please empty your brain below
I had a discussion with Jag on the merits of buses against tube and obviously, to me, the tube came out on top.
You sum it up quite well to say it's the speed of the tubes that make them better. I know, I know they stop between stops there's always delays but when they run normally there isn't a faster way to travel round Central London.
Let me speak from my own experience:
For nearly a year I, like many hundreds of other tube riders doing exactly the same route, used to travel from North West London to Hammersmith. Ignorantly like marching droids, taking the Jubilee Line down to Baker Street - then switching to the Ham & City Line - and then proceeding from there on to Hammersmith. Total cost: £1136 annual Oyster, all the crowd-hassles of Zone 1 and consistently at least an hour door-to-door - if I was lucky.
After about a year - I discovered that I could actually get the 79 instead (a hundred metres from my house) and connect with the tube at Picc Line at Alperton instead - approaching Hammersmith from the West instead of the centre. Total cost: £664 annual Oyster, no Zone 1 hassles - and variably under an hour door-to-door - sometime in under 30 minutes!
So - for me at least (and I must be one of many) the bus is not only "faster", it's 500 quid cheaper - far less stressful - and as the Geezer has demonstrated so well: is soooooo much more interesting.
And that's coming from someone who regularly rides both bus AND tube - TWO of them - TWICE a day.
So there.
Tubes are boring. They have no personality. The people who ride them sit there (or stand there) like zombies. And the most that people find to interest themselves on boring tube journeys is to immerse themselves in that thing that calls itself a newspaper: The Metro. I've even witnessed many said zombies turn demonically posessed in order to grab a discarded Metro that's been left behind by a departing zombie. It shocks me - it really does. You will rarely find a discarded Metro on a bus - and if you do - it will almost certainly be found at very back of the top deck: where childish teenagers with nothing better to do after having finished reading the back page football news - dump them on the floor instead of the seat: the seat being reserved for putting your feet up against.
The people of London love London's buses. The Mayor loves London's buses. With innovations like the "bendy bus" on Route 18 - there is more bus innovation to come. Unlike the tubes - where many of us struggle to breathe, let alone sit or stand. And you don't get a nose-full of black, plague-infested, snot on your kleenex after a bus journey either.
The London Bus is the undeniable and undisputed king of London's transport system.
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