Mackle

I guess the HEX is in line with the rest of London's public transport, since it is one of the most expensive cities in the world for commuting.

There was a Channel Four feature on recently that showed that the average train season ticket for a 30 miles commute to London was almost £4000, whereas the same distance of commute to Paris was around £900. And that a season ticket that covered the use of all public transport for the whole of Germany, was cheaper than a season ticket for commuting from Wokingham to London.

criso

Taxi is no quicker than the Piccadilly line for me at most times of the day. Exception is early hours before the tube starts when I can justify expensing the fare.

When I'm going to the airport it always seems to be 7 minutes till a T5 train. Just sitting on the platform now. T1, 2 and 3 are more frequent but depending on your terminal is a bit of a hike at the other end.

gms

Some people simply don't realise how lucky they are in terms of public transport options!

I live just 40 miles outside central London. I get a basic bus service that doesn't go anywhere particularly useful (one per hour during the day, nothing in the evening, nor most of the weekend). Plus I get the pleasure of using South Western Railways - now pretty much the worst and least reliable train company in the whole of the UK. I can't even get an Uber out here!

How anyone can claim that Heathrow is badly connected to central London when you have the option of frequent tubes, HEX and bus services is something I struggle with. Time for a reality check I think!

Koru Flyer

warreng

The main attraction is that I know the HEX schedule and I know exactly how long it will take to get to T5, even at 5pm in the evening. A cab during peak hour is a less certain proposition, particularly if you like to minimise unnecessary travel time. Outside of peak hours I really don't have any preference one way or the other, but that's the whole reason the price is jacked up during peak hour.

:D!

This is what I felt when I read this thread.

T5's public transport is OK from Central London and if you live along the train lines. (The Piccadilly line to T5 could be more frequent if the Rayners Lane branch was transferred to the District line, which may or may not be happening in the future. Personally if all terminals had been planned at the same time as the tube I would have built it as a bidirectional loop around Hatton Cross-T4-T5-T123-Hatton Cross.)

Where T5 fails is in bus connections. I frequently travel to LHR by bus but all the useful buses go to T2-3 only, requiring either a long trek into the tube station, and a wait of up to 20 minutes whenever one train is diverted or reversed early (and the info boards are not reliable), or the 482/490 bus which takes even longer. Funnily enough the easiest time to get to T5 is when the N9 is operating.

Going to Sutton, I wonder if you could do tube to Wimbledon (relatively easy change at Earls Court when compared to Leicester Square/Embankment) followed by either the Sutton loop Thameslink (now much improved and easy to get live running data from 3rd-party sites) or a combination of buses and/or trams (now can change between several services without an extra fare). Assuming not too much luggage obviously.

NickB

Given that the starting point of this discussion is connection of the airport to the network, I am not convinced that main airports are better connected to the public transport infrastucture and offer more frequent and seamless connections in all of these cities than in London.

T8191

Getting there ... slowly!

Dateline 2019>>> Dulles Airport

orbitmic

George K

I have yet to try this, mostly because Google maps estimates around the same travel time with the bus but will certainly give this a go next time I land at T5. I've got quite a few flights in short succession actually and wanted to also try to connect to T2 via the shuttle bus and clear immigration there (something that I've never done) and see if this shaves some of the faffing of moving between terminals landside.

Misco60

I disagree: I think London has one of the best public transport systems of any major city in the world. And, despite frequent claims to the contrary, it costs about the same as public transport in my home city, Berlin.

robertf999

kingstontoon

Absolutely this. Yes, things on the Tube can go wrong from time-to-time, traffic congestion causes delays to the buses and we need weekend engineering works to continue bringing Victorian rail infrastructure up to modern standards. But the sheer volume of people we move every day in London, safely and generally punctually, is phenomenal. The Tube has just, in the run up to Christmas, had its busiest day ever with 5 million people travelling and we move even more than that by bus. Tube headway targets are consistently met 95+% of the time across most lines, with the poorer performers still in the 90s and due to be upgraded over the next decade. We remember the odd journeys where things go wrong but generally not the majority which are performed exactly as intended by the transport provider.

Yes, things aren't perfect but the only people who could claim London has a genuinely poor public transport system are those who don't use it regularly, choosing instead to closet themselves away in taxis and minicabs, causing further congestion on the roads and slowing down the buses.

KT

P.S. I agree HEx is ridiculously expensive for what it is but the Piccadilly line and TfL Rail are good, reasonably priced, alternatives.
P.P.S Western Rail Access to Heathrow is finally progressing so there's at least some light at the end of the tunnel for those accessing the airport from the west.

orbitmic

I hate to keep this thread so ot but...

A monthly travelcard zone 1-2 (the cheapest) costs £135. Even at today's awful exchange rate, that is over €150. An annual travelcard is £1404 (well over €1,500)
In Berlin a monthly travel card is €81, annual is €761
In Paris a toutes zones monthly carte Navigo is €75.20. Annual one is €827.20
In Rome monthly passes range for one zone are €24.50 and annual is €172 (only slightly more for zones 1-3)
In Madrid, abonos zone A (€54.60) or A-B2 (€72), annually, it is €543 and €720 respectively.
In Stockholm, all zone SEK860 for a month (~£75), not sure about annual.

In terms of your finding London one of the best public transport system in the world, I have of course no problem with you making that argument but could I ask what you base it on? The two main criteria I've seen used are affordability, average commuter travel time, and coverage, measured, as rightly noted by Jagboi, by the proportion of houses with given distance of stations. As mentioned though, unfortunately, the figures that Jagboi saw were badly mistaken, and in fact London compares very, very negatively to all the competitors above (not to mention the likes of Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, or Moscow) on all three criterion, so it would be good to know which other criteria you have in mind if only so that I can cheer up my many friends living in East and South London.

* PS: i'm not aware that station closure at various point in the day is a criterion I've ever seen but I know it also annoys many people when trying to head home from Covent Garden, Holborn or several city stations when they finish work at peak time).

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingstontoon

But the sheer volume of people we move every day in London, safely and generally punctually, is phenomenal. The Tube has just, in the run up to Christmas, had its busiest day ever with 5 million people travelling and we move even more than that by bus. Tube headway targets are consistently met 95+% of the time across most lines, with the poorer performers still in the 90s and due to be upgraded over the next decade.

I would whole-heartedly agree with your point if we compared London to Birmingham or Nottingham, but how do you think this compares to Paris, Moscow, let alone Tokyo or even NYC? As for targets, they are not an international standard of any sort, just that, targets set by London for a slow improvement of a situation known to be problematic for many.

Don't take me wrong, there is plenty done to try and improve the life of Londoners, chief among which the 24 hour tube which is a brilliant initiative. The network, however, remains largely what it is, not anyone's fault in particular (at least not today) but when big cities try to look for an example of network to emulate, London is just not what they focus their eyes on.

navylad