London is preparing to welcome new Tube trains for the next 40 years. Last week, London unveiled the new cars to the public for the first time, and when the trains finally hit the tracks starting in the mid-2020s, they’ll bring an appreciable list of improvements to riders.
With the new design, you’ll be able to walk the entire length of the train, which frees up lots of space that was wasted just from closing off individual cars in the past. The entrances are now all evenly spaced and feature double-wide doors, which means it should be a lot faster to get on and off the trains. And you won’t have to “mind the gap” anymore: the cars are all shorter, which makes the trains more flexible and able to come much closer to the platform edge.
There are smaller improvements, too, like strips of LED lights along the doors that clearly flash red to warn passengers as they’re about to close. In addition, all of the advertising and signage on the cars will use digital screens instead of paper inserts, and some of the deepest lines in London will get air conditioning for the first time with the new cars. And did we mention that there will be Wi-Fi on board? Perhaps most importantly, the new trains will be future proofed to run entirely operator-free (though they’ll be staffed for the foreseeable future).