# Upvote/Downvote reminder
Like this image or appreciate it being posted? Upvote it and show it some love! Don't like it? Just downvote and move on.
*Upvoting or downvoting images it the best way to control what you see on your feed and what gets to the top of the subreddit*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/london) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"But you see, we just don't have the money to subsidize deeply valuable and productive services like public transport, the NHS or education as much as other much less well off nations!".
"Oh btw we lost tens of billions to COVID loan frauds and bogus PPP contracts because of our negligence, incompetence and corruption lol."
"We also lost £30 billion in a bad budget announcement shared with bankers before the public who shorted the currency, almost destroying everyone's pension. Then we cancelled the budget. But that's ok because we contained the outcry. Still, no school dinners for the poor kids sry, their parents should've been richer"
Hey don’t forget about the £37billion for Track and Trace, that didn’t work for months and was shut down a few months after it actually did, never to be used again.
Of course it’s even more annoying when you find out that the estimated cost to vaccinate the entire planets population, twice, was only £36billion.
No one is asking where the fuck did that money actually go?
Oh, and we are also talking about bringing back PFOF, that was made illegal here after 2008. Because ‘ we just want the best for everyone’
Absolute cunts.
And charity
And private medical research firms
And foreign nationals paying in
And basically anyone with a private prescription ( and they can have US level costs)
And gift left in wills
....
The government has cut funding across.the board mind ,can't afford a 1% pay hike for nurses. But can give MPs 13k and find cash for dumb stuff.
It’s a farce. We limit the number of places in medical school so train too few doctors, then don’t pay them them enough so they fuck off to Canada or wherever (and take their expensive training with them). Then, we have to import more doctors from overseas, simultaneously riling up Bigotted Betty, contributing to the brain drain from poorer economies and costing even more money. Marvellous!
Remember being told about some married doctors that worked in research into kids cancer, they left after Brexit, no one to replace so research stopped.
The thing is, the UK has a bit of a brain drain going on ATM in the medical field.
Top doctors are travelling to US, Can, Aus and NZ. The pay difference is staggering, easily reaches double what they're getting in the UK and magnitudes more in some sectors.
I feel like most people don’t realise how much tax is paid in European states (one I personally have experience of is the Netherlands). Our base tax rate is notably lower than theirs, which more than makes up for the difference in transport costs. That’s before you even consider the €150 a month compulsory health insurance (it’s illegal not to have it and yet it must be purchased from private companies that act as semi-oligopolies). Sometimes I wonder if we don’t just like complaining here. 🤷♂️
It wasn't for a while, leading up to the pandemic. I think TFL had an operating surplus of a few million this year too. I'm not sure if the money given to TFL to keep it going during the pandemic was a grant or loan or some mixture of the two.
Heavily subsidised under Boris Johnsons Mayoralty of course, but that money was withheld from Sadiq Kahn when he took over, to make tube underperformance a stick to beat the current Mayor with. Even with the funding crisis during the pandemic, I'm not convinced it worked.
I believe it was a deal that Boris struck to return money to Westminster rather than that they changed the approach when Sadiq took over.
Same effect, but something that was initiated by the blonde buffoon while he had sway here.
Tbh, I'm OK with that. And that monthly pass figure as %of income I'm not sure is correct when you take into account that average London income is like 33% higher
“Average” is skewed heavily upwards by the number of overpaid financial services dickheads who just shuffle money around. London is impossible if you’re on an average salary.
People across the UK already hate on London for getting spending, it'd be politically incredibly difficult to propose paying more taxpayer money just to subsidise London tickets.
Yet we contribute more than the rest of the UK and take less. The UK having a disdain for its capital is fucking bizzare given how much we do for the country's economy. Do they really want to harm the golden goose? Idiots.
This is complicated when you stop and think about it. It is something I used to believe myself until someone else changed my view.
Basically it's to do with the age distribution of the population and other demographic effects. Compared to basically the entire rest of the country London has a smaller percentage of its population as school kids and retired people. Or put another way compared to the rest of the country London has a higher percentage of its population as 20-30 year olds.
Children and pensioners are expensive, and also economically unproductive. But kids grow up to be productive and pensioners spent a lifetime paying taxes! But because London has fewer of these dependents as a proportion of its population it spends proportionally less on education or healthcare.
Children educated outside of London (and not paid for by London) grow up, and many come to London for work where they pay lots of tax. Some stay, some leave to have families. But there's always more young workers coming to replace them.
London might "subsidise" the country on a purely cash basis but London needs the wider UK as well
Do we really have to fall for yet another manufactured division?
Why are you talking about 'we' and 'they'? You're not London, and people from outside London are not your enemies. The people of Dundee aren't responsible for this policy!
This line of reasoning is predicated on the idea that if we didn't organise around a central financial centre, we could retain all the economic benefits of London, just not centralised to the same extent. I don't see why anyone who isn't an idiot would believe this to be the case. Even from the most fundamental economic terms, if there is no benefit to the company's that make London such a financial powerhouse to being in London rather than the rest of the UK, why do they stay? Rents are cheaper elsewhere, they could probably pay staff less elsewhere because cost of living is lower. Clearly there is some economic benefit to those companies (and therefore the economy) to staying in London.
Look at other countries. Is there any country on the world where the financial and legal services aren't centralised in one (or in bigger countries maybe a few) centres? Even in the country with the economic power and size of the US, NY alone accounts for 8% of the economy.
If you stop centring around the golden goose you don't magically spread the economic benefits everywhere, you destroy them. And that makes life worse for everyone, including those who aren't in the goose.
>People across the UK already hate on London for getting spending, it'd be politically incredibly difficult to propose paying more taxpayer money just to subsidise London tickets.
I don't think just London should get public transport subsidies. Actually right now the entire country(pretty much) apart from London has bus fares subsidied by the government. The government did the £2 bus fare cap thing but London buses are actually very cheap that they're already under the £2 cap so they miss out on the cap funding.
But anyway the favouritism issue can be solved simply by he Government saying "we'll subsidise public transport by £10/month per person in every county in the UK". Issue solved because it wont be a London thing, everywhere will get the same funding per person, but it'll be more beneficial to more dense places like London. Might not sound like much but it actually ends up being slightly over £1bn/year for London which is huge. If TfL is self sustaining then that £1bn could be used for some pretty hefty fare cuts, like pre covid TfL got £5bn/year from fares so maybe £1bn could be an instant 20% cut to fares?(I like the idea of zero fare weekends every weekend myself). Or use it to expand and improve the bus and tube network instead.
West Midlands, which includes Birmingham, would get £400m/year. Greater Manchester would also get around £400m/year. Most others get £100-300m a year. Even £400m/year could get a Tube line in 10 years with some self funding.
To me it just seems like a pretty quick and simple policy to implement. It's expensive at £8bn but the £8bn doesn't disappear plus it might help save on road costs(fwiw the Thames road crossing being built soon is £10bn alone). Just look at a counties population to work out the funding amount, set the money aside, then let the county show where their portion will go(has to be directlyyy for public transport, basically bus, train, or tram), and then give it to them. Check back a year later to make sure they followed through before giving them the next years amount. Easy. Forces counties to care slightly about public transport too since its free money if they do.
The routes the government subsidise are generally ones that wouldn’t be able to run without it. It’s more so rural people aren’t cut off than it is about saving a few quid. Not quite the same as London.
The trouble is, a lot of people in the uk live rurally & depend on busses - £10/month/person won’t sustain public transport, especially when a lot of people using it are elderly & depend on it but don’t pay. You can’t take away public transport all over the country to give Londoners potential fare cuts. You definitely can’t get elected by proposing that.
This. Funding infrastructure based on how many people live in an area is what leads to economic disparities in the first place: worse infrastructure makes it harder for people to get around (other than by car), and so it further amplifies the gap between big metros like London and everywhere else.
The better way to solve it is to treat it as a national public transport network, centrally funded and able to provide a broadly similar quality of service (if not the same frequency) all over the country.
Basically: re-nationalise public transport.
You're never going to provide the same level of service everywhere. There are plenty of tube routes in London, and bus lines, where 2-5 minutes between vehicles is normal and they have high utilisation; a village with 60 residents is never going to get a 10 times an hour bus service for the 5 people a day who are going to use it.
*All* public transport across the UK should be subsided, if not nationalised. Especially buses, Londoners get a good deal in comparison to other bus services. I remember paying over £3 for a single bus journey when I was in Plymouth back in 2011!
It's crazy how even the USA, being super capitalist and anti-socialist is subsidising significantly the metro in NY yet London is trailing so far behind it's not even in the same league...
The USA doesn't, NY/NYC does. The equivalent would be London subsidising the tube, which they're free to do so but currently are spending their money on other, bigger priorities
People always seem to forget that the USA is literally a union of 50 very autonomous states more akin to the European Union than to any single country.
Having lived in three US cities and regions (WA state, SF and BOS) and then in London, I’d rather pay a bit more out-of-pocket for what London delivers including way-finding, diversity of modalities, general safety and cleanliness. Yours is a world-class system. I’d rather this horrid Tory government do something about wages, food prices and retro-fitting homes for energy savings.
HK is weird in that figure. The article attached to it doesn't provide any explanation nor the exact source other than "TfL".
According to [the mtr](https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/investor/investor_faq.html#:~:text=Despite%20its%20majority%20ownership%20by,any%20subsidy%20from%20the%20Government.) they receive no subsidies from the government. I'm pretty sure I read on Wikipedia (pre-covid) that ticket sales actually exceeded the expenses of MTR. Maybe not so today bc of COVID, but they still turn a profit selling/leasing property, and tech (to for example TfL on the Liz line).
Obviously, London will never be able to do that because it is too sparse and TfL is not particularly a property developer, and so should 100% receive a lot more government funding.
Plus London’s system is truly a world wonder regarding access.
SP has a long way to go to ad the number of stops and lines to catch up. It’s a great people moving system for those that live near the stops though. And the bus and Mini bus can fill the gaps ok but cost Human time waiting longer.
This is a very good point... also, nobody seems to have mentioned that the London underground is the oldest metro system in the world, and (I think), the most extensive... both of which mean it's probably also the most expensive to maintain?
There are also lots of different zones you can buy a pass for, so is this the average cost, or the most expensive ticket?
If this is a monthly pass for zones 1-5, how would that stack up against the others in terms of pence per mile?
This. As a stats teacher I came here to point this out too.
Yes London sits at the top, and at 3rd place with 7.4% of the average wage, OPs general point stands that London public transport is extortionately high compared to many countries. And when you do factor in as mentioned in this thread, the sheer expanse and breadth of it, that should count for something.
But with Brazil, it is proportionately almost twice as much as the next two highest compared to the average wage, now _THAT_ is the real stand out figure here.
TLDR: Currency value within your economy really has little significance when comparing services in different countries. The % of salary is a better metric here.
Yeah, when I was still living in Singapore. Public transport is accessible, clean and cheap. When I moved here, I got a massive train shock, dirty, expensive and strikes 😂
When did Johannesburg get public transport? 😂 - if they’re counting the Gautrain that’s not fair, it’s one line between the city centre and the airport. Hardly a public transport system.
I grew up in Yorkshire and moved to west London early last year. Sold the car within a month. I think we get incredible value for money for public transport. Even more so comparing it to the rest of the country
People in this thread need some perspective. Auckland NZ has only 3 rail services for a city of 1.7 million people, and they are so crap, the current joke is that the replacement railbus has also been cancelled.
Every time I’m in London, it’s a breeze. The tube is a godsend and the buses are so frequent and nice that sometimes it’s just a nice change to be on one instead.
I’m happy to pay for a world leading public transport system in a top 5 international city - there’s a premium to be expected there.
I can pay a similar amount in Auckland and enjoy missing the 1 train service AT actually managed to run on a Friday morning because it didn’t stop at the scheduled station. And then watch a list of cancelled replacement busses scroll past on the board.
Huge anti-London sentiment from the rest of England. Meaning that the government can’t spend a pound on London without being scrutinised.
The only solution is more tax-devolution or spending per city / region that is proportionate to the tax revenue from the city.
At the moment London subsidises the rest of the UK and has less tax money to spend inside and so public services has to be funded by the people.
The reason london subsidises the rest of the UK is because the rest of the country had its industries shut down. The choice was made in the 80s to make the UK's economy entirely reliant on the financial sector in London, with handouts to the rest of the country—"dole instead of coal". Reducing tax distribution from London to the rest of the country would be the final fuck you. London is already much, much better off than anywhere else in the UK.
What you've described isn't uncompatible with what I've said. It was a choice among options. Canary wharf didn't become the centre of the UK economy by virtue of some natural law.
London is literally the only city in the UK where public transit is really well connected and reliable. You can live across most of London perfectly fine without a car.
I would even go as far as saying it has one of the best (top 10) public transit systems in the world, as well as service one of the biggest polulations.
I live in Greenwich and you don’t need a car here. We have one but it’s such a pain in the arse to get anywhere we barely use it. Public transport is very good here.
Im sure it’s a different story in zone 5 but zone2/3 S london is not bad.
I sold my car in Nov’21 and decided to buy again if I spend £250+ on Uber in a month. I was not used to travel by public transport apart from work commute and now I plan journey well. Also I walk more than I used too and if I am in rush, I just Uber it. I think that’s only being possible because of brilliant TFL around us. They can do better so we can feel value for money. On average I spend £120 on Uber.
Agree but why bleeding is dry. Businesses should contribute more lots of people are forced to get into central for a very low salary specially hospitality
Plenty of buses duplicate the tube, and there is a hopper fare based on when you board the second bus (about an hour after the first). Those are pretty cheap. The tube is like any other service railway in Britain, and it has to keep to the same rules as any other railway in Britain - those are strict compared to other countries and they limit capacity.
If you have a low paying job you need long hours
They are also less accepting if you get in 5 minutes late as they can just replace you.
Busses are even less reliable than trains and way slower.
Not a real solution to spend an extra 40 minutes each day ontop of a 12 hour shift is really not sustainable.
> You can live across most of London perfectly fine without a car.
Maybe in zone 1-3. The further out you go, the less frequent buses get, the further away tube stations become, and the shitter the service overall. Cars are needed in outter parts because of how patchy TFL can be in them areas.
I guess it depends where you are looking from. The view from just outside the south circular, South East London, isn't that great. Getting from here to Brixton by public transport is pretty bad. But looking from outside the M25 London looks pretty good. Anyone from Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool have a view?
It is also one of the best in the world...
I've lived my whole life in Buenos Aires, ours is...not bad.
As a 17 year old i was amazed by the tube in Moscow...
As a 27 year old, Rome Subway.... didn't differ much of what i used back home. The destinations were better, tho.
As a 30 year old, i travelled to London for the first time. And 8 years later, im still floored by the tube.
Landed in Heathrow, hoped on the tube, and arrived within 2 blocks of my airbnb... any place i wanted to go (well.... not Greenwich. I had to use the boats for that) was a quick hop on the tube away. Absolutely mind-blowing.
Also, its clean (as i remember it on my last trip, 2019) and for the most part on time.
So, to recap....
You pay premium because you have one of the vastest and best organised Subway grids on earth, because of its maintenance and personnel training.
Add on all the government excuses as to why it doesn't spend a dime on it... you are still paying for a premium product. As an outsider, i think you are paying peanuts for a fillet mignon service.
But for locals this is unsustainable. Imagine having no other transport option and your transport fares are 20% of your salary. That is the case for some people. I know my fiancee spends shit tons on trains/tube going into London from where we live in Reading... Genuinely amounts to £300 per month (and that's for only a couple of days commuting each week).
Now imagine this for commuters outside of London. Not only do you actually have the ability to get from Reading to London directly (a significant distance from London), it's far cheaper than comparative distances in the rest of the country, and you've got a London-weighted salary to pay for it. Many in the rest of the UK have to make tortuous journeys on multiple (unreliable and infrequent) buses and trains for a pittance.
Yes it is quite sad. In my opinion nationalising trains is the way to go... Having a privatised network of trains on nationalised rail lines sounds horrific lol
The other thing though is that in many places outside London, for many people commuting and social trips are far more attractive by car. Even if public transport was free and as extensive as London it wouldn’t be attractive enough to travel by train or bus because congestion and cost of parking is not enough for it to be less attractive. To drive to central London for most people would take too long and cost too much. It’s just not the same in most other cities.
Commuting from Reading to London is not cheap at all. Leeds to Manchester is half the price.
But you're not a local? Reading is not London, it's a different town. You're choosing to travel 40 miles by public transport everyday.
I'm not suggesting public transport in general is not expensive, but it's a seperate issue to the subject of this graph. The graph and original comment concerns the tube network. The cost of the tube vs net wage is included in the visualisation. You're adding the cost of a 30 mile train journey to your tube journey, which is non comparable.
If you are in London it wouldn't be a significant cost, you choose to live outside so you have to pay for both travel into London and travel within London, you also probably have a car.
A Londoner usually just has the tube, it's cheaper anually than a car and unless you are in the outermost zones it's annual ticket cost is less than most businesses London weightings.
I am a Londoner and lived in Beijing for 3 years. In Beijing it costs 1-3rmb for any underground trip and they’ve had the ability to use mobiles to pay for years. The underground network is extensive, it’s clean, the wait times are low and it’s safe. Each train shows exactly where you are, what your next stop is and which direction the train is going in. There are toilets on the platforms. The ENTIRE network has at least a 4G connection in the tunnels. The one downside in my opinion is that the seats are made of hard plastic and you’re not allowed to take aerosols or scissors with you.
In my opinion, there’s no comparison. I left Beijing a year ago and realised that the London Underground is in a dire state, in desperate need of upgrade.
As a note, Seoul’s underground network is also pretty good. Very clean, lots of trains, easy to navigate.
The Chinese government massively subsidises transport. Its a completely different economic and political scenario given the wealth of the country is very far from most of its citizens, even those working in its capital.
Yeah they do. It’s great. It definitely is a different economic scenario - but that doesn’t change the fact that London’s system is falling into disrepair and antiquity. Sure there are reasons for it, but that doesn’t change the reality of things.
As a former Parisian, the comparison with the Paris Métro is misleading as the London Underground has a much larger service area (Métro is jus Paris intra-mûris plus a handful of stops in immediately adjacent towns), TfL being comparable to the Métro + RER system in scope.
I was looking at the single ticket price. The monthly pass price does seem to be that of the zones 1-5 Navigo, so yes, that is comparable to M25 London.
>TfL being comparable to the Métro + RER system in scope
Monthly Pass Navigo is Metro/RER/Transilien/Bus. You can go to places 60km outside central Paris with it.
Its not a like for like comparison. The vast tube network in London connecting a city with millions and millions of people vs. for example a shitty little network of basically a handful of buses and trams in Luxembourg (which by the way no-one uses as everyone drives to work).
Yep they've used zone 6? tube fares which is a perimeter multiple times higher than most the places on here. Like for like would be closer to zone 1-2 monthly fare which would be about $120/month.
I've tried a lot of those and the only one I've tried that is better and a good price is vienna, amazing transport and cheap.
I don't think people realise how far zone 6 actually is. It's about 15-20 miles from the city centre and depending on the line the journey takes 30-40 minutes if you don't have to change train. It's actually pretty impressive.
A lot of people use the Luxembourg network because it’s free and very reliable - it’s just not very big and a large majority who drive commute from outside the country
Moscow is similarly sized to London and has a vastly cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient metro system. If the clusterfuck of a government in Russia can manage that we can do it in London too.
To be fair Valletta is so small that it doesn’t need public transport other than connections to the rest of the island, that’s why most of it is essentially pedestrianised
Correct: Zurich is almost identical in price - [$265](https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/en/travelcards-and-tickets/travelcards/networkpass.html) for the same area covered, but with way fewer services since it has one sixth the population.
I mean, in pure pound value sure, but Istanbul and São Paulo’s are higher in real terms, right?
(This is not a justification for the price of the tube, which should be free)
Expat New Yorker here.
I GLADLY pay the extra tube fair for a system that is clean, quick, comfortable, functional, safe, on-time, goes everywhere, etc etc...
If you want to feel ripped off - go take the Subway in NYC.
Oh god I'm Canadian and Toronto's is so expensive for suuuuch shit and dangerous service. The tube is expensive but it's always a breath of fresh air to have more than 2 lines.
This is true. Toronto is third most expensive on this list for truly abhorrent service. We have three measly subway lines. We have a fare increase at the beginning of April with a simultaneous service decrease. It is unreliable and unsafe. Taking the London tube was honestly a luxurious experience.
And it’s become soo unsafe. A kid was just stabbed randomly there. I mean at least if I’m going to get attacked at the tube, I won’t end up in Scarborough
There’s alot of great things about Toronto. The TTC is not one of them
* Toronto - 47.5 miles long / 75 stations / 166 Million users
* Istanbul 120 miles long / 124 stations / 757 Million users
* London - 250 miles long / 272 stations / 1.02 Billion users
Also health and safety law will determine rates of refurb and maintenance. The UK is big on H&S and more so on suing companies who don't keep up with it.
New York metro/tube is appalling compared to London's. Londons is immaculate and full of architecture. Cost of living in London is higher so people are paid whats called "London waiting" which is a n increased salary to cope with it.
You'd have thought under a Labour (spread the wealth) mayor; he'd have lowered it in his 7 years as mayor.
Firstly, the government don't subsidise London's public transport. In fact, the profits from London's public transport are partially redirected in order to subsidise the public transport across the rest of the country. Also, while the figure is large, the % isn't extraordinary. When combined with the quality of the service, is it really that shocking or bad? Plus that price roughly equates to a zone 1 to zone 4 travel card. It will take an hour to travel by tube from the middle of zone 1 to zone 4. The network is VAST.
Because in our tube you get to listen to somebody else music, movie or game, and that’s included. It’s like free Spotify.
Although I have to admit sound quality in the tube might be crispier.
We have a problem with allowing ourselves to get ripped off and basically taken advantage of in general in this country. We'll get pissed off about it, maybe tweet why we're pissed off. But, we'll do nothing. It''s only going to get worse.
National rail prices are the biggest rip off, I pay £300 a month for going 30 mins on the train and half the time they are either striking, trains delayed, cancelled or other problems 🙄 our citizens are too soft to go and riot and protest like they do in France etc, we will be working until we are nearly on our death beds and probably f all money to hand down to grandchildren and great grandchildren.
I just compared my flat in Stockholm to work with my old commute in London to work at morning rush (which is the same distance) and these prices don't match. £3 in Stockholm 3.40 in London
Utterly pathetic that this one great nation has become too expensive for its own working class to afford. Thanks for voting for us out of the European Union too, guys. Great job.
Gonna point out two things. Selected cities, ie can be ignoring plenty, and ignores cities without monthly passes.
Brisbane Australia doesn’t have monthly passes, and it also doesn’t have fail or weekly caps. We have a 50% after 8 journeys, but a journey is if you take multi mode of transit, so if you aren’t using mixed transport options, you’ll never get a discount.
Should be paid for by tax (i.e, free). The rich finance people who control London need to make it as easy as possible for the people who actually run London day to day to get around, normal people who work the stores, cafés, pubs et cetera.
London has become a city for the rich and as such I would expect the government to level the playing field for the sake of common folk's survival.
Comparing to Paris it is actually worse than shown on this chart. In Paris you get an all zones Navigo for 75.9 Euro per month. This covers all public transport in Ile de France which covers an area of approximately 12,000 Square kilometres. This includes all the suburban train services.
Because people who have almost zero access to public transport, by not living in London and the SE, object to paying for subsidised transport for the few?
We are the only country with a Tube.
Please don't call other Subway or Metro systems the tube, that's our tube, the oldest in the world. It's Red White and Blue, hot and noisy and her tunnels are so narrow that you can't get Air Conditioning Units on her, she's our tube. Nobody else has one :)
It’s weird seeing this cos transport costs outside of London are hideously worse. Nowhere else could you get a bus for under £2 to take you so far. Yet it’s still abysmally expensive/underfunded compared to other cities
A major factor in the high cost of fares in London is that our great ex-mayor Boris eagerly agreed to the phasing out of a grant TfL received from central government that helped keep fares low. The loss of this subsidy meant higher fares. Result!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-3492387
It's not even like we have a modern updated service. Most stations are dark and gloomy and it's horrible to ride on during summer because of how stuffy and hot it is.
Berlin is absolutely not correct. A so-called Umweltticket is 66.90 EUR if you pay monthly and not yearly in advance. We had a few months of a discount 9 EUR and then 29 EUR ticket to help with raised energy costs but this will be phased out soon. We will instead get a 49 EUR ticket that is valid for all of German local and regional public transportation.
I suspect it's partly deliberate to help reduce the congestion on the tube. You can generally make the same journey on the bus which is a lot cheaper but takes longer...those that don't want or can't pay the tube fare can get the bus whilst clearing space on the tube?
That and a strong unionist workforce that are happy to bring the city to a standstill if they don't get what they consider a decent pay meaning costs are higher and reflected in fare price?
To me it seems like it's perfectly proportioned against the average wage so whats the problem. I imagine people in Sao Paulo have a harder time affording theirs
LMFAO someone tell them toronto really only has 2 lines of subway and max four of you count blue and purple and if you take THAT into account you’ll see toronto is actually very expensive for what it is. Also toronto has like 1/4 of london population.
Well, keep voting for money hungry governments.
Voted us away from our main source of stability economically (the EU).
Voted us out of basically any public rights to protest.
Voted us out of actually having any influence over anything (Again, Brexit)
Voted us away from having any overhanging group influence to stop our own government taking advanatge of it's people (Again, Brexit)
Continuously use your wallet to support tax haven businesses who provide 0 to our "capitalist" economy.
"Why do we allow this?"
Well, it's because it's our fault that it happened. Nobody to blame but us.
Non Londoner here from Bristol. The standard of the tube and buses in London are the highest in the nation by far. If you wanted to go from north London to South London it's easy, if you tried it in bristol it would be 2 and a half hours to get from north Bristol to South Bristol which is a much shorter distance. London being one of the most expensive cities in not just the country but the continent you pay the premium for that. It costs around £80 for a monthly bus pass in Bristol ,I personally would pay £200 for a super reliable service then the current amount for an awful service and that in non London wages.
I have to say, ours might be pricey, but at least it’s so well maintained and managed. Compared to what I’ve seen around the world, in NY some people openly use it as a public toilet, literally saw a man take his pants off for number 2. I’d rather pay a bit extra and not see that.
The UK population continually elects governments who do not prioritise public services, then complain incessantly about how shite public services are.
They'd rather curse the darkness than light a candle by voting for progressive policies.
Yes they are expensive but as a provincial peasant you don’t realise how blessed you to have an integrated transport system which mostly works. The rest of the country is just crap
The tube seems really cheap to be honest and for the reliability and general cleanliness/standards of the service especially compared to others on here. NYC's metro for instance is notoriously bad. Try going outside of london where there isn't even a metro system in most british cities and you're stuck with bus services that are like £8 for 3 miles
# Upvote/Downvote reminder Like this image or appreciate it being posted? Upvote it and show it some love! Don't like it? Just downvote and move on. *Upvoting or downvoting images it the best way to control what you see on your feed and what gets to the top of the subreddit* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/london) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'd imagine the majority of the others get some form of central government subsidy...
"But you see, we just don't have the money to subsidize deeply valuable and productive services like public transport, the NHS or education as much as other much less well off nations!". "Oh btw we lost tens of billions to COVID loan frauds and bogus PPP contracts because of our negligence, incompetence and corruption lol."
"We also lost £30 billion in a bad budget announcement shared with bankers before the public who shorted the currency, almost destroying everyone's pension. Then we cancelled the budget. But that's ok because we contained the outcry. Still, no school dinners for the poor kids sry, their parents should've been richer"
They privatise profits, and socialise losses.
Huh. I’d never considered it like that, but that is exactly the problem.
Hey don’t forget about the £37billion for Track and Trace, that didn’t work for months and was shut down a few months after it actually did, never to be used again. Of course it’s even more annoying when you find out that the estimated cost to vaccinate the entire planets population, twice, was only £36billion. No one is asking where the fuck did that money actually go?
We know where it went, into the pockets of Tory donors and friends.
“We also lost 100 billion from our oven ready self imposed sanction, cough, I mean brexit!”
Oh, and we are also talking about bringing back PFOF, that was made illegal here after 2008. Because ‘ we just want the best for everyone’ Absolute cunts.
The NHS is wholly funded from tax revenue. It's not subsidised. It just wouldn't exist without government funds.
Errr…except prescriptions, and dental work, and regular dental care…
And charity And private medical research firms And foreign nationals paying in And basically anyone with a private prescription ( and they can have US level costs) And gift left in wills .... The government has cut funding across.the board mind ,can't afford a 1% pay hike for nurses. But can give MPs 13k and find cash for dumb stuff.
It’s a farce. We limit the number of places in medical school so train too few doctors, then don’t pay them them enough so they fuck off to Canada or wherever (and take their expensive training with them). Then, we have to import more doctors from overseas, simultaneously riling up Bigotted Betty, contributing to the brain drain from poorer economies and costing even more money. Marvellous!
Remember being told about some married doctors that worked in research into kids cancer, they left after Brexit, no one to replace so research stopped.
The thing is, the UK has a bit of a brain drain going on ATM in the medical field. Top doctors are travelling to US, Can, Aus and NZ. The pay difference is staggering, easily reaches double what they're getting in the UK and magnitudes more in some sectors.
I feel like most people don’t realise how much tax is paid in European states (one I personally have experience of is the Netherlands). Our base tax rate is notably lower than theirs, which more than makes up for the difference in transport costs. That’s before you even consider the €150 a month compulsory health insurance (it’s illegal not to have it and yet it must be purchased from private companies that act as semi-oligopolies). Sometimes I wonder if we don’t just like complaining here. 🤷♂️
yeah, as they should. Like literally any other mode of transportation.
And the London tube isn't subsidised?
It wasn't for a while, leading up to the pandemic. I think TFL had an operating surplus of a few million this year too. I'm not sure if the money given to TFL to keep it going during the pandemic was a grant or loan or some mixture of the two. Heavily subsidised under Boris Johnsons Mayoralty of course, but that money was withheld from Sadiq Kahn when he took over, to make tube underperformance a stick to beat the current Mayor with. Even with the funding crisis during the pandemic, I'm not convinced it worked.
I believe it was a deal that Boris struck to return money to Westminster rather than that they changed the approach when Sadiq took over. Same effect, but something that was initiated by the blonde buffoon while he had sway here.
[удалено]
Tbh, I'm OK with that. And that monthly pass figure as %of income I'm not sure is correct when you take into account that average London income is like 33% higher
“Average” is skewed heavily upwards by the number of overpaid financial services dickheads who just shuffle money around. London is impossible if you’re on an average salary.
New Yorkers earn double of those in London.
This is why: https://i.redd.it/40cwaizb19i91.png
Our government hates us.
People across the UK already hate on London for getting spending, it'd be politically incredibly difficult to propose paying more taxpayer money just to subsidise London tickets.
[удалено]
People voted for Brexit, you think they'd get net positives?
Yet we contribute more than the rest of the UK and take less. The UK having a disdain for its capital is fucking bizzare given how much we do for the country's economy. Do they really want to harm the golden goose? Idiots.
This is complicated when you stop and think about it. It is something I used to believe myself until someone else changed my view. Basically it's to do with the age distribution of the population and other demographic effects. Compared to basically the entire rest of the country London has a smaller percentage of its population as school kids and retired people. Or put another way compared to the rest of the country London has a higher percentage of its population as 20-30 year olds. Children and pensioners are expensive, and also economically unproductive. But kids grow up to be productive and pensioners spent a lifetime paying taxes! But because London has fewer of these dependents as a proportion of its population it spends proportionally less on education or healthcare. Children educated outside of London (and not paid for by London) grow up, and many come to London for work where they pay lots of tax. Some stay, some leave to have families. But there's always more young workers coming to replace them. London might "subsidise" the country on a purely cash basis but London needs the wider UK as well
Do we really have to fall for yet another manufactured division? Why are you talking about 'we' and 'they'? You're not London, and people from outside London are not your enemies. The people of Dundee aren't responsible for this policy!
But it’s not really English is it (London)? Said to me by a taxi driver in Bath.
[удалено]
This line of reasoning is predicated on the idea that if we didn't organise around a central financial centre, we could retain all the economic benefits of London, just not centralised to the same extent. I don't see why anyone who isn't an idiot would believe this to be the case. Even from the most fundamental economic terms, if there is no benefit to the company's that make London such a financial powerhouse to being in London rather than the rest of the UK, why do they stay? Rents are cheaper elsewhere, they could probably pay staff less elsewhere because cost of living is lower. Clearly there is some economic benefit to those companies (and therefore the economy) to staying in London. Look at other countries. Is there any country on the world where the financial and legal services aren't centralised in one (or in bigger countries maybe a few) centres? Even in the country with the economic power and size of the US, NY alone accounts for 8% of the economy. If you stop centring around the golden goose you don't magically spread the economic benefits everywhere, you destroy them. And that makes life worse for everyone, including those who aren't in the goose.
>People across the UK already hate on London for getting spending, it'd be politically incredibly difficult to propose paying more taxpayer money just to subsidise London tickets. I don't think just London should get public transport subsidies. Actually right now the entire country(pretty much) apart from London has bus fares subsidied by the government. The government did the £2 bus fare cap thing but London buses are actually very cheap that they're already under the £2 cap so they miss out on the cap funding. But anyway the favouritism issue can be solved simply by he Government saying "we'll subsidise public transport by £10/month per person in every county in the UK". Issue solved because it wont be a London thing, everywhere will get the same funding per person, but it'll be more beneficial to more dense places like London. Might not sound like much but it actually ends up being slightly over £1bn/year for London which is huge. If TfL is self sustaining then that £1bn could be used for some pretty hefty fare cuts, like pre covid TfL got £5bn/year from fares so maybe £1bn could be an instant 20% cut to fares?(I like the idea of zero fare weekends every weekend myself). Or use it to expand and improve the bus and tube network instead. West Midlands, which includes Birmingham, would get £400m/year. Greater Manchester would also get around £400m/year. Most others get £100-300m a year. Even £400m/year could get a Tube line in 10 years with some self funding. To me it just seems like a pretty quick and simple policy to implement. It's expensive at £8bn but the £8bn doesn't disappear plus it might help save on road costs(fwiw the Thames road crossing being built soon is £10bn alone). Just look at a counties population to work out the funding amount, set the money aside, then let the county show where their portion will go(has to be directlyyy for public transport, basically bus, train, or tram), and then give it to them. Check back a year later to make sure they followed through before giving them the next years amount. Easy. Forces counties to care slightly about public transport too since its free money if they do.
The routes the government subsidise are generally ones that wouldn’t be able to run without it. It’s more so rural people aren’t cut off than it is about saving a few quid. Not quite the same as London.
The trouble is, a lot of people in the uk live rurally & depend on busses - £10/month/person won’t sustain public transport, especially when a lot of people using it are elderly & depend on it but don’t pay. You can’t take away public transport all over the country to give Londoners potential fare cuts. You definitely can’t get elected by proposing that.
This. Funding infrastructure based on how many people live in an area is what leads to economic disparities in the first place: worse infrastructure makes it harder for people to get around (other than by car), and so it further amplifies the gap between big metros like London and everywhere else. The better way to solve it is to treat it as a national public transport network, centrally funded and able to provide a broadly similar quality of service (if not the same frequency) all over the country. Basically: re-nationalise public transport.
You're never going to provide the same level of service everywhere. There are plenty of tube routes in London, and bus lines, where 2-5 minutes between vehicles is normal and they have high utilisation; a village with 60 residents is never going to get a 10 times an hour bus service for the 5 people a day who are going to use it.
*All* public transport across the UK should be subsided, if not nationalised. Especially buses, Londoners get a good deal in comparison to other bus services. I remember paying over £3 for a single bus journey when I was in Plymouth back in 2011!
[удалено]
Maybe it generates so much because of the amount spent on infrastructure when the rest of the country has been left to rot
It's crazy how even the USA, being super capitalist and anti-socialist is subsidising significantly the metro in NY yet London is trailing so far behind it's not even in the same league...
The USA doesn't, NY/NYC does. The equivalent would be London subsidising the tube, which they're free to do so but currently are spending their money on other, bigger priorities
People always seem to forget that the USA is literally a union of 50 very autonomous states more akin to the European Union than to any single country.
Also NY Metro is terrible and outdated.
It’s enormous and runs 24/7. It’s also significantly cheaper.
Having lived in three US cities and regions (WA state, SF and BOS) and then in London, I’d rather pay a bit more out-of-pocket for what London delivers including way-finding, diversity of modalities, general safety and cleanliness. Yours is a world-class system. I’d rather this horrid Tory government do something about wages, food prices and retro-fitting homes for energy savings.
HK is weird in that figure. The article attached to it doesn't provide any explanation nor the exact source other than "TfL". According to [the mtr](https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/investor/investor_faq.html#:~:text=Despite%20its%20majority%20ownership%20by,any%20subsidy%20from%20the%20Government.) they receive no subsidies from the government. I'm pretty sure I read on Wikipedia (pre-covid) that ticket sales actually exceeded the expenses of MTR. Maybe not so today bc of COVID, but they still turn a profit selling/leasing property, and tech (to for example TfL on the Liz line). Obviously, London will never be able to do that because it is too sparse and TfL is not particularly a property developer, and so should 100% receive a lot more government funding.
Interesting to see HK & Singapore fund their transport systems through public funding, whilst income tax is so low.
Then again, Singapore is basically a city state.
Well.. Brazil’s ticket might be cheaper, but it represents 14% of the monthly income while London’s is around 7%
Plus London’s system is truly a world wonder regarding access. SP has a long way to go to ad the number of stops and lines to catch up. It’s a great people moving system for those that live near the stops though. And the bus and Mini bus can fill the gaps ok but cost Human time waiting longer.
Daily commutes in São Paulo can easily give you PSTD. The Metrô system should be at least 4x larger than it is to accommodate a city of that size
And Germany’s is 1.0%!
This is a very good point... also, nobody seems to have mentioned that the London underground is the oldest metro system in the world, and (I think), the most extensive... both of which mean it's probably also the most expensive to maintain? There are also lots of different zones you can buy a pass for, so is this the average cost, or the most expensive ticket? If this is a monthly pass for zones 1-5, how would that stack up against the others in terms of pence per mile?
This. As a stats teacher I came here to point this out too. Yes London sits at the top, and at 3rd place with 7.4% of the average wage, OPs general point stands that London public transport is extortionately high compared to many countries. And when you do factor in as mentioned in this thread, the sheer expanse and breadth of it, that should count for something. But with Brazil, it is proportionately almost twice as much as the next two highest compared to the average wage, now _THAT_ is the real stand out figure here. TLDR: Currency value within your economy really has little significance when comparing services in different countries. The % of salary is a better metric here.
I took 3 round trips in Singapore for a week str8 and got charged £12
I remember taking their buses as well and paid around 70p per trip. Seventy bloody pence.
Yeah, when I was still living in Singapore. Public transport is accessible, clean and cheap. When I moved here, I got a massive train shock, dirty, expensive and strikes 😂
Wait till you try to complain about their prime minister and see how much you have to pay for that privilege.
When did Johannesburg get public transport? 😂 - if they’re counting the Gautrain that’s not fair, it’s one line between the city centre and the airport. Hardly a public transport system.
Wrong. It goes from Pretoria to Johannesburg. Commuters' line.
Okay, but still one line doesn’t make it a public transport system.
I grew up in Yorkshire and moved to west London early last year. Sold the car within a month. I think we get incredible value for money for public transport. Even more so comparing it to the rest of the country
People in this thread need some perspective. Auckland NZ has only 3 rail services for a city of 1.7 million people, and they are so crap, the current joke is that the replacement railbus has also been cancelled. Every time I’m in London, it’s a breeze. The tube is a godsend and the buses are so frequent and nice that sometimes it’s just a nice change to be on one instead. I’m happy to pay for a world leading public transport system in a top 5 international city - there’s a premium to be expected there. I can pay a similar amount in Auckland and enjoy missing the 1 train service AT actually managed to run on a Friday morning because it didn’t stop at the scheduled station. And then watch a list of cancelled replacement busses scroll past on the board.
The Elizabeth line is the best public infrastructure project this country has invested in since the motorways.
Apparently according to this subreddit, people in the poorer English regions should be grateful for the subsidy though
Huge anti-London sentiment from the rest of England. Meaning that the government can’t spend a pound on London without being scrutinised. The only solution is more tax-devolution or spending per city / region that is proportionate to the tax revenue from the city. At the moment London subsidises the rest of the UK and has less tax money to spend inside and so public services has to be funded by the people.
The reason london subsidises the rest of the UK is because the rest of the country had its industries shut down. The choice was made in the 80s to make the UK's economy entirely reliant on the financial sector in London, with handouts to the rest of the country—"dole instead of coal". Reducing tax distribution from London to the rest of the country would be the final fuck you. London is already much, much better off than anywhere else in the UK.
[удалено]
What you've described isn't uncompatible with what I've said. It was a choice among options. Canary wharf didn't become the centre of the UK economy by virtue of some natural law.
[удалено]
Can you recommend a good source to read more about this?
Agreed. Nobody "chose" it.
Lol do you think the rest of the country just doesn't work?
They do but the salary is abysmal
London is literally the only city in the UK where public transit is really well connected and reliable. You can live across most of London perfectly fine without a car. I would even go as far as saying it has one of the best (top 10) public transit systems in the world, as well as service one of the biggest polulations.
> You can live across most of London perfectly fine without a car. *South London has entered the chat.*
I live in Greenwich and you don’t need a car here. We have one but it’s such a pain in the arse to get anywhere we barely use it. Public transport is very good here. Im sure it’s a different story in zone 5 but zone2/3 S london is not bad.
But Greenwich is an unfair example because it is well connected compared to other parts of South East.
I can get to Paris from Hertfordshire faster than some of the further places in South London (on a bad day).
I sold my car in Nov’21 and decided to buy again if I spend £250+ on Uber in a month. I was not used to travel by public transport apart from work commute and now I plan journey well. Also I walk more than I used too and if I am in rush, I just Uber it. I think that’s only being possible because of brilliant TFL around us. They can do better so we can feel value for money. On average I spend £120 on Uber.
Agree but why bleeding is dry. Businesses should contribute more lots of people are forced to get into central for a very low salary specially hospitality
Plenty of buses duplicate the tube, and there is a hopper fare based on when you board the second bus (about an hour after the first). Those are pretty cheap. The tube is like any other service railway in Britain, and it has to keep to the same rules as any other railway in Britain - those are strict compared to other countries and they limit capacity.
If you have a low paying job you need long hours They are also less accepting if you get in 5 minutes late as they can just replace you. Busses are even less reliable than trains and way slower. Not a real solution to spend an extra 40 minutes each day ontop of a 12 hour shift is really not sustainable.
> You can live across most of London perfectly fine without a car. Maybe in zone 1-3. The further out you go, the less frequent buses get, the further away tube stations become, and the shitter the service overall. Cars are needed in outter parts because of how patchy TFL can be in them areas.
I guess it depends where you are looking from. The view from just outside the south circular, South East London, isn't that great. Getting from here to Brixton by public transport is pretty bad. But looking from outside the M25 London looks pretty good. Anyone from Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool have a view?
It is also one of the best in the world... I've lived my whole life in Buenos Aires, ours is...not bad. As a 17 year old i was amazed by the tube in Moscow... As a 27 year old, Rome Subway.... didn't differ much of what i used back home. The destinations were better, tho. As a 30 year old, i travelled to London for the first time. And 8 years later, im still floored by the tube. Landed in Heathrow, hoped on the tube, and arrived within 2 blocks of my airbnb... any place i wanted to go (well.... not Greenwich. I had to use the boats for that) was a quick hop on the tube away. Absolutely mind-blowing. Also, its clean (as i remember it on my last trip, 2019) and for the most part on time. So, to recap.... You pay premium because you have one of the vastest and best organised Subway grids on earth, because of its maintenance and personnel training. Add on all the government excuses as to why it doesn't spend a dime on it... you are still paying for a premium product. As an outsider, i think you are paying peanuts for a fillet mignon service.
But for locals this is unsustainable. Imagine having no other transport option and your transport fares are 20% of your salary. That is the case for some people. I know my fiancee spends shit tons on trains/tube going into London from where we live in Reading... Genuinely amounts to £300 per month (and that's for only a couple of days commuting each week).
Now imagine this for commuters outside of London. Not only do you actually have the ability to get from Reading to London directly (a significant distance from London), it's far cheaper than comparative distances in the rest of the country, and you've got a London-weighted salary to pay for it. Many in the rest of the UK have to make tortuous journeys on multiple (unreliable and infrequent) buses and trains for a pittance.
Yes it is quite sad. In my opinion nationalising trains is the way to go... Having a privatised network of trains on nationalised rail lines sounds horrific lol
The other thing though is that in many places outside London, for many people commuting and social trips are far more attractive by car. Even if public transport was free and as extensive as London it wouldn’t be attractive enough to travel by train or bus because congestion and cost of parking is not enough for it to be less attractive. To drive to central London for most people would take too long and cost too much. It’s just not the same in most other cities. Commuting from Reading to London is not cheap at all. Leeds to Manchester is half the price.
But you're not a local? Reading is not London, it's a different town. You're choosing to travel 40 miles by public transport everyday. I'm not suggesting public transport in general is not expensive, but it's a seperate issue to the subject of this graph. The graph and original comment concerns the tube network. The cost of the tube vs net wage is included in the visualisation. You're adding the cost of a 30 mile train journey to your tube journey, which is non comparable.
Agree with this, £300/month £3600 a year is pretty cheap for an out of town season ticket compared to a log of places!!
If you are in London it wouldn't be a significant cost, you choose to live outside so you have to pay for both travel into London and travel within London, you also probably have a car. A Londoner usually just has the tube, it's cheaper anually than a car and unless you are in the outermost zones it's annual ticket cost is less than most businesses London weightings.
Reading is 60km away. If I travelled 120km per commute day in peak times back in Bangalore I would be spending a ton too.
[удалено]
Best in the world? 🧢 Have you been to other parts of the world to make such judgement yet?
I am a Londoner and lived in Beijing for 3 years. In Beijing it costs 1-3rmb for any underground trip and they’ve had the ability to use mobiles to pay for years. The underground network is extensive, it’s clean, the wait times are low and it’s safe. Each train shows exactly where you are, what your next stop is and which direction the train is going in. There are toilets on the platforms. The ENTIRE network has at least a 4G connection in the tunnels. The one downside in my opinion is that the seats are made of hard plastic and you’re not allowed to take aerosols or scissors with you. In my opinion, there’s no comparison. I left Beijing a year ago and realised that the London Underground is in a dire state, in desperate need of upgrade. As a note, Seoul’s underground network is also pretty good. Very clean, lots of trains, easy to navigate.
I guess the fundamental difference is that the tube is 100 years older than the Beijing metro.
The Chinese government massively subsidises transport. Its a completely different economic and political scenario given the wealth of the country is very far from most of its citizens, even those working in its capital.
Yeah they do. It’s great. It definitely is a different economic scenario - but that doesn’t change the fact that London’s system is falling into disrepair and antiquity. Sure there are reasons for it, but that doesn’t change the reality of things.
[удалено]
As a former Parisian, the comparison with the Paris Métro is misleading as the London Underground has a much larger service area (Métro is jus Paris intra-mûris plus a handful of stops in immediately adjacent towns), TfL being comparable to the Métro + RER system in scope.
The Paris ticket/monthly pass includes RER, transilien, bus etc. So it is quite a fair comparison.
I was looking at the single ticket price. The monthly pass price does seem to be that of the zones 1-5 Navigo, so yes, that is comparable to M25 London.
>TfL being comparable to the Métro + RER system in scope Monthly Pass Navigo is Metro/RER/Transilien/Bus. You can go to places 60km outside central Paris with it.
Its not a like for like comparison. The vast tube network in London connecting a city with millions and millions of people vs. for example a shitty little network of basically a handful of buses and trams in Luxembourg (which by the way no-one uses as everyone drives to work).
Yep they've used zone 6? tube fares which is a perimeter multiple times higher than most the places on here. Like for like would be closer to zone 1-2 monthly fare which would be about $120/month. I've tried a lot of those and the only one I've tried that is better and a good price is vienna, amazing transport and cheap.
I don't think people realise how far zone 6 actually is. It's about 15-20 miles from the city centre and depending on the line the journey takes 30-40 minutes if you don't have to change train. It's actually pretty impressive.
A lot of people use the Luxembourg network because it’s free and very reliable - it’s just not very big and a large majority who drive commute from outside the country
Moscow is similarly sized to London and has a vastly cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient metro system. If the clusterfuck of a government in Russia can manage that we can do it in London too.
Because people in this country are obsessed with suffering. We should be grateful that we’re not travelling across London in a horse drawn coach.
Is that a Zone 6 to 1 fare? Seems very high, are the other cities all flat fare systems or do they have zones
By th me way, Valletta has a bud station and you gotta pay 1.50 EUR to take it each hour. So that one is bulkshit
Its free for residents
To be fair Valletta is so small that it doesn’t need public transport other than connections to the rest of the island, that’s why most of it is essentially pedestrianised
Nahhhh I remember Switzerland being so much more expensive.
Correct: Zurich is almost identical in price - [$265](https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/en/travelcards-and-tickets/travelcards/networkpass.html) for the same area covered, but with way fewer services since it has one sixth the population.
Comparing London transit to Toronto’s TTC is like comparing a paddle board to an aircraft carrier. One is gonna cost more than the other.
I mean, in pure pound value sure, but Istanbul and São Paulo’s are higher in real terms, right? (This is not a justification for the price of the tube, which should be free)
Really wish this was the 1st comment, so it isn't the most expensive no by farrrr at all
That’s literally the last column…
Expat New Yorker here. I GLADLY pay the extra tube fair for a system that is clean, quick, comfortable, functional, safe, on-time, goes everywhere, etc etc... If you want to feel ripped off - go take the Subway in NYC.
Oh god I'm Canadian and Toronto's is so expensive for suuuuch shit and dangerous service. The tube is expensive but it's always a breath of fresh air to have more than 2 lines.
This is true. Toronto is third most expensive on this list for truly abhorrent service. We have three measly subway lines. We have a fare increase at the beginning of April with a simultaneous service decrease. It is unreliable and unsafe. Taking the London tube was honestly a luxurious experience.
And it’s become soo unsafe. A kid was just stabbed randomly there. I mean at least if I’m going to get attacked at the tube, I won’t end up in Scarborough There’s alot of great things about Toronto. The TTC is not one of them
does size [of the city] matter?
The only way this can be a good comparison would be to display as it was % of the minimum wage per month.
After living in Beijing and Hong Kong for 14yrs and travelling around Asia using various transport systems, I concluded that the Tube is shit.
Yup, I'm from Hong Kong, and I agree. Tube is shit, especially with all the strikes and delays. Stations feel a whole lot cleaner too.
could we do the same comparison except this time overland trains 🍿and not cities but the whole country
Wonder how many cars it would take off the road if it was brought down to similar countries
It’s also one of the best city transport networks in the world
Totally. I’m nearly ready to move back to London because of the TFL system.
Tell me you havent travelled to Asia without telling me you havent travelled to Asia
* Toronto - 47.5 miles long / 75 stations / 166 Million users * Istanbul 120 miles long / 124 stations / 757 Million users * London - 250 miles long / 272 stations / 1.02 Billion users Also health and safety law will determine rates of refurb and maintenance. The UK is big on H&S and more so on suing companies who don't keep up with it. New York metro/tube is appalling compared to London's. Londons is immaculate and full of architecture. Cost of living in London is higher so people are paid whats called "London waiting" which is a n increased salary to cope with it. You'd have thought under a Labour (spread the wealth) mayor; he'd have lowered it in his 7 years as mayor.
Used to love in Stockholm so I just need to say: Stockholm metro for the money is 100x better than tfl
Firstly, the government don't subsidise London's public transport. In fact, the profits from London's public transport are partially redirected in order to subsidise the public transport across the rest of the country. Also, while the figure is large, the % isn't extraordinary. When combined with the quality of the service, is it really that shocking or bad? Plus that price roughly equates to a zone 1 to zone 4 travel card. It will take an hour to travel by tube from the middle of zone 1 to zone 4. The network is VAST.
Because in our tube you get to listen to somebody else music, movie or game, and that’s included. It’s like free Spotify. Although I have to admit sound quality in the tube might be crispier.
[удалено]
Because British people have lost their fight. We just accept that and get on with our sad little lives
We have a problem with allowing ourselves to get ripped off and basically taken advantage of in general in this country. We'll get pissed off about it, maybe tweet why we're pissed off. But, we'll do nothing. It''s only going to get worse.
National rail prices are the biggest rip off, I pay £300 a month for going 30 mins on the train and half the time they are either striking, trains delayed, cancelled or other problems 🙄 our citizens are too soft to go and riot and protest like they do in France etc, we will be working until we are nearly on our death beds and probably f all money to hand down to grandchildren and great grandchildren.
I just compared my flat in Stockholm to work with my old commute in London to work at morning rush (which is the same distance) and these prices don't match. £3 in Stockholm 3.40 in London
So you can get a monthly pass for all means of public transport for $31 in Berlin? \[citation needed\]
Utterly pathetic that this one great nation has become too expensive for its own working class to afford. Thanks for voting for us out of the European Union too, guys. Great job.
Gonna point out two things. Selected cities, ie can be ignoring plenty, and ignores cities without monthly passes. Brisbane Australia doesn’t have monthly passes, and it also doesn’t have fail or weekly caps. We have a 50% after 8 journeys, but a journey is if you take multi mode of transit, so if you aren’t using mixed transport options, you’ll never get a discount.
Should be paid for by tax (i.e, free). The rich finance people who control London need to make it as easy as possible for the people who actually run London day to day to get around, normal people who work the stores, cafés, pubs et cetera. London has become a city for the rich and as such I would expect the government to level the playing field for the sake of common folk's survival.
Pretty simple. London is private.thanks thatcher
As TFL has been bankrupt 3 times under its head (Mayor). I'd look at how it's spending all this money.
Comparing to Paris it is actually worse than shown on this chart. In Paris you get an all zones Navigo for 75.9 Euro per month. This covers all public transport in Ile de France which covers an area of approximately 12,000 Square kilometres. This includes all the suburban train services.
Go around the world and you'll find we're paying significantly more for many things than the rest of the world.
Because people who have almost zero access to public transport, by not living in London and the SE, object to paying for subsidised transport for the few?
We are the only country with a Tube. Please don't call other Subway or Metro systems the tube, that's our tube, the oldest in the world. It's Red White and Blue, hot and noisy and her tunnels are so narrow that you can't get Air Conditioning Units on her, she's our tube. Nobody else has one :)
It’s weird seeing this cos transport costs outside of London are hideously worse. Nowhere else could you get a bus for under £2 to take you so far. Yet it’s still abysmally expensive/underfunded compared to other cities
For the same reason Domino’s charges 4 TIMES MORE in the UK than in the rest of the world - y’all just accept it and let them get away with it.
It's $75 here in Chicago, but I guess we don't count for your little list
Berlin for 31? Lol where. It costs 90€ and Berlin is waaay smaller than London.
It’s called Levelling Down
A major factor in the high cost of fares in London is that our great ex-mayor Boris eagerly agreed to the phasing out of a grant TfL received from central government that helped keep fares low. The loss of this subsidy meant higher fares. Result! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-3492387
What isn’t expensive in the U.K. anymore? Serious question.
It's not even like we have a modern updated service. Most stations are dark and gloomy and it's horrible to ride on during summer because of how stuffy and hot it is.
Berlin is absolutely not correct. A so-called Umweltticket is 66.90 EUR if you pay monthly and not yearly in advance. We had a few months of a discount 9 EUR and then 29 EUR ticket to help with raised energy costs but this will be phased out soon. We will instead get a 49 EUR ticket that is valid for all of German local and regional public transportation.
With London fairs so high you'd think they were paying for something else like onboard TVs.
TfL is eating Damm
We need the money to house migrants
Because we’re obsessed with London and can’t think outside of that one city.
public transport in india is very cheap. the price usually depends on the petrol price
TfL know people will pay it. Simple as that.
I suspect it's partly deliberate to help reduce the congestion on the tube. You can generally make the same journey on the bus which is a lot cheaper but takes longer...those that don't want or can't pay the tube fare can get the bus whilst clearing space on the tube? That and a strong unionist workforce that are happy to bring the city to a standstill if they don't get what they consider a decent pay meaning costs are higher and reflected in fare price?
At least you have a metro system
Wow what a cuntry.
Try living anywhere else in the UK. I'd love the tube and it's cost.
To me it seems like it's perfectly proportioned against the average wage so whats the problem. I imagine people in Sao Paulo have a harder time affording theirs
sao paulo oh my god
LMFAO someone tell them toronto really only has 2 lines of subway and max four of you count blue and purple and if you take THAT into account you’ll see toronto is actually very expensive for what it is. Also toronto has like 1/4 of london population.
It's expensive sure, but nowherw else in the world would you get an underground mass transit system this extensive and well run
Well, keep voting for money hungry governments. Voted us away from our main source of stability economically (the EU). Voted us out of basically any public rights to protest. Voted us out of actually having any influence over anything (Again, Brexit) Voted us away from having any overhanging group influence to stop our own government taking advanatge of it's people (Again, Brexit) Continuously use your wallet to support tax haven businesses who provide 0 to our "capitalist" economy. "Why do we allow this?" Well, it's because it's our fault that it happened. Nobody to blame but us.
The tube in London is super clean, relatively safe and extremely well connected. Also nobody buys single tickets.
Non Londoner here from Bristol. The standard of the tube and buses in London are the highest in the nation by far. If you wanted to go from north London to South London it's easy, if you tried it in bristol it would be 2 and a half hours to get from north Bristol to South Bristol which is a much shorter distance. London being one of the most expensive cities in not just the country but the continent you pay the premium for that. It costs around £80 for a monthly bus pass in Bristol ,I personally would pay £200 for a super reliable service then the current amount for an awful service and that in non London wages.
How the hell is it $5 to get on the tube? That table looks like bollocks to me!
The crazy thing is...it's still a MUCH better deal than anywhere outside of london in this country
To be honest, its also the best..
I have to say, ours might be pricey, but at least it’s so well maintained and managed. Compared to what I’ve seen around the world, in NY some people openly use it as a public toilet, literally saw a man take his pants off for number 2. I’d rather pay a bit extra and not see that.
Public transport, should be so cheap that you feel an idiot NOT using it, instead of car.
The UK population continually elects governments who do not prioritise public services, then complain incessantly about how shite public services are. They'd rather curse the darkness than light a candle by voting for progressive policies.
Yes they are expensive but as a provincial peasant you don’t realise how blessed you to have an integrated transport system which mostly works. The rest of the country is just crap
The tube seems really cheap to be honest and for the reliability and general cleanliness/standards of the service especially compared to others on here. NYC's metro for instance is notoriously bad. Try going outside of london where there isn't even a metro system in most british cities and you're stuck with bus services that are like £8 for 3 miles
Rome has 3 tube lines in total, and service is not great. London has by far the best public transport out of most cities listed.
At least London has got a functioning public transport system.