Antiquated, Overcrowded Transport System : In London, a Real Jam Over Traffic

The city that was farsighted enough in 1863 to give the world its first subway is trapped today in a nightmarish transport problem.

When hundreds of British students demonstrated on the central Westminster Bridge recently against cuts in education grants, they triggered an hours-long traffic jam that the Automobile Assn. termed the worst in London history. A few days later, repair of a gas leak in South London disrupted things almost as badly.

In December, 34 people died in the worst British rail accident in 20 years--a casualty toll that experts said was worsened by gross overcrowding on the surface trains that bring long-distance commuters to the city.

Coincidentally, protesters in sardine costumes were calling attention to even more serious overcrowding on the separate London subway system, parading around one of the Underground’s busiest stations on the same day as the train crash. Subway usage has soared 60% in the last six years, and nearly one in 10 of the system’s stations are already so congested that there is talk of having to limit passenger access.

“London is a mess, frankly,” Stephen Joseph, director of the pro-rail lobbying group Transport 2000, said in an interview. And about the only hopeful sign so far is that increasing public awareness has made transport an important political issue, he added.

The prestigious Times of London, which ran a five-part series on the situation recently, complained in a concluding editorial of “sclerosis in the capital’s arteries.” And the Daily Telegraph headlined a recent report, “The City That Choked Itself to Death.”

When it comes to transport, London is about as different from Los Angeles as possible--although Angelenos may find it hard to sympathize as they sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway.

Twice as Many People

More than twice as many people live here as in Los Angeles on about 20% more land area. London has no cross-town freeways or beltways, and roads that are little more than slightly updated village lanes frequently serve as primary access routes. During rush hour, the city’s ubiquitous red double-decker buses and bulbous black taxis are quaint but otherwise mostly useless tourist curiosities.

More than 80% of commuters travel to and through London by rail. British Rail surface trains bring passengers from outlying areas to combined railroad and underground stations around the city’s perimeter. From there travelers use the subway or bus and then walk the last few blocks to reach their final destinations. About 15% commute at least part of the way by car, and only about 5% travel all the way from home to office by bus.

But Londoners are sometimes remarkably creative in coping with their congested transport system. When a young mother caught in a Westminster traffic jam realized she could not possibly reach her daughter’s nursery school on time to pick the girl up, she abandoned her vehicle temporarily and sought out the owner of a Rolls-Royce stalled several car lengths ahead.

She assumed, correctly, that the Rolls-Royce would have a car phone, from which she was able to arrange for her daughter to be tended by a friend until she could free herself of the jam.

The practice of hurtling through little-known side streets to avoid traffic is so common here that it is known universally as “rat-running.” And leather-bound copies of the particularly detailed “London: A-Z” street atlas are a popular corporate Christmas gift.

Veteran riders of the subway--or “Tube”--often are capable of maintaining their balance without outside assistance as they casually read the morning newspaper on violently swaying, standing-room-only subway cars.

Others--perhaps those with a poorer sense of balance--clutch at overhead straps and seem to favor portable tape players to help pass the time. But even the most serene commuters say they are worried by current trends.

Admittedly, part of the problem is the price of prosperity. After a slow but steady flow of population out of London during the 1960s and 1970s, that trend was reversed in the 1980s by policies encouraging rapid economic growth in Britain generally and in the country’s populous southeast specifically.

Now some critics warn that this very prosperity could fall victim to increasing congestion. In particular, they fear that financial firms may move their offices to other, less-crowded European cities after the scheduled removal by 1992 of trade barriers between European Community countries.

For business people, congestion costs money. And they are among the more outspoken critics of the current situation.

As the debate heats up, it appears to be dominated by two main groups. One is pro-central transportation planning and anti-automobile; the other is anti-central planning and pro-automobile.

Thus, proposed solutions range from a $10-billion network of “underways”--freeways buried 80 feet beneath the ground--to legislative limits on company cars, which account for about half the automobiles entering London each day.

The government already has introduced legislation to permit a major field test of an “Autoguide” system to direct drivers around traffic jams via in-car computers.

These and many other plans would be in addition to a multibillion-dollar program to modernize and maintain the existing road and rail systems.

“We are in such difficulty that I am spending large sums of money to cure what I think has been the neglect of the past,” Transport Minister Paul Channon said in a recent British Broadcasting Corp. interview. And, he added, “the results have yet to feed their way through” to the commuting public.

Last month, Channon announced plans to supplement London’s subway system by building giant tunnels to carry British Rail commuter trains below the city for the first time, providing many suburban areas with new links to the center.

Channon said the government plans to act quickly. Either of two alternative plans would cost about $3.54 billion, he said, with much of the cost being paid by higher fares. The government plans to spend an additional $2.65 billion to increase the capacity of subway stations and on higher-capacity trains.

As for proposals to discourage private automobile use in the city, making more room for shuttle buses, Channon told the BBC: “Maybe we’ll be driven to that. (But) I think if we are, people will absolutely hate it, and I think they will feel it’s unnecessary.”

Channon played down the popular idea of creating a strategic planning authority for the city.

Referring to the Labor-dominated Greater London Council, which the current Conservative government dismantled in 1986, he said: “The strategic authority idea is, I’m afraid, just an idea--largely . . . put forward by people who think the existence of an authority will clear the problem.”

Critics respond that the GLC had its failings but argue that is no endorsement for what they describe as a dangerously hodgepodge planning approach.

“The trouble is that land-use planning and transport planning are almost completely divorced in this country,” Transport 2000 lobbyist Joseph said.

Frequently, critics point to the East London development known as Docklands, a modern residential and commercial complex, as symptomatic of the current system’s breakdown. Docklands has been such a stunning success that a transportation disaster looms.

As many as 200,000 jobs are expected to be created in an area where the transit system is built to handle only 4,000 people an hour.

To former London Underground Chairman Tony Ridley, the basic question is clear: “We are shaping the future of London. Will it be by design or by default?”