Place your bets on the first Tube Delay sweepstakes!
Much like death and taxes, delays on the Underground are simply an inevitable part of life that we’ll grumble about, but eventually just deal with. However, the odds-obsessed folks over at Casino.co.uk elected to take a deeper dive into the numbers of tube delays in 2018, and they’ve crowned a Champion of Delays. Drumroll please…
With a whopping 198 delays of two minutes or more, it’s the mean green delay machine known as the District line taking the title. Edging out its nearest competitor, the Central line, by a mere 19 delays, the District line accounted for 17% of all delays in 2018. At the other end of the scale, the goody two-shoes Waterloo & City line clocked up just 24 delays – although it has the advantage of only running six days a week.
We’re not quite done handing out the prizes, though, for whilst the District is hereafter anointed Champion of Delays, there are some other accolades to bestow. Triumphing in the ‘Most Customer Hours Wasted’ category (and stepping out of the District’s shadow) is the Central line, who managed to squander 5.2 million hours of our precious lifespans. That’s over a million more than the silver medallist Piccadilly line, a stunning effort from this veteran competitor.
All in all, Londoners lost 22 million hours due to tube delays in 2018, which is a frankly terrifying number when I think about how much I procrastinate anyway. So, on to our final category, the ‘Total Meltdown Award For Most Station Closures’. A potential tiebreaker in the District and Central line showdown, perchance? Nope, because a quite literal dark horse has run in to snake the crown: it’s the Northern line, with a century of station closures (105, to be precise) in 2018.
Really, it’s a remarkable achievement given that the black line barely cracked the top five in the first two categories. It wasn’t even a close result, either, with the Northern finishing well ahead of the Victoria line, in second with 71 delays. To further stamp its authority over this category, the Northern also scoops the Lifetime Achievement Award in station closures, having racked up 2655 of the damn things since 2004. Well deserved, I’m sure you’ll agree. And that concludes our festivities for the evening – happy delays, people!
You can take a look at the full findings – along with a fun interactive map – over at Casino.co.uk.