Improving the Capital - part 4

So tell us Jon, tell us how we can make London a less crappy place to live.

Why should I?

Because geniuses are few and far between and you're so awesome, I just know you'll have another genius idea to improve the capital.

You're right. I am awesome.

And with that, Jon stopped talking to himself, turned away from the mirror and returned to his antiquated electronic writing device to type out his latest idea in a most unconventional manner.

After a while he decided that writing his blog in the third person probably wasn't his greatest idea, and that hopefully nobody would notice when I reverted to the first person half way through a sentence....
Seamless!


So as promised...

Picture the scene.  You're a London local. You're in a tube station. You're on your way down the escalator towards the station platform. And because you're not an idiot or a tourist, and you understand the English language, you'll know you have the choice of either standing on the right or walking down the left side of the escalator.

If your not a small child or an elderly person or an American, then you'll have chosen to walk down the escalator as every able-bodied adult with even the loosest understanding of the concept of gravity should. But then you have two further types of people to contend with...

There'll be the usual moronic-foreign-elderly-child type of person who's stood on the left of the escalator.  You need to be patient with these, and ask them politely to move out of the way. Some people ought to know better, but it's quite hard to tell from behind which of the people are simpletons and which are just arseholes.

Then there's the tailgater. The teenager who runs down the escalator who then has to stop becuase you're in the way, and then continues just inches behind you. The city-boy with the stupid pointy shoes who has to leg it down three steps at a time. The businessman who absolutely must get to the platform in order to get the train that's waiting there, lest he miss and have to wait for the next train, all of 90 seconds later. Run businessman, run! Oh my god, I can hear the doors beeping already! Quick! RUN!!

Pedestrian tailgating is not nice. You can hear them coming, then you're ever conscious that they're just behind you.  No, I will not speed up for you. I usually walk faster than most people but I'm not going to speed up going down a staircase, let alone a staircase that's moving. Nor am I going to find a place to my right to move to so that you can go past. I like my personal space. Why are you in such a rush in the first place.

The solution of course is obvious. Have a third option; Are you going to take the stairs, the escalator, or the slide?

Fun for kids. Great if you're genuinely in a rush. Perfect if you find that walking speed plus the speed of an escalator isn't fast enough for you. There could even be an extra steep slide... just for thrill seekers and really impatient people.
If that's not fast enough for you (and let's face it, we're talking about the arseholes who always need to be some place 5 minutes ago), then you can choose the fireman's pole. No training given. Use it at your own risk.  And if your maximum acceleration due to gravity isn't enough for you, then I'm sure we can think up some sort of explosive upside-down human cannon.

London Bye Ta-Ta (Improving the Capital - part 3)

I've left London. Why? Well it is a horrible place to live. And yet millions of people have actively chosen to live there. Even people who were fortunate enough not to be born in Britain's capital. I can't understand it myself. In fact I'm surprised that I put up with the place for so many years myself. 

I wouldn't want to return (Not immediately anyway, and when i do it'll be hopefully just as an annoying tourist*). I haven't turned my back on London though. Not completely. Here's another idea that'll make the big smoke a less depressing place to live, to go along with my existing genius-like ideas of putting an invisible roof over Soho, and giving the London underground a colonic.

Cigarette Butt Fine

People who throw litter on the ground disgust me. If the litter happens to be a cigarette then I'm disgusted more so, on account of a cigarette's toxic nature. You people make me sick! I want to vomit on you, you vile smoke filled litterer! You know who you are. I hate you, and everyone you associate with I hope you all die of an appropriate throat or lung based illness! **

My solution to this social disease?... There should be an on-the-spot fine for anybody caught littering. They'll be charged a mere pound for regular litter and two pounds for anyone chucking a cigarette/roll-up on the ground. 

Any adult caught littering will be given the choice of picking up said litter themselves or paying the fine.

Now you may think that it can't be policed, but it can. With a couple of thousand recruits of undercover litter cops. They'll have the power to demand the money there and then. And people with have the choice of paying the fine immediately or if they can't then their details are taken and the fine increases to twenty pounds. 

This scheme will stop people littering the streets. It'll create jobs, money (which will go back into funding the litter-police), and a general sense of paranoia amongst your fellow man. No one will know who else is secretly a litter-cop. People can have this job full time and still hold down their existing job full time. It's a genius idea and one that I am surprised hasn't been instigated already. I mean, that's the way society's going isn't it?

More genius 'make London nicer' ideas to come.

* 'Pardon me, but could you direct me to lie-sester square?'

** I still feel like I'm sitting on the fence here. This is as polite as I get. After all, I never said the C word.   ...Either of them.

Above Us, Only Sky... (Improving the Capital - part 2)

Recently I was reminded of a conversation I had a few months back. It was a conversation with a colleague in a public house (where all good conversations take place) in London's Soho. I can't quite remember how we got onto the subject, but I was challenged with resolving the traffic jam problems of the area. Initially my thoughts were to pedestrianize the whole of Soho, thus instantly solving the problem. Why would you need cars in the area.... in the day at least? Delivery vans could have limited access to certain main roads in Soho in the early hours of the morning, and any requiring a taxi during the day can easily walk to the nearest main road that surrounds Soho; You're never more than a 5 minute stroll from either Charring Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue, Oxford or Regent Street.

This explanation seemed unacceptable to my fellow-worker, as he insisted that traffic would still require access throughout the day. Fair enough. And with that brief, I mulled the problem over for a couple of seconds and proposed a genius scheme that if put into practice, would drastically alter the centre of London as seen from above. My solution would be a ridiculously expensive one (to the point that it would be cheaper to demolish all the buildings of Soho and build it again with better planning), but a solution that would ultimately work, none-the-less. What is required is that all the roads become pedestrianized, and new overpass roads be built above the main thoroughfares of Soho (Berwick, Wardour, Broadwick, Dean Street, etc.). With regular temporary parking areas and pedestrian access to buildings/streets below. This would enable easy delivery of goods and people alike to the very centre of the West-End, whilst keeping the original roads traffic free (with the exception of bicycles, push-scooters and hoverboards) for the safety of tourists, London trendies, media-types and sex-workers alike.

At this point the sharper amongst you may have spotted a problem with the above proposal (as did my slightly inebriated colleague). It was pointed out to me that with half of Soho's roads having roads above them, much sunlight will be blocked from hitting the streets. The obvious solution to this is a simple yet costly one. On the underside of every flyover, there will be special optical tiles. These tiles comprise of millions of optic fibres, the end of such fibres will run through the concrete to the road above to a corresponding tile. Light will hit the road surface above and be emitted from the optic tiles below. The ones above will not actually be on the road itself (otherwise the light would be diminished every time the shadow of a vehicle goes over it) but in fact on the side and central barriers, and on the top of intermittent posts that will double as lampposts after dark. The result of which is that during daylight hours, the sky will be visible from beneath the road. The road itself will not be totally invisible to look at, but at first glance it will be totally transparent. Also there will be no sight of any vehicles (and in the future when all are electric, no sound or smell of any cars either).

You may think this all sounds implausible, but the technology already exists to make such things 'invisible' by various means. At this point, my co-drinking co-worker seemed extremely happy with the solution that I'd given him; not only was he smiling throughout my description of a possible future, but the moment I said the word 'invisible', he laughed out loud and said 'Invisible roads'. Then he continued to laugh. He couldn't stop. Only to take a breath or repeat the phase 'Invisible roads!' to himself, which would get him started again. I can only summarise that either this man is also a genius and could not contain himself at the thought that no-one had come up with such an ingeniously simple solution to one of our capitals traffic problems, or that I had vastly over-estimated his cognitive abilities; this high-concept glimpse of the future was enough to short-circuit his brain, rendering him a simpleton. I fear the latter to be the case, as I've subsequently witnessed several outbursts of uncontrollable laughter from this man. Occasionally he can be heard to repeat the phrase 'Invisible roads' to himself, before laughing some more. Thankfully his basic motor functions do not appear to be affected and he continues in is occupation with seemingly no problems. But I can't help but feel guilty for the long term damage that I may've caused. A lesson has been learnt however: Ensure those seeking ultimate knowledge are ready for such, for to impart ideas on an untrained mind can have tragic consequences.

Oh, the woes of being a visionary genius.

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.