Good? Yes. Especially considering the pressures of an aging system, choked roads, and large population. It’s efficient and frequent, as much as it’s easy to complain when something breaks down and the whole system gets snarled up.
But cheap? As GorrilaMan and Garius both pointed out, similar systems in similar large cities with multi-method unlimited travel are usually dramatically cheaper - I think a NYC travel card is about $150 per month for all transportation methods including bus and subway. I don’t consider the equivalent of $300 per month for the same thing cheap, by any stretch. I don’t own a car, so it’s offset by that, and I’m probably quids in than if I was dumb enough to drive in, but it’s not cheap.
Yes, you can find bus routes that are cheaper, but I live in Hampton Wick. It would take me 4 buses to get to work (Leadenhall Street) and probably close to 2 hours each way and 1 pound per bus so 8 quid round trip and a 12 hour (minimum) day. Instead I take overland SW Trains to Waterloo, then tube from Waterloo to Bank - door to door in 45 minutes. Yes, a peak travelcard for that journey is 13 quid per day, but I’d rather spend the money and have the time as I can always make more money.
I think my wife does, it takes her twice as long to get through the grocery store as I do. Of course I am that odd bird that goes through it with advance planning so there is little of no doubling back. I make decisions fast, largely based on unit price or I already know what brand I want. She stops to read the ingredients and do all those things that someone is probably suppose to do.
I also bag very fast and efficiently and have everything at the ready. I waste as little time as possible at the grocery store.
Not sure what I’m supposed to be guessing at there but if I were to take the bus to my local town centre, which is 5 minutes walk away, (one minute in the car) the cost is the same as your daily commute (OK I can claim the over 60’s 100% discount but it is more effort than it is worth.) It can take around 20 minutes each way as you never know when the bus will turn up.
To get to work, last time I checked, would take almost 1½ hours each way and cost £3.84 per day, no doubt more now and I would have to get bus passes from 2 local authorities to travel free. By car it takes 7 minutes and costs about £0.70.
Diesel at the pumps is £1.21/L (Sainsbury’s) and the Biodiesel I buy from the industrial estate I work on is £1.15/L
Where’s Loonyland? From my calculations you travel a maximum of 8 miles, which is similar to my commute, but my drive takes me between 5 and 8 times longer.
Washington, Tyne & Wear. I work in Birtley, which doesn’t really know if it belongs to Gateshead or County Durham. I pick my time for the trip or it could take far longer.
You’re not including wear & tear and depreciation. There’s a good reason I get the full 40p/mile tax-free travel expenses allowed by the taxman. With a small car, that does approximately balance out the increased running costs as well as the petrol.
Property values have apparently risen quite stupendously over the last 12 years (ie., the period since I left England).
We (well, my mother) bought a house on this road: http://www.houseprices.co.uk/knightlow-road-harborne-birmingham-b17/11/ in 1993 for 129 thousand pounds. We sold up in 1997 for 169 thousand; 10k of the profit was for improvements like a renovated kitchen and new flooring and such.
The house is the bottom listed one on that page, (161 Knightlow Road) and sold for $365,000 in 2003!@#!#@!
(It’s in Harborne, in/near Birmingham; if it was one street over, it’d be in Edgbaston, and worth a good 25% more.)
If you want to see the last selling price, or the estimated price for any UK house , take a look at this site :- Zoopla . As you can see there have been some quite spectacular price increases. But some forecast prices are now showing a fall.
Not wanting to brag or anything but I can travel the length and breadth of this Sceptered Isle for bugger all.
Being an old codger of 66 summers I am in the proud possession of a bus pass which entitles me to free travel anywhere I want to go. I can also use it to travel free on inter-city trams and greatly reduced train fares are also mine for the asking.
That said, who the hell wants to sit on a bus for days on end
Old people.
Us old codgers have to empty our colostomy bags y’know.
The bus drivers take a dim view of us just launching them out the window
So that’s why it always smells like somebody’s poured piss all over the floor.
You have to watch Chowder’s feet… if he starts doing that “Great Escape” shuffle, you’ll know he’s up to something and it’d also be a good time to change out of sandals.
For £38 in Prague you get 90 days unlimited transport which runs from 0500 to midnight, although there are limited night buses/trams. There are 3 metro (underground) lines and numerous tram and bus lines. I don’t think anywhere in the city is more than a 10 minute walk from the nearest public transport connection. From where I live it is 4 minutes to the metro and 2 minutes to a tram stop.
A 2 bedroom, 900 sq. ft flat (80 sq m) near the city center but outside the tourist zone can be had for perhaps £250,000 and would rent for roughly £1,000/mo.
Most things here like clothes and manufactured goods are on par with the UK but food is a bit cheaper in Prague. VAT is 19% vs 17.5% in UK.
There was a thing on the TV the other day that reported that London was the proud owner of the most expensive public transport journey in the world. To get from Embankment to Charing Cross by tube costs £4 (if a single ticket is purchased rather than using a travel or Oyster card), and covers a distance of 0.1 miles, according to Google Maps.
Actually it was living in New York that gave me a renewed respect for London Transport. It made me suddenly realise how good it was (especially given its age) in comparison to the shitwreck that New York public transport generally was.
Heh. I used to live just down the road (Teddington and then Hampton proper).
When i was working in Kingsway i’d take the same train you do, I suspect, to Waterloo and walk up from there.
Anyway, I know I’m in the minority with my opinions on London transport. Would i like travel in London to be cheaper? Hell yeah. But at the same time i don’t feel i’m currently being ripped off for the service i get. Just wanted to make sure that the OP poster realised there was another side to that argument, so to speak.
Anyone who takes the tube from Embankment to Charing Cross deserves to pay £4 for it. 
My mother gets it, she refuses to go into a “hipermercado.” She gets completely lost, specially in one which has too-narrow aisles and a purposefully-badly-organized floor plan; it’s a mess everywhere and I’ve confirmed through friends that it’s company policy to have similar items in different parts of the store, to make you walk more in hopes of more impulse buying. If she needs something that can only be obtained from a hyper, either she sends one of us to buy it for her or, if it’s something she needs to veto, stays outside while we go get it and show it to her from the other side of the rent-a-cop. I don’t even want to think what some American supermarkets might be able to do to her sanity.
She’s not the only over-60 person I’ve watched do that.
Oh, come on, you know full well that this is a silly example. To get from the bus stop outside my house to the one by the shop a hundred yards later no doubt also costs an astonishing amount for such a small journey. And the cost of a Zone 1 paper ticket is a deliberate disincentive, with the ultimate aim of getting rid of paper entirely.
Hey, I am totally in agreement with you here as far as functionality and efficiency. Yes, it breaks down (what system under the same pressures wouldn’t?) but it carries something like 10 million passengers a day. That ain’t bad. I just think it could be less expensive in a lot of ways. Much of the cost of London Transport now is the poor management as was proven by the fiasco of the tube repair company (Railtrack?) who couldn’t manage the upgrades to stations and went under; lots of the fare now is paying off that disaster.
PROPER? Get bent. Everyone knows that Hampton Wick is the only proper Hampton; all the others are just trying to copy us! :).
I live like 2 min from Hampton Wick station, so taking almost any other means of transport other than the train is just silly. I might wind up moving to Hampton Hill - still close to Bushy Park but the houses are cheaper than either Hampton Wick or Teddington by a fair bit.
I don’t think so, or if you are we both are in the minority. All in all, I don’t think London Transport is exactly extortionate either, just not cheap. It is a pretty damn good system, especially considering it’s handicaps.