For twelve pairs of central stations, Transport for London's own Journey Planner will not offer you a train at all. Ask it for Bank to Liverpool Street, or St Paul's to Bank, or Aldgate to Aldgate East, and it returns a walking route, because the walk is genuinely the better answer.
What hangs on the wall of every station is a diagram rather than a map. It was drawn to make a tangle of lines readable, and it does that by stretching the crowded middle and squashing the empty edges. The side effect is that two stations three centimetres apart on paper can be two minutes apart on the pavement, while two that look adjacent in outer London are four kilometres apart.
Our general guide to walking in London covers the classic riverside and park routes and has a first list of close-together stations. This page takes twelve different pairs and gives you the street to walk down, the reason the train is slower, and the cases where you should take it anyway.
How these twelve were chosen
- Method
- Each pair was put through TfL's Journey Planner as a point-to-point journey, restricted to Tube, on a Wednesday at 11:00
- Result
- For all twelve, the planner returned walking and no rail option at all
- Walking times shown
- TfL Journey Planner, station entrance to station entrance
- What is not included
- Crossings, crowds and your own pace. Add a few minutes at rush hour
- Pairs already covered elsewhere
- Charing Cross and Embankment, Queensway and Bayswater, and eleven others are in our walking guide
The twelve pairs
| Between | On foot | The route above ground | Why the train loses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aldgate and Aldgate East | 3 min | Straight along Aldgate High Street into Whitechapel High Street | Different lines, no interchange. The rail route is a long detour |
| Euston and Euston Square | 3 min | West along Euston Road to Gower Street | Two separate stations that share a name. No direct train |
| Charing Cross and Leicester Square | 4 min | North up Charing Cross Road from Trafalgar Square | One stop on the Northern line, and both stations are deep |
| Warren Street and Euston Square | 5 min | East along the north side of Euston Road | Different lines. Going by rail means changing at Euston or King's Cross |
| Hyde Park Corner and Green Park | 5 min | East along Piccadilly with the park on your right | One stop on the Piccadilly line; Hyde Park Corner has no other line |
| St Paul's and Bank | 6 min | East down Cheapside, past St Mary-le-Bow | One stop on the Central line, then a long climb at Bank |
| Chancery Lane and Holborn | 6 min | West along High Holborn | One stop on the Central line |
| Goodge Street and Warren Street | 7 min | North up Tottenham Court Road | One stop on the Northern line. Goodge Street is lifts only |
| Blackfriars and Mansion House | 8 min | East along Queen Victoria Street | One stop on the District and Circle lines |
| Moorgate and Bank | 9 min | South down Moorgate into Princes Street | One stop on the Northern line, but Bank's tunnels are long |
| Bank and Liverpool Street | 11 min | North-east up Threadneedle Street and Old Broad Street | One stop on the Central line, plus two deep interchanges |
| Borough and London Bridge | 11 min | North along Borough High Street, past Borough Market | One stop on the Northern line, and London Bridge is a large station to cross |
Three pairs where the map hides that there is no interchange
The first three in the list are a category of their own. On the diagram they look like ordinary neighbours. In reality no train runs between them, and a visitor who tries will make two changes to travel four hundred metres.
Aldgate and Aldgate East are the worst example on the network. Aldgate is served by the Circle and Metropolitan lines; Aldgate East by the District and Hammersmith & City. They sit roughly two hundred metres apart on the same road at the eastern edge of the City. If you come out of Aldgate and want the District line, walk east and you are there before a train would have arrived. This is the natural way to reach Whitechapel and Brick Lane, and our guide to Whitechapel and the East End picks the walk up from there.
Euston and Euston Square confuse almost everyone, because the names promise an interchange that does not exist. Euston Square is on Euston Road at the Gower Street junction and serves the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines. Euston, with the Northern and Victoria lines and the main line trains to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, is a few hundred metres east. The walk is along one straight, noisy road. Our guide to getting between London's main stations has the equivalent walks for the other termini.
Warren Street and Euston Square are the same problem one block further west. Warren Street has the Victoria and Northern lines. Cross the road, walk east, and you are on the sub-surface lines without touching a train.
If two stations share a road name, check before you descend. Aldgate and Aldgate East, Euston and Euston Square, Shepherd's Bush and Shepherd's Bush Market: the names imply a link that is not there. TfL's Journey Planner will tell you in about ten seconds.
The City walks, where the stations themselves are the problem
Four of the twelve are in the Square Mile, and they have a shared cause. The City's stations are old, deep and awkward inside. Bank in particular is less a station than a network of tunnels, and simply reaching the Central line platform from the street can take several minutes.
Walking from St Paul's to Bank takes you down Cheapside, which was the City's medieval market street and is now its main shopping street. You pass St Mary-le-Bow, whose bells define who counts as a Cockney. The cathedral end of the walk is covered in our page on St Paul's Cathedral.
Bank to Liverpool Street is eleven minutes through the middle of the financial district, past the Royal Exchange and under the newer towers. Moorgate to Bank runs the other side of the same block. Blackfriars to Mansion House follows Queen Victoria Street, which is dull for the first two minutes and then delivers you to the western edge of the City. All four are more interesting than the tunnels, and our guide to the City of London explains what you are walking past.
The West End ones you will use most
Charing Cross to Leicester Square is four minutes up Charing Cross Road. It is one stop on the Northern line, and at both ends you spend longer on escalators than you would on the pavement. Do this walk rather than the train and you also pass the second-hand bookshops.
Goodge Street to Warren Street is seven minutes straight up Tottenham Court Road. Goodge Street is worth avoiding for its own sake: it has no escalators, only lifts and a long emergency staircase.
Hyde Park Corner to Green Park is a five-minute walk along Piccadilly with Green Park itself on the southern side. It is a far better five minutes than the Piccadilly line offers, and it leaves you at the top of the walk down to Buckingham Palace.
Borough to London Bridge runs up Borough High Street past the entrance to Borough Market. If you are heading for the market, Borough station is often the calmer choice even though London Bridge is nearer, and our guide to Borough and Bermondsey explains the area.
Walk the last stop and arrive before the train does. On any of these twelve, a passenger who decides at the platform to come back up will normally beat the passenger who waits, because the wait, the descent and the climb cost more than the ride saves.
What makes a one-stop Tube journey so slow
The ride itself is quick. Between two central stations it is usually 60 to 120 seconds. Everything around it is not.
- Getting down. The deep lines sit far below the street. At Bank, Holborn, Leicester Square and London Bridge the walk from the entrance to the right platform is a journey in itself.
- Waiting. Even on a line running every two or three minutes, you will average half that as a wait, and longer outside the peak.
- Getting up again. Repeat the descent in reverse, often behind a queue for one escalator.
- Finding the right exit. Large stations have several, sometimes hundreds of metres apart, and taking the wrong one undoes the whole saving.
Put all four together and a single-stop hop reliably costs eight to twelve minutes door to door. That is why TfL's planner refuses to suggest it. Rush hour makes it worse rather than better, since the crowds are in the stations as much as on the trains; see our page on avoiding the London rush hour.
When you should take the train anyway
None of this holds in four situations, and pretending otherwise would be unhelpful.
Walk
- You are travelling light and it is dry
- You want to see the streets rather than a tunnel
- It is a hot day and your line has no air conditioning
- You are not sure which exit you need at the far end
Take the train
- You have a suitcase, and the pavements are crowded
- You need a step-free route and the pair you want is not step-free on the street
- It is late and you would rather be inside a staffed station
- Heavy rain, which turns an eleven-minute walk into a miserable one
Luggage in particular changes the calculation completely, and not always in the train's favour, because many of these stations have stairs rather than lifts; our guide to luggage on the Tube names them. For wheeled and step-free routes, check the step-free network first, and see our page on accessible London for kerbs and crossings. On a hot afternoon, our guide to which Tube lines have air conditioning may decide it for you.
Checking any pair yourself
You do not need a list. The Journey Planner on the TfL website, and the TfL Go app, both offer a walking option, and if you set the mode to walking they will give you the time and the route between any two stations. The quick test in the street is simpler still: if the two stations are in the same postal district and on the same line, the walk is probably under ten minutes.
Two more pairs did not make the twelve but behave the same way: Embankment to Waterloo is a nine-minute walk over the Golden Jubilee footbridges, and Russell Square to Holborn is ten minutes through Bloomsbury. Both are more pleasant than the alternatives. For longer walks that string several of these together, see the Thames Path and London's walking routes, and our round-up of useful London apps covers which ones are good at walking directions.
Frequently asked questions
Which two London Tube stations are closest together?
The famous pair is Covent Garden and Leicester Square: one stop on the Piccadilly line, about six minutes apart on foot. Aldgate and Aldgate East are closer still on the street, roughly two hundred metres, but no train connects them because they are on different lines.
Is it quicker to walk from Bank to Liverpool Street?
Yes. The walk is about eleven minutes up Threadneedle Street and Old Broad Street, and TfL's Journey Planner offers no Tube option for the pair. Bank station's interchange tunnels are long, so the time you spend underground outweighs the one-stop ride on the Central line.
Can you change between Aldgate and Aldgate East?
Not underground. They are separate stations on different lines, about two hundred metres apart on the same street. Leave Aldgate, turn east along Aldgate High Street and Whitechapel High Street, and you reach Aldgate East in around three minutes.
Are Euston and Euston Square the same station?
No, despite the names. Euston Square is on Euston Road at Gower Street and serves the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines. Euston is a few hundred metres east and serves the Northern and Victoria lines plus main line trains. The walk between them takes about three minutes.
Does walking one stop save money on the Tube?
Only until you reach your daily cap. Once the cap is reached, further journeys that day cost nothing, so walking saves time rather than money. Before that point a Zone 1 journey has a fare attached to it, and our guide to pay as you go fares and daily caps explains where the ceiling falls.
Sources
- Transport for London - Journey Planner (walking and Tube times, checked for each pair) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Unified API, Journey and StopPoint endpoints (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Tube and rail maps, including walking maps (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Step-free access (checked September 2026)