Consuming Interest
Underground Movements
By LESLIE ADRIAN
About half a century ago it was realised that the big answer to a big city's circulation lay underground and,. as a result, London has the most extensive underground transport system in the world. But, if the capital is not to die of congestion at the centre and paralysis at the extremes, this system must be extended and im- proved urgently.
The centenary of the London Under- ground's operation was celebrated with the cus- tomary panache last year. But the real truth of its history could be 'found in throwaway lines in the annual report for that year. Item: 'At Oval, one of the two escalators installed in 1926 was completely rehabilitated and modernised and similar work was started on the second. When this pilot scheme is completed in 1964, a decision will be taken on the modernisation or replace- ment of the other sixty escalators of the same type elsewhere on the system.' At that rate, one every forty years, the other sixty ought to be in good shape about the time the first emigrants set sail for Uranus.
I realise that it is always possible that the London Transport Board could authorise work on more than one escalator at a time, but judging from the present rate of deterioration of the Underground service, this does not seem to be a
realistic expectation. Yet the London Transport network has to be prepared to serve 10,000,000 people, nearly a fifth of the population of 'the British Isles, and, indeed, does carry above and below the surface 9,500,000 passengers a daY' And it feels like it. The Victoria Line is a flea' bite compared with this mammoth statistic. I cannot visualise this extension doing much more than increasing the crescendo of confusion now prevalent in the passages of the central Tube stations, where the London citizen may be seen at his worst, part troglodyte; part jugger- naut.
Badly lit, badly ventilated, badly staffed, the London Underground needs the ruthlessness of 3 Henry Ford backed by the finances of a J. Morgan. All my questions about Improvement, levelled at the 55 Broadway mandarins, have been shrugged off on grounds of lack of finance or, it seems, to me, from defeatism.
I asked about redesign of Underground carriages (they are still putting on new cars with no end doors) and was told that tip-up seats
had often been suggested, but' that 'outside, times of maximum congestion . . . our passengers are entitled to the maximum number of seats and a reasonable degree of comfort,' But the bulk of the revenue must be earned in the rush hours (four or five a day), so why not work out a system of removable seats and abolish the situation where thirty sit and about a hundred stand in conditions of maximum discomfort? Design, considerations, I am told, preclude any change in the arrangements of the interior of an Underground carriage. Have they tried a design competition? There's always a better way.
Apart from sardine-can conditions in the cars, there remains the whole appalling mess of under- staffed ticket offices. machines that run out of tickets at rush-hour time, and constant checking in and out, with all the queueing that these create. Every idea that can be canvassed—fare .simplification, mechanisation of ticket-issuing and checking, automatic trains, one-way flow barriers to stop artful dodgers careering into 'No Entry' and out of 'No Exit' points—is either brushed aside as impractical or is only lately .being tried 'alit and with ponderous caution.
Last. January the first electronic ticket barrier vas installed at • Stamford Brook. The Under- ground will get them generally about 1970, if then, the year that it 'is hoped the Victoria Line will go into operation, perhaps with automatic trains. By then there will be, at a conservative count, another 120,000 commuters clogging the channels of communication and more still if the South East Study predictions are .anywhere near the mark. But the Chairman of LTB. Sir Alec Valentine, wrote in The Times cen- tenary supplement last year, . . even if London remains at its present size, which seems unlikely, jets public transport must be positively en- couraged. For it has to be realised that the pros- Perity of London and the health of its public transport system are inseparable.' Facilis de- scensus Avernil The glossies will, at the drop of a cache-pot, show you how to decorate from scratch in taste- ful arrangements of yaffie green and caca d'oie, no expense spared. But Heal's have shown a livelier sense of the realities with their Colour Planning Service, run by Elizabeth Tomalin (one-time head of Marks and Spencer's fabric design studios). The service caters not just for the lucky ones with a bare, inviting room to be planned, but also for people who can't decorate from scratch, who are stuck with great-aunt's wedding present of a •ma coon settee or the pre- vious tenant's carpet.
Mrs. Tomalin has a rare sensitivity to other people's tastes, extracting from them clearer ideas than they knew they had, and then—given some idea of the purpose of a room and the general preferences of its owners--her own inspired colour-sense does the rest.
She cross-examines customers about room sizes, light direction and so on—then shows samples of fabrics, papers and the rest, as- sembling cuttings in a folder so that the relation- ship of one to the other can be studied.
Dissuading customers from teaming floral carpets with floral curtains is, Mrs. Tomalin says, her hardest task—and next to that, the ones hell- bent upon contrasting walls in shrieking colours. 'Some of the most go-ahead customers are newly retired people who are refurnishing; often they are More interested in really modern design than young couples. I'm delighted when I find such people ready to experiment with, say, Arne Jacobsen chairs on a rich, glowing Afghan carpet.'
No charge is made for the service when an order results. And it is available by post as well as to callers.
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