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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 ea

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

djtango 3y ago
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...
- hkt 3y ago
  Birmingham is also magnificent for (south) Asian food. Glasgow too!
pif 3y ago
> 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).
- citrin_ru 3y ago
  Normalisation of work from home can reduce congestion in mega-cities. WFH during COVID has shown this.
hkt 3y ago
> 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: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/is-all-economics-local-speech-by-andy-haldane.pdf 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.

djtango 3y ago

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...

hkt 3y ago
Birmingham is also magnificent for (south) Asian food. Glasgow too!

pif 3y ago

> 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).

citrin_ru 3y ago
Normalisation of work from home can reduce congestion in mega-cities. WFH during COVID has shown this.

hkt 3y ago

> 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: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/is-all-economics-local-speech-by-andy-haldane.pdf 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.