Jack May
City Monitor
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Jack:
The long and confusing history that explains why Charing Cross and Embankment are so weird
On this issue, as with so many others, the travelling public of London divides into two camps. There are loads of us who, as tourists or new residents, have finished a journey to Charing Cross by changing from the District and Circle lines to the Northern or Bakerloo lines at Embankment only to realise it’s an obscenely short journey that’s best done above ground. And then there are those who,… → Read More
This map gives you all the tube knowledge you never knew you wanted
You love the tube map, but sometimes it frustrates you, right? Sure, it’s a useful navigator. But it doesn’t tell you where the stations are. And it doesn’t tell you how far away one set of platforms is from another. It most certainly doesn’t tell you how the tracks curve between one station and another, and gives no indication whatsoever of other highly useful things – like where the sidings… → Read More
Here are some of the world's most stupid time zones
As citizens in the great nation of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the Prime Meridian, and the official designated centre of the world, we Brits can forget the bizarre ridiculousness of time zones. Time zones. Why is it that flying west from London to Madrid results in shifting the clocks one time zone eastward – an hour ahead? And did anyone ever give a thought to the zip wire across the… → Read More
If we want to increase escalator capacity, why don’t we just run the things faster?
While Londoners may still be recovering from the trauma, many outside the capital probably completely missed Transport for London’s audacious and sacrilegious experiment at Holborn station. For three weeks, tube passengers stood on both sides of the escalators going up from the platforms to the ticket hall. There were people standing on both the left and the right. Nobody could walk. I know: it… → Read More
Here are all London’s abandoned tube stations
London is a city littered with corpses. Some of them are visible in plain sight, dejectedly propped up on busy street corners. Only bits of others remain, buried deep below the ground, or barely visible out of the windows of trains passing by. Mercifully, I’m not talking about actual dead people (because, eww), but abandoned tube stations. Now as ever with these things, the exact number of such… → Read More
Which pairs of capital cities are the closest together?
It doesn't take long to get from Paris to Brussels. An hour and a half on a comfortable Thalys train will get you there. Which raises an intriguing question, if you like that sort of thing: wich capital cities of neighbouring countries are the closest together? And which are the furthest away? There are some that one might think would be quite close, which are actually much further part. Buenos… → Read More
Why are there so few tube lines in South London?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that London south of the River Thames is a bit of a wasteland. Sure, it’s come along a lot in the past five years or so, but it still basically divides into three camps: south west London, full of rich City workers who want big houses; south and south east London, full of hipsters so hip that East London is totally over (or they just got priced out too… → Read More
Here are some of the world's most stupid time zones
As citizens in the great nation of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the Prime Meridian, and the official designated centre of the world, we Brits can forget the bizarre ridiculousness of time zones. Time zones. Why is it that flying west from London to Madrid results in shifting the clocks one time zone eastward – an hour ahead? And did anyone ever give a thought to the zip wire across the… → Read More
DEBATE: Should London’s Congestion Charge exemption for private hire vehicles be removed?
Should London’s Congestion Charge exemption for private hire vehicles be removed? → Read More
DEBATE: Is the new digital tax Philip Hammond is considering a good idea to rescue the high street?
Is the new digital tax Philip Hammond is considering a good idea to rescue the high street? → Read More
What's the roundest country on earth?
From geography lessons at school and Sporcle quizzes at work to Trivial Pursuit at home and increasingly rabid arguments at pubs, we’re used to asking the big questions about countries. Which is the biggest? Which is the richest? Which is the richest per capita? Which has the highest population density? All important questions, but at this point a little tired - perhaps, even, generic. Holding… → Read More
How did the tube lines get their colours?
What if the Central line were blue? Or the Piccadilly was a lurid yellow? Just for fun, let’s make the Metropolitan line red, too. Spice things up a bit. If you’re not screaming in anguish by this point, I suggest you shut your laptop and continue with your day. But if you are, it’s a vital question. Each tube line has its own colour; clear, defined, immutable. So how did the tube lines get… → Read More
Sadiq Khan is flirting with the NFL – but the romance might not be all rosy
Quietly ruminating, and politically savvy as ever, the mayor of London has been enjoying a hushed round of successes. And in an attempt to build on the successes of the Olympics in 2012 – and as a way to learn from the missed opportunities of those games – Sadiq Khan has set about making London “the sporting capital of the world”. It’s important to say that his motivations for this are as much… → Read More
Which London Underground line is the busiest?
All London commuters are perpetually convinced that their commute – theirs, not yours – is the most hellish, the most jam-packed, the most arduous and hard-going. But not all commutes are born equal. Some lines are hotter than others, some lines have older trains than others, and some lines are busier than others. So what is the truth? Which route is the busiest? Part of the problem is that we… → Read More
Here are all London’s abandoned tube stations
London is a city littered with corpses. Some of them are visible in plain sight, dejectedly propped up on busy street corners. Only bits of others remain, buried deep below the ground, or barely visible out of the windows of trains passing by. Mercifully, I’m not talking about actual dead people (because, eww), but abandoned tube stations. Now as ever with these things, the exact number of such… → Read More
26 of the most stupidly named council wards in Greater London (and the City, too)
Names are fun. We like names. But London has a lot of stupid ones, from tube stations that are nowhere near the things they're named after, to main thoroughfares named after rivers that are now basically just drainage pipes. So in the name of public service, here are 26 of the most badly, boringly, unimaginatively, or lamely named council wards in London's boroughs. You're welcome. 1) Nonsuch,… → Read More
Here’s CityMetric’s summer reading list
It's been a largely wet, dreary summer here in London, and if you're sensible you'll have booked yourself a sweet escape to some sunnier clime – be it Cornwall or Santorini. No doubt that trip will involve lounging by the pool (or the secluded Cornish cove) for hours on end, reading a book and sipping some beverage or other. But what to read? Contemporary fiction is exhausting and overrated,… → Read More
This map shows how Roman Britain kept the show on the road... by imagining it as a tube network
What’s the best way to get from Londinium to Isca Dumnoniorum, via a refreshing and restorative pit stop in Aquae Sulis? If such questions have never occurred to you, perhaps your previous incarnation was not as a wellness-aware man-about-town in Roman Britain. But if, like me, this question is one of many of its kind that keep you up at night, there is finally a map to cater to all your needs.… → Read More
Is Inner London actually more green than Outer London?
For all the stereotypes of London – the dark star, the big smoke, the hellish swirling cloud of pollution and desperate millennials scrowling the concrete jungle their next avocado fix – it's a pretty green city. In fact, you can quite literally see from space just how green London is. It has a very low population density relative to other major world cities – think in particular of the… → Read More
What's in the in-tray of the new mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough?
The latest instalment of our weekly series, in which we use the Centre for Cities’ data tools to crunch some of the numbers on Britain's cities. So, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has a metro mayor to cover the newly-created combined metro area. Obviously, let's just start by saying this is ridiculous. The clue's in the last syllable of the first word. Cambridge-shire. Shire! Anyway. Obviously,… → Read More