4 ms·

~60m people in Britain. About 20m of then live within 1 hour of the centre of London.

by willyt 4y ago

marmarama 4y ago
Yes, but it would be about 10m if London had the same underperforming transport infrastructure as the rest of the country.
- mnd999 4y ago
  That seems to be a common attitude in the UK and it’s not helpful. We should be building London level or better transport in the rest of the country, not wrecking Londons transport to bring it into line.
  - marmarama 4y ago
    I was not talking about wrecking London's transport, merely using a thought experiment to illustrate how much better London's transport is than what the rest of the country has to put up with.
- willyt 4y ago
  It is better defined as people living within 30 miles of Charing Cross I think. See comment above. I'm not sure about the 20m figure as I can't find the stats just now. But it's definitely greater than 15m so the basic argument probably still holds.
Lio 4y ago
I'm not sure I follow your point. I live about an hour from the "centre" of London. That doesn't mean I want to travel 2 hours a day just to use London's infrastructure. London is a big place. The centre of London is big. Where my train comes into London is not necessarily where what I need to do is. So there could be another further hour of travel each way to get across London. Travelling to and from the station on the home end is also a problem. Since public transport is so dire outside of London that takes much longer than it should do and is much more inconvenient. Where friends of mine get annoyed waiting 5 minutes for a bus in London, you could be waiting over an hour in the rest of the country ...and if you miss it you're in schtuck, because it's the only one that day. How much daily travel should we have to put up? Just to be clear, I don't want less in London, I want more/better outside of London.
- willyt 4y ago
  Probably better defined as in the number of people living within about 30 miles of Charing Cross. I.e. if about 3m people live in the central belt in Scotland and about 20m people live in the Greater London urban area then you would expect there to be about 6x more transport capacity on any given rail line or bus service. I would say very very roughly the trains in London are 3x longer and twice as frequent as the trains between and around Glasgow and Edinburgh. Busses are probably up to 6x more frequent than in Glasgow simply because the buses can't get larger so you need to run more of them to cope with demand. Trains and busses are still more crowded in London than they are in Scotland, probably because it would be physically impossible to have the same modal share of car journeys in London as you have in the central belt; due to the greater urban density there is not physically enough space to park as many vehicles. Transport investment was neglected in London in the 80's and 90's by the then Conservative administration who thought everyone would drive everywhere in the future. This doesn't work in London and as a result the trains and buses were overcrowded, unreliable and unsafe. Examples: Kings Cross Fire, 1950's slam door trains with no corridors. My train to school was a slam door train that regularly approached the max crush load of 7 people per m² and was the most unreliable line in Britain for most of the late 80's and 90's. Overcrowding on lines around Manchester and Birmingham has probably been forecasted decades ago but the government will not have done anything about it in the last 12 years because the urban northern cities don't vote Conservative just like urban London doesn't.

~60m people in Britain. About 20m of then live within 1 hour of the centre of London.

by willyt 4y ago

~60m people in Britain. About 20m of then live within 1 hour of the centre of London.

Yes, but it would be about 10m if London had the same underperforming transport infrastructure as the rest of the country.

mnd999 4y ago
That seems to be a common attitude in the UK and it’s not helpful. We should be building London level or better transport in the rest of the country, not wrecking Londons transport to bring it into line.
- marmarama 4y ago
  I was not talking about wrecking London's transport, merely using a thought experiment to illustrate how much better London's transport is than what the rest of the country has to put up with.
willyt 4y ago
It is better defined as people living within 30 miles of Charing Cross I think. See comment above. I'm not sure about the 20m figure as I can't find the stats just now. But it's definitely greater than 15m so the basic argument probably still holds.

Lio 4y ago

I'm not sure I follow your point. I live about an hour from the "centre" of London. That doesn't mean I want to travel 2 hours a day just to use London's infrastructure. London is a big place. The centre of London is big. Where my train comes into London is not necessarily where what I need to do is. So there could be another further hour of travel each way to get across London. Travelling to and from the station on the home end is also a problem. Since public transport is so dire outside of London that takes much longer than it should do and is much more inconvenient. Where friends of mine get annoyed waiting 5 minutes for a bus in London, you could be waiting over an hour in the rest of the country ...and if you miss it you're in schtuck, because it's the only one that day. How much daily travel should we have to put up? Just to be clear, I don't want less in London, I want more/better outside of London.

willyt 4y ago
Probably better defined as in the number of people living within about 30 miles of Charing Cross. I.e. if about 3m people live in the central belt in Scotland and about 20m people live in the Greater London urban area then you would expect there to be about 6x more transport capacity on any given rail line or bus service. I would say very very roughly the trains in London are 3x longer and twice as frequent as the trains between and around Glasgow and Edinburgh. Busses are probably up to 6x more frequent than in Glasgow simply because the buses can't get larger so you need to run more of them to cope with demand. Trains and busses are still more crowded in London than they are in Scotland, probably because it would be physically impossible to have the same modal share of car journeys in London as you have in the central belt; due to the greater urban density there is not physically enough space to park as many vehicles. Transport investment was neglected in London in the 80's and 90's by the then Conservative administration who thought everyone would drive everywhere in the future. This doesn't work in London and as a result the trains and buses were overcrowded, unreliable and unsafe. Examples: Kings Cross Fire, 1950's slam door trains with no corridors. My train to school was a slam door train that regularly approached the max crush load of 7 people per m² and was the most unreliable line in Britain for most of the late 80's and 90's. Overcrowding on lines around Manchester and Birmingham has probably been forecasted decades ago but the government will not have done anything about it in the last 12 years because the urban northern cities don't vote Conservative just like urban London doesn't.