London Mass Transit.

Last time I was in London for a short family vacation I remember the Transit seemed like a maze to me, but that was sometime ago. Is the Tube easy to use effectively if you are new or does it take a while to get your bearings? What are some other options for traveling around London quickly and effectively (cheaply too)?

I thought the Tube was pretty easy to navigate. The lines have unique names and different colors, whereas in NYC it's not enough to know that you need the green line, for example, but that you need either the 4, 5, or 6 train. Tube maps are available in all Underground stations and on the Transport for London website, www.tfl.gov.uk.

There aren't as many Tube lines south of the Thames, and I think that is because of the soil composition (or perhaps I imagined that, not sure). South London does have a good overland rail system that connects up with Tube lines, though.

Buses are cheaper but slower, however, I found that taking buses helped me to become more familiar with London faster. You don't really get the layout of the land if you are always beneath it. Also, the Tube map can distort distances between places; sometimes a bus ride or short walk is more efficient than taking the Tube.

The Tube is easy to navigate if you are new to the city.  The busses take a bit longer to figure out but they are cheaper and help when you need to get somewhere with no Tube.  Where the Tube doesn't go, the overground train and busses do. 

Getting around by transit isn't tough.  Driving in London is a whole different kettle of fish!

There aren't as many Tube lines south of the Thames, and I think that is because of the soil composition (or perhaps I imagined that, not sure). South London does have a good overland rail system that connects up with Tube lines, though.

It is true that in many areas south of the Thames the ground is not as favourable for tunnelling as the clay north of the river, so tubes would have been more expensive to construct. This is not such a problem with modern methods but in the period of tube expansion it made a difference, especially because when the tube lines were being planned around 100-120 years ago, South London already had a dense network of urban railways with frequent train services, and also a (now mostly gone) network of electric trams. (Trams were abandoned in 1952 and only returned to Croydon in 2000 - the modern German tramcars are numbered to continue in sequence from the previous trams built before World War 2).

Therefore the tube railway companies did not consider they would get a good enough return on their invested capital, unlike North London where the urban railways were much less developed. The powerful  south-of-the-river railway companies fought tube plans for their areas in Parliament and made the process as protracted as possible, sometimes lobbying to take over the plans and run them themselves. For example the Southern Railway stopped the District Railway's plan to extend from Wimbledon to Sutton, but then built the line themselves.

In essence, the railways south of the Thames do the job that the Underground does north of the river.

IMO, Tube is faster and is easy to navigate but, as was said earlier, you never seem to get the feel of where every thing is in the city using the tube.
I got an Oyster card and travel by bus.  Transport for London website is brilliant for figuring out what connections to make and explains what an oyster card is and how to get one.

But it is surprising how walkable London is.  Things are much closer than I first imagined.
Transport for London will also tell you how to walk to where you want to go, or even use a combination of walk, bus, tube.

There is also www.walkit.com which is a fantastic sight to plan out a walk.  Even tells you how many calories you can burn based on your walking speed!

I second the walkit site.
I hate public transport so if I can help it, I walk.
Make sure you wear nice walking shoes!
Some roads are not heel friendly!

But if walking isn't an option, I think the tube system is relatively easy to understand.  You know exactly when to get off and where you are at.  Some buses don't call out the stations and sometimes your bus driver will forget to tell you when to get off.

Thanks for that additional info, Contrex. I do remember a Blue Badge guide talking about the soil, but she didn't say anything about the economic and business side of it. It makes sense.

Ok, Thanks to all of you for clearing that up. Those suggested websites were great too.

Bear in mind that I grew up with the London Underground so my view might be a little biased from familiarity, but on the whole I would say it's reasonably easy to find your way around so long as you've looked at the map and have a rough idea of where you're going.

Like American highways which are classed as north-south or east-west depending upon their predominant orientation, regardless of whether they actually turn a different direction for several miles, so too are the Underground lines.  For example, the Piccadilly line is classed as an east-west line, so even though going from Kings Cross to Cockfosters you are traveling mostly north, you need to head for the eastbound platform at Kings Cross and Cockfosters is regarded as the eastern terminus of the line.   Once you have that in mind it's easy to know which platform to turn to when arriving at the correct level for the line in question.  Obviously the Circle line is a little different since north/south/east/west don't really have much significance, so the two directions are instead referred to as the Inner Rail (counterclockwise direction of travel on the map) and Outer Rail (clockwise travel).

The other main thing to watch is where a line has one or more branches, so you need to look at the train's destination to be sure it's headed the way you want to go.  For example, the Piccadilly line splits beyond Acton Town, so a westbound Piccadilly train might be going to Heathrow or it might be going to Uxbridge, so if the westbound train pulling into your platform is not heading the right way, you'd have the choice of waiting for the next one or riding that train as far as Acton Town and then getting out and waiting for the correct train for the rest of the journey.   In the outer reaches, not all trains go the end of the line either, so you'll have similar choices of whether to wait or go as far as you can and change to the next train; e.g. many eastbound Piccadilly trains stop at Arnos Grove, and many westbound trains on the Uxbridge section only go as far as Rayners Lane.   

You do also need to keep in mind that the "classic" Underground map is regarded as an excellent piece of design for showing the relationship between lines and the sequence of stations, but is not a scale representation of the system.  The outer sections of track are greatly compressed in distance on the map, and some stations which are in reality quite close together can appear to be farther apart on the map.  Some people unfamiliar with the geography have been known to spend 20 minutes taking two different Underground trains and changing between lines to get to a station which was only 200 yards away from where they started!

the modern German tramcars are numbered to continue in sequence from the previous trams built before World War 2

That's kind of nice salute to the past.   

I imagine you're familiar with the story of the BTF cameramen who went out and filmed the last journeys in 1952 even though the "officials" didn't deem it particularly important enough to record much for posterity.  Lucky for us today that they did so.

You shouldn't have any problems if you arm yourself with a little pocket-sized map of the tube (available free in any station) and, I find, an "A to Z of London" map book, looks like a paperback novel and costs about £5.99. It has a tube map on the back cover also, but usually not a full one one (outer stations are missing).

Even as a native Londoner, that little A-Z and my tube map were my little bibles and I always carried them around with me, and still do. You can figure out how to walk or tube anywhere in the whole city with those two tools in your pocket or purse.

I don't think I could take the tube on a daily basis if I lived in London.  When I was there in August for work, it was so hot and crowded, I felt like I needed a shower after. 

You get used to it.

Commuting from the outer suburbs (ie Finchley, where I live) isn't so bad, as you usually get a seat which gives you a little breathing space.

Vicky

I don't think I could take the tube on a daily basis if I lived in London.  When I was there in August for work, it was so hot and crowded, I felt like I needed a shower after. 

It would be more comfortable, yes, if they could air-condition those carriages. That would be nice. But it's like what people say about NYC -- you put up with things. It's a big city, a major world city, not everything is ideal but people who enjoy it for other reasons have to take the good with the bad. I was born here and the tube was just the tube, take it or leave it, since I was a baby.

I was born in London, lived there for some of my adult life, was (and am) very proud of the London Underground as an engineering achievement, love to read about the rolling stock, operating procedures, technical stuff, etc, but boy would I hate to use it to commute to work! (except perhaps if I was going against the flow)

It has suffered from decades of under investment and is creaking at the seams.

It would be more comfortable, yes, if they could air-condition those carriages.

The problem with air-conditioning is that the heat extracted from the interior of the car has to be dumped to the exterior.   It might be fine for the suburban reaches such as those long runs of the Metropolitan and District lines which are on the surface, but when you're inside a complex of tunnels, you'd just be increasing the ambient temperature at the stations and then as soon as the doors are opened again the heat will be back inside the train.  Across the network, it would increase power consumption drastically to achieve very little -- It's just not a practical proposition.