Squeezing in

WHEN Catherine Mulligan, a part-time economist at a non-profit group, commutes from her home in south-west London to her office in Clerkenwell, in the centre, she chooses her departure time carefully. Either she gets on the London Underground early, at around five o’clock in the morning, or she works at home and travels in when the rush hour is over. Such early and late starts may seem an annoyance, but neither is as bad as the alternative. “I avoid the peak hour because it’s hell,” she says.

London’s Underground system is heaving. Since 2007 the number of journeys on the Tube has increased by 30%; passengers now make 4m trips on it each day. The rush hour—which today lasts for nearer three hours—has become even more crowded: since 1991 the number of people crammed on to carriages in the morning and afternoon peaks has increased by nearly 50%. But the congestion is also spreading out. Over the same period the number of people travelling off-peak has almost doubled, with much of the increase in the past decade (see chart). Such shifting patterns hint at the ways in which Londoners are changing the way they live and work.