The Grime Tunnel (Improving the Capital - part 1)

If you don't know me, you won't know that I've spent the best part of the last 10 months on the other side of the world (in New Zealand to be precise), imparting my genius-like words of wisdom to the local Kiwis, without being too condescending or self-righteous as every good genius should. 

I returned to my semi-temporary home city of London just a few weeks ago and was confronted with a familiar problem. I have a love/hate relationship with London, and one of the things I hate about it is the pollution. Now these days it's obviously not as bad as back in the smoggy days of the industrial revolution, but there is still a problem. Not so much above ground*, but beneath it. On the underground.

*(Although the air is still obviously more polluted the closer you get to the city centre. I still claim that in a blind test, I could be led through the underground to anywhere, and when we resurfaced, one lung full of the air is all I'd need to state which zone we were in. …and not just because of the destination announcements on the tube.)

The terrible state of the underground air is none more obvious than when you blow your nose after a tube journey. What would ordinarily be a greeny-yellow mucus now looks like the contents of a smokers lungs. The cause is the underground air... or rather, the tunnels that the air blows through. They're around 150 years old, and for decades had coal-powered trains going through them creating such a build up of crap on the walls that it's still there today. 

The solution is a simple one: The tunnels need cleaning.
This is where my latest genius invention comes in. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… 

The Tube Cleaner.  

...or possibly it should be called the Tunnelic Irrigation Train... (but that's not so good on account of the acronym.)

Basically it a tube train that cleans the floors, walls and ceiling of the tube it goes down. There won't be space for passengers; just a driver. Most of the 'carriages' on this train will hold water. Powerful jets of water (with perhaps a small eco-friendly detergent mix in it) will powerfully spray in every direction. They'll be a couple of carriages with thousands of steam-cleaning nozzles towards the front of the train, and one drying carriage at the back... this'll just be like a big hair dryer.

The train itself will move at a slow walking speed in order to ensure maximum cleaning efficiency. It will run at night. Perhaps only 4 or 5 hours a night between 1am and 6am when the tube is not in use by commuters. At this rate, and with only one cleaning train it might be several months before all the track has been covered, but then it can start again and keep those tunnels up to the shiny buffed-up standard that they would be if I was Mayor of London**.

Have I thought of everything?... You might remind me the the tube is electric, and getting live electric rails wet can't be a good idea. Well they won't be on when they're cleaned. The cleaning train will be self propelled and battery powered (which will recharge during the day). The track is completely dried by the last carriage of tube cleaner, and the cleaning process should stop by 5am, at least an hour before the passenger trains start again.

So why isn't this (some might say 'stupidly simple') genius idea implemented already? They do vacuum the tunnels each night to remove dust, but that hardly sorts out the problem. As far as I can tell, there are currently no wet or steam cleaning trains in operation on the London underground. If there were, my snot would not be grey.

**Incidentally, please don't vote for me... It'll be quite embarrassing for the government when I inevitably get voted in, and I have to turn the job down.