While New York is famously known as the “city that never sleeps”, London has always rejoiced in the fact that it gets a couple of hours kip every night before waking up sometime around dawn.
The popular image of nocturnal London being a place of deserted streets, emptied of human inhabitation save for the solitary policemen and the occasional partygoer scanning the horizon for a taxi cab, may already be out of date, as nowadays the city is a modern metropolis to rival almost anywhere in the world.
Yet the primary means of public transport on which the capital relies – the London Underground – still quaintly draws its shutters at 12.30am, and doesn’t resume operation until 5am. Anyone wishing to travel without a car between these hours faces some difficult and disagreeable choices.
Licensed taxis may be plentiful after hours, and the proficiency of their highly-trained drivers will ensure that once aboard you can fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that they’ll get you home without having to give directions.
But such are the eye-watering tariffs these vehicles charge once the trains have stopped, that you require deep pockets to travel any distance. For those existing on a low wage, a ride in a London taxi is at best an occasional luxury.
A cheaper alternative is the minicab. But the industry remains poorly regulated, often involving vehicles of uncertain age and efficiency.
A journey I took in one recently from my North London home to Heathrow airport found me sitting in the rear of a vehicle that had just been cleaned in the local automatic car wash.
It may have looked pristine, but the driver had left the rear windows open during the procedure, with the result that the rear seats on which I perched more resembled the deck of the Titanic than a comfortable car.
Long before I reached the airport the windows had steamed up to such an extent that we could barely see the road ahead. Hardly the ideal preparation for a relaxing break.
And then there’s the night bus. Infrequent, overcrowded, understaffed and crammed with revellers who have enjoyed their evening out a little too heartily, your main concern as a passenger is trying to prevent the occupant of the adjacent seat from upending the contents of their stomach over your new suit.
Well now it’s all set to change. In the biggest shake-up to London life since the invention of the automatic cigarette machine, an all-night Tube service is to be introduced throughout the city.
From next year, trains are set to run up to six times every hour throughout the night, and take you from A to B for a fraction of the cost of a licensed taxi.
The initiative, trumpeted loudly by (who else), London’s garrulous mayor Boris Johnson, will come into service at the commencement of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and continue on a permanent basis once the tournament is concluded.
The change to London and Londoners will surely be profound.
Indeed, Mr Johnson proclaimed that as well as creating vital new jobs “it will make the city an even better place to live, work, visit and invest”.
The anticipated benefit to the capital’s economy could be as much as £360 million (Dh2.14 billion) per annum.
It will also put an end to another unappealing ritual practised by thousands each night – that of the desperate stampede for the last train home.
The move will undoubtedly prove popular with everyone (apart, of course, from the poor taxi drivers). Yet I wonder if the initiative may make London a little less civilised to live in.
There has always been something magically restorative about being in a city that shuts its eyes for a brief spell. Walking through the capital in the early morning when it’s still waking up remains one of the true pleasures of living here: quiet, cleansed and refreshed.
Perhaps the only person who won’t have noticed the impending change is my wife. She already has the good fortune to have her own personal male chauffeur living at home, ready to leap out of bed at a moment’s notice whenever summoned by mobile phone, to travel to whichever far flung corner of the city she wishes to be collected from.
Now she, too, will have to use the Tube. And I can look forward to an uninterrupted night’s sleep.
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer based in London
On Twitter: @michael_simkins
