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
