Rant: why is T5 so badly connected?

Old Jan 7, 2019, 5:53 am
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Originally Posted by JFX1764
While not necessarily 'easy', many people make the trip by tube with two (and more!) suitcases
I have done it with three and a camera bag. I wouldn't repeat the experience though!
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 5:54 am
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Originally Posted by navylad
you are of course aware that London is much bigger than those cities, if you travel further it costs more (generally unless it’s a mistake fare on CX). And to make a true comparison, you’d have to consider the amount of subsidy in the system (you can have a cheap annual pass but if they money comes from paying more tax, you are no better off).
I chose zones 1-2 in London and the nearest equivalent in most cases, but in some like Paris, I have even given you the systemwide comparator which is invariably a lot cheaper than in London. As we are all indeed aware, the suburban all zone Navigo area is way larger in both area size and population than London 1-2 (to be specific more than 5 times larger in surface area and 3 times larger in population). (choosing tiny Paris 'intra muros' would have been very unfair indeed, as would have been choosing 'all zone' in London).

As for your second point, this is taking things even more OT but I thoroughly disagree: people like me who get a decent salary paying more taxes to subsidise public transport is not comparable to your average low paid nurse or police(wo)man having to pay that money (that's for the social justice argument as well as the need to ensure the presence of needed professions - as you know, there are many we don't have enough of in London including fire people and primary school teachers), and makes a massive difference to how it incentivises people to take public transport over their private vehicle (that's for the urbanistic argument), with all the implications this has on public health, public safety, the environment and even the work of companies.

By contrast, again, I agree with your point of Heathrow being reasonably well connected, not the best but far from the worst, and when Crossrail finally opens, it will be a great further improvement! The variety of existing connections is also way greater than for Gatwick which, at least for a small portion of the route, depends on a single rail corridor (and when a train breaks down there, all hell breaks loose!!)

Last edited by orbitmic; Jan 7, 2019 at 6:05 am
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 6:06 am
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Originally Posted by orbitmic
I chose zones 1-2 in London and the nearest equivalent in most cases, but in some like Paris, I have even given you the systemwide comparator which is invariably a lot cheaper than in London. As we are all indeed aware, the suburban all zone Navigo area is way larger in both area size and population than London 1-2. (choosing tiny Paris 'intra muros' would have been very unfair indeed).

As for your second point, this is taking things even more OT but I thoroughly disagree: people like me who get a decent salary paying more taxes to subsidise public transport is not comparable to your average low paid nurse or police(wo)man having to pay that money (that's for the social justice argument as well as the need to ensure the presence of needed professions - as you know, there are many we don't have enough of in London including fire people and primary school teachers), and makes a massive difference to how it incentivises people to take public transport over their private vehicle (that's for the urbanistic argument), with all the implications this has on public health, public safety, the environment and even the work of companies.

By contrast, again, I agree with your point of Heathrow being reasonably well connected, not the best but far from the worst, and when Crossrail finally opens, it will be a great further improvement! The variety of existing connections is also way greater than for Gatwick which, at least for a small portion of the route, depends on a single rail corridor (and when a train breaks down there, all hell breaks loose!!)
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.

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Old Jan 7, 2019, 6:11 am
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Originally Posted by 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).

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.
This is a fascinating conversation and one very close to my heart which I'm sure could run and run in a more suitable forum! 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. I too have many friends living all over London, many of whom have come from other cities around the world including New York and Paris, and they consistently rate the quality and performance of London's Transport ahead of their former home city. I'm not covering fares here as I recognise a lot of people think London public transport fares are expensive 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. In addition, we have National Rail services out of most London Terminals at 16tph or above on core suburban corridors, splitting further out. Few other cities running with such old infrastructure operate at anywhere near service levels such as these. Of course, systems like Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul etc are newer, built with larger tunnels and generally cheaper to maintain.

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. And weekend / off-peak headways on many NYC Subway lines are now at a dreadful every 10 minutes, with hugely crowded trains. In London, even places like Stanmore, High Barnet, Morden and Barking get at least three times that many on a Sunday now.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 6:20 am
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Originally Posted by 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.
In Europe perhaps, but certainly nowhere near one of the best in the world.

But back to the original point, T5 public transport connectivity is actually pretty good via HEX. It certainly beats the pants off JFK and LAX for example.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 6:22 am
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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.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 6:26 am
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Originally Posted by HIDDY
Until not that long ago EZE never used to be accessible by public transport from BA at all....unless you had about 4 hours to kill and were prepared to walk the last kilometre or two. For more up-to-date info wake up the Argentina forum.
In December of 2001, I and some friends took a suburban train from Constitucion to Ezeiza suburban station, then a public bus on from there to the airport. Other passengers on the bus said we were crazy but it worked Just as well as we were on board a QF flight to AKL when the financial system in the country collapsed...

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Old Jan 7, 2019, 7:13 am
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Originally Posted by signol
In December of 2001, I and some friends took a suburban train from Constitucion to Ezeiza suburban station, then a public bus on from there to the airport. Other passengers on the bus said we were crazy but it worked Just as well as we were on board a QF flight to AKL when the financial system in the country collapsed...

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Old Jan 7, 2019, 7:22 am
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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...
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 7:40 am
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I've traveled to London several times, always via LHR, and have a pretty positive opinion of public transport from the airport. And I live in New York and can tell you, even as someone who takes public transport to the airport 95% of the time, that I would in no way consider the New York area airports' connectivity to the transit network to be superior to that of London's airports.

But I also think tourists/travelers, at least those who have a basic level of comfort with public transport, will often have a superior opinion of airport public transport options to locals. Travelers are more likely to be heading to destinations well-served by the transit lines to the airport instead of all over the region (they're heading to central London or the Manhattan CBD, instead of Sutton in London or Bay Ridge in Brooklyn) and are often coming from places that have vastly inferior airport transit -- I grew up flying out of the entirely road-based LAX so for a long term when I encountered any kind of rail transit to the airport I was impressed.

And I think travelers often have a different mental price calculus to locals, in that locals are often unfavorably comparing the costs of airport transit to their everyday costs for the "normal" transit network, versus travelers who tend to compare the costs of airport transit to a cab or car rental. I know that at home here in New York I grouse about the AirTrain fare ($5) because I'm annoyed that I have to pay more even though I already buy a monthly pass. But when I'm traveling from an airport abroad, I'm more often comparing the transit costs to the cost of a cab, and so (for example) any of the London options will generally seem a good deal for me.

Plus, of course, as a traveler you're usually either paying by the ride or buying some sort of daily/weekly pass for the rest of the network, both of which tend to work out to a higher cost per ride than for locals who will have some kind of unlimited/monthly/annual pass (as varies by the network), so then the airport transit doesn't seem so relatively costly either.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 7:49 am
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Originally Posted by orbitmic
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.
Thats just not true.

The Victoria Line (in peak) is the second most frequent railway in the world at a train every 100 seconds. Behind Moscow at a train every 95 seconds.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 8:17 am
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Originally Posted by JFX1764
Thats just not true.
The Victoria Line (in peak) is the second most frequent railway in the world at a train every 100 seconds. Behind Moscow at a train every 95 seconds.
I'm only basing it on media articles as I don't have access to that data, but if it is mistaken, then it is a mistake shared across multiple sources. See here for a reference (section starting: "la ligne 7 est la mieux desservie"): Cinq faits à connaître sur le métro parisien Rough translation: "with 60 trains an hour at peak time, line 7 is the best equipped. Line 13, often criticised by public transport users reaches 52 trains an hour. This, however, is a lot more than the 4 trains an hour of line 3b."

And here: Les petits secrets de la RATP révélés au public | L'interconnexion n'est plus assurée mentioning 60tph for line 7 and 59tph for line 9.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 8:23 am
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Originally Posted by orbitmic
I'm only basing it on media articles as I don't have access to that data, but if it is mistaken, then it is a mistake shared across multiple sources. See here for a reference (section starting: "la ligne 7 est la mieux desservie"): Cinq faits à connaître sur le métro parisien Rough translation: "with 60 trains an hour at peak time, line 7 is the best equipped. Line 13, often criticised by public transport users reaches 52 trains an hour. This, however, is a lot more than the 4 trains an hour of line 3b."

And here: Les petits secrets de la RATP révélés au public L'interconnexion n'est plus assurée mentioning 60tph for line 7 and 59tph for line 9.
Sometimes these stats are given as total trains calling at the station (i.e. in both directions).

The other thing that happens (both in London and elsewhere) is that operators can provide extra peak capacity in a single direction for very short periods, sometimes just for a single hour. This can make comparisons between networks tricky.
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 8:32 am
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Originally Posted by kingstontoon
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.
As someone who often uses the RailAir bus from Reading I can't quite believe it's really happening or how long it's actually going to take but I look forward to the day that tunnel opens!

But still can't believe it's nine years away at best :-(

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-ra...row-rail-link/
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Old Jan 7, 2019, 8:38 am
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Originally Posted by lcylocal


Sometimes these stats are given as total trains calling at the station (i.e. in both directions).

The other thing that happens (both in London and elsewhere) is that operators can provide extra peak capacity in a single direction for very short periods, sometimes just for a single hour. This can make comparisons between networks tricky.
Two very good points indeed!
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