Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

Management are happily slapping each others' backs after the "successful" launch of Night Tube. The media scrum around the Mayor and the 50,000 first-night journeys made good headlines for them. Oh, and there were no actual disasters.

Still, it wasn't them cleaning up vomit, trying to wake unconscious drunks on the platform, or waiting hours for ambulances because under-funding has reduced the ambulance service to only attending people in danger of dying.

One of the more irritating features of passengers' journeys was the constant on-train announcements. You see, the PA system can't simply state that only the Vic and Central lines are running and remove all other references to interchange. Oh no. The only way to not advise people that they can change to any other line (or TOC) is to announce, one at a time, that the particular service is "suspended" - only it's not suspended, it's just not scheduled to run at night.

The biggest problem remains, of course, under-staffing. People were being shifted around all over the place in order to keep stations open, nicked by one station from another to stop it falling below minimum numbers.

As Night Tube spreads and the party season approaches, what could possibly go wrong?!

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