A very important person was waiting for me at Liverpool Station today. She is my best friend and the person I still affectionately refer to as “mummy.” Yes I indeed kept my mum waiting at the station today as she arrived in London to visit me. It seemed to have given her enough time to think of all the questions she had been meaning to ask me, so she started with the most obvious one: “So.. Do you now know where everything is in London?”
It is an obvious question to ask really – one that I wondered when I would be able to answer. And I am not the only one! A friend of mine had also taken up the challenge of “doing everything there is to do in London”, without much success.
As it is obvious to anyone who lives in London, it is a city where one could do a social activity 24 hours of a day throughout their lives and they still would not be done. But if activities are in abundance, why are attendance levels not reflective of the amount of people living in the city?
One of the contributing reasons would be the lack of advertisement. Mid-level events are advertised or mentioned in the media very few times – meaning if you missed those chances, you will not be informed of something you would potentially want to go to. Isle of Wight Festival got plenty of mention in the media – only because attendees had to sleep in their cars that were stuck in mud. But the lack of a mainstream media outlet not running a comprehensive list of events around the city forces potential attendees to seek out events they might be interested in through pages and pages of Google results.
I came across the Designing James Bond exhibition through such a search – which brings me to my next point. Directions given to events can be seriously little – especially for a new Londoner. The exhibition listed its location as simply “Barbican.” For long-time Londoners that could automatically mean “Barbican Centre.” With me however, the directions led me to emerge at Barbican tube station wondering where to go. After all, this is not an Ikea that one can spot from a mile away. Barbican Centre is located within a maze of flats and truth be told if I didn’t own a GPS, I absolutely would have given up and gone home. Never in my life had I been so lost among tall buildings looking for a British spy figure.
So, while events could be excused for not having the financial means to advertise themselves widely, they still should provide clear enough directions in a city with such a high visitor population.
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With the Olympics approaching the amount of visitors is likely to increase. I’m sure more care will have to be taken in giving out directions then. The tube has taken the initiative to put up tourist location directions on the maps within the trains which will help. But to be honest, this got me thinking about what kind of a transport system visitors will be greeted with.
The moment they land in London, they will come across border control queues that reach corridors within some major airports. One of the key motorways linking Heathrow to London had to be shut down (and although we’ve been promised it will be ready by the time the Olympics arrive) this has got to be a major worry. Visitors who take the trains might have to sit on a seat covered with read newspapers. Some visitors could of course use the buses. And anyone who has had the bad fortune of sitting at the back seat will tell you, the amount of discarded food there would be enough to put together a supper.
It is clear at this stage that with the torch fast approaching the Olympic Park, time is also running out for London to get its attitude towards directions and transport links in order.
Şeref İşler is a broadcast journalist at the BBC World Service’s Turkish section.
