Mind the gap

"Mind the gap" or sometimes "watch the gap" is an audible or visual warning phrase issued to rail passengers to take caution while crossing the horizontal, and in some cases vertical, spatial gap between the train doorway and the station platform edge.
The phrase was first introduced in 1968 on the London Underground in the United Kingdom. It is popularly associated with the UK among tourists because of the particularly British word choice (this meaning of the verb mind has largely fallen into disuse in American English, where the term "watch your step" is more commonly used).
The phrase "Mind the gap" was coined in around 1968 for a planned automated announcement, after it had become impractical for drivers and station attendants to warn passengers. London Underground chose digital recording using solid state equipment with no moving parts. As data storage capacity was expensive, the phrase had to be short. A concise warning was also easier to paint onto the platform.
The equipment was supplied by AEG Telefunken. According to the Independent on Sunday, sound engineer Peter Lodge, who owned Redan Recorders in Bayswater, working with a Scottish Telefunken engineer, recorded an actor reading "Mind the gap" and "Stand clear of the doors please", but the actor insisted on royalties and the phrases had to be re-recorded. Lodge read the phrases to line up the recording equipment for level, and those were used.
While Lodge's recording is still in use, some lines use other recordings. From 2005, the voice of Phil Sayer was heard on the Jubilee, Northern, and Piccadilly lines. When he died in 2016, The New York Times, one of many newspapers worldwide to report his death, said, "Mr. Sayer's was not the only voice cautioning passengers to 'mind the gap', but it is arguably the most familiar one." For 15 years before that, the voice on the Piccadilly line was that of Archers actor Tim Bentinck, but is now Julie Berry's. Another announcement was recorded by voice artist Emma Clarke. At least ten stations were supplied with announcers manufactured by PA Communications Ltd. of Milton Keynes. The recorded voice is that of Keith Wilson, their industrial sales manager (May 1990). It can still be heard at Paddington for example. Keith Wilson's voice can be heard in the background of a scene in the Bond film Skyfall.
In March 2013, an old "Mind the gap" recording by Oswald Laurence was restored to the curved northbound platform at Embankment station on the Northern line's Charing Cross branch so that the actor's widow, Dr Margaret McCollum, could hear his voice.
Because some platforms on the London Underground are curved, and the rolling stock that use them are straight, an unsafe gap is created when a train stops at a curved platform. In the absence of a device to fill the gap, some form of visual and auditory warning is needed to advise passengers of the risk of being caught unaware and sustaining injury by stepping into the gap. The phrase "Mind the gap" was chosen for this purpose and can be found painted along the edges of curved platforms and heard on recorded announcements when a train arrives at many Underground stations.
The recording is also used where platforms are non-standard height. Deep-level tube trains have a floor height around 20 cm (8 inches) less than sub-surface stock trains. Where trains share platforms, for example, some Piccadilly line (deep-tube) and District line (sub-surface) stations, the platform is a compromise. On London's Metropolitan line, a gap has been created between the train and the platform edge at Aldgate and Baker Street stations. This is due to the phasing out of the old "A" stock trains and their replacement with "S" stock trains, which have low floors to ease accessibility for disabled people.
"Mind the gap" audible warnings are always played on the Central line platforms at Bank, the Northern line northbound platform at Embankment, and the Bakerloo line platforms at Piccadilly Circus. The markings on the platform edge usually line up with the doors on the cars.
While the message is sometimes played over the platform's public address system on some lines, usually it is an arrival message inside the train itself: "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform".
During the coronation weekend of King Charles III in 2023, the message was voiced by the King himself and his wife Camilla. The King says, "My wife and I wish you and your families a wonderful coronation weekend," followed by Camilla, who says, "Wherever you are travelling, we hope you have a safe and pleasant journey," which is ended with the King saying "And remember, please mind the gap." It was played throughout every railway station in the United Kingdom.
The phrase "mind the gap" can be heard at each station along Dublin's DART and at all stations in the city centre. The message can be seen in some train stations in the rest of Ireland. On Commuter and InterCity trains, the phrase "Please mind the gap" is accompanied by the Irish "Seachain an Bhearna le bhur dtoil" when pulling into stations.
Equivalents of "Mind the gap" are used by transit systems worldwide, particularly when stations curve, but most new systems tend to avoid these types of stations.
Despite its origin as a utilitarian safety warning, "Mind the gap" has become a stock phrase and is used in many other contexts having little to do with subway safety.
It has been used as the title of at least two music albums by Scooter and Tristan Psionic, a film, and a novel, as the name of a movie production company, a theatre company, and a board game. It was also the title of a regional daytime quiz show on ITV, hosted by Paul Ross.
The phrase is used in many video games, including Portal, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Halo, Where's My Water, Temple Run, Quantum Conundrum, Killing Floor, Amazing Alex, Armadillo Run and BioShock Infinite, and in animated series such as The Clone Wars, usually in an ironic context. A soldier in Captain America: The First Avenger says it humorously before they descend via zip-line onto a moving train across snowy mountain peaks. It was a prominent utterance by the subterranean cannibal killer of the 1972 movie Death Line. The phrase is also featured in the soundtrack of the game Timesplitters: Future Perfect in the Subway level.
It is also the title of a Noisettes song on their album What's the Time Mr. Wolf?. The phrase is used in the songs "Deadwing" by Porcupine Tree, "Bingo" by Madness, "Someone in London" by Godsmack, Metal Airplanes by Matthew Good and "New Frontier" by the Counting Crows. Emma Clarke, one of the voices of the London Underground, has released a Mind The Gap single. It features spoof London Underground announcements. The name of the Portuguese hip hop group Mind Da Gap was also inspired by this stock phrase.
The phrase was used as the name for a campaign in December 2010 to lobby the UK Government to allow Gap Year students to defer their university place and not pay the higher tuition fees in September 2012.
The phrase has been used to name a combinatorial optimization problem.
The original Oswald Laurence "Mind the gap" announcement and the current voice-over announcements are also used in electronic music.