The Definitive Ranking Of London Tube Lines

You cannot argue with this at all, not even a little bit. Well, maybe a little bit.

Note: If it appears as a line on the Standard Tube Map, we're counting it as a Tube Line.

tfl.gov.uk

This leads to some slightly weird outcomes. For example:

14. Emirates Air Line

Flickr: mdpettitt / Creative Commons

LOL what is this even doing on the map? Go home, Dangleway, you are a cable car, not a train, and the people in this photo are the only ones who have ever used you.

13. Northern Line

Flickr: bixentro / Creative Commons

A hellish coffin of misery. So hot and overcrowded it would be illegal if we were cows, it transports drunk people to Camden and rugby gits from Clapham, except on the regular occasions that large parts of it are shut down.

12. Waterloo & City Line

Flickr: mattbuck007 / Creative Commons

Less a Tube line, more a conceptual art stunt. It has precisely two stops and is mostly closed. In its defence, it certainly does travel between those two stops pretty quickly during the 37 minutes it's open on alternating weekdays.

11. Hammersmith & City Line

Flickr: mattbuck007 / Creative Commons

Once, it was the only way to reach various awkward parts of West London. But ever since the Circle line spiralled out onto its turf, the Rogers & Hammerstein has just felt a bit...superfluous. Everything it does is now done by other lines, except without the inexplicable wait at Edgware Road. Edgware Road is where the promise of a better future goes to die.

10. Circle Line

Flickr: anniemole / Creative Commons

a) Not even a circle any more b) Somehow still as annoying and prone to delays as it was when it was a circle. A series of weekend shutdowns held loosely together by mystery and frustration.

9. District Line

Flickr: joshtechfission / Creative Commons

A slowly trundling caravan of disappointment and crushed ambition. You have such dreams, such hopes, so many amazing places you want to go. Then you end up in Earl's Court. Also it smells weird because there's something funny with the brakes.

On the plus side, you get phone signal on most of it! Think of it less like a Tube line, more like a really long bus, and suddenly it all seems a bit better.

8. Piccadilly Line

Flickr: seenbychris / Creative Commons

A solid but unspectacular workhorse of a line that's effectively just a 44-mile-long extension of the baggage reclaim carousels at Heathrow. Has a certain yeomanlike honesty to it, even though it's a much slower way of going diagonally across London than the Victoria.

7. Bakerloo Line

Flickr: blandinelc / Creative Commons

An elderly gentleman, once a dapper and dashing young man about town, now slightly reduced in his circumstances but determinedly maintaining his dignity as he shuffles toward his club, where his regular armchair and a carefully folded newspaper await. Retains an air of elegance and charm, even thought it smells slightly of mothballs and decay.

6. Metropolitan Line

Flickr: ed_webster / Creative Commons

The Metropolitan Line feels like another world. It takes you to strange, possibly mythical, faraway places: Amersham, Rickmansworth, Chalfont & Latimer. It has whole zones all to itself. It has an express version that skips loads of stations. It has very nice new trains now. But there's always the poignant tang of unfulfilled potential when you get on it, of adventure declined — you could go to Zone 9! You really could go to Zone 9!

You will never go to Zone 9.

5. Central Line

Flickr: mattbuck007 / Creative Commons

The Central Line is unfairly maligned. Yes, it can get overcrowded at commuting time. But you know why that is? Because it goes to loads of great places! And Acton! And it's really quick! And red's a nice colour! You can't deny it: The Central Line is the backbone of London. On the downside, it is also the sweat gland of London.

4. Overground

Flickr: joshtechfission / Creative Commons

Hipsters may have preferred it when Shoreditch was underground, but the newly unified Overground has opened up a dazzling world of possible destinations for many Londoners, through the simple trick of gathering up loads of pre-existing lines, adding cool new trains, and drawing an orange line through where they all go. Finchley Road & Frognal! Penge West! Bushey! Also: You now have no excuse not to go to Hackney.

(Except when it's closed for planned maintenance, obviously.)

3. Victoria Line

Flickr: mattbuck007 / Creative Commons

A tease of a line. When it works, it's a joy (assuming you wanted to go from Brixton to King's Cross in no time at all). But then you have to deal with the shutdowns, random changes of destination (you wanted to go to Walthamstow? Tough. Make do with Seven Sisters), and the dreaded "being held to regulate the service". Also: noisier than Black Sabbath and Metallica having a semtex fight. But we still love it.

(UPDATE: The Victoria Line was temporarily demoted to 13th place on this list, as approximately three hours after the article was published, some people at Victoria decided to pour fast-setting concrete into their own signal room, almost entirely shutting the line down for the day. It was still better than the cable car, though. It has now been restored to 3rd place, as it is no longer full of concrete.)

2. Jubilee Line

Flickr: masochismtango / Creative Commons

So shiny. So very, very shiny with its shiny shiny stations and shiny trains and shiny suicide prevention barriers. Using the Jubilee Line is like stepping into a sci-fi dystopia, but one of those cool dystopias that you don't really mind because it's so stylishly designed. Just imagine how awesome the Jubilee would be if it went to, you know, more exciting places.

1. Docklands Light Railway

Flickr: mattbuck007 / Creative Commons

IT'S A MAGICAL ROBOT SKYTRAIN FROM THE FUTURE AND YOU CAN SIT IN THE DRIVING SEAT.