Thread by @TTremblingEarth

These days I have a long twice-daily rail/cycle commute between London and Oxford and I am SO here for it. I recently moved to London to live with my fiancé, and you could hardly find someone *less* bothered to take the train for 2-3 hours each day.
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It is magnificent to witness first-hand the steady operation of a vast mass transit system. Trains full of nearly a thousand people shuttle workers into and out of London every few minutes, through one of FOURTEEN bustling rail terminals
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A lot of people are bothered by crowds, but I absolutely marvel at the volume of people being disgorged in waves as train after train brings them in from the outskirts to the urban center. Here's the ebb and flow of passengers as a train arrives into Marylebone Station
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The London stations themselves are gorgeous historic buildings, underscoring the lasting legacy of this unsurpassed efficient mode of transport. Paddington Station's architecture lends romantic continuity between its sooty 1854 origin and the sleek modern trains that serve it
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Rail transport has always been an incredibly energy efficient way to move masses, and #GreatWesternRailway has recently added a huge fleet of awesome new high-speed trains. They're a big upgrade in looks, comfort, and efficiency (compare in pic) gwr.com/about-us/moder…
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Then the National Rail network dumps all those legions of commuters onto the rightly world-class underground system, originally developed to connect rail termini beneath the dense 2-millennia-old city they couldn't build through, and still doing so faster than any alternative
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Or there's the other last mile, a set of cycle superhighways and bike rental systems that let you get around town without touching a car
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London is very lucky to have developed so completely b4 the advent of cars, so the city is quite hostile to individual automobile transit, making all its residents and visitors rely on a remarkably effective network of mass transit systems that snake below & above the city
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That frees up street space for more welcoming human occupancy, and even the rail lines arching over the city provide real estate for bars, cafes, shops, restaurants, galleries, public markets, galore
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Crowded mass transit commutes can *feel* dehumanizing, but I view them as the complete opposite. I really feel like this functioning mass transit system is the pinnacle of society, and as an American transplant to London I fear I'm spoiled forever 🚫🚘

...also, I feel I needn't even highlight the sustainability aspects to this, given London's freshly implemented efforts to eliminate cars from the city
tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/…
And repeated documentation of rail (and bike!) travel's supremacy in this regard truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fue…

PLUS public transport is like having a personal chauffeur. Those hours on the train aren't lost because I have a wide seat, a desk, a view, a toilet, and a concessionary cart that DELIVERS COFFEE TO MY DESK 🚂🚞🚈🚅🚄☕💻

...so I can spend the time as part of my work day. ...... and/or crafting a lengthy twitter thread curating all the photos I've been obsessively taking

More curated photos from my present ride home/my newfound love-affair with transport. Finding the pleasure in emulating the @MrTimDunn school of transit-appreciation photography

Peekaboo

When there's a whole train platform in/under your back yard

This one was maybe a sidetrack in my effusive praise of London's transit system. Indeed London's streets are crowded, narrow, paved with bumpy stones and cobbles, and totally ruled by taxis and buses. It's far from an accessible pedestrian paradise like many other EU cities are

BUT it's still great to see commercial and public use of the railway arches. More of an illustration that rail can exist within a dense city without necessarily dividing or displacing. Multi-use infrastructure!

...and as to the roads. Although not yet totally friendly to pedestrians, they are ruled by public transit rather than private autos. Though polluting, buses and taxis get larger numbers of people around the city more efficiently than everyone in private cars.

So London is still exemplary in terms of an overall mass transit system--buses, tube, rail, taxis combined. And omg the taxis. Also world class. The problem solving skills & Knowledge* of a London black cab driver blows Uber, Waze, & Gmaps out of the water
tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis…

The final thing I think Americans need to be made aware of because we probably couldn't otherwise imagine, is the AUDIBILITY of the station, platform, and train announcements. Slow and clear and immensely informative. Not just garbled angry squawking over an inaudible PA speaker

Update: I think Great Western has strategically chosen the PERFECT morning to solicit a rail user feedback survey from me...