Tonight:
4°c
The city lies apparently paralysed by the Tube strike.
London's businesses face a potential collective loss of £100 million.
Who knows how everyone with tickets will get to the England v Andorra game tonight at Wembley.
Yet this could turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the strike's organisers. We are choosing alternative methods of transport and getting to work anyway.
And indeed, many of us may well find that we prefer not to return to the Tube when full service resumes on Friday.
I have one friend who lives in Richmond who was considering riding her horse to work in central London: not a practical choice for many but it's a measure of Londoners' determination to get in this morning.
Another, a chef, is using her son's tiny scooter (the foot-powered variety) to whisk along the pavements between Camden, where she lives, and Battersea, where she works.
My nephew has a pogo stick which he says will beat the traffic. Cyclists fill the streets.
We are all surprisingly eager to get to work. At some points in our city's recent history, a transport strike might have been seen as an excuse to take the day off.
But now, the long light days, work worries and a shared determination to keep London's commercial heart beating all contribute to us taking the time and just walking where another mode of transport isn't possible.
And in fact, given the speed of traffic on our gridlocked, endlessly dug-up roads, those with an eye for a short cut and an ability to read maps may find themselves at work sooner than they expected today.
From where I live in Bayswater, there is no question that walking or bicycling is the quickest way to get anywhere in central London: I have not used the Tube for months.
Even from further out, if it takes you an hour to walk it today or tomorrow, that's probably no more than 20 minutes' extra travel time each way.
Meanwhile, I have long thought the River Thames an underused highway.
This week sees it brimming with flotillas of canoes, small rowing boats and an increased population of river buses, set up to transport 8,000 people per hour rather than the usual 1,500. Who would not rather travel to work by boat than Underground?
I hope Transport for London takes heed and keeps the extra boats on after the strike ends.
I also hope that Boris Johnson considers speeding up the permanent extension of the Oyster Card to include overland trains and boats.
The strike should be an opportunity for us all to look at radical ways to make London's transport better.
The Tube is expensive, dirty and unreliable. By removing it from our lives for a few days, the RMT may be doing us a huge favour.
Sure, a lot of people will struggle this week. But London Transport is responding with escorted bike rides, increased bike parking and by handing out walking maps at every Tube station.
Why can't we think creatively like this when the RMT's tantrum is over?
Never mind the more pleasant journeys: imagine the improved impact on the environment if even one in 10 of the people who start walking today stick to it. Imagine what it would do to our waistlines, too.
King Pyrrhus, busy winning costly wars all over the place, commented: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans we shall be ruined.” Such a victory may not quite ruin Bob Crow's RMT just yet.
But we may find we are less dependent on his members and the Underground than we thought we were — and happier for it.
Reader views (4)
Thing with striking is you never get that money back which you lose from not going to work, surely there must be a better way to resolve this dispute. Iknow the job is unsociable but at the moment we are all feeling the pinch and would like more money but its not that easy with job losses, firms closing etc. Why can't we have a bit of common sense from both sides and put the fare paying passengers first.
- David, Isle of Wight, 11/06/2009 15:42
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Agree with Paul. They're striking at a time when people will realise that they can give their travelcard and gym pass up for a few months. I, for one, haven't commuted on the tube since Dec 07. I got my bike on Cycle Scheme and saved the amount it cost per month by not having the Travelcard part of my ticket. Having a Brompton rocks! Even if South West Trains went on strike, I'd have no problem getting into and across London.
My only plea is for the pedestrians to have a look before crossing the road. You lot are the crazy ones.
- Nick, Kingston, 11/06/2009 13:56
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The strikers will be moaning even more when they start losing there jobs because passengers realise theres other ways to get to work than the tube...
- Paul, liverpool, 10/06/2009 16:06
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well, with less tube traffic, less trains may be needed, making further redundancies logical.
and redundancies will cause more strikes... so your argument doesn't sound logical. anyway, let's hope TFL don't gve in. the striker's appetite for strikes will soon diminish when their pay is sufficiently impacted...
- Mek, London, 10/06/2009 09:03
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