1,000 Tube Users Per 20 Seconds
Last updated: 07/09/2006 - 13:02
The London Underground's busiest day ever has topped the previous best for volume of tube passengers (also on a Friday, during June 2000) - by a staggering 83,000 trips.
2001's record figure was almost broken again, shortly afterwards, when 3,351,000 journeys were made on another Friday.
London's busiest tube stations - Victoria, Oxford Circus and King's Cross - are under most pressure, with Victoria station now having to introduce crowd control most weekdays.
Victoria station manager Mike Baxter has a team of staff on standby watching the flow of people entering the station.
Safety
"Safety is our overriding concern, and we make a judgement on the number of people outside and the numbers waiting for trains on the platforms," he said.
With trains running from around 5am, until approximately 1am on each of the following Saturday mornings, it means that, during the two long record Fridays, about 180,000 people an hour were joining the tube system.
Put another way, every 20 seconds, of each of the 20 hours of travel, saw the start of another 1,000 journeys underground.
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