First Out
The fastest way off the tube. Where to stand on the platform for the quickest exit at 50 London Underground stations.
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Micro-utility, macro impact
Every Londoner has a theory about where to stand on the tube platform. This makes it definitive. Select your station, select your line, and it tells you whether to board at the front, middle, or back of the train for the fastest exit. The kind of micro-utility that saves 30 seconds every journey: and over a year, that adds up.
Search, select, stand
Search or browse 50 London Underground stations across all 11 lines. Select your station and line, and it shows the optimal carriage position (front, middle, or back) for the nearest exit. Works offline as a PWA: install it and use it underground with no signal. Data sourced from personal observation (all unverified: verify as you travel).
I spent years doing that thing where you sprint to the front of the platform, realise the exit is at the back, and then do the walk of shame past everyone who got it right. This is the app I wished existed every single morning.
Why it works this way
PWA for underground use. This was the single most important technical decision. The tube has no signal. If the app does not work offline, it does not work at all. Building it as a Progressive Web App means you install it once and it runs entirely from your phone, no connection needed. That constraint shaped everything.
Front, middle, or back. I deliberately kept the output to three options. I could have mapped exact carriage numbers or door positions, but that level of detail creates anxiety rather than utility. You are walking down a platform. You need a quick, confident answer: go to the front, middle, or back. Three words. Done.
50 stations, not all of them. London has 272 tube stations. I started with the 50 busiest and most useful ones, the stations where knowing where to stand actually makes a meaningful difference. A half-empty station at 11am does not need exit optimisation. Oxford Circus at 8:47am absolutely does.
Personal observation as the data source. There is no public API for "which end of the platform is nearest the exit." Every data point comes from actually being there, looking around, and noting what works. That is why the disclaimer exists. It is honest, slightly imperfect data from a real commuter, not a scrape of something that does not exist.
Building something genuinely small
Constraints make better products. The offline requirement forced me to think about what actually needs to be on the page. No API calls, no loading spinners, no "connecting..." messages. Just data, already there, ready to go. Every product could benefit from asking: what if there was no internet?
Micro-utility has real value. This is a tiny app that does one thing. But when it saves you 30 seconds twice a day, five days a week, it starts to feel essential. I learned that the smallest products can have the most loyal users, because they solve a problem so specific that nothing else bothers to.
Personal frustration is the best brief. I did not do user research for this. I was the user. I stood on the wrong end of the platform enough times that I decided to fix it. That is a lesson I keep coming back to: if something annoys you regularly, it probably annoys other people too.
Thirty seconds saved per journey does not sound like much. But over a year of commuting, that is roughly 4 hours of your life you get back. I will take that.
Know where to stand. 50 stations, all 11 lines, works offline.
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