Tube strikes could actually benefit the economy according to a new study from researchers at Cambridge and Oxford universities.
The benefits come from passengers finding easier and quicker routes to work, which save time and money in the long run.
After being forced to experiment, commuters found better routes primarily because the Tube map does not show the accurate distance between stations and because they discovered some lines were slower.
An analysis of Oyster card data from before and after the strike on 5 and 6 February 2014, in which much but not all the Underground network was closed, identified how affected people changed their journeys and whether they went back.
After finding about one in 20 commuters decided to stick with the new route, a benefit cost analysis found that the time saved over the next four years would actually outweigh the time lost by commuters during the strike.
The paper states: ‘We estimate that a significant fraction of commuters on the London underground do not travel their optimal route. Consequently, a tube strike (which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes) taught commuters about the existence of superior journeys ñ bringing about lasting changes in behaviour.
‘This effect is stronger for commuters who live in areas where the tube map is more distorted, thereby pointing towards the importance of informational imperfections. We argue that the information produced by the strike improved network-efficiency. Search costs are unlikely to explain the suboptimal behaviour. Instead, individuals seem to under-experiment in normal times, as a result of which constraints can be welfare improving.’
