The Elizabeth line (Lizzie line??) is a bit of a quandary for me...
Was so excited about it opening and I still get excited about riding it. Although the tunnels are already notably less pristine, so I'm glad to have seen them when they almost sparkled.
That all said, at least according to google maps and citymapper the Eline seems to be a little situational.
For example, if you're on the Met line and want to go to Canary Wharf, it seems to not be worth changing at Farringdon to catch the Eline or even Liverpool Street, or even a cheeky Jubilee Switch at Finchley Road/Baker St then jump on at Bond Street.
Instead they recommend just doing the boring hop onto the Jubilee line and riding out on those numerous stops.
I tried manually calculating it and it seemed roughly correct, the long change times and less frequent journeys seem to mean it's still generally better to take the old routes.
But if you're already on the Eline it really is a blast across the city.
EDIT
I suppose really the game changer was the connection to Paddington. I remember when Amazon moved from Slough to Holborn/Farringdon the transit was shockingly slow for the Reading crowd... the experience was bad enough people would Boris bike or Brompton it instead... I imagine it's even better now for any of the old Reading crowd who now work at Principal Place by Shoreditch
Indeed, the interchanges can be quite arduous, as it tends to be very deep, and usually quite a trek from the other lines in that station. This also means it can take a good chunk of time to even get to or from the platform.
For example, if you wanted to go from Farringdon to Liverpool St, Google Maps would suggest using the Elizabeth line, but, in practice, it's usually better to use the sub-surface lines (Metropolitan etc). The time taken for the extra stops will be cancelled out because the Elizabeth line takes significantly longer to get into/out of of as it's so much deeper. Add another couple of minutes if you happen to get on the wrong end of the train, because those platforms are long!
That being said, it's a joy to ride and is the only air-conditioned train that runs through the central section of London.
I think the main point of Crossrail was fast access to central London for people living in east London. It does that quite well, and in doing so relieves the Central line. Crossrail might not be very useful for short, interchangey trips, but the Central line is, so this is still a win.
It's not an error, it's 25% in one direction and 33% in the other. I think what he meant is that he should have tweeted the bigger number, for clickbait.
He also gives a reasonable explanation of why, but nobody who read his original tweet is going to read it.
It’s hard not to think Londoners are entitled and ungrateful.
No other part of the country has ever had so much spent on mass transit nor will it ever. They have the finest public transport in the entire UK, and always will. I bet you can’t regularly do 1-40 mile journeys at the same speed and cost regularly anywhere else in the UK.
The media recently tried to make out the Elizabeth line was one of the worst services in the UK because it had the highest number of cancellations or something which is ridiculous because if the next train is 5 minutes away it doesn’t matter. Try living up North where hourly trains regularly get cancelled
I fully appreciate where you're coming from and everything you've said is true. But I feel like your opinion may differ if you lived on the south end of the Northern line and had to commute during summer. Doubly so if you were slightly shorter and had to spend your daily commute with your face in someone else's sweaty armpit...
The truth of many parts of London commuting is it's really quite unpleasant in many ways and so you're trained to really wish to spend as little time doing it as possible. If the heat, noise, air quality and congestion don't bother you there's also the threat of violence. A friend was assaulted (perp got GBH iirc) on the Victoria line and I've seen a fight break out on the escalators of Green Park at 9am...
I'm sufficiently jaded by public transport in London that my preferred means of getting around if I'm on my own is a lime bike. Any journey under 5 miles will probably be faster and considerably more pleasant.
I do get it. While I haven’t commuted, I’ve travelled many, many times around London including rush hour. Have smelled many armpits on the tube and even worn earplugs on the central line. (I have commuted in another European city however)
But London is a victim of its own success. It will always be hot busy and crowded. This is just like almost every other major city in the world - hot, crowded public transport at rush hour. What do you want? Every mode cooled to 17c and seats for everyone?
Nobody is forced to live in London, especially the younger ones with no ties who moved there to climb the ladder.
We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities
Fair enough I don't really disagree with your overall point. Although there's taking the tube and then there's the Northern line where I've heard people going in the opposite direction to get upstream of the queues to get on...
Hopefully remote working will take some of the pressure off of the city because it really does feel overcrowded. Although personally I probably would still stay near London given it's both where I was born but also having access to international food and Heathrow are quite important as a third culture kid. I've considered moving out to somewhere much leafier but losing access to decent Asian food might be my undoing. That said, I hear Liverpool and Manchester are not bad in that department...
> We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities
I think your proposal is correct worldwide; it's not a UK-only problem. Unfortunately, it looks like humanity has not yet invented a successful economic model that doesn't require a cramped megacity (with a huge income inequality within) or stealing from other countries (see tax havens).
> We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities
Ironically, this would be aided greatly by investing in public transport. Andy Haldane gave a great speech about this at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute in 2019 - the most salient bit is from page 37:
Excuse the snip, highlighting PDFs is hard, but here's a key-ish quote:
> ..a measure of the “effective” working population. At
peak times, the effective working population of Birmingham is perhaps 50% smaller than its measured
population due to poor transport infrastructure. This helps explain why Birmingham punches below its
demographic weight
Virtually all UK cities suffer from this. The problem, as ever, is a lack of investment and too many cars.
British people in general are massively blinkered about trains. There are obviously flaws but if I said that I've seen Germans using british trains as an example of punctuality I'd imagine most people moaning about trains would be confused.
Well, London have over 8m people compared to second on the list, Birminghamn with slightly over 2m.
It's pretty obvious you need to spend a ton on public commuting options to avoid a chaotic hell during morning/evening rush (it's already chaos, but it could be much worse).
That’s an argument for spending elsewhere, not London. London is already busy and crowded.
I’m pretty tired of this belief that it wasn’t investment that made London the economic giant it is - it infects even the DfT and treasury. Invest properly in other cities and they will be equally prosperous.
It didn't infect the treasury, it originated there.
The treasury is a deeply broken institution, and it has always been resistant to losing "turf". In the 1960s Harold Wilson's administration tried to split its functions: the new Department for Economic Affairs would take the long view, and the treasury's job was to take the short view and deal with the markets. From what I recall reading (source needed, it was a long time ago and I forget the book) it was not just ministerial infighting that caused the problem: civil servants in the treasury didn't want to lose out to the DEA either.
It is always helpful to recall that the four great offices of state are, especially at the upper echelons, ancient institutions whose cultures are unlike anything most of us have experienced.
But you don’t have to go to Japan to make a comparison, you can, as the GP suggested, look at the rest of the country which has abysmal public transport - not fit for purpose - where at least it mostly works in London.
Before another penny in capital expenditure is spent on TFL, every other city in the country needs a metro and decent bus services.
Leeds remains one of the largest cities in Europe with no tram, trolleybus, or metro system. This having had the offer of such things rescinded multiple times.
With awful consequences for its productivity and environment, no less. It is easier to commute to central Leeds from Hebden Bridge, Saltaire, and Mythholmroyd than from actual suburbs of the city itself. Utterly ridiculous.
> No other part of the country has ever had so much spent on mass transit nor will it ever.
This entirely true and very unfortunate. It is great to see Manchester making improvements on that front, for example, and I hope many cities will follow as the current model is absurd. Franchising like in London is not ideal but a marked improvement.
That said, there aren’t many places in the UK where a single train line can affect hundreds of thousands or a million people each week. Up to a point, improving transport around London is the best bang for your quid.
> Try living up North where hourly trains regularly get cancelled.
Yeah, but that’s a reason to improve the situation in the North, not to rejoice when something breaks down in the South. There are massive political issues to overcome for that, but the UK would be a better country overall if the North was taken seriously.
> Up to a point, improving transport around London is the best bang for your quid.
I'm trying to limit snark in my responses to this article, but wow. It turns out if you invest in something continually at the expense of everywhere else it becomes the lynchpin of the system. Good grief.
The major reason people in the north hate hearing about investment in the south is because politically it is very clearly a zero sum game. If the south gets investment, the north doesn't.
For additional perspective, look at the Crossrail projects: hugely expensive with benefits only felt in one part of the country. (No, Londoners paying tax doesn't count)
For the cost of crossrail, or HS2, every city in the UK outside of London could have comprehensive tram networks and massive active travel infrastructure. What stings the most is that if London didn't exist, became independent, or fell into the sea, everyone else would likely benefit very rapidly.
> What stings the most is that if London didn't exist, became independent, or fell into the sea, everyone else would likely benefit very rapidly.
Almost all regions/cities make below-average contributions to the UK economy. That's because London drags the total way up (IIRC Bristol is the only other that's above-average, but barely).
That's obviously driven by a feedback-cycle that encourages investing in London rather than elsewhere. That does not imply that the rest of the UK would "benefit" from losing London; it would be an economic disaster.
The problem is that governments are focused on raising the UK's GDP, but that's the sum of each region's GDP and London's contribution is so large that it's equivalent to just maximising London (to optimise a weighted sum, put all the weight on the largest term). Perhaps a solution is to use metrics that combine regions geometrically (multiplying each region's GDP): that encourages investment in poor areas, since they drag down the result (rather than simply contributing less; and in the extreme case, a contribution of zero would wipe-out everything else).
We could do the same analysis on other partition too, e.g. multiplying each sector's contribution would make things less dependent on finiancial services.
> The major reason people in the north hate hearing about investment in the south is because politically it is very clearly a zero sum game. If the south gets investment, the north doesn't.
Indeed. But that’s politics, not a law of nature. The zero-sum game is completely artificial: the money tree does not exist until you need it and then it does. A sensible revitalisation policy for the North would pay for itself over the long term.
The incentives are really not great from a political point of view and that is very unfortunate. Still, hurting London economically won’t help the rest of the UK in any way.
Newcastle here - yep, you wait for a bus to get to work and it just doesn't arrive. That isn't once in a blue moon thing, it's a regular daily thing to a point where you literally can't rely on public transport to get to work or to school.
I'm aware of just how under invested the rest of UK infrastructure is outside of London, but that doesn't make complaints about its services invalid.
With the billions spent on the purple pine you'd reasonable expect a decent quality of service that doesn't involve so many cancellations, delays, and days of complete deadlock.
Bet if you look at to comparable European countries this reliability would be a joke to them.
The train being every 5 minutes is only for central London, if you live further out you're only served by at most 1 in 3 trains. Missing one sucks much more, during rush hour you can bet you'll be crammed like sardines if you're not early.
I've only been commuting twice a week for about a year, and there have been several occurrences where I get to the station and all upcoming trains are delayed or cancelled due to some line failure. The alternative route takes about twice as long if I want it to cost the same. You bet your arse TFL won't give you a refund if your regular route is untenable.
London gets more investment, definitely. But even so the outcomes still lag behind what you'd expect from the capital of such a wealthy country.
I don't think it's being ungrateful, or at least not something unique to Londoners. People think and act relatively. We will always complain about the biggest issue we face, not matter how trivial it is compared others. Or you could say, we always try to improve no matter how good things are. We shouldn't stop fixing things or improving just because someone has it worse.
It's amazing to me that in <current year>, the whole Britian is not clamouring to get rid of Southwest trains that stop because there's leaves on the railway, and the next train is 20minutes away.
I'd rather not gamble being late in front of clients, in London, because leaves fell on some rails.
The Tube gets hotter in the summer than an Aussie beach. 40-50deg in the bowels of the Tube, for a cold and rainy country like the UK is insane.
People pay 3.5 quid for a 2minute journey through London, when you could just walk 10minutes instead.
London work places, set the expectations high, so the Tube should follow. It has nothing to do with the muggles that ride it, and blaming the people is blindness.
Having worked in Kingston and had to endure Southwest trains, their service is still an absolute dream vs most of the rest of the country. Trains are cancelled, but the next service is 20 mins away, not hours, and they're not 1970s road bus bodies stuck on rails like Pacers.
To people outside the UK, when an English person speaks about the UK and mentions “the north”, they are not referring to the north of the UK, but instead to the north of England.
Travelling by scooter in London, about half the time is spent waiting for traffic lights. I took videos of my commute for about a year, in case of interesting events. Traffic isn't a big deal on a scooter but traffic lights add up.
Still a lot faster than the tube unless you have a direct connection and are close to a station for both ends.
> about half the time is spent waiting for traffic lights.
I wonder if it is the same problem as in Geneva: in an effort to moderate congestion, they programmed the lights to slow the traffic towards the centre. In other words, they moved the problem a couple kilometres and they called it a day.
As a cyclist, familiar with riding from Paddington to an office, the comparative times are of great interest. I cycled ten miles from Paddington due north on the A5 Roman Road.
The bicycle, naturally aspirated with no motor nonsense, was competitive going north, it took me to my destination quicker and more reliably.
I just went into Google Maps and checked what the ride time would be going to Whitechapel. The bicycle would get there in 38 minutes, which is a lot more than the 16 minutes that Google says the tube would take.
But would I leave the bike at home and take the tube?
Well, no!
It takes five minutes to get from the train to the platform, to wait for an underground train, which will be packed. At the other end, it will take me five minutes to get from the tube station to a nearby office. Then there is the need not to be late, so an added ten minutes would be needed - no rocking up at work at 8.59, I need that to be 8.50.
Even though the journey from platform to platform might be 13 minutes, it is going to be half an hour.
Now the 38 minutes of cycling time looks pretty good. Plus, once I have aced the route, I will cut that down to 30 minutes, with no reason excluding earthquakes or asteroid strikes to be delayed - bicycles always find a way and the timing is reliable. Tube trains mysteriously stop in tunnels to dwell there randomly, possibly even broken down.
Then there is the cost. I have no idea what tube journeys cost nowadays, but say it was £4 or £20 expenditure a week to take the tube. Small change but there is opportunity cost with that - the bicycle is a mobile gym, and an hour a day of cycling at speed due to not wanting to be late would mean that I would not have to do stupid things such as pointlessly lifting weights in a gym so as to conform to society's workout expectations.
So, how much does the gym cost? That would be ten hours a week, getting there, lifting objects pointlessly and poncing about having a shower. Oh yes, it might cost £5 to £10 too.
By riding I would also be freeing a seat for the 70% of the population that are obese and effectively disabled as far as cycling is concerned. I would also be another cyclist on the road, therefore making it safer for others to cycle due to the safety in numbers effect.
My eye health would be better too. If you have to look to the next set of lights and also the road in front of you or behind you, then that exercises the eye muscles - gyms don't do that and being in tin boxes and tunnels does not help with eye health either.
There is also a physical buzz to cycling that you don't get from marching around tube stations.
Hence, although the tube train sounds really good and sounds really fast, even with the lengthy dwell times, the bicycle is the far better option, just so long as you are not part of the 70% obese. Furthermore, the hour of sprinting across town with pedals getting actually pushed on, would mean that I would have no danger of getting obese. Plus I would never have to waste my life in those dark satanic mills known as gyms.
Life hack number one for London - get a bike and ditch the tube.
No (well not in my case) as if I wasn't cycle commuting I'd be having a shower at home before going in to work. All cycle commuting did was move my shower from home to work, it doesn't add an extra shower and so doesn't add any extra time.
I did shower again after cycling home, but that often replaced the shower I'd have before going to bed (or after coming back from the gym) so, again, no increase in the number of showers in a day.
Completely agree - London's not that big, and it's great to travel around on the surface and experience all the different neighbourhoods and seasons. Generally, any distance inside Z1/2 will be faster, or at least competitive, by bike. My usual King's Cross to Kensington was around 20 mins by bike, same trip on the Tube was 40 mins + £3.50 (or whatever it was), and bus, well, bring a book... Despite the good cycling infrastructure, it definitely helps to have some confidence and road sense, which I can see would put some people off, but with more and more people cycling that gets better too.
I didn't really like London, but getting out on the bike changed that considerably - it's a beautiful city, with a lot more greenery than is normally credited. The Tube map, great as it is, inherently distorts distances and directions and learning how the city is really connected is enlightening.
I did a 7 mile each way cycle commute in London for many many years. Absolutely loved it.
Reliable, consistent travel times, and never affected by train/tube strikes. The number of times I was delayed by a puncture or other mechanical was way less than the number of times I was delayed by random public transport problems.
I was so much fitter when I was doing it, especially when I built up to doing the occasional commute running. (Cycle in, leave extra clothes at work, run home, run in the next day, cycle home.)
I miss it now that I WFH. I know I can just go out and do a similar type of ride but it's just too easy not to. It was much easier to set off to work in the rain by bike as I knew I had to get there and going by train/tube was even more miserable.
Is this a continuation of 'first world problems'? 'London problems'
Oh no, my train waits it the station for nearly a full minute.
The fact that there actually is a train, the train isn't a converted bus that was supposed to be a temporary measure 30 years ago, that's it's deemed viable to actually make a 13 minute train journey, the fact that presumably the train isn't 13 minutes late and in fact turned up, and the fact that in my experience, a 60 second stop is good would suggest to me that there's no need to complain.
Edit: to the downvoters. London has by far the best public transport in the country. Nowhere else has an underground system with trains every 5 minutes. The complaint is about a train waiting at the station for generally less than 60 seconds. For the rest of the country that would be a compliment not a complaint.
There's a few comments about packed underground trains aswell, as if the once per hour train, ie the only one commuters can get isn't going to be packed, and it takes longer than a minute for everyone to get off and on, and it takes a lot longer than 13 minutes for the entire journey, and these are diesels so the acceleration is slow, and noisy. And this all assumes it isn't cancelled, or so delayed it makes you late for work.
Getting to work an hour and 15 minutes early most mornings because you can't rely on the later train not to be 15 minutes late.
When English people talk about the “UK”, they really mean England. You’ll notice that even though they will talk about the UK throughout their post they will mention “the north”, by which they mean the north of England so they aren’t really talking about the UK.
Yes, I know about their "country of countries". Before commenting I did an HN search and double-checked that benj111 consistently uses "country" to mean "UK", such as using "in my country (UK)", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995793 .
Similarly, while Miami, Florida is geographically in the southern US, it is not culturally part of "the South".
I think it's more likely that benj111 simply did not know that detail about the Glasgow, rather than knowing that detail and deliberately excluding it because it's in Scotland. It is, after all, a rather small system without the international fame of London's underground.
Or maybe I just wasn't aware of the regularity of Glasgow tube trains?
When I talk about the UK, I really mean the UK. 'The north' is a name not necessarily reflective of geographic boundaries, if you want that, use 'the north of England'. 'Yorkshire' also necessarily excludes Scotland.
I'm also geographically closer, and emotionally closer to Scotland than London, so why would I exclude Scotland?
The rest of us do, but it’s mostly English posting here so you’ll just see “the north” so it’s unclear if they are really talking about the UK or not. I came across some beer from “the north” in Stirling recently and it was from Leeds.
By default I talk about the Britain (geography, UK the country). If I'm talking about England I'll mention it specifically.
It could be English bias but to me the North is a concept that can mean something between north of Watford gap, to specifically northern England.
As you say, most British people on here are English, and I'd guess most of those are from the south, so if I'm invoking some sort of concept of 'The North', it's probably in contrast to those southerners.
Personally I feel culturally closer to Scotland than London, so I'm not looking to exclude Scotland here.
The problem is the language. I've conflated the south and London, and I've described my self as British rather than UKish.
I wonder if maintaining the advantage of the Heathrow Express has an impact on Elizabeth Line dwell times. They take the same route but the Elizabeth Line (stopping at six stations along the way) takes 35 minutes versus the HE's 15.
New to London. London transport is good when it works. One thing I don't get, compared to my home country, is why when the train employees strike, they cancel services? Back home they just refuse to collect fares, and open the turnstyles. That way the unions don't offside the public.
Opening everything and making it free during strikes sounds like a great way to do it, but I don't think the power that be would allow it.
I've never seen a barrier hopper stopped, but I'm sure the bobbies would be sent in if thry announced everyone would be doing it.
There's also the problem of disconnected services - the purple line is Rail, so while they use the same stations, they can be on strike when the Underground isn't. So you could go through open barriers at a rail station but you'd find the barriers shut trying to leave from an Underground station.
I've led a blind friend to London Underground stations, to the gate line, and he's asked "assistance please". Usually that would mean someone would lead him to the correct platform, but when the station staff are "working to rule", they'll refuse to do this as it isn't in their job description. Could they be more heartless?
I was only with him once when this happened, and the station manager appeared and said I could lead him (without a ticket) and he'd let me out when I came back, which he did. My friend said it happened every month or two. Going alone meant he risked tripping on stairs, especially if it was busy and people jostled him.
Many commuters have weekly, monthly, or even yearly passes and therefore would only be slightly annoyed by the 'unfairness'.
But more importantly the wage negotiations are very complicated as 80% of the money ultimately comes from the government and therefore politicians needs to be motivated. Politicians are mostly motivated by annoyed voters (and campaign contributions obviously).
Yes, platform staff are mostly TSSA, drivers are mostly ASLEF and RMT.
While most of the train strikes over the last year have been RMT primarily, ASLEF and TSSA did vote to strike in support of RMT during the winter. They're both part of the TUC after all.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadWas so excited about it opening and I still get excited about riding it. Although the tunnels are already notably less pristine, so I'm glad to have seen them when they almost sparkled.
That all said, at least according to google maps and citymapper the Eline seems to be a little situational.
For example, if you're on the Met line and want to go to Canary Wharf, it seems to not be worth changing at Farringdon to catch the Eline or even Liverpool Street, or even a cheeky Jubilee Switch at Finchley Road/Baker St then jump on at Bond Street.
Instead they recommend just doing the boring hop onto the Jubilee line and riding out on those numerous stops.
I tried manually calculating it and it seemed roughly correct, the long change times and less frequent journeys seem to mean it's still generally better to take the old routes.
But if you're already on the Eline it really is a blast across the city.
EDIT I suppose really the game changer was the connection to Paddington. I remember when Amazon moved from Slough to Holborn/Farringdon the transit was shockingly slow for the Reading crowd... the experience was bad enough people would Boris bike or Brompton it instead... I imagine it's even better now for any of the old Reading crowd who now work at Principal Place by Shoreditch
For example, if you wanted to go from Farringdon to Liverpool St, Google Maps would suggest using the Elizabeth line, but, in practice, it's usually better to use the sub-surface lines (Metropolitan etc). The time taken for the extra stops will be cancelled out because the Elizabeth line takes significantly longer to get into/out of of as it's so much deeper. Add another couple of minutes if you happen to get on the wrong end of the train, because those platforms are long!
That being said, it's a joy to ride and is the only air-conditioned train that runs through the central section of London.
What about the district, metropolitan, Hammersmith and city and circle lines? And Thameslink of course!
Apparently a value below 20% is more acceptable.
> it could do the journey in 12 minutes, knocking the percentage down below 20%, if only those dwell times were a bit closer to normal.
He also gives a reasonable explanation of why, but nobody who read his original tweet is going to read it.
No other part of the country has ever had so much spent on mass transit nor will it ever. They have the finest public transport in the entire UK, and always will. I bet you can’t regularly do 1-40 mile journeys at the same speed and cost regularly anywhere else in the UK.
The media recently tried to make out the Elizabeth line was one of the worst services in the UK because it had the highest number of cancellations or something which is ridiculous because if the next train is 5 minutes away it doesn’t matter. Try living up North where hourly trains regularly get cancelled
The truth of many parts of London commuting is it's really quite unpleasant in many ways and so you're trained to really wish to spend as little time doing it as possible. If the heat, noise, air quality and congestion don't bother you there's also the threat of violence. A friend was assaulted (perp got GBH iirc) on the Victoria line and I've seen a fight break out on the escalators of Green Park at 9am...
I'm sufficiently jaded by public transport in London that my preferred means of getting around if I'm on my own is a lime bike. Any journey under 5 miles will probably be faster and considerably more pleasant.
But London is a victim of its own success. It will always be hot busy and crowded. This is just like almost every other major city in the world - hot, crowded public transport at rush hour. What do you want? Every mode cooled to 17c and seats for everyone?
Nobody is forced to live in London, especially the younger ones with no ties who moved there to climb the ladder.
We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities
Hopefully remote working will take some of the pressure off of the city because it really does feel overcrowded. Although personally I probably would still stay near London given it's both where I was born but also having access to international food and Heathrow are quite important as a third culture kid. I've considered moving out to somewhere much leafier but losing access to decent Asian food might be my undoing. That said, I hear Liverpool and Manchester are not bad in that department...
I think your proposal is correct worldwide; it's not a UK-only problem. Unfortunately, it looks like humanity has not yet invented a successful economic model that doesn't require a cramped megacity (with a huge income inequality within) or stealing from other countries (see tax havens).
Ironically, this would be aided greatly by investing in public transport. Andy Haldane gave a great speech about this at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute in 2019 - the most salient bit is from page 37:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/201...
Excuse the snip, highlighting PDFs is hard, but here's a key-ish quote:
> ..a measure of the “effective” working population. At peak times, the effective working population of Birmingham is perhaps 50% smaller than its measured population due to poor transport infrastructure. This helps explain why Birmingham punches below its demographic weight
Virtually all UK cities suffer from this. The problem, as ever, is a lack of investment and too many cars.
It's pretty obvious you need to spend a ton on public commuting options to avoid a chaotic hell during morning/evening rush (it's already chaos, but it could be much worse).
I’m pretty tired of this belief that it wasn’t investment that made London the economic giant it is - it infects even the DfT and treasury. Invest properly in other cities and they will be equally prosperous.
The treasury is a deeply broken institution, and it has always been resistant to losing "turf". In the 1960s Harold Wilson's administration tried to split its functions: the new Department for Economic Affairs would take the long view, and the treasury's job was to take the short view and deal with the markets. From what I recall reading (source needed, it was a long time ago and I forget the book) it was not just ministerial infighting that caused the problem: civil servants in the treasury didn't want to lose out to the DEA either.
It is always helpful to recall that the four great offices of state are, especially at the upper echelons, ancient institutions whose cultures are unlike anything most of us have experienced.
It's all relative. If you compared this with Japan's public transport system, 'fine' would not be a word you'd use to describe the one in London.
Before another penny in capital expenditure is spent on TFL, every other city in the country needs a metro and decent bus services.
This entirely true and very unfortunate. It is great to see Manchester making improvements on that front, for example, and I hope many cities will follow as the current model is absurd. Franchising like in London is not ideal but a marked improvement.
That said, there aren’t many places in the UK where a single train line can affect hundreds of thousands or a million people each week. Up to a point, improving transport around London is the best bang for your quid.
> Try living up North where hourly trains regularly get cancelled.
Yeah, but that’s a reason to improve the situation in the North, not to rejoice when something breaks down in the South. There are massive political issues to overcome for that, but the UK would be a better country overall if the North was taken seriously.
I'm trying to limit snark in my responses to this article, but wow. It turns out if you invest in something continually at the expense of everywhere else it becomes the lynchpin of the system. Good grief.
The major reason people in the north hate hearing about investment in the south is because politically it is very clearly a zero sum game. If the south gets investment, the north doesn't.
For additional perspective, look at the Crossrail projects: hugely expensive with benefits only felt in one part of the country. (No, Londoners paying tax doesn't count)
For the cost of crossrail, or HS2, every city in the UK outside of London could have comprehensive tram networks and massive active travel infrastructure. What stings the most is that if London didn't exist, became independent, or fell into the sea, everyone else would likely benefit very rapidly.
Almost all regions/cities make below-average contributions to the UK economy. That's because London drags the total way up (IIRC Bristol is the only other that's above-average, but barely).
That's obviously driven by a feedback-cycle that encourages investing in London rather than elsewhere. That does not imply that the rest of the UK would "benefit" from losing London; it would be an economic disaster.
The problem is that governments are focused on raising the UK's GDP, but that's the sum of each region's GDP and London's contribution is so large that it's equivalent to just maximising London (to optimise a weighted sum, put all the weight on the largest term). Perhaps a solution is to use metrics that combine regions geometrically (multiplying each region's GDP): that encourages investment in poor areas, since they drag down the result (rather than simply contributing less; and in the extreme case, a contribution of zero would wipe-out everything else).
We could do the same analysis on other partition too, e.g. multiplying each sector's contribution would make things less dependent on finiancial services.
Indeed. But that’s politics, not a law of nature. The zero-sum game is completely artificial: the money tree does not exist until you need it and then it does. A sensible revitalisation policy for the North would pay for itself over the long term.
The incentives are really not great from a political point of view and that is very unfortunate. Still, hurting London economically won’t help the rest of the UK in any way.
With the billions spent on the purple pine you'd reasonable expect a decent quality of service that doesn't involve so many cancellations, delays, and days of complete deadlock. Bet if you look at to comparable European countries this reliability would be a joke to them.
The train being every 5 minutes is only for central London, if you live further out you're only served by at most 1 in 3 trains. Missing one sucks much more, during rush hour you can bet you'll be crammed like sardines if you're not early.
I've only been commuting twice a week for about a year, and there have been several occurrences where I get to the station and all upcoming trains are delayed or cancelled due to some line failure. The alternative route takes about twice as long if I want it to cost the same. You bet your arse TFL won't give you a refund if your regular route is untenable.
London gets more investment, definitely. But even so the outcomes still lag behind what you'd expect from the capital of such a wealthy country.
Have you seen the DLR?
Fully automated, no hassle.
It's amazing to me that in <current year>, the whole Britian is not clamouring to get rid of Southwest trains that stop because there's leaves on the railway, and the next train is 20minutes away.
I'd rather not gamble being late in front of clients, in London, because leaves fell on some rails.
The Tube gets hotter in the summer than an Aussie beach. 40-50deg in the bowels of the Tube, for a cold and rainy country like the UK is insane.
People pay 3.5 quid for a 2minute journey through London, when you could just walk 10minutes instead.
London work places, set the expectations high, so the Tube should follow. It has nothing to do with the muggles that ride it, and blaming the people is blindness.
Still a lot faster than the tube unless you have a direct connection and are close to a station for both ends.
I wonder if it is the same problem as in Geneva: in an effort to moderate congestion, they programmed the lights to slow the traffic towards the centre. In other words, they moved the problem a couple kilometres and they called it a day.
The bicycle, naturally aspirated with no motor nonsense, was competitive going north, it took me to my destination quicker and more reliably.
I just went into Google Maps and checked what the ride time would be going to Whitechapel. The bicycle would get there in 38 minutes, which is a lot more than the 16 minutes that Google says the tube would take.
But would I leave the bike at home and take the tube?
Well, no!
It takes five minutes to get from the train to the platform, to wait for an underground train, which will be packed. At the other end, it will take me five minutes to get from the tube station to a nearby office. Then there is the need not to be late, so an added ten minutes would be needed - no rocking up at work at 8.59, I need that to be 8.50.
Even though the journey from platform to platform might be 13 minutes, it is going to be half an hour.
Now the 38 minutes of cycling time looks pretty good. Plus, once I have aced the route, I will cut that down to 30 minutes, with no reason excluding earthquakes or asteroid strikes to be delayed - bicycles always find a way and the timing is reliable. Tube trains mysteriously stop in tunnels to dwell there randomly, possibly even broken down.
Then there is the cost. I have no idea what tube journeys cost nowadays, but say it was £4 or £20 expenditure a week to take the tube. Small change but there is opportunity cost with that - the bicycle is a mobile gym, and an hour a day of cycling at speed due to not wanting to be late would mean that I would not have to do stupid things such as pointlessly lifting weights in a gym so as to conform to society's workout expectations.
So, how much does the gym cost? That would be ten hours a week, getting there, lifting objects pointlessly and poncing about having a shower. Oh yes, it might cost £5 to £10 too.
By riding I would also be freeing a seat for the 70% of the population that are obese and effectively disabled as far as cycling is concerned. I would also be another cyclist on the road, therefore making it safer for others to cycle due to the safety in numbers effect.
My eye health would be better too. If you have to look to the next set of lights and also the road in front of you or behind you, then that exercises the eye muscles - gyms don't do that and being in tin boxes and tunnels does not help with eye health either.
There is also a physical buzz to cycling that you don't get from marching around tube stations.
Hence, although the tube train sounds really good and sounds really fast, even with the lengthy dwell times, the bicycle is the far better option, just so long as you are not part of the 70% obese. Furthermore, the hour of sprinting across town with pedals getting actually pushed on, would mean that I would have no danger of getting obese. Plus I would never have to waste my life in those dark satanic mills known as gyms.
Life hack number one for London - get a bike and ditch the tube.
I did shower again after cycling home, but that often replaced the shower I'd have before going to bed (or after coming back from the gym) so, again, no increase in the number of showers in a day.
I didn't really like London, but getting out on the bike changed that considerably - it's a beautiful city, with a lot more greenery than is normally credited. The Tube map, great as it is, inherently distorts distances and directions and learning how the city is really connected is enlightening.
I did a 7 mile each way cycle commute in London for many many years. Absolutely loved it.
Reliable, consistent travel times, and never affected by train/tube strikes. The number of times I was delayed by a puncture or other mechanical was way less than the number of times I was delayed by random public transport problems.
I was so much fitter when I was doing it, especially when I built up to doing the occasional commute running. (Cycle in, leave extra clothes at work, run home, run in the next day, cycle home.)
I miss it now that I WFH. I know I can just go out and do a similar type of ride but it's just too easy not to. It was much easier to set off to work in the rain by bike as I knew I had to get there and going by train/tube was even more miserable.
Oh no, my train waits it the station for nearly a full minute.
The fact that there actually is a train, the train isn't a converted bus that was supposed to be a temporary measure 30 years ago, that's it's deemed viable to actually make a 13 minute train journey, the fact that presumably the train isn't 13 minutes late and in fact turned up, and the fact that in my experience, a 60 second stop is good would suggest to me that there's no need to complain.
Edit: to the downvoters. London has by far the best public transport in the country. Nowhere else has an underground system with trains every 5 minutes. The complaint is about a train waiting at the station for generally less than 60 seconds. For the rest of the country that would be a compliment not a complaint.
Most Londoners are completely ignorant of the pain of public transport up North (hell, even outside of London)
Getting to work an hour and 15 minutes early most mornings because you can't rely on the later train not to be 15 minutes late.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_FP_Paybuses
Glasgow? "There are trains every four minutes at peak times and every six-to-eight minutes during off-peak times." says https://www.spt.co.uk/subway/subway-timetables/ .
As for "the North", we have a similar historical construct in the US, where "the North" does not include Alaska or even North Dakota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_United_States .
Similarly, while Miami, Florida is geographically in the southern US, it is not culturally part of "the South".
I think it's more likely that benj111 simply did not know that detail about the Glasgow, rather than knowing that detail and deliberately excluding it because it's in Scotland. It is, after all, a rather small system without the international fame of London's underground.
When I talk about the UK, I really mean the UK. 'The north' is a name not necessarily reflective of geographic boundaries, if you want that, use 'the north of England'. 'Yorkshire' also necessarily excludes Scotland.
I'm also geographically closer, and emotionally closer to Scotland than London, so why would I exclude Scotland?
The rest of us do, but it’s mostly English posting here so you’ll just see “the north” so it’s unclear if they are really talking about the UK or not. I came across some beer from “the north” in Stirling recently and it was from Leeds.
It could be English bias but to me the North is a concept that can mean something between north of Watford gap, to specifically northern England.
As you say, most British people on here are English, and I'd guess most of those are from the south, so if I'm invoking some sort of concept of 'The North', it's probably in contrast to those southerners.
Personally I feel culturally closer to Scotland than London, so I'm not looking to exclude Scotland here.
The problem is the language. I've conflated the south and London, and I've described my self as British rather than UKish.
I've never seen a barrier hopper stopped, but I'm sure the bobbies would be sent in if thry announced everyone would be doing it.
There's also the problem of disconnected services - the purple line is Rail, so while they use the same stations, they can be on strike when the Underground isn't. So you could go through open barriers at a rail station but you'd find the barriers shut trying to leave from an Underground station.
I was only with him once when this happened, and the station manager appeared and said I could lead him (without a ticket) and he'd let me out when I came back, which he did. My friend said it happened every month or two. Going alone meant he risked tripping on stairs, especially if it was busy and people jostled him.
But more importantly the wage negotiations are very complicated as 80% of the money ultimately comes from the government and therefore politicians needs to be motivated. Politicians are mostly motivated by annoyed voters (and campaign contributions obviously).
Around 20% is commercial income (advertising, levies on new commercial buildings).
https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s19826/TfL%20Budget%20202...
While most of the train strikes over the last year have been RMT primarily, ASLEF and TSSA did vote to strike in support of RMT during the winter. They're both part of the TUC after all.
https://www.cityam.com/newest-strike-wave-to-hit-uk-as-platf...