The London Underground

Michael: Hey Paula, it’s me.

Paula: Michael! I can’t believe you’re calling me from London.

Michael: Yeah! I thought you’d be surprised.

Paula: Isn’t London fantastic? What have you done so far?

Michael: Well, we’ve only been here two days, so we haven’t seen much, but yesterday we took a tour of the London Underground.

Paula: Great that will help us with the project we’re doing on transportation in big cities.

Michael: Actually, it was really interesting. Did you know that it’s the oldest underground in the world? It opened in 1863.

Paula: Wow! That’s a long time ago. I thought the Paris Underground was the oldest, but it opened in 1900. Why did they decide to build an underground in London?

Michael: They built it because there was a lot of traffic in the city centre and they wanted to help people get to work more quickly. It started out with only one line, and two stations in the centre of the city.

Paula: That’s amazing. I can’t believe it was ever that small. When I was in London, I thought the underground was enormous. I got lost all the time!

Michael: Well, it’s very different today. Now, there are more than 400 kilometres of routes on the underground.

Paula: It was also expensive to ride on the underground when I was in London.

Michael: You’re right. It isn’t cheap, but it was much cheaper when it first opened. You could get a single ticket for about three pennies and a return ticket was just a few pennies more.

Paula: That’s a lot cheaper. I hope you took some photographs of the underground so we can use them in our project.

Michael: Of course I did. I have to go now – we’re going on a boat ride on the River Thames.

Paula: Have a great time. And call me when you get home!