stands turd-buckets higher than the others. Bank (and its enleeched sibling Monument) got more than twice as many votes as any other stop. That said, second-placed Elephant and Castle is presumably less familiar to many, and would probably come out higher than Bank if the number of passengers per year was taken into account.
Reasons for station hatred were varied. Overcrowding was the top nuisance, particularly at Bank. Reliance on lifts accounts for most of the Covent Garden and Russell Square votes. The epic Jubilee interchange explains the high showing of Green Park. One person disliked Tottenham Court Road for the number of werewolves. Another person opted for Moor Park — seemingly one of the most civilised, affluent stations on the network...until you read it backwards.
70 stations were nominated, with a long tail of stops picking up just a handful of enemies. Of the mainline termini stations, Euston, Paddington and Liverpool Street all lacked a single vote, and Victoria only got three. Surprisingly, Stratford only received a single vote.
If all this negativity gets you down, look out for our second part tomorrow, revealing the best Tube stations in London. You can still vote up until 3pm on 19 January via our Facebook page.
Image by Owen Blacker in the Londonist Flickr pool.