London vs New York City (transfer, living, pricing)

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by Emily Cohn - Business Insider

The London Tube may have fancy turnstiles and futuristic platform screen doors, but the subway system closes every day.

NYC subway runs all night and that's why it's great - Business Insider

Just read this in the Business Insider which now has no comments to reply.

I think the NY Journalist should do a little more research in the future, as much of the London Tube is 24 hour at weekends, with more lines becoming 24 hour and London Overground and DLR to be 24 hour along with Crossrail in the future.

Whilst London's Night Bus Network has been expanded and operate 24/7, indeed the Night Buses are often quicker than most subways and undergrounds once you get out of Central London and I often found the Night Bus to be quicker than the quivalent tube journey, and it should be noted that the London Underground has a faster average speed than the NYC Subway and less stations to slow it down.

90% of Londoners live within 400 metres of a bus stop, Over 8000 scheduled buses operate on over 700 different routes, on top of this you have the London Underground, London Overground, Regional Rail, National Rail, Docklands Light Railway, South London Tramlink, River Buses etc.

London Underground is only one part of London's vast Transport System.

[Hightower72]

I like the first line of that article.

"The New York City Subway has had its fair share of problems lately."

[Trafalgar Law]

Originally Posted by F18

None. Both overrated cities, horrible to live, full of issues and problems and both have crap climates.

The posters of both cities are so desperate in showing that their city is the best and superior to all others that it passes the border of ridiculous.

Honestly, from the point of view of a resident here in London, I don't even care if the city is the most important in the world or not.

Notice something like importance doesn't have an impact on everyone's life. Quantify "importance" for me, please? How does it make my life better? How does it make our city better? Does being "important" somehow magically make problems go away?

From a resident's point of view, all we can hope for is that London keeps taking the steps to make this the best version of London possible for us. To upgrade our transport system, to improve our quality of life, to provide even more greenspace, to open up even more basic services, to squeeze in more housing for every income bracket. To preserve our historical legacy. To innovate more cultural attributes. To step up security and defense. To export our culture responsibly. To foster an economy and community based off intelligence and ingenuity. These things are truly "important" to the people that live here.

Some blogosphere discussion with New Yorkers is not. If New Yorkers wish to view their city as more important or superior or whatever, then be our guest at it. We could care less about this useless and largely subjective discussion. We just want to internalize and become an even better version of ourselves than what we already are and we continue to do just that. See all the improvements happening in London right now, that's good enough for us.

[Pokitobounto]

Originally Posted by Brave New World

Just read this in the Business Insider which now has no comments to reply.

I think the NY Journalist should do a little more research in the future, as much of the London Tube is 24 hour at weekends, with more lines becoming 24 hour and London Overground and DLR to be 24 hour along with Crossrail in the future.

Whilst London's Night Bus Network has been expanded and operate 24/7, indeed the Night Buses are often quicker than most subways and undergrounds once you get out of Central London and I often found the Night Bus to be quicker than the quivalent tube journey, and it should be noted that the London Underground has a faster average speed than the NYC Subway and less stations to slow it down.

90% of Londoners live within 400 metres of a bus stop, Over 8000 scheduled buses operate on over 700 different routes, on top of this you have the London Underground, London Overground, Regional Rail, National Rail, Docklands Light Railway, South London Tramlink, River Buses etc.

London Underground is only one part of London's vast Transport System.

The question is: would New Yorkers be okay to sacrifice 4 or 5 hours of subway per day and substitute this with a dense network of buses (that work well at night, without traffic jams), and have the quality of metros London has? I would like to know...

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by Pokitobounto

The question is: would New Yorkers be okay to sacrifice 4 or 5 hours of subway per day and substitute this with a dense network of buses (that work well at night, without traffic jams), and have the quality of metros London has? I would like to know...

Most people get in to London using heavy rail and you can even trave around London by heavy rail such as London Overground, which is far faster than any underground or subway system, as for buses they increasingly just use special bus only lanes with a London Bus Priority Network and in Central London their are congestion charges for private vehicles. Taxis a can also use bus lanes.

Together London's Trains, Tube, Light Raill/Trams and Buses intergate well to provide a very good system, and London has planned well for the future and invested heavily.

The latest measure is colour coded buses for different routes and you can access apps showing where buses are and when the next one is due.

London buses to be colour-coded just like the Tube | Metro News

[OyCrumbler]

I think the question would be are New Yorkers willing to pay the far higher costs that Londoners pay for fares to get better quality metro service (cleanliness and state of good repair). The answer is almost certainly no.

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

I think the question would be are New Yorkers willing to pay the far higher costs that Londoners pay for fares to get better quality metro service (cleanliness and state of good repair). The answer is almost certainly no.

More buses is one way NYC could improve it's transport system.

Congestion Pricing Won't Solve New York's Transportation Woes

There is also daily price capping in relation to zone travel in London. The highest possible daily cap (zones 1-9 plus Shenfield, outside of London, which, I don't even know how you'd reach that cap unless you're a delivery person) is £28.60. Zone 1-6 is capped at £12.00. In terms of Zones 1 & 2 which cover central London (including as far away as Canary Wharf) the maximum daily payment for ridership across the two zones using an Oyster or Tourist Oyser is £6.50. Bus travel and other services are also by Oyster and have even lower caps, whilst there are all kinds of concessions.

I really don't think a lot of people outside of London realise this.

[That_One_Guy]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

I think the question would be are New Yorkers willing to pay the far higher costs that Londoners pay for fares to get better quality metro service (cleanliness and state of good repair). The answer is almost certainly no.

I would be fine with paying more on 2 conditions:

1. If it weren't too large of a fare hike
2. As long as Cuomo makes sure the money actually gets put back into the MTA and not elsewhere Upstate or on $200 Million light shows on a ****ty bridge that nobody likes. I still can't get over that one.

Honestly if they sold tickets to the demolition of the old Kosciuoszko Bridge I'm sure people would be lining up, excited to see that thing finally go. It could've paid to fix some of our problems with the subway. Or better yet, hold a raffle, and the winner gets to push the button to just blow it all up. Who wouldn't want to be the one to do that? I think NYers would get more excited about that than a waste of $200 Million dollar light show. And we'd be raising money too.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Brave New World

More buses is one way NYC could improve it's transport system.

Congestion Pricing Won't Solve New York's Transportation Woes

There is also daily price capping in relation to zone travel in London. The highest possible daily cap (zones 1-9 plus Shenfield, outside of London, which, I don't even know how you'd reach that cap unless you're a delivery person) is £28.60. Zone 1-6 is capped at £12.00. In terms of Zones 1 & 2 which cover central London (including as far away as Canary Wharf) the maximum daily payment for ridership across the two zones using an Oyster or Tourist Oyser is £6.50. Bus travel and other services are also by Oyster and have even lower caps, whilst there are all kinds of concessions.

I really don't think a lot of people outside of London realise this.

I realize this and there's no way that New Yorkers would go for this--it'd come out to approximately triple what many pay now as a minimum. People were having fits with the most recent fare hike and on an unlimited monthly 30-day pass that worked out to $4.50 more a month.

I'm very open to fare hikes though. I think if and when the RFID cards are finally rolled out, I'd be in favor of very modest fare hikes like the last one for people to get New York City resident cards and then charge massive increases to London-level pricing for everyone else though I'd be wary that it might push the throngs of tourists to use cabs and uber/lyft excessively.

I think the biggest thing that NYC needs to do, besides build the second set of Hudson River tunnels so they can fix the current ones, is to work commuter rail into the general system better via through-running and consolidated services where the commuter trains cross through Manhattan with multiple stops rather than terminate at a single one and then have to reverse and back out again. That would easily be the biggest improvement to the system whose issues are mostly during peak commuter periods. This means that a much broader number of commuter rail riders don't need to transfer to buses or the busy subway system, but instead have an increased chance they'd be dropped off within walking distance of their workplace. It'd mean that people living in one side of the greater metropolitan area has access to jobs on the other side without a massive number of transfers. It means that for the price of some organizational restructuring and relatively little additional construction and equipment, city residents essentially get what are effectively additional rapid transit lines.

[Botev1912]

I used London tube earlier this month and wasn't that impressed. Yes, it works and goes everywhere, but the system is outdated, the trains are really hot inside because no AC and no escalators in a lot of stations. Tokyo for example had a much more modern system.