Stand clear of the closing doors
The train I get every morning to my office is on a very good, direct line into Central London. Although on the way home I have to pick my train carefully, as the lines diverge and spread out across the South of England and thus not all of them stop at my home station, on the way in, as for everybody else, all trains stop at exactly the same further five stops, the last and most popular of which is a busy mainline London station. These trains come every three to four minutes at peak times, on both platforms. Even at off-peak times you'll never have to wait longer than about five minutes. I repeat, it's an excellent line. (Having lived outside the M25 for three years, I know what it's like to get a suburban train into London, and this is nothing like it.)
The station where I get off is, is a connecting station; thus, a lot of people get on and off here. Every morning, as I disembark usually between eight and nine o'clock, I have to fight my way through the scrums outside the train doors. People clamour to get on, especially at the end of the platform nearest the entrance. But this is just passengers who are already waiting for train. There's another imminent wave, charging down the stairs when they see that a train is in the station, barging past people coming up the stairs, dashing for the train doors, which are bleeping as they are about to close automatically, and the guard is blowing his whistle and shouting, clearly, "Stand clear of the closing doors please!" But still they dash and barge, with a look of sheer panic in their eyes, many of them not in a fit state to walk briskly, let alone run, but they put themselves through this torture anyway, because ... why? If they don't they'll have to wait three minutes for the next identical train? What is it about commuting that sends these ordinary, seemingly sensible people insane? I've seen people throw themselves, sometimes with a heavy bag or case, at the diminishing gap between automatically closing doors. Sometimes they make it, like Indiana Jones, sometimes they are clamped between the doors, so that the driver has to reopen them. (And guess what happens when they reopen? Exactly. More panicking commuters cram in.)
What is that pushes these people to the edge? Let's generously discount those passengers who descend the stairs but do not realise that another train will be along in three minutes. Fair enough. They might think that if they miss this one, they'll have to wait 20 minutes, or longer, for the next London train. In the same spirit of fairness, let's discount a few more who simply do not know anything about overground train lines - they're lost, or they're foreign visitors, or, even more likely, they have seen others doing the four-minute mile with a brief case and imagine that there must be some urgency, so they pick up speed too. And maybe some of the commuters are actually late for work, and three minutes will actually affect whether or not they are sacked or reprimanded, or will lose them an important client. Fair enough. But for most people making a mad-eyed oaf of themselves, getting all het up and sweaty and out of breath, and actually risking personal injury in those jaw-like doors (which, by the way, are nothing like as malleable as Tube doors - these ones close tight), the added stress is unecessary. I say: calm down, commuters. Chill. It's not as desperate as you think. I worry that the modern world is killing these people. But they are bringing it on themselves.
Equally, people who use their car horns unecessarily. For instance, the person who rammed their fist on the horn on Saturday evening when, in busy Central London, a driver at a crossroads snuck over a light and momentarily blocked oncoming traffic, trapped out there in the yellow grid. It was moderately annoying, but nothing that doesn't happen every 10 minutes in a congested city centre, and yet, about two cars behind me, this driver felt that the only proper response to the possiblity that his journey might be extended by three minutes, was to actually hold down his car horn to create an angry, unbroken siren, thus winding everybody else up. You might say that by sounding his horn this driver (and yes, I believe he was in a van) was releasing his tension, rather than holding it in, and might actually reduce his chances of getting cancer in later life, but externally he was merely adding to the stress of driving in a city. My guess is that by sounding the horn he was addressing the other driver and simply expressing his displeasure. But what would a horn do the driver who was now trapped out in the middle of a box junction? Within about 30 second, the traffic moved, and he was able to move forward, and we were able to move forward too within the green light.
There are an awful lot of stressed people out there, and they seem to be spreading the stress, is what I'm saying. It makes me feel even less like running for trains, which I make it my business never to do anyway. (People run for Tubes all the time. See a closing door, run for it! After all, the next train might not arrive for another two minutes, and then where would we be? I actually saw a woman with a baby in a push chair instinctively go to prevent the doors from closing on a Tube train with the push chair ie. with her baby. We are all going to hell, aren't we?)
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:51 AM
26 Comments
Contact
Andrew at
26 Comments:
You've just described in essence the reason why, after 14 years of studying/working in London, I took the opportunity to move to a job elsewhere. An hour-each-way commute (and 90 mins for my girlfriend) should have been a tedious, lengthy but ultimately bearable bookending to the working day, but in reality it was more like a twice daily assault course for the reasons you state. And not a cheap one, either. There are some things I miss about London (though not as many as I thought there'd be) but the daily commute is not one of them.
Dr Johnson's maxim does have an element of truth about it, but then he never had to contend with the 7.53 to Waterloo via Chiswick.
All very true, Andrew, but I think you have forgotten another annoyance - those people who are so desperate to get onto a train or tube that they don't allow you to get off and complain loudly at you for blocking their way. As far as making other people stressed, these are the ones who turn me from mild mannered into Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill"!
(As a regular commuter, I make it a rule never to run for anything!)
Thanks Andrew, I'm just about to get on to a train to central London. I'm stressed now already! :-p
People become so selfish once they even think of getting on public transport, descending into the Ben Eltonesque 'Gotta getta double seat' mentality. This is why nobody offers elderly people, the disabled or pregnant women seats any more, or feel their child who hasn't paid a fare is entitled to a seat of their own whilst fare-paying adults are standing - society ends once you get on a moving public service vehicle.
Never run after a bus or a woman. And that goes for trains too.
If a train is full, I wait for the next one. My particular train stop, however, only has four trains an hour to Waterloo (and back again), so if I'm in a rush it can be necessary to squeeze in, as hideous as that is.
The only thing that stresses me about commuting - cyclists.
I always offer my seat to elderly people, the disabled or pregnant women but when I say always I mean always! Almost every journey I make I have to do it as seemingly no one else cares. My boyfriend once got up for an elderly gentleman who could hardly stand but while he moved to let the man know (being quite far away as no one nearer cared) a business man sat down and refused to move! This makes me feel more stressed than anything else.
I also never run for public transport.
Jenny, that once happened to me. As I no longer care what people think about me, after the lady had sat down, I berated the entire carriage for being rude and thoughtless. I'm sure they thought I was mad, but I don't care - I'd do it again!
Oh I know, I want to use public transport and I don't have a car anymore but where I live no one uses it so the buses and trains are nearly empty, therefore they don't bother to give us a decent service. When I stay with my friend I can get one of three different company's buses at around 8:30am out of her village or wait three hours for the next one! So when I visit London I am always amazed and annoyed by people in such a stress when the next train is never more than 10 minutes away. I often have to run for buses or trains when I make connections because if one is late arriving I might miss the next and have to pay £30 taxi fare as there is no alternative. It's so annoying, how can I encourage people to use public transport so we can have more and better services when using it is such an unpleasant, stressful experience involving hours standing on cold dark streets waiting for buses or sleeping in station waiting rooms?
On at least two occasions I have been spoken to as though I'm a piece of crap because I didn't notice a woman was pregnant and therefore didn't offer my seat to them.
I'm not one for going round eyeing a woman's gut area, let alone making a judgement on whether it contains an unborn child as opposed to a load of blubber.
True, it can be difficult, and hazardous, to jump to the natal conclusion. If in doubt, just get up and pretend you're getting off at the next stop, that's what I do. if the woman wants it, she can have it, if not, nothing lost. Except your seat.
As Dave Barry once wrote, 'Never ask a woman if she's pregnant unless you can actually see she's giving birth at that moment'.
I don't mind being insulted. I like a seat more than I like being told I look fat.
I just pretend that I am also pregnant by pushing my abdomen out and trying to look feminine (and speaking with a high pitched voice).
I sometimes run for trains, precisely because that will-or-wont-I-make-it risk makes it quite an excitement in an otherwise dreary commute. If you make it, slipping through the door Indiana Jones style just before it closes, then you can feel all good about yourself for at least five minutes. If you don't make it, you know that you've just made yourself look foolish in front of a train load of commuters. The chance factor makes it a thrill.
That said, I don't do it if I know the train is going to be packed, or if there's another in a few minutes.
I don't even bother to get on a train if it's too packed, let alone think about running for one. Life is too short to be subjecting yourself to discomfort - I'd much rather get up five minutes earlier to give myself that leeway.
Actually, one of the good things about the New York system that I now have to use after twelve years or so on the London network, is that the subway 'cars' are air-conditioned. On the occasions I'm corralled into gertting onto a packed train, I find it's much less painful being shoved into somebody's armpit when there's at least a fresh breeze blowing...
You have to ask yourself what's worse, a pregnant woman stood up, or a fat girl sat down, crying.
In defence of people running for trains, when I used to commute to London (I hated it!) I used to have to run for a tube train on occasions as I had to get another train to Luton. Had I missed the tube, the chances were I would miss the train to Luton too. That would mean waiting 20 minutes, or worse, longer due to late trains or no trains! It also meant getting caught up in the worst part of the rush hour at the station.
On a point mentioned in other comments, I have also witnessed problems over seats, but it featured 2 women fighting over the same seat. One woman looked in her 30's, the other in her 50's. The younger woman was actually kicking the other woman! I was down the other end of the bench seats, but I was prepared to go over and stop them fighting whilst everyone else buried their heads in their newspapers.
Luckily, a man standing close by stopped them.
This was 10 years ago and it still amazes me now when I think about it. I was even prepared to get off the train when the older woman got off just to make sure the younger woman didn't follow her, as she kept shouting at her and insulting her.
I just thought "that could be my mum". Fortunately, the younger woman got off first.
It is sometimes hard to tell if some one is pregnant but once I was on a bus and there was a women with a very young baby in her arms and no one got up for her. Luckily there was a nice driver and he stopped the bus and announced he wouldn't go any further unless someone gave her a seat.
btw. my boyfriend did shout at the seat stealing suit but he was unapologetic.
If you put already stressed lab rats under similar crowded, hot, airless conditions, they will start to exhibit signs of extremely hostile and anti-social behaviour quite quickly. We're nothing special, us humans.
And lab rats don't have to do "breakfast brainstorm sessions" over dry croissants and watery coffee with a bunch of people they secretly hate and fear in equal measure, just so they can pay the mortgage and get The Boy a Wii for Christmas.
You Southerners don't know you're born.
Thanks to the monopolistic greedy tendencies of Stagecoach (aka Slowcoach) I will now have to get THREE buses to and from work. Why? Because, as of Monday, they're taking off the only bus that goes directly from the largest housing expansion in Europe (and growing), the Eastern Expansion of Dunfermline, to Edinburgh via Forth Road Bridge.
Their new motto is "less fuss by bus", they should change it to "profits and subsidies before passengers". I refuse to use the train, which isn't that convenient either, after being assaulted by a female member of staff.
Don't even get me started on queue-jumpers. I just couldn't live in London because I would kill someone - D Fens would have nothing on me.
If I feel it's appropriate I'll give up my seat to someone in need but the last time someone said "If you were a gentleman, you'd give me your seat" I replied, "If you were a lady I would"!
I'm away for a lie-down in a darkened room to calm down. I could right a book on the etiquette of public transport travel, I really could.
Interesting. I was visiting my folks in Edinburgh on Sunday. As always, when I decided to head home I didn't estimate enough of a margin for my mum's valedictory stories to comfortably catch my intended bus back to Glasgow.
In the event, I was just reaching the top of the hill when I saw the bus go past and a sense of resignation overtook me. Some one at the bus stop only about fifty feet away, however, hailed it. The bus stopped and two people got on, one of them dawdled too and I realised that I could actually catch the bus.
But I didn't. If anything I dawdled all the more surmising that if I ran it would doubtless pull away just before I got there and I would become an object of ridicule to all watching passengers. I waited for the next one and wound up squeezed beside a coughing fat man for the entire journey. Is this my just desserts or am I a lonely warrior in the fight against rushing?
Mumbler, your only chance was to have made an immediate decision to run. That way you normally catch it. But even a moment's hesitation means you're lost. And you're absolutely right - the fear of humiliation attached to running for but still missing a bus should act as an overwhelming reason not to rush. Nobody on the bus will actually laught at you; instead you get that blank-eyed pitying look as you cough and splutter on the pavement which is somehow far worse.
Um. I don't want to defend white van man here, but could I be pedantic and point out that the driver who "snuck over a light and momentarily blocked oncoming traffic, trapped out there in the yellow grid" was breaking the law. As any copy of the highway code will tell you, you're not allowed to drive into a box junction unless your exit is clear--that's what they're for.
I think the driver who sneaks across as the lights change and holds everyone up so as to reduce his own personal journey time by maybe a minute is just as worthy of your criticisms as the van man hitting his horn or those silly commuters pushing everyone out of the way to get to their train...
All technically true, Matt, but my worry is with the stress of everyday life made more stressful, which the incessant sounding of a car horn in a situation where such an action would clearly have no appreciable effect (the offending grid-enterer could not move forward) strikes me as adding to, not subtracting from, this general air of stress.
I may have taken a dim view myself of the driver that entered the grid, but did I sound my horn? No, because it wouldn't have helped.
'Just in timeism' has never been the same since the rail companies replaced their slam door carriages with automatic door equipped ones.
I remember the frission of anxiety and danger running for a departing train, and then jumping on to the moving carriage to the outraged cries of platform staff and dissapproving stares of passengers.
Life is safer now but duller (I was a lot younger then!)
"nobody offers elderly people, the disabled or pregnant women seats any more" A London cliche, and utterly untrue in my experience - on the Cental Line, anyway. See also: Stepping over the bodies of people who've just collapsed. There's nobody more accident prone than me, consequently I spend about 25% of my year being helped up from the floor by dozens of total strangers.
Commuter etiquette. Am I the only person currently enduring the daily slog to and from work who has any idea of this concept? I only ask because today, for the umpteenth time, the various golden rules of travelling into town by public transport (and more specifically the train) have been broken on my journey. In order that I can enjoy my journey more (i.e. so that I am able to get to sleep quickly on the train and remain in the land of nod until my destination), the following 10 golden rules are presented for you. Feel free to cut and out and keep, or even sellotape to your usual train carriage wall:
1. Any windows on the carriage should only be opened/closed with the express permission of the other commuters in the immediate vicinity of the said window. On no account should a commuter breeze onto a train and open/close any windows without a polite cursory request to do so.
2. Any conversation should be kept to a bare minimum on any trains before 7.30am. If it is felt necessary that a conversation needs to be carried out before this time, it should be done so in a quiet fashion (a whisper is preferable). Commuters must not indulge in pointless hearsay and gossip with each other for entire journeys before the sun has fully risen.
3. The temperature on a train is directly related to whether the windows on the carriage are open or closed. If one feels hot on entering a train, one should first remove items of clothing. Only then should a window be opened (see rule 1) if one is still feeling hot. On no account should commuters board a train wearing thick coat, scarf and hat, and then open windows whilst remaining sitting/standing in said attire.
4. On entering a train, carriage doors should be closed after the last person has embarked. This prevents any heat from leaving the carriage if, for example, the train has to remain on the platform for any length of time
5. Seats on a train are designed to be just too small for the average person. If taking a seat next to another commuter who happens to be asleep, the new arrival should under no circumstances launch themselves or fall into the empty seat next to the sleeping commuter, thus bashing into that person and potentially waking them up.
6. All bags should be quietly placed on racks above the seats or stowed under seats. There is absolutely no need to make loud clanking noises, potentially disrupting the sleep patterns of fellow travellers. Bags should not be placed in the already minimal foot space between facing seats.
7. Anyone sitting in a seat usually occupied by another commuter should be forced to vacate said seat and find one which is not regularly occupied. Rhythms can be severely disrupted by this inconsiderate practise.
8. A train carriage only has a finite amount of space within it. Once this carriage is full, there really is no where else to move to. Shouting out “Can you move down please” is not an excuse to rudely push one’s way onto a full carriage. The laws of physics still apply to rail journeys.
9. If a newspaper is next to someone on a seat, it is common courtesy to enquire if it belongs to that person, rather than simply picking up the paper and keeping it.
10. Hot food should never be consumed on a train. There is nothing worse than sitting opposite someone munching on a Cornish pastie.
Post a Comment
<< Home