Today I was lucky enough to see a keynote speech at MongoDB Europe by Hannah Fry – “MATHEMATICIAN, SCIENCE PRESENTER AND ALL ROUND BADASS”. Hannah took us on a whistle-stop tour of maths and social science, covering topics such as finding a single algorithm that covers serial killers, malaria, and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). She also showed visualisations including one which showed which London Underground stations have the worst delays if there is a problem. Having written about transport resilience earlier this week I was intrigued. Oh hai serendipity!
“But of course one service disruption does not a network outage make. London Transport is a resilient system, and although the Tube itself has more single points of failure, it too is generally a resilient system.”
When you get a chance to hear the truth from a lecturer in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, you pay close attention. And the winner is… Highbury and Islington.
“The worst place to have a problem at 9am is not Waterloo? It’s Highbury and Islington. A lot of trains passing North and East are travelling through that station, but it only has one Tube line. The only option is to walk to Angel, Islington. There are hardly any buses or taxis around, or a bike share scheme.”
Even better than that, I now know what the second worst Tube station if there are delays is – North Greenwich, the location of the conference ironically enough. So now you know. Stations to avoid at 9am.
No Comments