Transport in London is shit

Bendy Bus 38 on diversion Saturday. Confused the hell out of me. KEN OUT! etc.

But 80p on Oyster or Carnet.

*or sitting down on the floor where they get kicked
** for many people, they won't know their train isn't coming until several minutes after the fact since all the video terminals are fucked

OAPs get freedom passes and their are concessionary fares for Jobseekers/New Deal

Not having an oyster of some sort is foolish

I never heard of this when I was signing on, but that was a couple of years ago.

Now I just get the X68 both ways (long walk at the Zone 1 end, but I probably need it) and tend to spend around £30-35/month. (Z1-3 Travelcard is £100/mo, Z1-2 is £85/mo [would allow me to use buses outside Z2 but not rail], All Zone Bus Pass is £52/mo).

The capping of Oyster Pre-Pay so that you never pay more than an equivalent daily Travelcard or Bus Pass if you find yrself bus- and Tube-hopping is a nice feature. Now, if they'd just install Oystercard readers at SE London surburban rail stations...

The full horror of British Rail prices will soon hit me as my Young Persons Rail Card runs out in March. A peak time return from Glasgow to Edinburgh costs about £18. That's a 40 minute journey. Peak time Glasgow to Stirling, however, costs £8.30. And that's a 35 minute journey. WTF?

That said, having travelled on the geriatric, freezing and slow trains south of London in order to get to ATP, we've at least got half decent rolling stock in Scotland. At least, in those parts of the country unaffected by the Beeching Cuts.

London transport is pretty decent, but then I don't live there so don't have to face all the problems commuters do. The big problem with transport systems in British cities is the lack of integration. The best public transport I've come across is in Berlin. As soon as you work out the difference between the s-bahn and the u-bahn etc you're sorted.

dude, you're not.

when you're looking to move somewhere - in london or elsewhere - you check out the transport links (tube, buses, nightbuses, overground, tram, dlr, whatever) and if the provision is incompatible with your lifestyle, don't move to that part of london/wherever. i'm sure there are far-flung places on london's edges that are not served by nightbuses, but i've never found any and wtf would you be living there for? it's not meant for you, obviously.

but if you live in london, you can totally stay out as late as you want and get home on a bus/combination of buses. except possibly in aforementioned far-flung "zone b" places or whatever.

im questioning how much you value transport, and where you get your concept of cheap or expensive from. how much should transport cost us as a proportion of our overall outgoings?
should we be able to commute from hitchin to london every day? given the restraints on capacity on the train network in london, how possible is it to accomodate the numbers of commuters coming in every day?

why do planners in hertfordshire allow developers to build new blocks of luxury/executive apartments right next to rail stations with decent commuter train services, when there is no improvement to the service to accomodate the increased number of comuters that these developments are sure to bring?

im questioning the concepts that a) we should be able to travel where and when we want/need to, from where and to where, and b) that this travel should be "cheap" "affordable" or at the least "not expensive" c) the travel should be reliable, or high quality, or predictable, ro something. why are any of these givens that we "should" have access to them? becasue it costs 1.50 to get the bus? does that cover the full cost of providing that service? i appreciate that anger is mainly focussed on he fact that fares are set to cover increasing profits for the private involvement in providing transport services rather than covering the costs, but i find it strange that bus dergeulation for example took place a full 20 years ago, and yet an organisation like "We Want Our Buses Back" has only just been set up.
the fact that london is the most safeguarded against the worst effects of privatisation in public transport and that other areas are desperately trying to get round the impositions in place to achieving a similar set up means that its hard not to envy, rather than denigrate public transport in London from a provinicial persepctive

Is this actually true? I'd always thought received wisdom said the exact opposite.

Yeah, I found New York transpot to be awful. Admittedly it is a lot cheaper, which makes it sort of forgivable, but then when what ought to be a 40 minute journey regularly ended up taking 90 minutes, I tended to feel I'd have been happier to pay more and just get there.

Ok, I'm going to rant here. You know the handy electronic readouts you get on the tube telling you how long you have to wait for the next train? None of that on the NY subway, you just have to stand and wait and hope. On the A/C line (where I was staying) it seemed 4 out of 5 trains were express, and didn't stop at my stop, so even though a train might pass every five minutes, i'd only be able to get on one every 25 minutes. Each weekend at least one line will be closed completely, for engineering works or whatever, and there's no staff around to give out announcements to let you know about that. There's just A4 sheets stuck to some pillars, which are easily missed, so it's very easy to stand and wait 20 minutes for a train that isn't ever coming. Stations stay open all night, yeah, but quite often a station will close all but one entrance/exit, which can mean a ten minute walk in the wrong direction to even get inside there. and once you do get in, you find that trains after 11pm only run on certain routes, and become incredibly infrequent.

Really, Londoners don't know they're born.

when government decided to build a commuter belt on the basis that the people who lived there would many of them work in london, they kind of made a commitment, don't you think, to affordable transport?

as i say it's one of those social-contract-y things, along the lines of 'why should we expect' 'free' hospital care, schools, etc. you're own views on deregulation are opaque.

Another thing I liked is that you don't need your ticket to exit the station, only to enter it.

no, no, no! jim had a bad experience being stuck on the c line, but in general it's loads better in nyc. cheaper, faster, larger trains with better ventilation and 24 hr service, plus the lovely air conditioned buses. perhaps most importantly, lines don't go out of service with anything near the frequency that they do in london.

Maybe I just got unluck in NY, but I was consistently unlucky for a whole month. It was upsetting.

no, the 'burbs and the commuter towns were *designed* for commuters! one of the roles assigned to government has been strategic planning of this sort. there aren't that many jobs in bethnal green; but then there isn't much accommodation in the city.

why is 'the right not to get ill' fine anyway?

ambrose brought up this:

should we be able to commute from hitchin to london every day? given the restraints on capacity on the train network in london, how possible is it to accomodate the numbers of commuters coming in every day?

why do planners in hertfordshire allow developers to build new blocks of luxury/executive apartments right next to rail stations with decent commuter train services, when there is no improvement to the service to accomodate the increased number of comuters that these developments are sure to bring?

This is true. Letchworth, Stevenage and Hitchin were all built or have become commuter towns and are all currently subject to huge landscape changes on account of new, upperscale apartments being built. A lot of people protest this, citing that the community can't take this influx of people. I reckon the train's will be the first to suffer here as they're already buckling under the current pressure.

-- Vintage Latin (doglati...), February 14th, 2006.

yeah, we entrust this kind of thing to JOHN PRESCOTT so, well, there's your joined-up govt for ya.