Packed on the Tube - and more sardine trips to come

Most visitors recoil in horror. They gasp, they moan, they step away, mistakenly assuming the next train must be better. They simply cannot comprehend that this is now the normal density of traffic on the Tube, not just on a few hard-pressed routes, not just at rush-hour peaks, but all round the system, at all hours of the day and night.

Not so long ago, the Tube home after an evening out used to be relatively uncrowded. Now, even at that time, it's nightmarishly packed. The platforms at many stations, not just Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, become so clogged that no one can move in any direction for long periods of time, a frightening experience. And that's when all's going well, which is rare. As soon as a line goes out of service, the alternative routes become even worse.

We know that road traffic congestion levels have now crept back up to the same level as before the congestion charge. All experience of passenger congestion on the Tube suggests that it is becoming worse too, year by year. But is this just a subjective impression?

No. New TfL figures confirm it. There are now 3.4 million passenger journeys made each weekday - and the number of passengers travelling on the Tube is currently increasing at around seven per cent per year. That's a scary statistic when, as a passenger, you'd be excused for feeling absolute saturation point has already been reached. Into that impossibly overstuffed carriage there will be seven per cent more people pushing next year. And the year after that, another seven per cent more of that compound total struggling to get in somehow ...

The rise is inexorable. In 2003/4, there were 948 million passenger journeys per year; in 2004/5, 976 million. In 2005/6, after 7/7, numbers briefly fell back to 971 million, but by 2006/7, they were back up to 1,014 million.

The figure projected for 2007/8 is 1,100 million. If it goes on rising at this level, it will exceed 1,350 million in just three years. Nearly a quarter as many travellers again as we now have.

These may be figures that the eye skates over, but what they mean is that in just a few years we will be looking back to the terrifying crushes we endure now as the good times of old. Maybe, as Max Beerbohm said, the secret of happiness is to see the present as an advance proof of the past.

For David Sexton's full column buy Friday's Evening Standard