TRANSPORT IN LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

TRANSPORT IN LONDON.

COLOSSAL RAILWAY FIGURES. VAST TEEMING LIFE-STREAM. .Railway ; passenger, traffic in • Great Britain is the densest in the world, and London, the " Heart of the British Empire," provides some truly astonishing figures. The City of London is filled with millions of people each day and emptied each night, bo that the most famous square mile dreams peacefully with fewer inhabitants than many a country market town. The railways are the arteries that carry the life-stream to and from this teeming London of nearly 8,000,000 people. Facts and figures sharpen the outlines, says the British Railways News-letter. In Greater London last year tho railways carried 929,521,919 passengers. The number of passengers using tho main line terminal stations each day, togotlier with thoso carried by the underground lines and tubes, amount to a total of nearly 3,000.000.

There are 580 passenger stations within 10 miles radius of Charing Cross, and there are scores of other stations in what may rightly bo termed Greater London. The statistics of passengers for each day at main line termini arePaddington, 55,000; King's Cross, 60,000; Liverpool Street, 230,000; • Marylebone. 10,500; Euston, 60,000; St. Pancras, 30,000; Fenchurch Street, 50,000; Broad Street, 120,000; Waterloo, 121,000; Victoria, 96,500; London Bridge, 135,000; Charing Cross, 59,000; Cannon Street, 57,000; and Holborn and St. Paul's 44,000; while at Baker Street as many as 637 cars are dealt with in an hour. At these stations alone over 9,000 trains are dealt with every day, and to bo added to this enormous total are the thousands of underground trains which run at peak periods with intervals that can be measured in seconds.

London's vast army of season ticketholders each make numerous journeys from places within a radius of miles. A man on Brighton Promenade said that he travelled at least 30,000 miles a year. It was remarked that he must have seen some strange countries. " No," he replied " I've been farther than London. I'm a season ticket-holder, and I travel up to town every day."