If there is one thing that unites Londoners it’s the transport system. Ken Livingstone was elected on the basis of his prior record in handling this huge creaking system. With prices 2-3 times the price of other major cities you wouldn’t expect the service to be dirty, unreliable and congested.

Unfortunately the London Transport Museum is closed for an 18 million pound refurbishment, and reopens in the Spring of 2007. Here you are able to trace the roots of the Transport system from the early 1800’s. In the 1930’s London Transport network of underground trains, buses and trams was regarded as the world’s most progressive public transport system.
In it’s golden era London transport was also an important patron of contemporary art. Eminent artists such as Man Ray and Graham Sutherland created publicity posters, while Paul Nash designed upholstery fabric for the seats of trains, trams and buses.
London Transport commissioned work from noted designers, such as Hans Schleger and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, while the poet, John Betjeman, wrote it’s tourist leaflets.

Now days approaching the Capital is a lot simpler with high speed rail links and direct tube services.. Although slow and unreliable London’s buses are part of the Landscape. You will often see 20 of them nose to tail down Oxford street, with pedestrians passing them at twice the speed.. Things have improved with the introduction of the congestion charge however and, although slower, the scenery is better than the Tube. Although the newly introduced “pay for a ticket before you get on” is somewhat inconvenient getting change, your best bet is a day pass, a lot less expensive.
The London Underground ( affectionately known as the Tube) was the first and is now sadly the least reliable and most expensive in the world ( 250% more expensive than even Tokyo) Delays are frequent , and seem to occur just when you need to get somewhere urgently. Escalators are often out of service and some of the lines run very deep below the streets. Some of the stations are rather beautiful, for example, the “Art Deco” St John’s Wood Station. A more recently “Alien” inspired design try changing between the Jubilee and Circle lines at Westminster, or visit any of the stations on the Jubilee Line south of the river. They recently won the coveted architecture design award for 2000, beating buildings all over the UK.

London Black Cabs are justifiably famous. “The Knowledge” – the exam to become a cabbie- takes years of study and has been actually shown on scans to increase brain size, such is the amount of geographical information needed. That said, many Cabbies dislike going south of the river and their knowledge seems to become a little hazy south of the Elephant & Castle,
The good news is that travelling by river has got cheaper and easier. The excellent Thames Clipper will take you from Tate Britain to Canary Wharf, and back, with unlimited stop-offs for £7.50 or £16 for a whole family. Well worth spending a day on the river….