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Picture the scene. You're at the gargantuan O2 Arena, watching your favourite band - say, the Arctic Monkeys. You're having an amazing time, and then you look at your phone and realise the set will shortly end. It's 11pm. "The crush," you whisper. "Run!"
At this point, you don't give a toss if Alex Turner pulls of some kind of dazzling gymnastic display during their encore. You have to leave the gigantic venue NOW before you are swallowed up in the desperate human chasm that engulfs North Greenwich tube station as the audience rushes to catch the last tube home.
Now, come 2015, that will be a thing of the past. Thanks to five tube lines now running 24 hours on weekends, you'll be able to comfortably enjoy a bite to eat at the O2's Frankie & Benny's post-concert. Not that you would particuarly want to.
Yep, we can wave goodbye to boarding a kebab-scented night bus or flagging down an unlicensed taxi in desperation after a night at a gig or a club. Five tube lines - Piccadilly, Victoria, Central, Jubilee and (most of the) Northern - will be operating all night long on weekends. And about bloody time.
It's the weekend, we're in London, one of the best cities on Earth. Hundreds of gigs happen every week, and we shouldn't have to restrict ourselves because we're worried about how the hell we're going to get home safely. These shows are responsible for a percentage of London's tourism, and foreign visitors are clearly baffled when the realisation dawns our main mode of transport, puzzingly, shuts its doors at midnight. On a Saturday.
Yes, late night tubes aren't going to be particuarly pleasant - I'm imagining night buses, but ten times more intense - but it unlocks most of London for those who don't live in Zone 1 or 2 and have to hop on a myriad of buses to get home. Freedom of travel means weekend gigs can occur at a wider range of exciting venues across the city, more artists can play on one night, and we can actually stay and have a drink post-show and dissect the whole thing, comfortable in the knowledge we can get a tube straight home.
Fans of electronic music are also sure to rejoice. Most sets won't begin until 10pm, and the main act you came to see probably won't even touch the decks until at least 2am. By the time the whole thing's over, it's 4am, and if you're in a club in Zone 2 and you live in Zone 4, you'll probably want to punch yourself in the head at the prospect of catching roughly four buses to deliver you to your front door/bed.
One more thought - when we have more transport freedom, can we please change this whole gigs starting at 7pm thing and push things back a little later? We'd probably actually go and see the support act if we didn't have to leave the house so early.
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