New London Tube Adds AC, Subtracts Driver
By 2020, the city will have a fleet of 250 new subway cars transporting passengers on air-cooled, driverless trains.
London's 19th-Century Underground is getting a modern-day upgrade. By 2020, the city will have a fleet of 250 new subway cars transporting passengers on air-cooled, driverless trains.
The revamped Tube system was initiated by London's mayor, Boris Johnson, who wanted to increase rider capacity from 8.4 million people to 10 million by 2030.
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To accommodate more passengers, the train will feature unsegmented, "walk-through" carriages that allow more people on a line, as well as wider doors that will allow commuters to get on or off the trains faster.
An improved signaling system will keep riders informed of wait times or scheduled maintenance.
Some stations will get clear walls on platforms, which will increase safety and keep trash off the tracks, which can result in fires and delays.
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Since the Piccadilly Line currently serves the most customers - 210 million a year - it will be among the first of four lines to receive the new trains and signaling system.
The other lines getting upgrades include the Central Line, Bakerloo Line and Waterloo & City Line.
Credit: Transport for London
The Tumblr blog
features just that, imaginary signs and warnings that we might come across eventually. The image blog is the brainchild of Fernando Barbella, an artist and creative director in Barcelona.
Barbella creates the images by taking stock photos and manipulating the images in Photoshop. "I look for casual and amateur images on forums and online boards, then I work on putting together the whole thing, trying to integrate the signs in ordinary and very usual places where they would be relevant," Barbella says.
How does Barbella come up with ideas? Any way he can: "Since I'm doing this during my free time, I usually came up with the idea in any give moment of the day, mostly while commuting by train, or taking my dogs for a walk at night."
Barbella says the inspiration for the project came when he was trying to devise a graphical header for another project.
"The idea came from trying to figure out how these upcoming technologies would interact with us," Barbella says. "But at the same time not showing these technologies at all, since we’ve already seen many pictures of those technologies."
Once inspiration for a new image strikes, Barbella immediately starts picturing the context. "I write it down on my mobile or on paper and I try to figure out the best and more natural way to feature it."
Subtlety is a key part of the design, Barbella says. The idea is not to trumpet the oddness of the signs, but rather to emphasize their "normalness" by placing them in very ordinary settings. "We're all very acquainted with signage," he says. "Of course there are some few touches of subtle humor, since I really enjoy irony and black humor a lot."
Barbella says he hopes the project inspires people to think about their relationship to technology. "The goal of the project is to expose a point of view, and to make the visitors think about how far -- and how fast -- we want to go in this kind of technological race," Barbella says. "Although I'm an innovation fan, I'm not an expert or a man of science, and I think there are huge chances to make some mistakes in terms of the final result."
Barbella says he plans to keep updating the image blog regularly, and perhaps take the project in new directions. "It would be nice to blur the line between the online and offline worlds, he says. "Perhaps a small book or a temporary expo in some physical space, or even producing those signs for real and start doing some urban interventions." Follow his
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