It finally snowed today. And as usual, gritters were not out in time.
The roads turned into slushy, slippery dangerous skidways, but there were no accidents fortunately.
I had to head into Chinatown to pickup my contact lenses from the opticians. While waiting for the bus, two cars got stuck trying to climb the hill (it's a notorious hill that has caused problems in the past during snowy, icy conditions, even the police got stuck the last time it snowed heavily)
Since the cars were now blocking the road going up, I decided to go and take a different route to Chinatown, and went via the Northern Line instead of the Piccadilly Line like I was originally planning.
The pavements were slushy and there was not even any sign of gritting. The station pavements were gritted, but presumably by the station staff, and not the council.
Even while coming home and trying to climb the hill to my house, my shoes were not gripping well, and had to take small steps to make sure I wouldn't fall.
Dangerously incompetent, that's what my local council are.
Boy, oh boy, yesterday was a crazy hot day. I went back into the office as they are going to do a deep clean so we needed to make sure all our desks are clear of any personal belongings.
They blocked out every other desk:
And the air conditioning was reduced since there weren't that many people in the office.
The temperature in the office was a toasty 26.8degC
But the temperature outside soared to 36degC, and nearly tipped the 38degC/100degF mark.
As expected, the heat destroyed Network Rail's ability to run a reliable service and services out of King's Cross were delayed or cancelled.
I ended up using the Piccadilly Line to get back home.
On the way, spotted Blackfriars station had a vending machine for alcohold wipes, hand sanitisers and face masks:
The heat in the trains was horrendous. Eventually made it home and decided not to walk, I was sweating enough as it was just taking the train.
Back to today. Temperatures are back to mid-20s so walking is still hot weather, but not as uncomfortable as yesterday.
Well, it’s the day after Boxing Day. The day where the majority of people who haven’t taken the interim days off on holiday, go back to work.
There was definitely a run-down feeling on the train ride into work and the trains were running a reduced (probably a Sunday service), so I ended up running for the earlier train since my normal one wasn’t there today.
A really interesting map of all of London’s abandoned and partly-abandoned stations. Some of which I knew about (Mill Hill East for example), others, like Highbury + Islington, which I use daily to get to work, I didn’t know had a different surface building at one point.
This seems to be a norm these days, but it is still unhygenic and disgusting. I’d love to push the spitter’s face into their own spit and order them to lick up every drop of it…. But I’d probably be violating their “human rights”….
People who bring full sized bikes onto trains. Tolerable on rail services, as some train stations are quite far out of towns, but on underground trains where every inch of space is a premium, and valuable, a bike is worth at least three spaces…. Posted from WordPress for Android
It’s rush hour, and a busy carriage, and there’s space inside the train, but people don’t always want to move down inside the car because it’s harder to get off.
British Transport Police says John Burgess died three days after suffering serious head injuries in horrific accident at Stockwell Underground station
After now using public transport a lot more since changing jobs, accidents such as this now make a bigger impact to my commute to and from work. Even the announcers on the platforms are now tell people not to look over the edge of the platform.
People tell me I should use public transport to save on money, so I decided to check cost differences.
To use buses only, would take me 2 hours on a good day, and on a bad day, possibly 3 hours to get from one end to the other. A single bus fare would cost me £2.40 (2 buses), costing £24 a week.
To use underground only, would take me 1.5 hours to 2 hours on an average day. I have to travel from Zone 5 to Zone 1. I travel during the peak so that costs me £4.60 each way, total of £9.20 per day, or £46 per week.
If I wanted the flexibility of using both, a monthly season ticket between Zones 1 and 5 costs me £205.10 or £51.28 per week.
Buses, so far are the cheapest option, but they are the slowest (at 2-3 hours) and are most prone to have disruptive commuters (school kids, drunks, smokers)
But what about if I use a car? In a car it takes me 30-45 minutes to get to work in the morning, and about the same to get home. If I hit a peak of traffic, it maybe, at worse, 1.5 hours. Compare that to a 1.5 hours BEST case on the underground and 3 hours WORST case on the buses.
Here’s my breakdown of costs:
Diesel: Approx £16 pw – I fill up every 3 or so weeks, and on everage, it is about £16 per week of fuel
Road Tax: £0.39 pw (£20 per year)
MOT: £1.05 pw (£54.85 py)
Service (Full): £6.05 pw (£314.36 py) – including work done. If no work actually needs to be done, then this is much lower.
Tyres (4): £4.58 pw (£238 py) – assuming I have to change all tyres at least once a year. Not likely as I don’t do too much mileage, and I have only had to change the tyres once since buying the car.
Insurance: £8.65 pw (£450 py)
Total Cost Per Week: £36.72
So, even with the worst case scenario (lots of work to do on the service and yearly replacing of the tyres), my weekly running cost is STILL less than a season ticket on the Public Transport (and I also get to and from work a HELL of a lot faster).
To put it in perspective, a medium fries from McDonalds is 330 calories, so heading to and from work will burn this off.
This DOESN’T however, mean you can slack off the trip to gym.
