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Originally Posted by eduardo88
i'm going to have to disagree, although i'm thankful for the size of the system, i think its a disaster in its current state: constantly delayed, dirty, hideous stations...
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Originally Posted by Jonas
Have to agree here... having used London's public transport for 4 years on a daily basis it looks more or less a disgrace for a city disposing such wealth. That is simply not excusable.
That would be less important if London had a decent road network (as most American cities do)... but that is nonexistent.
Of course, comparing public transport in London to N.American cities might look like a jewel but comparing it to some European or Asian cities it looks miserable.
Only thing that works is the PR... "we're investing £10 billion into tube"... yeah, so that it doesn't derail and the 100 year old wooden rail ties wouldn't decompose...
If that's all they can do with £10 billion, then a £100 billion is something that they need to really make it work.
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I am with Nick here. As mentioned above, comparing to "some" European or Asian cities, it's looks miserable? Well, disregarding Asian cities as their networks are all so new, and when something is new it always looks nice and shiny, London's network on the other hand is the oldest in the world. However, when comparing to other European networks, I find very few that are significantly cleaner and nicer than London's.
Hideous stations as eduardo88 stated. But how are the stations worse than say Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Antwerp, Vienna or a myriad of other cities. Most stations in London are pretty damn pleasant. Check out this thread and you can see there are much worse out there. I posted a picture of a Frankfurt Suburban railway station on page 2 of the thread, this is worse than any working suburban station I have seen in London.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=691048
I do agree that there are more delays or line closures on the Tube than most other metro's I have been on. But many of them are related to Britain's health and safety laws which are a lot stronger than anywhere else in Europe. Trains in Frankfurt do not go out of service because of Vandalism that's for sure.
We have a term for English people back in Australia, Whinging Poms
It seems to me that the English have a capacity for complaining greater than any other culture. And the UK press just love to play with this. It's constant ripping of the London transport infrastructure making false claims that it's always better everywhere else reminds me of their latest favourite story, youth murder. If you read UK papers, you would imagine that there is a massive crime wave with Youths stabbing and killing people all around the country. The newspapers make such a deal about it, it's reported in the global press and now much of the world thinks that UK must have one of the highest youth murder rates on the planet. All this despite statistics that show the UK has less Youth committed murders than New Zealand (half per capita), Australia, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Canada in fact, pretty much most country's.
It's the same with your public transport. The average service compares quite favourably to any other city I have been to, but if I believe the media I would expect to never be able to travel when I am in your country.
Yes, there are parts that need improving. And I do think the price of commuter trains for the London Metro area are terribly high (though the Tube and bus transport within Greater London is pretty average when using an Oyster card). But I think the overall condition of stations, trains and buses is pretty good. No other city in the world that I have been to has such a comprehensive and easy to understand network despite it being one of the largest as well.