Travelling the London Underground in the shortest time

World Record 26-Sep-2006

Tuesday 26-Sep-2006 we (I, Håkan Wolgé and Lars Andersson) set a new record breaking time of 18h25m03s for "Travelling the London Underground in the shortest time". This was confirmed as a new record on 06-Nov-2006 by GWR (Guinness World Records^tm). This beat the existing record of 18h35m38s held by Steve Wilson and Samantha Cawley,

It all started in January 2005 when I first read Keith Lowe's "Tunnel Vision". This revived my childhood love for the London Underground. I started browsing the net for information on any records. I immediately found Geoff Marshall's site, then record holder. I read his story on the 2004 Zone 1 Challenge and realised that the Zone 1 would be doable in a single day from Sweden. What I also realised was that it would be possible to get enough information on the internet to make it worthwhile to try to find an optimum route with a computer. On 16-Feb-2005 I had a crude Zone 1 route, 3 willing colleagues and Ryan Air return tickets to London. We did the Zone1 in a 2h58m37s. Read about it here. I returned back with Patrick Sillén for the 2005 Zone 1 Challenge (May 20th) and we won - thanks to an improved computer generated route. Read about that here. Knowing we had only done light jogging rather than running I understood the power of a good route. From that day, I guess, I wanted the Guinness World Record…

Even though I consider myself a qualified computer programmer, I couldn't really see how a 275 route could be found by a computer - it simply seemed a bit too complex. But over time ideas started to mature into algorithms and I started to realise it might after all be possible. In the autumn 2005 I started ripping all the Journey Planner's time tables and started writing my route finding program. I used a mid-March-06 date as the tentative target date. In the early months of 2006 things started to come together properly. Suddenly I had my first computer generated routes available. They were a bit crude compared to the latest one, but looked quite promising at the time (and Shoreditch was still open). First I intended only to try things out in March, but as the day drew closer and Lars was confirmed to come along we decided to have a proper go at it. Tubeguru himself volunteered to handle the stop watch and ended up doing around 200 stations with us. Looking back at it I can see that we learned a lot from both Neil and the experience itself. We almost broke the record already then - but failed a couple of hours before the finish when Earl's Court closed, prohibiting us from making Kensington (Olympia). We immediately decided to have another go after T4 reopened.

I went back to my computer to improve further, and after a while I came up with the route we were to use. I felt confident that it was record breaking stuff, provided we didn't encounter any serious disruptions. Minor delays are to be expected and are catered for. From our previous attempt we knew the model was robust enough and not too far from reality.

So finally this Monday (Sep 25th) I and Lars traveled again to London or rather Amersham where we had booked rooms at the Cherry Trees B&B. The hosts, especially the man in the house, had shown interest in our quest the last time, and indeed, when we arrived he offered us a drink in return for all our plans! We happily obliged.

At 5 o'clock we walked down to the station where our official time keeper Nadeem was waiting. A few pictures were taken and the stop watch started as we rolled away at 5:28:08… Our plan said we would finish at Heathrow T123 at 23:38, i.e. in 18h10m…

Everything went glitch free for the first few hours and we were significantly ahead of plan, but when we hit the central area, we started loosing time on bad connections and suddenly we were slightly behind plan. At this point Steven Karahan joined us. He provided some insights and, not the least, some much needed lunch. He gave me some useful information for later on, some I probably would have guessed anyway, but got confirmed. He left us after about 4 hours and we continued on. At this stage we were around 5 minutes ahead of plan. In the evening tubeguru came out to check on us first hand and took a few photos. He stayed with us for about an hour. At this point we were starting the home stretch and suffered a few medium delays - mostly Pic line, due to earlier faults at Heathrow and partly due to Arsenal/FC Porto fans - setting us back around 15 minutes. Suddenly we were looking at a 23:53 finish, but that depended on making a 2 minute connection in the late stages… We made that connection and finally got on our final train to Heathrow (with one to spare 8 minutes later) and arrived at T123 at 23:53:11. However it turned out that the next train never arrived. We had actually caught the last T4 train of the day…

Some highlights:
* We had a nice stroll between the New Crosses in the beautiful sunshine - knowing trains were on time and we had a good 10 minutes to complete the connection.
* I had a close brush with doors closing around my knee, with Lars onboard after a communication glitch between us. After an eternity (probably at least 10 seconds) of me gesturing that I was stuck, the train driver finally conceded and reopened the doors. However she didn't start immediately but spent another 10 seconds to give me a verbal bashing over the speakers…
* At one station we ran out and caught a 10-minute interval bus just leaving. Even better was that the driver probably had a past as a car thief - at least it seemed like it when he drove. He even overtook one of his own numbers!
* Just after returning from Upminster we heard an announcement that all trains were suspended between West Ham and Barking due to debris on the track…

Some horror moments:
* Arriving at platform level going towards Upminster just seeing a train pull out. We had to wait another 8 minutes for the next one.
* During a double back / cross platform change we just saw the doors closing on the opposite side moments before our own doors opened.
* Just missing a train after a walk/run where we'd lost time due to erroneous notes on door positions - getting off at the wrong END of the train (the only such glitch though). Also felt I could have moved just a bit quicker between the stations…
* Loosing sight of Lars during a run. He was supposed to be ahead of me, but I couldn't see him anywhere after turning a corner. Moments later he came up from behind - he had missed the turn but had fortunately realised in time.
* When all the Arsenal/Porto fans invaded the train and we realised we would loose a few valuable minutes and subsequently would miss a crucial change - which we did (probably cost us the 23:38 finish)

Since our result was first known, one question has been put to me more times than any other: -”How fast do you think it could be done?” Since my entire route is based on a statistical model I think I may have a good guess at it. As I've written numerous times, we expected a time of 18h10m, provided there were no extraordinary delays. As it turned out we had a few of those (not major, but absolutely extraordinary). Our estimate actually gives us the distribution as well. I don't have all the figures, but I'd say that given you have a day without extraordinary delays affecting you, it would be about 30% chance to make it on the 23:28 train to Heathrow T123. That would be very close to 18h flat. So the easy answer would be –“On a lucky day I think it could be done in 18 hours flat.”

That's about it. Now we'll sit back and see how well this record will survive...