Yes, of course, it gets frantic at rush hour, but that's what happens when govt policy for the last 25 years has been to concentrate practicallly the whole of national employment possibilities into the 20 sq miles inside the cicle line tube in london. Apparently they call it market forces, although personally I'd call it abdication of government.
It is undeniable that successive governments have underinvested in the British railway system. It was often noted that the French had a much better railway system because they put five times as much support into it. As is usual in the UK, we want the services but aren't prepared to fund it properly. So it just limps along and we moan about it.
Privatising the railways didn't stop that problem, it just shifted the blame. That the subsidy is now at the levels British Rail always needed it is worth noting that a substantial portion (anout 1/3 if memory serves) of that is trousered by directors and shareholders.
Right now, the system needs major overhauls of signalling across most sectors. The price of travel for anything but journeys planned a month or two in advance is prohibitive. Most car journeys are cheaper that the equivalent train travel, even for single travellers. The only incentive to use the train is that in the South East the road network is worse than the railway.
Yes, there can be problems with reliability, but much less than is supposed. However weekend off-peak travel is often subject to maintenance interruptions that prevent casual leisure use.
NB The reason Crossrail hasn't been started is that everybody knows it's a political vanity project. There is no demonstrable purpose for the line that can possibly justify the cost. It's a nice-to-have but there are many projects with a higher priority and greater justification. keep to the Fen Causeway
Maybe then planned costs are too high. I think London would sorely need through connections on rail and an express-metro-like service to relieve the Tube, e.g. just what the RER is in Paris (and the S-Bahn in Berlin or Vienna); and what the Crossrail 1, 2, the East London Line and Thameslink2000 were supposed to integrate into. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
We need to move employment out of London and thus shift the demand. It's somewhat like the need to provide alternative energy souces in the face of peak oil; the biggest single factor that would make a difference is reducing demand. Right now that is taking place, but it's a generational shift as London increasingly becomes unbearable for those on even reasonable income.
Once teachers, nurses, firemen, rubbish collectors, waiters, bar workers are priced out of the south east (which is happening) then other parts of Britain become more attractive employment centres. But that will happen too slowly and government should take a lead in changing the financial environment to encourage business to leave london. Instead they abdicate responsibility, and wait for the whole thing to fall in on some successive government's head. keep to the Fen Causeway
London is not bigger and less employment-centralised than Paris. But I agree that moving employment out might be a sensible goal. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Paris has nothing like such a zone and os the pressure on its central services is noticeably less. keep to the Fen Causeway
The whole area around Paris is about 11 millions people.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglom%C3%A9ration_parisienne
I read paper that said that lots of workers went from one place outside Paris to work outside Paris too while the central system was designed to bring people to Paris though.
At any rate, the Paris mass transit system carries much more passengers than London's. In 2005, London had 971 million Tube, 53 million DLR and 503 million rail passengers. In the same year, Paris had 1,372.7 million Métro passengers, 444.5 million RER passengers on the part of the network run by Paris transport authority RATP, and a further 633 million on the rest or RER and suburban lines run by Transilien, SNCF's Île-de-France rapid transit branch.
I note the central element of the RER network are three long tunnels across the city. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
That's Brighton to Milton Keynes, Basinstoke to Colchester, Canterbury to Oxford keep to the Fen Causeway
The London catchment area is bogglingly huge. People commute from all kinds of insane places, usually because of property prices.
Someone else I know commutes from Newcastle to Reading for the week - around 300 miles - and then back again at weekends. By car.
Also, there is a new phenomenon of tax evaders who have residency in Belgium, while working in Paris. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
I, honestly, don't follow the reasoning behind businesses not having moved already. Most of the recruits from universities are going to be well outside of London. The rents are going to be cheaper. The wages paid are going to be lower, given the difference in the cost of living, alone. It doesn't make sense, economically, to feed everything into it, the City be damned. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Apparently they call it market forces, although personally I'd call it abdication of government.
Oh they call it that too. explicitly. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
