If you don’t live in London, you’d be forgiven for missing what is perhaps the cheeriest bit of legislation us youngsters have had in a long old time. See, on Friday and Saturday nights now, the tube is open all night long. This means that if you are out in hip hop and happening Islington (north-ish) past 12AM on a weekend and you need to get to your home in Brixton (south-ish) now, instead of of getting three whole night busses that take over an hour, you can sit comfortably on the Victoria Line for just 19 minutes before arriving at your destination. This without having to stumble around at unfamiliar streets waving your phone around as you try to Googlemaps your way to bus stop G on York Way.
At the moment the night tube extends to only two lines, the Victoria Line and the Central Line but there’s plans to expand to the Jubilee (side note: this is very helpful to me Sadiq Khan, thank you).
As anyone who has ever got the last tube or has had the experience of one of London’s night busses knows, Londoners at night are very different to Londoners in the day. ‘There’s something about at night, whether or not it’s because people have had a bit to drink, but people interact a lot more.’ Says Liza Williams, part of a production team from BBC Three who have been spending their weekends filming people using the night tube. ‘More so than anywhere else, you get such a huge mixture, people from all walks of life and all different ages.’
Many people know the experience of making a drunk best friend late at night. That girl you get into a really deep conversation with about the racial politics of mid-noughties television or that guy from Colorado that you friended on Facebook and are TOTALLY going to go and visit next March. The night tube means (fingers crossed) way more of this. ‘There were definitely people you’d never see talking to each other says Liza. ‘There was one guy who were were following who was doing a charity fundraiser and travelling 24 hours on the tube. He was from Devon, he’s a dad, and he interacted and got chatting to these young kids who were having an 18th birthday party. He said himself you wouldn’t think I’d have anything in commons with them but we got on and it was funny!’
There are obviously concerns about anti-social behaviour with the implementation of the night tube. Mayor Sadiq Khan earlier this month announced a £3 million investment for a further 100 police officers for the new venture. According to Liza though the staff seemed positive. ‘I think they all felt it went really smoothly. That was the impression we got.’ She says. ‘They’re used to running it in incredibly successful situations so actually running it all night… It is the unknown and they were probably a bit nervous but they’re still doing the same job at the end of the day. They run it all night on New Years’ Eve and they’ve been doing that for a very long time so I think most people felt confident that they knew how to deal with any incidents if they did arrive.'
In terms of anti-social behaviour too, Liza says her and her team didn’t witness anything sinister. ‘Obviously there were lots of drunk people, lots of people asleep, quite a bit of vomit, quite a lot of people getting lost and not really understanding which lines were closed but in general it was a celebratory atmosphere and they seemed genuinely pleased that they could get the tube home.’
Obviously, drunk people aren’t going to be the sole users of the night tube. For people that work anti-social hours, it’s going to be a godsend. ‘We interviewed a chef who would normally have a horrendous journey to the East and he’d have to get in very early to bake the bread and get all the equipment sorted and obviously on Sunday the tube doesn’t normally open until seven AM and a lot of people do start work earlier than that.’
One final thing about the night tube – what’s going to happen to the 500,000 mice or so that live on the underground? Eagle eyed commuters will probably have spied them at some point, scuttling along the track or the platforms late and night and early in the morning. Recently, Professor Bill Wiseden from Imperial College London expressed his concern at the the effect the 24 tube would have on the rodents. ‘Soon, they will be sleep deprived’ he worried, adding that they’d get no sleep between Friday morning and Sunday evening. ‘[It] will mean that the mice will evolve to be more stress resistant. Tube mice will have an even shorter and more brutal life.’
Liza, for her part, has seen no mice during their filming, despite seeing plenty before the night tube’s launch. ‘We went to a pre-briefing the week before there was loads of mice so normally they must be out in force. I guess they must be more nervous now there’s more people about!’
Erm #saveourtubemice ?
Watch Night Tube: The First weekend on BBC Three iPlayer.
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Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.