A commuter who travelled on the Tube barefoot revealed why he did it, saying the experience was ‘gross’ but also ‘freeing.’
You might have thought in passing what travelling on the London Underground is like without shoes, especially when the sweaty summer months roll in.
One commuter did it, so you don’t have to try it out. While the experiment was unpleasant, he told Metro it was also ‘quite freeing’ to break the norm.
The man, who asked not to be named, was forced to think on his feet and get rid of his shoes completely after his flip-flops broke on his way home from Morden station on the Northern line.
The passenger, who works in IT in central London, warned others on Reddit not to do it when he saw how grimy his feet were.
He told Metro: ‘I got to Camden Town and looked at the bottom of my foot and it was completely black, that was kind of gross.
‘I could feel it under my feet. I did feel self-conscious, you could feel it was almost a bit slippery – and really dirty.
‘It got even blacker after that picture. It shows how dirty the Tube is.’
Despite the muck – which is thought to be tiny rubber and dust particles from train brakes that stick to every surface – he said it ‘felt quite nice, kind of cool.’
‘It was quite freeing.
London dirtiest Tube line
London Underground lines are cleaned at different times.
The Piccadilly line, the third-biggest Tube line, undergoes a full-service clean every 43 days, a Freedom of Information request revealed.
Meanwhile, the cleanest route is the Jubilee line, which is fully cleaned once every 18 days. It has the second-smallest fleet of all lines with just 63 trains.
‘I’ve seen girls do it before on nights out.’
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He said that fellow passengers didn’t bat an eyelid when he stomped around barefoot, but this could be because people are ‘not very sociable’ on the Tube, with many trying to avoid eye contact.
Grime on the Underground network is unavoidable as it handles around 5,000,000 passenger journeys and more than 500 trains each day.
Tube trains undergo a pre-service clean daily, further cleans every three to four days, including cleaning of window ledges and interior window panels. Train interiors and exteriors undergo a full clean around every 28 days, TfL said previously.
His feet might have been worse off just traipsing through the streets of London for any distance due to the gunk that people and animals leave behind.
Other Redditors were flabbergasted – and curious – about the human experiment, with some asking what he was doing wearing flip-flops in the first place.
He defended his choice of footwear, saying he would have normally cycled, but his bike had issues, so he ‘threw on’ some flip-flops he had in his office as the weather was warm that day last week.
Then one of them ‘snapped’ and because he was in a rush and didn’t want to limp, he threw them both away.
‘I don’t usually go out barefoot,’ he added.
And since the travel escapade, he said he no longer wears flip-flops.
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