Ah, the joys of the Monday Morning commute. Thannkfully, I don’t have to do this every week nowadays (mercifully). But, as I stand here on the platform at Waterloo station, after a rather unpleasant journey to get here so far, it occurs to me just how hard it is to plan our journeys properly.

Let me explain:

Planning HOW to get from A to B is now easy, but planning how to get there and AVOID delays isn’t. Sure, TfL will tell me if delays have been reported along my route, but they’re only engineering issues. We don’t really have an effective means to provide data based upon the movement of the masses, and feed this into such travel planning software.

What I selfishly want to know is how I can have a pleasant journey by avoiding all the hustle and bustle, even if that means delaying my arrival time. Yes, I could choose to avoid travelling between 6.30am and 10.00am, but that is ridiculous: there must be some queiter periods during ‘rush hour’, and without adequate data to show where and when the main activity occurs, it is really difficult to make effective decisions that might actually help to ease overcrowding.

People cause most of the delays, because of some kind of psychological phenomenon that means individually, we’re by and large sensible creatures, but en mass we are anarchic, unpredictable and programmed to get in everyone else’s way.