Since it hasn't been covered already, I'll do a post about:
The London Underground
The London Underground, often simply called the Tube, is Greater London's rapid transit system, essentially our answer to something like the New York Subway (or rather their answer to the Tube since the first Tube line opened in 1863 and the first NY Subway line opened in 1870. Get fucked yanks).
The Tube consists of
a series of tubes 11 lines, with 270 stations and serves about 5 million people a day. While that might seem like a lot, the Tube's only the 12th busiest metro in the world, trailing China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the US, Mexico and France. Although considering the UK's smaller than most of those countries, it's more of an achievement than it may seem at first blush.
As alluded to above, the Tube's been in operation in various forms since the mid-19th century and several aspects of it, like the Underground logo, Tube cars and the map have become an iconic part of British culture. During the First and Second World Wars, Tube stations were used as bomb shelters during air raids, and
Doctor Who fans from around the world will probably recognise it from the classic story
The Web of Fear where Yeti invade the tunnels (no, really).
The Tube map itself is a pretty ingenious piece of design. Unlike New York, which was built on a grid system, London's layout is a lot more chaotic, but the Tube map makes it surprisingly easy to navigate because (to steal an observation from Bill Bryson) the designer realised that when you're underground you have no sense of your bearings, so the map is constructed as a simple layout of stations that bears no relation to above ground geography. Here's the tube map:
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And here's a geographically accurate one:
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Yikes.
Although this does create the problem of not giving passengers a proper sense of distance meaning they can often waste time taking the Tube when it would be much faster to walk.
Beyond that, the Tube has the same problems every other underground system has - it's filthy, smelly, infested with hobos and buskers and the trains and platforms can get hideously overcrowded during rush hour. More recently we've had to reckon with Extinction Rebellion protestors gluing themselves to train cars and leaving commuters disappointed and frustrated that the train car didn't just drive off with them still attached.
What sets the Tube apart in unpleasantness though is undoubtedly the heat.
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't rain all the time in Britbongistan, and particularly in the South, where London is, we can have some nasty heatwaves. During the summer, temperatures on the deep Tube lines (i.e. most of them) easily rises above 30 degrees Celsius, and have been known to get as high as 47. It's now become a famous adage that this is above the legal limit for transporting livestock, and for once that isn't just sensationalism - it's actually true. On a summer day, taking the escalator down into a tube station can feel very much like descending into the pits of Tartarus.
This wasn't always the case - in the early days of the Tube, it was advertised as a place to keep cool. The trouble is, the tunnels are surrounded by clay and over the years this has formed a heat sink. The clay temperature was originally around 14 degrees Celsius, but this has now risen to a base temperature of about 19-26 degrees Celsius.
You may ask: "Why don't you get air conditioning installed?" Well, some of the above ground lines like the Metropolitan and District Line do in fact have air conditioning. But for the deep Tube lines this is more of a problem - the train cars are too small to carry a proper air conditioning system and because of the size of the tunnels, replacing them with larger ones isn't an option. That doesn't change the fact that the problem's gotten so bad that installing a giant ice cube in the train cars is under serious consideration.
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As for the individual Tube lines themselves, if I went into detail about every single one of them, this post would be far too long, so I'll restrict myself to the ones I have some experience of:
The Central Line
The Central Line is the busiest Tube line in London, as most of the popular stops for commuters are on it, and while it's fast and there's a train every minute, it's also horribly overcrowded. The heat problem I mentioned is probably worst on this line and there was one summer where I had to get it to work every day. I suffer from hyperthyroidism which, among others things, means I don't do well in heat. Whenever the temperature gets above 15 degrees Celsius, I usually start sweating uncontrollably, so after being packed like a sardine into a metal tube with temperatures into the forties, I'd show up to work looking like I'd jumped in the Thames. Yesterday, I took the missus into Central London for lunch. We wanted to take the Metropolitan line, which has air conditioning, but it wasn't operating because most of the staff are self-isolating due to Covid. Instead, we were forced to take the Central Line, and on the way back, the heat got so bad she vomited. I'd say avoid this line if you possibly can, but convenience makes fools of us all.
The Bakerloo Line
The Bakerloo Line isn't the oldest line on the Tube by a long shot (it's actually the fourth newest) but it feels like the oldest because the train cars haven't been upgraded since 1972. The fact the line's colour is brown and has the word Loo in the title is rather appropriate because it's essentially just one long shitstain spanning across London. It's the dirtiest, ricketiest and smelliest line I've ever been on. The only cool thing about it is the Baker Street station which has tributes to Sherlock Holmes all over the walls, but that's just one stop out of 25.
The Waterloo and City Line
Affectionately known as the Drain, this line only has one stop on it, and is responsible for carrying commuters (usually bankers and the like) straight from Waterloo train station to Bank, London's imaginatively named financial district. I've never actually used this one myself, but the queue for it was always so huge I wondered why the people using it didn't just walk - the journey only covers about a mile and a half and walking that or getting a taxi would surely be faster.
Docklands Light Railway
This isn't really a Tube line, but I'll include it here as an honourable mention since it's on the Tube map. Not much to say about this one - it's a magical sky train with no driver. What's not to like?
Having been on Subway systems in quite a few countries, I can comfortably say the Tube does not compare well, so in conclusion, it's yet another thing we can add to the list of things Brits do terribly.
If this post is too TL;DR for you, Adam Kay sums it up pretty well:
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