TfL say workers use Tube as lateness excuse

A new survey by Transport for London has "found" that commuters lie and use London Underground delays as an excuse for being late. An independent study of 1,000 commuters shows that half of those who were late lied about the reasons why. Delayed Tube trains and heavy traffic were the most common excuses.


The survey was to launch the new Travel Tools that me and other bloggers were given a preview of a few weeks ago at a bloggers briefing with TfL.

As much as I welcomed being invited to the briefing, I was almost speechless when I heard about this survey. I'm sure most people who use the Northern Line and the District Line, which is fast becoming as bad as the Misery Line, are also fairly speechless.

20% of Londoners used the 'Tube was late' as their excuse, while only 5% said poor service on the Underground was the real reason they were delayed. There's more on this at the BBC. However, I wonder how many lines were represented in this survey? It probably wasn't carried out in the rush hour either.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to put a lot of faith in a survey like this, commissioned by TfL to promote travel tools. Rather than blaming us for fibbing about delays, it might have been more positive to put the money on the survey to better use. Like making it easier for us to find a link to the Customer Charter when you can make a claim when you're delayed by more than 15 minutes. This has happened to me twice this week and it's only Thursday. This year I've racked up £70 in Customer Charter refund claims and I forget to make claims a lot of the time.

Anyway if you're one of the liars, I've made things a little easier for you with a random London Underground Delay Generator. Based on Reginald Perrin's "Sorry I'm late, cow on the line at Bagshot" excuses - you can have minutes of fun coming up with some more reasons for your boss to think you're a work shy fop who wanted a lie in.

Enjoy.