>this makes me think that the main problem probably comes from the age of the infrastructure. I suspect this is the cause. I don't know what level of technolog

>this makes me think that the main problem probably comes from the age of the infrastructure. I suspect this is the cause. I don't know what level of technology is running behind the scenes but it certainly didn't feel anywhere near as modern as many of the systems you encounter around Asia, which are generally no more than a few decades old. Often they have also been aggressively updated since their construction, both out of utility and almost as a point of national pride. One thing jumped out at me as being particularly anachronistic in 2014, which is when I was in London. Human beings standing on the platform making routine announcements over the loud speakers at stations and train drivers making announcements on the trains. The vast majority of places have all of their standard announcements prerecorded as well as a bank of prerecorded special case announcements. Not just in Asia. In Australia (Perth), where I am from, and Barcelona, where I am now, this is also the case. This has the advantage that the announcement has zero background noise in the sound coming over the speakers, a relatively accent free voice can be used and the announcements are the same every time. I am a native English speaker but still found understanding the announcements over the noise of a train pulling into the station with that same sound also coming through the speakers was often impossible. Throw in the person having a reasonably strong accent and them feeling the need to adlib the announcement format and things get even more difficult. I was genuinely shocked the first time I saw a human being standing on the platform attempting to shout into a microphone loud enough to be heard over a train. And given that the customer facing technology is sub-par it does make me suspicious of the degree to which the rest of the system has been updated over the years. It would be lovely to think that the London underground has retained its old worldy charm whilst running state of the art 21st century technology under the skin but I suspect its not the case.