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There’s one thing no one wants to do in the stifling 30 degree heat of London… and that’s take the tube.
But fear not, travel app Citymapper has introduced an ‘Air Conditioned’ feature that shows you which modes of transport to take if you want to beat the heat.
Britons have seen rising temperatures this month, with highs reaching 32C in some places.
But as the heat rises outside, so does the heat underground, where temperatures on deeper underground lines such as the Central and Bakerloo can reach a stifling 32C – making for a rather miserable rush hour journey.
Shown is a map showing ‘air-conditioned’ and ‘non-airconditioned’ routes for travel from Stratford to Westminster
Shown is a map showing ‘air-conditioned’ and ‘non-airconditioned’ routes for travel from Peckham Rye to Covent Garden
Shown is a map showing ‘air-conditioned’ and ‘non-airconditioned’ routes for travel from Ealing Common to London Bridge
Only four Tube lines are currently air-conditioned: Circle, Hammersmith and City, District and Metropolitan.
Other transport options in the capital that offer a breezy commute include the Overground, Northern City line, Elizabeth line, Thameslink and London Trams.
Citymapper is a handy route description app for those trying to navigate the capital’s intricate travel network, with useful features such as advice on which carriages are busiest and which station exits to come and go from.
The app gives you a list of suggested routes to take – which can vary in duration and ticket price.
And you don’t need to use the app differently to access the new air conditioning feature, because when you map directions to a destination, it will automatically indicate which routes have air conditioning for the entire trip. It will be below the suggested routes.
To test its feasibility, MailOnline compared four trips across London to regularly visited areas to see how the air-con routes fare in terms of price and journey time. All journeys were mapped for travel time on a weekday at 7am.
And the feature proved quite successful, with travel time and ticket price very similar to the non-air-conditioned routes.
There was only one trip where choosing the air-conditioned route would add more than 10 minutes to your journey – traveling from Ealing Common to London Bridge.
The quickest route suggested by Citymapper for that journey takes 36 minutes and involves taking the Piccadilly line to Green Park and then changing to the Jubilee line.
But if you want to keep a cool head, the shortest air-conditioned route is to take the District Line to Ealing Broadway, then change to the Elizabeth Line to Farringdon, before hopping on the Thameslink to your final destination London Bridge. But this journey still only takes 47 minutes.
And for one trip, traveling from East Putney to Shoreditch, choosing the non-air-conditioned route effectively takes the same amount of time – and costs more.
Shown is a map showing ‘air-conditioned’ and ‘non-airconditioned’ routes for travel from East Putney to Shoreditch
Building new ventilation shafts would be expensive and the small tunnels (pictured) don’t have enough space to screw on large air-conditioning units
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Scientists argue that rising temperatures – which led to Britain’s hottest summer on record in 2022 – are ‘just the beginning’, so air-conditioned commuting could well become more of a necessity.
However, TFL has said there are plans to introduce air-conditioning on other London lines, including the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Waterloo and City and Central.
New designs for trains on the Piccadilly line mean they could have air conditioning as early as 2025.
But while the other three lines should be upgraded in the near future, no dates have been set yet.
One of the reasons why most of the Tube lines – Central, Bakerloo, Victoria, Piccadilly, Northern, Jubilee and Waterloo and City – do not yet have air conditioning is that the systems are very old.
Built in the Victorian era, the tunnels have just enough room for the trains themselves to pass through.
And according to the Engineering & Technology charity, this means the hot air forced out of the wagons has nowhere to go. This hot air would only heat up the trains more.
Building new ventilation shafts would be expensive and the small tunnels don’t have enough space to screw on large air-conditioning units.
The air-conditioned lines are just newer, so the tunnels are made big enough to fit the equipment.
To provide air conditioning for the old Piccadilly line tunnel, new train designs have reduced the number of bogies, structures that hold train wheels in place, underneath. This extra space should be used for air conditioning systems.
It comes after the BBC revealed that journeys on the London Underground are rising again, and now 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
According to TfL data, 91 million metro journeys were made in April. This compares to 101 million for the same month four years ago in 2019.
However, the number of trips on the network is up by nearly 12 million since the same time last year – when the country was still reeling from the effects of Covid.
Saturdays and Sundays are currently off-peak all day, resulting in a reduced fare, with peak times Monday to Friday between 6:30am and 9:30am and between 4:00pm and 7:00pm.
After data showed that Friday sees 28 per cent fewer Tube customers than Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it was suggested that TfL could make travel cheaper on both sides of the weekend.
But in response to the claims, a TfL spokesperson said there are currently no plans to change the timing of off-peak hours.