Should the London Underground have first class?

superalbs · 10 Jun 2026

Technologist said:
I suspect that the method of enforcing this would be by means of a direct in coach payment via oyster or contactless card. The doors of the first class car would not open unless requested by someone inside or by a person on the outside paying to open the doors. This should limit occurrences of large groups getting on in error. Obviously people could tail gate the first person to open the doors but the point would be that there would be lots of reminders both visual and auditory that would make it clear that to use this carriage there was an additional charge. Nobody would be getting on the train thinking they didn't need to pay.

Once in the carriage there would be a means to pay, an HD CCTV system would be installed which would verify that every person has paid and would issue audio warnings to people who haven't tabbed in. Facial recognition could be used to identify and prosecute people who repeatedly violate the system, it could also flag people who are wearing face coverings and similar so they can be pulled up at the station exit.

The larger issues are ones of revenue and equity. From a revenue stand point a coach of people in comfortable seats are going to need to pay about 4-5 times more than they currently do to have a better revenue per m2 than a packed underground trail with 150+ people per carriage. So the argument that will be made is that you will get new people onto the system who previously hadn't travelled at rush hour and that plenty of the people who previously would have been in the first class carriage would still ride in the more cramped remainder of the train.

I don't think that the argument that we are going to make the ride much worse for 1200 people so that an additional 40 people can ride in comfort is one that the London mayor can make to voters. It would be a relatively easy one for the opposition to run with the promise of ending it and likely to have a political impact way larger than the relatively small revenue impact it would have.

My god, that sounds awful...

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etr221 · 11 Jun 2026

Sun Chariot said:
First class withdrawal timeline
1940: First Class travel was officially abolished on all local and Uxbridge Metropolitan services to ease growing wartime congestion.
October 1941: First Class was permanently abolished on the remaining mainline, long-distance Metropolitan trains running out into "Metro-land" (like Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire).

Sources: MyLondon, Wikipedia

The 1940 withdrawal was on and from 1st February, and applied to LPTB only services. First class remained for services over the Met & GC/LNER Joint lines beyond Harrow (which were not LPTB (only) services). Later, by decision of the Minister of War Transport (responsible for the Railway Executive), first class was withdrawn from 'all trains that began and ended their journeys in the London Transport area', which applied to the LPTB Joint Line services, and all the Big 4 main line suburban services, effective from 6 October 1941 (wording of quote from G T Moody Southern Electric. It is unclear how the LT area was defined for the purpose, or for its subsequent continuation). Moody quotes the rationale as being to maximise usable available seating, and the difficulty in ensuring correct use of first class accommodation in blackout conditions.

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My thinking on 'first class' (generally) is that I'm rather ambivalent as to whether you should have it, but if you do, it must be taken seriously: it should be consistent, offer a clearly better option (whatever that might be) and be properly enforced (i.e. expect a ticket check every journey). None of which can be done on the Underground or other TfL services.

Just providing an antimacassar in otherwise standard accommodation, that is declassified over half the time, and is rarely checked isn't being serious (quite the opposite), and I would say is a waste of time, money and effort.

Sorcerer · 11 Jun 2026

RT4038 said:
It may be one of the solutions, but hardly likely to be a priority.

Honestly, I don't think it could be called a solution at all. If London has traffic problems requiring more incentives to use public transport, the answer isn't to have first class on the London Underground which would reduce capacity with no actual benefits. I do not believe people who won't use it now would be swayed by a first class section because it would offer nothing of value to them. Bluntly put, I cannot think of a less fitting place to have first class spaces than a high-capacity high-frequency rapid transit system.

Egg Centric · 12 Jun 2026

Others have given loads of reasons why this won't work with the rolling stock, but a more important point for me is that the stations aren't set up for this. You can have the most luxurious coach in the world but if you're doing Bank in rush hour at the the height of summer heat it simply isn't going to work.

First class public transport in central London is called a black cab.

Fun to speculate about how it could have been if designed from new though.

Technologist · 15 Jun 2026

superalbs said:
My god, that sounds awful...

How's it worse than todays system where a person demands to see a ticket?

I'd actually argue the the existence of the system would actually be less intrusive as most passengers would just tab in and the system would notice that this had happened and not bother them.

A small number of users would get a voice telling them what to do and with modern AI agents there is no particular reason why they could not talk back to the voice in whatever language they want.

I think the idea of first class on the underground is pretty barmy for fairness and revenue reasons. But the idea of using cameras and AI for revenue protection is going to be standard pretty rapidly. The police already have software that allow them to find and track people across hundreds of submitted doorbell and dashcam footage. Doing the same to associate a person with a ticket or lack thereof is relatively trivial.

35B · 15 Jun 2026

Technologist said:
How's it worse than todays system where a person demands to see a ticket?

I'd actually argue the the existence of the system would actually be less intrusive as most passengers would just tab in and the system would notice that this had happened and not bother them.

A small number of users would get a voice telling them what to do and with modern AI agents there is no particular reason why they could not talk back to the voice in whatever language they want.

I think the idea of first class on the underground is pretty barmy for fairness and revenue reasons. But the idea of using cameras and AI for revenue protection is going to be standard pretty rapidly. The police already have software that allow them to find and track people across hundreds of submitted doorbell and dashcam footage. Doing the same to associate a person with a ticket or lack thereof is relatively trivial.

It may become standard (though the cost case is rapidly changing), but that doesn't address effective enforcement - in just the same way as gates only do a certain amount. And this old fart isn't desperately keen on the sort of tracking that's being enabled here, for good old fashioned reasons of respecting privacy.

Egg Centric · 15 Jun 2026

Technologist said:
How's it worse than todays system where a person demands to see a ticket?

I'd actually argue the the existence of the system would actually be less intrusive as most passengers would just tab in and the system would notice that this had happened and not bother them.

A small number of users would get a voice telling them what to do and with modern AI agents there is no particular reason why they could not talk back to the voice in whatever language they want.

I think the idea of first class on the underground is pretty barmy for fairness and revenue reasons. But the idea of using cameras and AI for revenue protection is going to be standard pretty rapidly. The police already have software that allow them to find and track people across hundreds of submitted doorbell and dashcam footage. Doing the same to associate a person with a ticket or lack thereof is relatively trivial.

Good thing there's no such thing as an identical twin!

Jan Mayen · 15 Jun 2026

Perhaps bring back the Pullman carriages? :lol:

deltic · 15 Jun 2026

Middle Eastern metros tend to have both a first/gold class carriage and a women's only carriage and then the rest for everyone else!

superalbs · 15 Jun 2026

Technologist said:
How's it worse than todays system where a person demands to see a ticket?

I'd actually argue the the existence of the system would actually be less intrusive as most passengers would just tab in and the system would notice that this had happened and not bother them.

A small number of users would get a voice telling them what to do and with modern AI agents there is no particular reason why they could not talk back to the voice in whatever language they want.

I think the idea of first class on the underground is pretty barmy for fairness and revenue reasons. But the idea of using cameras and AI for revenue protection is going to be standard pretty rapidly. The police already have software that allow them to find and track people across hundreds of submitted doorbell and dashcam footage. Doing the same to associate a person with a ticket or lack thereof is relatively trivial.

I do not want the train to talk to me, and I definitely do not want to talk back to the train. I also don't want the train to report me to the authorities because it can't see my face.

DelW · 15 Jun 2026

Cdd89 said:
As a new and optional fares model, the First Class carriage could be priced according to demand by just showing a surcharge price or multiplier on the validator (my guess is it would be a flat price regardless of distance since Zone 1 is where the service is congested). If it had slightly more comfortable seats (in all the asian examples i've seen, the seats are forward facing, in contrast to the rest of the carriages), it would be worth a small premium even during uncrowded times. Conversely, during peak hours the premium could be extremely high as there would be some bankers etc who would happily pay it.

It's a minor point, but I don't think anyone else has addressed the suggestion in bold.

AIUI, transverse seats can't be located in the end saloons of tube-size stock, because the tops of the wheel flanges are above carriage floor level. Those saloons have to have longitudinal seats to accommodate the wheels and allow lateral movement on curves.

When tube-size carriages had transverse seats, they were only found in the middle saloon, with two four-seat bays each side of the aisle, total sixteen seats per coach. (This layout can still be seen in a few Bakerloo line cars, the very last tube trains with any transverse seats). So you're not going to be able to provide many forward facing seats in deep-level trains.

Chiltern 165 · 15 Jun 2026

Technologist said:
How's it worse than todays system where a person demands to see a ticket?

I'd actually argue the the existence of the system would actually be less intrusive as most passengers would just tab in and the system would notice that this had happened and not bother them.

A small number of users would get a voice telling them what to do and with modern AI agents there is no particular reason why they could not talk back to the voice in whatever language they want.

I think the idea of first class on the underground is pretty barmy for fairness and revenue reasons. But the idea of using cameras and AI for revenue protection is going to be standard pretty rapidly. The police already have software that allow them to find and track people across hundreds of submitted doorbell and dashcam footage. Doing the same to associate a person with a ticket or lack thereof is relatively trivial.

I don't think AI would be effective for this - the people who are doing unsophisticated methods of fare evasion normally conceal their identity, and the people doing sophisticated methods of fare evasion (such as short-faring) aren't going to be easily detectable!

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DelW said:
very last tube trains with any transverse seats

You're forgetting the S8 stocks which are only 15 years old!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jun 2026 ==

DelW said:
accommodate the wheels

I sent a photo of this from a TfL FOI on post #7 !

DelW · 15 Jun 2026

Chiltern 165 said:
You're forgetting the S8 stocks which are only 15 years old!

No, I was specifically using "tube" to mean deep level not subsurface lines. I know some people use "tube" to refer to all of the Underground, but (personally) I don't consider subsurface trains like the S stock to be tube trains.

Chiltern 165 said:
I sent a photo of this from a TfL FOI on post #7 !

That referred to "equipment", which might conceivably have been relocated elsewhere. I wanted to make the point about the wheels, which are rather an insuperable barrier to transverse seats.

whoosh · 16 Jun 2026

"Please pass along the platform [unless you don't want to use first class, in which case stay where you are blocking the platform]"

"Please use all available doors [except those ones labelled first class, if you haven't got a first class ticket]"

"Please give up this first class priority seat, for those less able than yourself [but only if they also have a first class ticket - although how will you know as it'll be on an Oystercard]"

Just some of the barriers to first class on the tube!

Should the London Underground have first class?

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