By Richard Perrins In the 1930s my late, much loved, mother’s first job was in a now defunct department store, Dickins & Jones, in London’s West End. She used to talk about “Goin’ up West” to work. London was one of the world’s biggest cities at the time, with a population of nearly 9 million. Its population is about the same size in 2026, though it is dwarfed today by modern megacities like Tokyo and Shanghai, which have superb, hyper modern transport systems for their more than 30 million inhabitants. London’s ageing infrastructure, though slowly and steadily improving, shows its...