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.
Indeed, that's not only a very relevant point but one particularly important on airport routes! That was part of the discussion around the funding of Crossrail, it is part of the discussion on the funding of the new (useless in comparison in my view) planned CDG express train route, and it's been in other smaller cities. For instance, at NCE, the new tramway route is charged at the normal rate but some wanted to charge it at a special (higher) airport rate to avoid "subsidising tourists", and instead, the new route was made entirely free for the first two weeks of service. Thankfully (in my view) this has been ignore, but it is interesting that airport public transport charging systems do vary a lot from city to city from totally integrated to highly differentiated.
London has an unusual mix from that point of view. The tube is charged as regular zone 6 but if I remember correctly, Crossrail to Heathrow will be charged more than other nearby stations (or am I wrong? I'd love to be! 
) The weirdest one to me is Gatwick: Gatwick Express takes 30 minutes and is extortionate, regular trains to various stations which take the exact same time but are not marketed as "Gatwick something" are only a fraction of the price!
It's so tricky nowadays too because obviously, the better and cheaper public transport to/from airports the more complaints authorities get from Taxs, minicabs etc! ON the whole, I'm personally of the belief that the more people we can put on regular public transport and who are still happy the better, but I know that this has a (several) cost(s).
Originally Posted by
kingstontoon
Would you be able to confirm whether you use London's transport on a daily basis though or do you judge it on what your many friends in East and South London tell you? I ask, as I commute using two Underground lines every day to and from work, 45 minute journey time door-to-door, and while I don't quite keep a spreadsheet recording my daily journey time reliability, it's a rare day that I don't leave the house at 08:45 and arrive at my desk +/- 1 minute of 09:30.
Answered you by PM. Of course, if you get the right commute, it can work perfectly fine. It's true of both routes and specific stations (eg Holborn is frequently exit only at peak evening time which frustrated people working there no end, Leicester Square never is so even if you have to wait you won't be stuck outside in the rain till they open the grid for long minutes. And yes people universally complain about commute everywhere, but not necessarily about the same things. You mention Paris and New York, and there a lot of people complain about the dirty trains and the overcrowding, but there is path-dependency there - the whole London subway (inner and outer London) has an annual usage of about 1.4 billion people, the Paris subway alone (ie, less than London zone 1 as beyond that service is on the RER) is 1.7 billion people annually (1.8 billion in NYC and 2.4 billion in Moscow). The more people the more crowding. In Paris, another major complaint are the strikes but that is obviously not a network issue. Thankfully, in London as elsewhere, a vast majority of people have tolerable commutes, but it's the proportion who can't which vary a lot.
Originally Posted by
kingstontoon
but is £7 a day for unlimited zone 1-6 travel, covering almost 1,500 square km (before considering annual leave etc) really that terrible value for money? It's also worth considering that we have the Victoria line running at 36 trains per hour (tph), the Jubilee, Northern and Central at around 30tph, and the majority of others (pre-upgrade) above 20tph.
Totally agree, it is very good value, but obviously as it is off peak it is not available to anyone with a regular work schedule. Incidentally, I also agree that the cost of an off peak journey to Heathrow is extremely reasonable for anyone with an Oyster card, a lot cheaper than the equivalent in Paris for instance.
With regards to frequencies, yes, up to 36tph on the Victoria line sounds really good at first... until you look at comparable subway systems. In Paris, for instance, line 7 has 60tph at peak time and line 13 has 52. That's basically double.
Originally Posted by
kingstontoon
I often travel to New York and love to travel on their Subway both as a public transport professional and enthusiast, but it feels like every time I travel in from JFK on the E I wait forever for a train, then get stuck in the tunnels somewhere in Queens at least twice, before arriving 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival.
Again, totally agree. Public transport to JFK is not good at all. Public transport to TXL is really poor especially given how close it is to the city as is ORY whilst CDG is mediocre at best. Of course we are not doing as well as some of the best in class (say SIN, HND, etc or those fully integrated in train networks) but of all the things which I think should urgently be improved about LHR, I'll admit that transport access is way down my list of concerns...