Originally Posted by
navylad
fair enough, I wasn’t argueing against the use of tax subsidy, just that if you are only going to compare on price, you would need to consider where the funding comes from and also who are you comparing it for, the people that live there or visitors, a lot of tourist cities will subsidise annual passes in favour of high single-trip fares.
This is a very valid point.
TFL now receives no central government subsidy for day to day operations (capital expenditure is different) and the subsidy from the GLA council tax and business rates is also limited so of course the out of pocket costs are higher compared to a system that does get such subsidies.
Fare box recovery (ratio between total income and income from fares) is a more valid measure.
We'd all like it to be like Luxembourg where from next year when public transport will be free at the point of use but that ain't going to happen here.