bobble

Well today it was 34C in London (93.2F) and yes I admit I like the heat. Heat when it’s dry crispy heat! Sadly, more often than not it’s humid here. Tomorrow the weather is set to break all previous records for the UK (38.5C / 101.3F set in 2003) and be 39C / 102.2F.

People who refuse to believe that global warming exists I draw your attention to the fact that a lot of the Northern hemisphere is experiencing a heat wave currently and in a a few short years this will be the Summer norm not the exception. If ever the planet needed us to give up our dependance on oil (and other things like private car ownership) and embrace renewable energy it’s now.

It’s not a pleasant story getting to and from work at the moment. Travelling on a public transport system without air conditioning (some tube lines are set never to get it, some “maybe” in 2009) is beyond inhumane. Hell, the maximum EU temperature for trucks transporting cattle is 27C.

So with that in mind guess what the recorded temperatures on the tubes and London buses were today?

47C / 116.6F Tube
52C / 125.6F Bus

(above figures from The Evening Standard so not scientifically backed up.)

WTF???!!! And tomorrow as the ground temperature is higher it is set to be even hotter.

Oh come on Mayor Ken where is the forward planning? Where do our public transport fares - some of the highest in the Western world go? Hey we are hosting the Olympics in 6 years, do you think international visitors are going to put up with that? When you replaced the old Routemaster buses with those swanky modern ones recently where was the aircon? And, yes, I know parts of the system are Victorian. We’ve had that excuse for shoddy transport since I moved to London nine years ago! If we are to hit environmental targets and help out our poor old planet and stop it overheating then we must get people onto public transport. How can we possibly tempt people out of their cars when all they can look forward to is this????

Tonight it took me two hours to get home (a 45 minute journey on a good day) because a) our tube line had a speed limit imposed on it due to hot tracks that may melt or buckle if the train went over 20mph and b) I had to change trains twice due to signal errors.

What a lovely day I look forward to on Friday when there may be a national mainline train strike and they predict three times more people than normal squeezing onto the already packed, hot, sweaty slow tube. Oh Bob Crowe you have a lot to answer for.

Save us now oh gods of transport!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Subscribe to this comment feed at Bloglines. Both comments and pings are currently closed.