3 ms·

I'm curious : do you feel the same way when vis-a-vis airlines?

• tormeh 12y ago
  Their business is not selling transportation but moving the population of London around to where they need to be. The government is the customer and the people are passengers.
  • ekianjo 12y ago
    Airlines is not selling transportation but moving the population where it needs to be in the world. You are just arguing semantics, they both do the very same thing.
    • tormeh 12y ago
      Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary. For an airline, transportation is an unfortunate side-effect of getting paid. For the tube, managing tickets is an unfortunate side effect of transporting people.
      • ekianjo 12y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your example very well or what you are trying to say. > Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary In both cases, the airline and the tube have fixed costs related to having planes flying or trains running. For both of them payments are necessary to offset the fixed costs and generate profits to further invest in better transports. They key difference is that for one the volume of passengers is much higher than the other, therefore "full capacity" is defined in very different terms in the Tube vs a plane. People don't stand in a plane like they do in the Tube.
        • tormeh 12y ago
          The point, in a single line, is: The tube's mission is not to make money and it doesn't need profits for anything.