Leopold Foundation Investigation Report Issued: Austria To Investigate Leopold Museum, Victim Compensation Promised

According to a December 25, 2009 article in the Kurier, the Austrian government has announced that a 2,000 page report of an investigation into the Leopold Museum's holdings of artworks looted from Jewish victims of the Holocaust has been completed but has not yet been released to the public. 

Apparently, the Leopold is refusing to return the stolen artworks, but will offer money instead.

More stalling from Austria on Egon Schiele's Dead City and Portrait of Wally.  Austria claims to have been investigating these cases for a decade, it is scandalous that they haven't yet done the right thing.

Let's hope Austria releases the report quickly.

http://kurier.at/kultur/1965210.php

A rough summary follows:

Leopold Museum: First Restitution Report
Exchange by all participants on the basis of recognized facts. Report by the provenance researchers engaged by the Leopold Museum and Culture Minister Claudia Schmied. According to Schmied’s plan, an independent commission will be created in the second half of January that will make recommendations about returning objects. The Leopold Stiftung has also said that as a “sign of good will,” they are prepared to make financial contributions to victims and heirs.

The provenance researchers, Michael Vladika and Sonja Niederacher have drafted a report of around 2,000 pages, but have not released the details. This report is supposed to be published in January. Until then, they are bound by confidentiality agreements. The Ministry and the Leopold Museum are taking time to study the report.

The researchers said that they need more time to study the collection of cabaret performer Fritz Gruenbaum, from whose collection Dead City III and Portrait of Wally were confiscated in New York in 1998, and which precipitated a debate. Wally is the subject of an on-going court case in New York and is not treated in the report.


The report covers, among other works, four Schiele graphic works from the collection of Karl Maylaender, who was deported to Lodz in 1941. It also treats three works by Anton Romako that were taken from the collector Oskar Reichel, which Leopold acquired by exchange.



If the Leopold Collection, which has been a foundation since 1994, is considered to fall under the 1998 Restitution Law [which applies to state collections] then these works would certainly be the subject of restitution cases. Leopold has maintained that he acquired these works in good faith as a private citizen. The question is, “what did he really know?” stands at the center of the matter.

Signs of Christmas on the London Underground

You know it's nearly Xmas on the Tube, when there's a lot more empty seats in the morning. When there's weary shoppers hoping to make it home with their bounty intact (great picture of one such shopper by Mevan Babakar below).


When TfL positively encourage you to take bits of the Tube home with you:


Obviously not pulling up seats or stripping off the moquette upholstery, but giving gifts made with their likenesses. Nice seeing the London Undercover Tube Umbrella on the poster.

When your local station puts its "Festive" opening times up.


Luckily my station is running pretty normally, but don't forget to check out TfL's site for Tube travel over Xmas.

Finally Christmas on the Tube wouldn't be complete without a picture of Santacon.


Great shot of a group/herd of Santae legging it onto the train before the doors shut by Zbigniew Osiowy of Tubephotography.net.

Hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and here's hoping that travel in 2010 won't be too much of a challenge!

What the Northern Line could have been

Fun short pilot for a TV show called 'Unfinished London'. It's about the incomplete Northern Heights plan for the Northern Line and how its failure affected how North London looks.


Covers similar ground to the Transformed by the Tube talk I went to last month at London Transport Museum. Building the London Underground had a massive impact to the suburbs & literally creates new towns.

Thanks to Will B for sending it on to me and for Jay Foreman for making a good short film, pondering whether we're any worse off because the Northern Heights was never finished.

Adless Tube

King's Cross London Underground station won't look like this for long. So James Cridland took a shot of the new recently-opened access tunnel there.


He said "Imagine what it would be like if this stayed like this?".

Looks like an art installation to me and some of the commuters look as though they're discussing something in the Tate!

Tube power staff in Xmas strike over pay

Hopefully, this will not have serious consequences for the overall London Underground service, but 100 EDF Power staff will walk out next week over a pay dispute.

The engineers will not work from 8pm on Tuesday 22nd December 2009 to 8am on Christmas Eve. Further action might also take place in the 12 hours from 8pm on Boxing Day.


RMT leader Bob Crow says: "Our EDF Powerlink members are furious at the failure of the company to make a meaningful pay offer. Instead of entering into serious talks they have run to the courts and have wheeled out the anti-union laws in an attempt to shackle RMT. Unless we receive a positive offer this action will go ahead and the consequences for the Underground will be serious."

Transport for London say they're confident that "this action does not present a significant risk to the operation of the Underground."

However, Unite members have been balloted and may be taking the same action as RMT members at the same times.

There is also a separate dispute with LUL Willesden Green Group Station Staff over alleged victimisation of a staff member. "The union has therefore decided to use the mandate for industrial action and our members on the group have been instructed not to book on for any shifts that commence between 04:59 and 23:59 on Wednesday 23rd December 2009."

Update: 22nd December 2009 - Unite members will definitely be taking strike action from 8pm 22nd December 2009 until 8pm 27th December 2009. No updates from TfL as yet as to whether this will cause a disruption to services on the Tube. Although Unite say "EDF has failed to reach a compromise with Unite and now there is a high risk that the tube will be brought to a halt at the busiest time of year."

Will Tube Lines hand back Tube contract?

Yesterday the Rail Arbiter favoured the London Underground and said that Tube Lines' estimate to complete line upgrades was higher than it should be. Chris Bolt said "I have reviewed carefully the submissions from Tube Lines and London Underground, and taken expert advice. On the basis of my analysis, I consider that a company operating in an overall efficient and economic manner and in accordance with Good Industry Practice – the test in the PPP Agreement – could deliver its obligations at a substantially lower cost than projected by Tube Lines, though not as cheaply as suggested by London Underground."


He's come in with a middling figure of £4.4 billion, whereas Tube Lines wanted £5.75 billion and London Underground believed they should do it for £4.0 billion.

This is only a draft decision though and Tube Lines sound like they might prepared to walk away from the contract. In a press release on their site, they said that the arbiter agrees that London Underground are a "difficult client" to work with.

Currently they say it will be difficult to complete the work at lower figure proposed. Dean Finch, Tube Lines' Chief Executive said "The Arbiter has acknowledged even at this level that LU has a stark choice to make - either to do less work or raise additional finance. However, this document is a draft and we have a further six weeks to make representations which we will do robustly."


So what will happen if the arbiter sticks at £4.4 billion? What if London Underground still say they're not prepared to pay more than £4 billion? Is Boris going to wade in and demand that it's completed at that price? Will Tube Lines seriously walk away from the contract? If so what does that mean for us commuters? Even more delays to the Jubilee Line work? Any improvements on the Northern Line by 2012? Questions, questions, questions.

Tube Philosophy at King's Cross

Taken at the exit of the King's Cross H&C/Metropolitan/Teacup line this morning, by Matthew V.


Is this an instruction to us all? Or just the philosophy of the London Underground in general?

Plus on another thoughtful note, Rammi saw this at Sudbury Hill on Monday:


Let us know if any of your station staff are giving other philosophical offerings or veiled instructions on how to cope with life on the Tube. Perhaps they're competing with each other in an effort to be the most erudite.

Finally, the staff at Caledonian Road decided to use their Service Information board for a rather impressive Christmas message:


Thanks to Yaili for alerting me to this. Have a look at all the effort that was put into it on the large size!

Tube Lines' Delays may spread to Northern Line

After a recent media war of words about the finish date for the Jubilee Line upgrade, it appears that TfL now aren't confident about Tube Lines being able to complete Northern Line updates in time for the Olympics. Bloomberg reported yesterday that TfL is "concerned" about Tube Lines meeting the January 2012 deadline for the Northern Line work.


The same Jubilee Line team will be used for the work on the Northern Line. Boris Johnson had written to the Head of Tube Lines demanding assurances of the finish date of the Jubilee Line work. However Tube Lines said in an e-mail on Monday that 'the delay to the Jubilee line does not necessarily impact on the Northern line upgrade.'

This Thursday rail regulator Chris Bolt will issue a draft decision on a related dispute between the London Underground & Tube Lines' about the cost of the contractor's work from 2010 to 2017. London Underground estimates the cost to be 4.2 billion pounds, while Tube Lines says it will be around 5.7 billion pounds.

RMT Leader Bob Crow leapt on the recent disputes as a chance to lay into Tube Lines and hasn't minced his words. He told the BBC:

"Tube Lines should be sacked now, without compensation, before the final death throes of PPP on the underground do further damage to London's transport system.

"This chaos management of an essential service for millions of Londoners cannot be allowed to continue." He believes that the work should be bought in-house (probably giving him even more opportunity to determine when workers should lay down their tools).

The Northern Line is one of the busiest on the Tube & many people are worried about the Tube's ability to cope with the influx of travellers due to the Olympics. So Tube Lines are under a lot of pressure to get work completed on time. At the moment it's early days, but doubtless the battle of words will continue.

How's the new Circle Line?

According to The Independent, the new Circle Line (or lasso line, or spiral line, or @ line) is causing some confusion for London Underground passengers. Writer, Andy McSmith calls it "incomprehensible".


He points out what is making things confusing: "To add to the perplexity, Transport for London (TfL) insists on calling the trains that are going by the long route to Hammersmith "eastbound", although they go south, west and north until they get to Liverpool Street, and then start travelling west. "Westbound" trains between Tower Hill and Gloucester Road, are, in fact, heading east, and "eastbound" trains are heading west. Clear enough?"

What we can only hope are just teething problems, added to the confusion at Edgware Road yesterday:

"At the entrance were notices telling you that westbound trains to Hammersmith left from platform 4, and the "eastbound" trains that took you south towards Victoria left from platform 2. But any unwary passenger who believed the notices and got the first train on platform 2 was likely to be whisked away to Hammersmith, because the train drivers were using the wrong platforms."

A number of comments on Twitter show that the line "sucks" or people are reverting to buses instead. Thanks to Seant666 for the heads up to the Indie article.

Have you used the new Circle Line yet? Has anyone tried getting it to Hammersmith, as that's supposed to be the main benefit of extending the line?

Farringdon Tube Announcer's running commentary on delays

A disgruntled station assistant at Farringdon London Underground station decided to give commuters a 20 minute blow-by-blow account of delays to the service last week. Apparently his manager complained that he didn't communicate enough so he decided to go all out with sympathy instead.

"Is this what having a nervous breakdown feels like" he said. Not too full of suggestions as to how to speed up the journey his philosophical offerings included: "You’ve got two options – apart from shooting yourself, and who could blame you."


"Once again I do apologise for the disruption to your journey this morning, it has upset me easily as much as it has upset you. Do trust me, that is coming from the heart"

You can hear part of his rant on the Bitter wallet blog.

Thanks to Jon Justice who spotted in the Telegraph.

Interesting that they decided to focus on him telling passengers that they should consider shooting themselves. Obviously it's a better approach than threatening to push passengers off a train.

Have you heard or seen any other drivers or station assistants become so exasperated with the system, they had to let loose?

Derivative Works: Photographs of Sculptural Works

In Schrock v. Learning Curve, 2009 WL 3644331, --- F.3d --- (7th Cir. Nov. 5 2009), the Seventh Circuit took up the question of whether a very simple straightforward photograph of Thomas the Train (above) is a derivative work, and if so, whether the product photographer could register his copyrights after his client's two-year license to use the photographs expired and the client continued to use the photographs.

The court found that the photographer had a narrow copyright in the photograph, that the photograph was a derivative work, and that once the copyright owner in Thomas the Train had given consent to have the work photographed, the photographer didn't require the permission of the toy company to register his copyrights.

If a court found originality in the photograph above, it sets the bar very low for photography for works of visual art because it is hard to think of a less original photograph of a toy train.

The Seventh Circuit noted that parties may limit by contract the rights of third parties to create and register derivative works and further found that the toy company, its distributor and the photographer's ultimate rights may be governed by license agreements that were not part of the record.   A clear warning to those drafting license agreements to pay attention to how products are promoted and distributed.

Roundels Not on the London Underground

Thanks again to all you globe trotters who have been spotting the Tube roundel outside the system.

Adam S was on holiday in Delhi and his friend took the picture below:


Jemimah Knight also spotted the roundel in India at Bangalore


Michael Windsor saw a roundel for Camden Town not in North London by in a shopping centre in Gdansk Poland:


My favourite and one that will certainly have TfL's lawyers jumping up and down was taken by The Londoneer


He said "You're really not going to like this - they clearly have absolutely no shame on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg!"

I love it, please keen them coming and I'll blog the best. You can see more at the growing Roundels not on the London Underground set.

Speaking of Germany, I'm off to Berlin for a few days. Hopefully I'll be able to add a few pictures of the metro system there!

Robert Downey Jr at Baker Street Tube

Interesting way of promoting the new Sherlock Holmes film. A waxwork figure of Robert Downey Jr has been put on a number of platforms of Baker Street London Underground station looking as though he's waiting for a train.


He was also seen inside the carriage, with commuters naturally looking as though it wasn't out of the ordinary to see him there!


Great photos by Scott Monty and there are more in his Flickr set here and on his Baker Street Blog.

I'm not sure if he'll be there every day. But on the December 14th he's moved to the nearby Madame Tussauds. Thanks to Paul B for the hat tip to this.

Copyright and Fine Art: Federal Bar Association Conference in Hawaii This Friday December 11

This Friday I will be speaking at the Federal Bar Association's First Annual Hawaii Conference and discussing inter alia the Shepard Fairey case involving the Obama/Hope poster.   For more information, check out:

http://www.fedbar.org/hawaii.html

December 11, 2009


First Annual FBA Hawaii Conference

Location: The Royal Hawaiian Hotel

Speakers: Lawrence Baca, FBA President; Hon. William A. Fletcher, Ninth Circuit; Hon. Gerald Bard Tjoflat, Eleventh Circuit; Prof. Kathleen Sullivan, Stanford Law; Prof. Linda Krieger, Richardson School of Law; Robert Kohn, FBA Federal Litigation Section; Raymond Dowd, FBA Southern District of New York Chapter; Simeon Baum, FBA Alternative Dispute Resolution Section; Claudia Bernard, Chief Ninth Circuit Mediator

CLE: 6.5 CLE hours on federal appellate, trial, and ADR topics. Program includes continental breakfast, lunch, and evening reception.

Registration: View schedule at a glance or complete conference program. Register online or download printable form. For more information, contact Melissa Stevenson at mstevenson@fedbar.org or (571) 481-9100.



Hotel Accomodations

Conference Hotel: The Royal Hawaiian, A Luxury Collection Resort. Conference room rate: $250 per night, garden view, plus applicable taxes, guaranteed through November 11, 2009, thereafter on space available basis (special rate upgrades also available). Reservations call: (800)-782-9488 or (808) 921-4621. Alternative: Hilton Hawaiian Village, Beach Resort & Spa. Walking distance to conference hotel. Special room block rate of $161 per night, plus applicable taxes, guaranteed through November 11, 2009, thereafter on space available basis. Reservations call: 808-949-4321, use Group No. 610, Group Confirmation No. 1000537328.

Copyright Litigation for the General Practitioner 2009 - Tonight

Tonight from 6-9 p.m. I will be presenting a Continuing Legal Education Program at the New York County Lawyers' Association at 14 Vesey Street called Copyright Litigation for the General Practitioner 2009.   My co-panelists are Joe Petersen of Kilpatrick Stockton and David Wolfsohn of Woodcock Washburn.

The program will be videotaped and available for sale.   For more information, http://www.nycla.org/.

London Underground Tube Tour

It must be extremely hard to pack more than 150 years of London Underground history into a two hour tour, but the people from Insider London make a great stab at this. Last week, I was treated to one of their guided London Underground Tours, along with fellow London chroniclers at Londonist & LDN.


The tour starts at Farringdon where the first trains ran underground in 1863 and ends with a look to the future at Westminster station.

Rather than ruin the tour by telling you everything that's on it, some of the things you'll experience are discovering which line may have been called the Viking Line, seeing where a "ghost Tube station" is and learning about some of the interesting things encountered when the Victorians were digging tunnels by hand.

As someone who uses the Tube at lot and has been writing about it for years, I was pleased to see some new things to look out for. The tour would a good way for tourists to while away some hours & speak knowledgeably about the Tube when back home. Tube experts or those with a more geeky knowledge may want to get something a little more tailored for their "specialist" subject. But Insider London would be happy to do this.

Naturally, the tours don't run in the rush hour, as we all know how much we love to see groups of people standing around pointing at things on a commute! However, as long as there's a minimum of two people, you can get a tour to suit the day & time that's best for you. There are also discounts for 10 or more people.

If two hours sounds like a breeze, there's a six hour London Underground Epic Tour for the hardcore Tube enthusiast. Although I'd imagine for the next six or twenty eight weekends, there'd be an alternative way of getting from Green Park to Westminster - d'oh to Jubilee Line weekend engineering closures.

US State Dept Announces January 7, 2010 Town Hall on Creating US Commission on Restituting Artworks Stolen During the Holocaust

In today's Federal Register, we find the announcement that the US State Department is following up on this summer's Terezin Declaration by exploring the possibility of creating a commission in the US to work on restituting artworks stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust.   Amb. Stuart Eizenstat has been at the forefront of this discussion. 

In 2006,  AAMD President James Cuno testified before Congress that there were "tens of thousands" of potentially problematic artworks in US museums.

Last night's airing of the film The Rape of Europa on PBS sparked a number of emails from friends who care about this issue.

US museums have shamefully abandoned their commitments to fully research their collections, to make provenance information public and transparent, and to restitute stolen artworks to the rightful owners.

[Federal Register: December 8, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 234)]


[Notices]

[Page 64803-64804]

From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

[DOCID:fr08de09-121]



=======================================================================

-----------------------------------------------------------------------



DEPARTMENT OF STATE



[Public Notice 6832]





Town Hall Meeting To Consider the Establishment of a U.S.

Commission on Cultural Materials Displaced During World War II, and the

Implementation of the Art Restitution Provisions of the June 30, 2009

Terezin Declaration



The Department of State's Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues is

calling a Town Hall Meeting January 7, 2010 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at

the Department to get the views of interested individuals and

organizations on the establishment of a U.S. commission on cultural

materials displaced during World War II. The meeting will also discuss

the June 30, 2009 Terezin Declaration, the text of which is at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/126162.htm.

Individuals wishing to attend this Town Hall Meeting should

register no later than January 5, 2010 by emailing the following

information to Ms. Carolyn Jones-Johnson (Jones-JohnsonCD@state.gov):



Full Name

Date of Birth

Number of Government-issued Picture ID (Driver's License Number,

including State of Issuance, U.S. Passport or Alternate Government-

Issued Picture ID)

Organization which you represent, and its Address and Phone Number

Home Address (only if attending as an individual)



Those who register are urged to arrive at the Department by 12:45

p.m. to allow time for security screening. Upon arrival, show a valid

government-issued identification (a U.S. state driver's license or a

U.S. passport.) The official address of the State Department is 2201 C

Street, NW., Washington, DC. Attendees should use the ``23rd Street

Entrance'' on the West Side of the State Department's Harry S. Truman

Building, located on 23rd Street between C Street and D Street, NW.,

Washington, DC.

Written comments on the above subjects may also be provided to the

same e-mail address for Ms. Jones-Johnson cited above.





[[Page 64804]]





Dated: December 2, 2009.

Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy,

Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Department of State.

[FR Doc. E9-29226 Filed 12-7-09; 8:45 am]

Fox on the Tube

Amazing photograph by Kate Arkless Gray who spotting an urban fox travelling up an escalator at Walthamstow London Underground.


She said "This cheeky chap was snapped at around midnight on 5th December 2009 at Walthamstow Central tube station in London. As I got of my train I'd seen him dashing down the escalator, and when the workmen shoo-ed him back up again he sat near the top for the moment - enabling me to grab these two pics." The other one which shows him in close up is here. Thanks to many people for the heads up on this. As Sizemore noticed it's even standing on the right side of the escalator. Big thanks to Kate for letting me use the picture on the blog!

I've been shocked by seeing foxes in many unexpected places, but never in a fairly enclosed & crowded place like the Tube. This little creature must have no fear.

What's the strangest animal you've seen on the Tube?

28 or six more weekend closures of Jubilee Line?

A disagreement seems to have broken out regarding the number of weekend closures required to finish the ongoing improvements on the Jubilee Line. Media reports have suggested that a further 28 weekend closures could be needed, taking us up to halfway through next year. Londonist report that this has led Boris Johnson to wade in to Tube Lines' head with demands as to the true extent of closures that are needed.

Taken by Utku

However, Val Shawcross on the London Assembly has no idea where TfL's figure of 28 weeks has come from: "There has clearly been some kind of breakdown in communications between the two parties, as I met with Tube Lines today and they have told me that they have only requested six more full weekend closures, and even if that increases to accommodate things like training time, it should be no more than ten". (via SE1)

She continued "Rather than a war of words in the press, everyone needs to sit down together to work out a sensible programme so that passengers know what to realistically expect.".

Caroline Pigeon, chair of the transport committee at City Hall echoed this view "The Mayor now needs to call a Tube summit, get all the players round the table, and bang heads together. This must include the owners of Tube Lines, Bechtel and Ferrovial, who pull Tube Lines' strings. These parent companies need to understand a better way of working has to be found. These delays cannot go on indefinitely."

Do you live on the Jubilee Line? Have you been sent anything about the works being extended into the middle of next year? You really have my sympathies. I've only tried to use it for a couple of weekends since the regular closures, so didn't have to put up with too many replacement bus journeys. I'm assuming you can't claim Customer Charter refunds for this as there's already been advance notice?

Tube Photo of the Week

Great spot by CdL Creative going through Canary Wharf London Underground station. He said "The guy sitting opposite me on the tube was wearing a suit.

Except...


The trousers were completely inside out. Either he was totally oblivious to this or it was some sort of Masonic ritual."

The mind boggles. Even if you're in a massive rush, you'd have to struggle somewhat to put your trousers on inside out.

Mind the Mohican

First time I've ever seen a London Underground member of staff with a mohican hair cut.


Bet he never makes a rush for the doors on a crowded train for the worry of getting his hair stuck.


I took this photo while I was on an interesting tour of the London Underground, which I'll blog about later.

But as I held back a little to take this guy's picture, the lady who was running the tour said that she'd been on a Tube journey once where a man with very long hair got it stuck in the doors. He was quite nonchalant about it and said he'd be able to escape at the next stop. Typically though, he was unlucky enough be to trapped on the side where the doors didn't open for a number of stops.

New Art Below Tube Campaign

There's a new collection of Art Below posters on the London Underground running up until 13th December. Art Below was set up in February 2006 and came about when two brothers, Ben and Simon Moore, wondered if they could use surplus ad space on the Tube and use it to display friends' artwork.


Ben Moore said "The Tube is an iconic, vast space, plus users are almost immersed in advertising on it, so why not turn ad space into art space,"


It's a great way for artists to get their work seen by millions of people. Submissions are made online and then selected on their contemporary relevance and standard. The poster scheme has also been rolled out on metro systems in Tokyo and Berlin. So far, over 500 artists have had their work displayed

Art Below have secured very central sites including Bond Street, Gloucester Road, Old Street, Angel and London Bridge. Overall they're seen by over 38,000 people every fortnight.

Amazing & Extraordinary London Underground Facts

That's the title of Dr Stephen Halliday's new book, which he will be signing this Friday evening at London Transport Museum & co-hosting a kitsch quiz as part of the museum's "Lates" series.


Halliday's book "Underground to Everywhere" is one of the most recent definitive books about the Tube, but his new book sounds much lighter and would make a great stocking filler. He gave a great talk which I was lucky to attend a few years ago on the history of the underground.


The quiz starts at 7.30pm and Stephen will be available to sign books from 8.30pm to 9pm.

Also at this Friday's event you can get crafty with The Make Lounge & make magnets and envelopes using London Underground maps and posters. There's also semi-detached bingo (no, I've no idea what that is either), a curatorial tour of the Suburbia exhibition.

Sounds like it will be a really fun night. Tickets are £7 Adults, £5 Concessions and £5 per ticket for each group of 4 or more. Admission for over 18s only. Friday Lates start at 18.45 and go on until 22.00, booking and further details are here.

Tube Travel makes us aggressive

A new report from the London Assembly "Too Close for Comfort" has revealed what many Londoners already know. Overcrowding on the London Underground gives us a "dog-eat-dog" attitude where we turn into "a different animal" in a fight for seats or space on a train.


The report shows there is severe overcrowding on the Tube, with 80% of commuters saying they experience overcrowding which causes discomfort and over half saying they can't get on their first train in the morning. The worst lines for overcrowding are the Central and Northern Lines. At peak hours you'll often find four travellers into a square metre of carriage space.

The report says that people are "going after a seat regardless of who else might want it, ignoring pregnant women and people carrying babies".

People mentally prepare for their journey on auto pilot and psyche themselves up for a packed journey as though they're going into battle, rather than simply travelling into work.

Caroline Pigeon of the London Assembly spoke to The Guardian and said that the report offers suggestions as to how the situation can be improved. In an audio interview she also points to Madrid metro and how they tackle the works of improvements to increase capacity on trains. "If Madrid can upgrade their system without any closures then London Underground ought to be able to do the same". she says. "Too Close for Comfort" criticised the "chaotic" upgrade of the Jubilee Line extension, which has meant that sections of the line being closed for whole weekends several times in the last few months.

The report also calls for a "traffic-light" system in ticket halls so people can judge exactly how packed the trains will be.

What more do you think can be done to ease overcrowding? Is your journey to work overcrowded? What are your strategies to avoid packed trains? Do you travel in later? Walk more or try to use music to put your head in another place?

Has the London Underground Map lost its way? - revisited

Yesterday's Guardian pondered what Harry Beck would do with the Tube Map today in the light of the expansion of the Oyster card & a new map to illustrate this.

"What would Beck himself have done? A man of vision as well as courage – and a pragmatist if ever there were one – he might well have recommended something drastic, even iconoclastic: tearing up his own Underground map, and suggesting that we begin again from first principles. No doubt this would be an occasion as emotionally charged as the introduction of decimal currency was nearly 40 years ago, but it might be the only rational thing to do." Thanks to richjm for the heads up.

From www.boardello.co.uk

A few years ago, I went to a talk that London Underground map expert Maxwell Roberts. He had similar thoughts. I wrote:

Max believes we've now got to the state with the map trying so desperately to please everyone (wheelchair access, station closures, partial station closures, zones, future extensions), that it has become a bit of mess. The network has grown so much that even Harry (or rather Henry) Beck would have tearing out his hair.

Now more than ever we can see the tension between the map's need to be legible, usable, attractive and simple and its counter need to convey information. The addition of Cross Rail and the Olympic Line will only make matters worse. Take a look at TfL's own projection of what the Tube Map could look like in 2016 (with Boris's arrival this projection no longer exists) and you'd need a pretty big diary map to cope with that.


What's the solution? If designers went back to the drawing board would they go curvy as Max Roberts recommends?

Max said "So, does this map 'work'? With extra railways on it, the simplicity of Version 1 (his earlier version) has been diluted, and the map needs a bit more mental effort to make sense of it (as for any complex map). I think I have shown that there may well be some mileage in designing maps in this way, but die-hard Beck fans will not be convinced. On the other hand, it's hard to know just how bad the design of the current official map has to get before they would be."


Will the design team board™ have their way with a proposed 2012 Tube map based on Olympic rings (see first image) - they say "recent usability feedback has been very positive." Would going geographical help or hinder? Has the map got so bad it needs a total re-design?

Extreme Tube Sleeping

The London Underground seems to be one of the better places to sleep in the winter if the following pictures are anything to go by.

Whatleydude snapped this guy going through Maida Vale sound asleep:


He said "What's that? No feet on seats? What about legs? They're ok, right?"

Melanie Seasons saw a pretty dishevelled man on the Victoria Line and said "I've seen people fall asleep on the Tube before, but never face down into their Metro. I don't think the poor guy even got through the second page."


Didn't realise that Metro was that boring!

If you manage to spot any other heavy Tube sleepers on your journey, you should have plenty of time to take a picture. Let me know if you do and I'll add them to this post.

Is Tube investment being cut back?

We've started, so we won't finish, should be the catchphrase at Newbury Park. Although the London Underground fare increases are supposed to "sustain vital investment", Matthew V found the opposite at his local station.


He said: "For the last few months at least Newbury Park has had major construction work to install lifts. Signs went up last week that they are halting the work due to lack of funding, and yesterday there were severe delays for a while due to 'obstruction on the tracks'.


"From the looks of things it might have been to remove some of the tools etc, but the platforms still have massive blue hoardings limiting the space available – which was bad this morning as the station, which is a major hub for the Essex and areas East of London (it's got about 500 car parking spaces), was closed for a while. I'm a little annoyed at this since having lifts would really make the station fit as a transport hub, and would mean I didn't have to keep offering to help women up stairs with buggies (there are no escalators).

Is this just a sign of the recession? Money being diverted to pay increases for drivers? Given the price hikes I've got a feeling it can't be due to general lack of money!"

Has anyone else seen any instances of this? I know that improvements at certain stations seem to take longer than planned to complete. But it seems unusual to say that work is going to be stopped because of lack of funding just before we're about to have a fare increase. Not the greatest timing.

If you can't film on the Tube....

Build your own version. This is lovely animation for Coldplay song Strawberry Swing by Matt Clark


Thanks to richjm for the heads up for this.

Should the Circle Line be renamed?

Not that the Circle Line ever looked like a circle, but from December 13th it's going to look even less like a Circle. The extension to Hammersmith will mean that a "tail" will be added to the line. An article in yesterday's Times is already calling it a tadpole. Are they right? Is there a better name for it? Why wasn't the Circle Line ever called the "Bottle Line", which is far more what it currently looks like?


Spiral, corkscrew and tea-cup have been some of the offerings on Twitter, when we were discussing a few weeks ago.


Any more suggestions welcome in the comments below. This is just for fun, as TfL have already said that the line won't be re-named. I'm not sure if they've ever renamed an entire Tube line since the London Underground existed!

Bob Crow appearing on Have I Got News for You

RMT Leader Crow will be the first trade union official to ever appear on the comdedy quiz show "Have I Got News for You".

He'll be on this Friday and apparently is a long time fan. He said to the Evening Standard "I'm looking forward to an evening of sparring with Ian Hislop, Paul Merton and the rest of the panel. I've sat across the table from some sharp operators in my time, but I know that the Have I Got News For You crew will pose a different challenge altogether."


Luckily there's still just under a month to go before the ballot for the pre-Xmas Tube strike takes place. So that won't be part of this week's news.

It'll be interesting to see how funny Crow is, and how well he'll react to being poked fun at. It's hard to imagine he'll get an easy time from the other panellists.

Ianvisits will be in the audience when the show is recorded on Thursday, so he might be able to give us a heads up on how it all goes. The show will be broadcast on Friday BBC1 at 9pm & repeated on iPlayer if you're in the UK.


Update - Here's Ianvisits's post on how he thought Bob Crow came across. Photo above is from Jimmy Carr who was one of the panellists.

Can the Tube save energy?

Travelling through London Bridge London Underground station last night I saw the following poster at the top of the escalators


You've probably seen some of them around too. Escalators are switched off at quieter times of the day to save energy & "help lower the temperature" (not that the temperature needed much lowering in November).

I wonder how many stations this actually happens at? There must be some high traffic stations like Tottenham Court Road, Holborn and Angel which have pretty long escalators. But I'm sure the escalators there are never turned off.

Also why do some Tube stations which are open air and have large glass ticket halls have all of their lights on, all of the time? The Guardian questioned TfL about the lights at Stratford Tube in the summertime & although there was a standard "we're reviewing this" comment, there's no update as to whether anything was done.

Lights behind advertising hoardings on platforms and in corridors also seem to be constantly on & there's no mention of them being turned off at quieter times during the day. This is particularly annoying if there's no ads in them!

Do you have any other suggestions as to how the London Underground could save energy? Have you seen any other energy saving initiatives on networks outside of London?

Weirdest things left on Tube Poll

Thanks to The Huffington Post & The Times who'd picked up on a post I wrote a number of years back on some of the weirder things left on the London Underground. It's in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Lost Property Office

Not exactly sure what the thing above it - but thanks to Lost Property Office for sending it!

The Huffington Post have made a poll out of the top items. They said: "Little explanation is given to how or why these things might have been left on public transportation. The mind boggles. Let us know what you think is the weirdest, any ideas as to why it might have been left there, and things you have left/seen left behind on public transport."

So far the skull is coming out on top as being the weirdest thing. Feel free to disagree!

Transformed by the Tube - Oliver Green Talk

Last night I attended a fascinating talk at the London Transport Museum on how the London Underground transformed and in some senses actually created suburban towns between the 1st and 2nd World War. It's always good to see a full lecture room, and even better when the room is filled with people of all ages and a roughly equal mix of men & women.


Oliver Green began with a quote from George Orwell on the "huge peaceful wilderness of outer London" and how few people actually admit to living in the suburbs. Much of the theme of the night was really how the suburbs aren't actually suburbs when they get a Tube station, as they change into this place that's neither town or countryside. There's a difficulty of marketing a place as the peaceful place to live, when at the same time you want to say it's really easy to get to the City. However, much of Transport for London's advertising tried to do that.


The poster of Golders Green, which was the first Tube suburb was a good illustration of this. You had the father still in his work clothes having time to tend his idyllic garden just after work & enjoy time with his wife & baby. Yet the London Underground can be seen in the background.

Golders Green was an example of how the area changed within about five years of the station being built. A shopping centre, theatre & cinema also helped the transformation.


This was a good contrast to Ickenham, which hardly became a thriving suburb. I used to pass through Ickenham each day when I went to Brunel University & travelled into town on a work placement and even in the eighties, I hardly saw anyone get on or off the station.


Green showed a beautiful poster from the 1920's which again tried to show how once a Tube station existed, housing and a town soon followed. No words were needed to put across this message.

Yet there was still this problem of keeping an idyllic suburban image. Once your town's built up it's not "the country" any more. People building houses often gave them a mock Tudor facade, with fake wooden beams. However, the stations were all modern.


It was interesting that when stations like Morden were built, there were cheaper "workman" tickets before 8am. So people used to queue from the early morning & then hung around in central London before work. Green said that the picture above showed the really long orderly queue (top right) and that Morden was victim of its own success. "It had the beginnings of the Misery Line, even before that term was used", he said.

Here's a picture of the wooded area of Arnos Grove before the Tube came along, with a rather basic sign showing the area was reserved for the Underground.


These early stations along the Piccadilly Line built by Charles Holden were based on a library design from Stockholm. Holden called them "Brick boxes with concrete lids", but now they stand out for their art deco design and are all listed buildings.


I loved the image of Southgate Tube station at night. It really looked like a spaceship illuminated in the darkness.


Again Green showed some Tube advertising at the time. Transport for London's principle was that a timetable wasn't needed and only the frequency of the trains was shown.


The problem of not knowing what image to portray to travellers was highlighted by the posters above. Transport for London used one of their best artists, Edward McKnight Kauffer, to produce a very modern (at the time) poster which just advertised the extension of the Piccadilly Line. Yet the poster on the left was less striking and more factual. "It's as if they weren't sure what customers would respond to best, so they tried everything", said Green.


An area outside of King's Cross station was known as the "African Village", due to the chaotic mixture. But amongst that chaos, a show house was built (see the house in the front to the left), so you could compare this to the calm place you could live if you moved to the suburbs.

Green also showed the first printed example of Beck's Tube map. The map has always had the river on, just as marker rather than having any geographical relation to how the river runs through London.


He advised us to pick up copies of the current riverless Tube map. "They'll be collectors items. The mayor's guaranteed that the river will be back on the next ones, so this current ones will be worth something", he laughed.

Green ended his talk with a look at Queensbury station. The name of the station came as the result of a competition where the public could win a few bob for naming it. The name of the station then became the name of the town that grew up around it. It was a great way to show how an area owed its whole development to the Tube.


Hopefully some other people will write about Green's talk as I've not covered everything we learnt in the hour. All of the pictures I took on the night are in this Flickr set - Transformed by Tube.

Thanks to Oliver Green and London Transport Museum for putting this talk on and I'm looking forward to the next in the Suburbia series which will be on Betjeman & Metroland on January 19th 2010.