‘Like a sauna’: London tube travellers swelter in temperatures higher than legal limit for cattle | London Underground

As the escalator descends underground at King’s Cross St Pancras station in London, one can notice the transition from what was already a hot station entrance to furnace-like underground depths.

It’s even worse in the subway: A man leans back in his seat, eyes closed, sweltering; people hold electric fans inches away from their faces. Commuters in London are known for their stoicism, and the heat seems to be another annoyance that must be acknowledged. They will need to: Heatwaves in the capital are becoming routine.

“We’re pretty lucky that this platform is almost empty, because when it’s full [like a] “It’s quite difficult at rush hour,” says Anna, an Oxford Circus passenger.

Anna says she generally adapts well to high temperatures, but even she has trouble withstanding the heat on the platform. Another passenger, Craig, says he had to travel in gym clothes and change into work clothes at the office due to the heat of the tube.

London’s Underground is ill-suited to the 30C-plus heatwaves that have hit the city over the last few summers. Lines such as the Victoria line, the deepest line on the network, and the Bakerloo line, which TfL says has some of the oldest trains used by passengers anywhere in the country, are particularly bad when it comes to withstanding the heat.

Sharmin, a barista at Pret a Manger next to the barriers at King’s Cross St Pancras, says she has seen people fainting in and around the station. He finds the heat so oppressive that he asked to go home early on some shifts this week. Wondering why there are no coolers or industrial fans near the Pret or the barriers. “I felt like I was going to faint,” he says.

A quick look at the thermometer on which I conducted this unscientific investigation shows that the station is around 30°C. It gets up to 32C on the platform and tube and then reaches 34C on the Victoria Line platform in Finsbury Park. In the UK it is illegal to transport cattle above 30C; But transporting people at 34 degrees may now become the norm.

According to my iPhone’s built-in weather app, the underground temperature is currently ten degrees warmer than outside. Between 8am and 9am the thermometer shows readings of 34C on the Victoria line platforms at Finsbury Park, the Victoria and Bakerloo line platforms at Victoria and the northbound Bakerloo line platform at Oxford Circus.

Asher Minns, chief executive of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, a partnership of several universities in the UK, says tube tunnels are “basically radiators”, taking heat from the clay and concrete around them. Wagons, platforms and surrounding tunnels are also heated by the hundreds of kilowatts of heat produced by trains during breakage. And the hotter it is outside, the worse it gets underground.

But Minns adds that the infrastructure is difficult to adapt due to its age and surrounding clay. It will likely be years before the network becomes better equipped to cope with the heat, so for now he says the focus should be on reducing risks to passengers.

“This can’t go on and it’s not going to get better,” he says. “[The underground] I definitely have to adapt to the effects of climate change, but right now I think [the focus] “I have to look after the passengers.”

It recommends limiting the number of passengers allowed to travel when temperatures are above a certain limit or reducing the number of cylinders in service during heatwaves.

TfL’s customer operations manager Nick Dent said TfL continues to invest to make the network more resilient and comfortable as hot summers become more common, as well as introducing new air-conditioned trains on the Piccadilly line and the DLR.

Dent added that “the short-term and stop-start nature of funding in recent years has meant that TfL has had to prioritize its investments carefully and focus on programs that will provide the greatest benefit to customers – while remaining open to measures to help manage the impact of rising temperatures due to climate change.”