When I was younger, or not so much younger really than I am now, I knew, or know, the bus routes in my local area. Now adays, although I know the bus routes for my local area still, I have realised that the world around me is so much bigger than just a couple of routes that I was limited to. I do think it is interesting what the different public transport systems within London are like.

The one that I am the most familiar with of all of the Transport for London services is the buses that travel around London and just out of them. The buses that run for this service include 785 Electric buses, 22 Fuel Cell buses and 3,854 Hybrid buses. During the week, the TFL bus system transports around 6 million passengers in London. When the buses were first established in 1829, they ran between Paddington and Bank. They carried 22 people and were pulled by three horses. Up until 1907, London Buses were painted different colours to signify their route, which has since been changed to the number system that we are using today. During WWI, buses were modified to carry soldiers or, in some cases, homing pigeons. Charles Dickens once wrote “from the glass-coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus.” about buses. 

Another part of the TFL is the underground system which is also heavily frequented by commuters. Each year, about 1.3 billion journeys are made on the London Underground. The busiest station in the network is Waterloo, which sees about 100.3 million passengers per year; the least used is Roding Valley. The entire London Underground network is approximately 249 miles long, employing more than 4100 trains, and linking 270 stations. But only about 45 percent of those miles are underground. The average Londoner spends an average of about 11.5 days each year on the Underground—5.2 of those days in the Underground’s underground tunnels. The fastest line is the Metropolitan, where trains can reach speeds of more than 60 miles per hour, but the average speed of a London Underground train is only around 20.5 miles per hour.

There is a lot of things that we are familiar with that we do not even understand and that which we understand but that which we do not know a large amount about. The trains and buses around me are not something that I know a lot about but that they have helped me in some trying times and even in some not so trying. 

Sources

• https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/33491/18-facts-and-figures-london-tubes-150th-birthday
• https://www.shortlist.com/news/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-london-buses
• https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/