Smoke(ing) on the London Underground.

Now here's something I wanted to cover on Sunday (29/7/12) night.

At around 07:00 local today (31/7/12) fire alarms activated at "Leyton" station on London Underground' (LU) Central Line. This highlights perfectly my worries about the Central Line. Being one of LU's oldest and busiest lines at some point during the 2012 Olympics something like a piece of track, a signal, a radio system or a fire alarm is going to develop a fault. This will cause a lot of stress and possibly delays as someone has to go and diagnose and fix that fault. On this occasion "Leyton" station had to be evacuated and the Central Line was closed between "Wanstead" station and "Snaresbrook" station and "Liverpool Street" station meaning that no Central Line trains ran to "Stratford" station at the Olympic park. Now this struck me as excessive because "Wanstead" is the Central Line station I use whenever I go to visit my mother in the home she shares with her partner - a UK government/civil service lawyer who wrote the UK smoking ban. Also it perfectly highlights the problem with Olympic visitors using the Central Line to "Stratford" station and raises the possibility that it might be worth putting on a shuttle bus service to take Olympic visitors directly from "Liverpool Street" overground station to the Olympic park. As news of the Central Line closure spread and London Fire Brigade (LFB) investigated at "Leyton" station people started to claim they'd smelled smoke at the station and then suddenly another set of fire alarms started going off at the Heathrow terminal stations on the Piccadilly Line. This brings us rather neatly onto the smoking ban that applies to all LU stations.

While I think any visitor from any reasonable nation will agree that Britain's ban on tobacco smoking in public places is f*king ridiculous especially the ban on smoking at overground stations which tend to be outdoors anyway the ban on smoking anything on London Underground has been in place for much longer and is there for a very good reason. The LU network is absolutely packed with things such oil, grease, fabric from peoples clothes and human hair/skin which catch fire really easily. If any of these things were to catch fire the 30mph(18kmph) winds that are created by the trains pushing their way through the tunnels means that any fire will spread really quickly. As LU stations are almost exclusively underground it is almost impossible to evacuate everybody in time should a fire break out. This is was happened in November 1987 in the "Kings Cross" station fire which killed 31 people most of whom were burned to death. Therefore;

DO NOT SMOKE ANYWHERE ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND!

If you are seen even considering smoking regular users will be expected to start tutting loudly and telling you off. Either LU staff or the police will then move in to detain you and you will be prosecuted and just in case you get any ideas about leaving the country without paying a fine the police and only the police are entitled to punch you full in the face first.


13:05 31/7/12.