The New York Subway and The London Underground

Which is the better transit system, The New York Subway or The London Underground? It's pretty easy to sit and push the merits of both into a keyboard but for me, the answer is easy - as long as you can have two answers. It's an emotional answer - not for me but for the people that have made it, watched it, used it and not only been part of it but made it a part of their city and life.

Better start off with throwing a few statistics into the pot and see where we end up then. The London Underground was the worlds first underground transit system when it opened in 1863 and the first to operate electric trains. Nowadays the tube network transports about 3.5 million people on any given weekday along 250 miles of track stopping at 270 stations. By comparison, New York has a larger ridership of 5 million on a weekday covering 229 miles and 468 stations. Yet these kind of statistics are all a bit shallow in comparing them and to me serve as the precursor to the pages of information you could pull up from a quick search.

For Londoners, the Underground is a lot more than a way of getting around. It's the lifeblood of the City, and at no time more than during the second world war. We have a housekeeper where I live in Kent, England who said that everytime the German aircraft flew over the countryside to bomb the hell out of the big smoke, her mother would say, "oh those poor Londoners". The

underground played a key role in saving the lives of people from the Nazi bombs. Government policy prior to London being bombed said the underground was not to be used as a shelter for fear that people may develop a "deep shelter mentality" and refuse to come back to the surface. However, heavy raids on London on 7th and 8th September 1940 led to public shelters being critically overcrowded to an unhygienic level. In October that year it was decided to build several deep level shelters, each with a capacity to hold 8,000 people and providing sanctuary for more than 60,000 people that lived in the worst affected areas of the City. In reference to the underground's role in ww2, Winston Churchill said,"London is like some huge prehistoric animal, capable of enduring terrible injuries, mangled and bleeding from many wounds, and yet preserving it's life and movement." Churchill always had a way with words but he was right, the underground saved the lives of thousands of people in the war - it protected people and then humbly went on to do what it does normally.

For New Yorkers too, the subway is a lot more than a way of getting around and their subway faced a different type of bombing in the 1970s. I first came across the New York subway when I was 12 years old with the publication of a book called Subway

Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfont (right). This book is now legendary in the world of graffiti and was one of the first books to give the world an insight into the graffiti movement, why it had come about and it's expressionism, artists running from the authorities whilst trying to display what they do to the public on New Yorks subway trains. It also contributed massively to the perception that modern graffiti's roots lie deeply embedded in the New York Subway. Maybe but nowhere was it more prevalent. Critics said that it showed how out of control New York was when in the 70s and 80s subway trains were completely drowned in writers tags, window down pieces, window up pieces, whole cars - it was war between artists. Although not what one might expect an artist to be although early protagonists such as the writer "Seen" have gone on to develop successful careers out of graffiti and related arts. Seen is now 'seen' as the godfather of graffiti. The importance of graffiti in the history of the New York subway can be seen in the size of some of the pieces and planning that went into the trips to train yards. Writers faced competition from one another in a bid to become the best known writers or the best painters alongside normally having to steal the paint and escape the law. For hundreds of youngsters it was a way of life that ordinary members of the public were exposed to in the most colorful, criminal, messy, imposing and beautiful way. Everyone had a view on it. It took years and millions of dollars to clear up New York's trains but the old images of New York subway trains colorfully screeching into stations with a top to bottom whole car painted the night before will remain etched in my head forever - I love it.

Above ground in both cities, station entrances are like the gateways to a different world. Modern, art deco, tired, classical, funky - with hundreds of stations to choose from there are as many styles of architecture as there were styles of graffiti in New York's graffiti heyday.