Transport in London is shit

*maybe not if you use the northern line

And the Hammersmith&Shittyline.

It's surely more balanced to compare London with Tokyo, New York, Paris etc rather than Basildon, Letchworth, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Transport in London is LOTS better than transport in New York.

Basically, transport in London is far from shit.

*maybe not if you use the northern line

That's been my primary line for about 4 years now and I'm not complaining, it's fine.

International competitiveness studies highlight the expense of transport, crumbling infrastructure, and historic lack of investment as a negative factor in London's economic position.

Not, of course, that it's the government's responsibility nowadays.

That said, anyone who lives in London who DOESN'T buy a monthly travel card is either an asylum seeker or mad.

Public public public money money money is what is needs.

but i only really use buses and not even daily -- i reckon so far i am up on the deal by some way though given the fierceness w.which they are policin the bendies now this will probbly have to change :(

I still have trouble understanding why/how Virgin charge £75 return to Manchester (with other return options reaching over £400) when you can fly several times the distance for half the price. And why does it take twice as long coming back? Can trains not tilt southbound?

we all know you arrived here just a few days ago from Kabul. the game's up, sonny chief.

I don't know about the tube, but the rail companies apparently make over £100m profit a year in London, and the cost for providing staff is estimated to be between £2m to £4m a year.

I don't find them comfortable in the slightest. They seem much harder than the seats on most other buses * and, into the bargain, the poor suspension on those vehicles gives a very bumpy ride in my experience.

* the notable exceptions to this that I've found are a few of the buses used on the 341 route which have purple seats with ridiculously thin upholstery; but these are not to be confused with some others on the same route which also have purple seats but which are wonderfully comfortable.

Very true. Resolving as I did about 4 years ago not to travel on it any more was one of the best decisions I have ever made, in a number of ways.

Is this actually true? I'd always thought received wisdom said the exact opposite.

Public transport in London is good, but wasn't really designed to serve a city that's growing this fast - seems to be where all the problems stem from.

Oak - are you the person I think you are? Something rings familiar here.

*maybe not if you use the northern line

kings cross - south wimbledon, last thursday, circa midnight = 100 minutes

but yeah, mostly its good. 24 hour tubes would be nice.

outside london you can, you know, walk or cycle places.

you can do those things inside london too, you know.

Eh? How many people do you reckon they employ?

i cant see train travel getting much cheaper as a result of competition from air travel. maybe we should read my friends dissertation about rail/air competition for business travel between leeds and london. isnt the problem partly that franchising to an extent creates kinda flabby uncompetitive practice, where profits can be made in relative safety from predatory activity, if there isnt strong enough contractual arrnagements or tight enough regulation on the performance of the franchisee?

eg "we award you this contract but will continue to allow you to increase fares/reduce penalties for poor performance, and you can do this for the next 10 years" as opposed to "you have a guaranteed revenue stream for the next 10 years but oyu must ensure to do X Y Z and not do P Q and S"?

i dont really know anything about this anyways.

i guess in a sense i dont really compare london to other cities in europe so that gives me a warped sense of how good transport is in comparison to other UK CITIES (dear sirz, outside of london there are population sizes larger than Basildon, Letchworth, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy). but then again what other european cities are comparable? how does paris do? it might be hyperbole but what euro cities are comparable in terms of geograpohic spread, density of developemnt, population etc etc?

moscow was pretty awesome but they run everything on vodka there, or something. actually it was sort of shit outside the metro, but it depends what your criteria for "good public transport" are

When it comes to the 'after midnight' bit, in London that usually means walking through the rain then freezing at a bus stop for half an hour then sitting on a very slow nightbus full of nutters, or paying twenty-five quid to a random ex-convict with a 'taxi' who'll drive you home (eventually, after getting lost) while spouting reactionary nonsense at you the whole way. In New York there seem to be five yellow taxis waiting for you immediately at any time, they don't cost much, and with the grid system they don't get lost.

again, its hard not to laugh when you are subject to the whims of a properly deregulated market outside of london. First Groups bus fares went up 4 times in a year in s yorks, now its 1.50 a single on first buses. still 1.20/30 in london?

as for tube fares, what is expensive about a 2.50 tube fare? in comparison to previous prices? or are you assessing the cost of labour, infrastructure, distance travelled etc etc and concluding that it is overpriced?

-- ambrose (ambrosewhit...), February 14th, 2006.

what's expensive is, it's expensive! let someone else do the math. but yes 'distance travelled' being about 2-3 miles, it does seem out of proportion.

still 1.20/30 in london?

It's now £1.50. Considering that, what 4 years ago(?), local journeys were 70p, I'd say that is somewhat above the rate of inflation.

another factor to consider might be the *vast fucking profits* made by the operator too?

(xp) They must employ the same lobbyists as the gambling and fast food industries.

the noise of the stolen ones is annoyingly the soundtrack of summer in london now also

it is weird how it's just okay for this private bike business to have people dump the bikes basically anywhere. like this just happened and we're all supposed to think it's fine.

it’s parasitic and completely objectionable. they’re left lying in hideous hazardous piles all over the place in australia and new zealand as well. i hate them.

just a sign of how nobody gaf what private businesses do or about public space for pedestrians

they’re making a mockery of us all

> They are HUGE and heavy to lift up and get out of the way.

some you can lift by the saddle and wheel out of the way using the front wheel, some lock the front wheel in an annoying way so you're left to shuffle them along an inch at a time.

> it is weird how it's just okay for this private bike business to have people dump the bikes basically anywhere. like this just happened and we're all supposed to think it's fine.

hammersmith council had a phase of collecting all the badly parked bikes and storing them in a compound under the flyover. there were probably 300 there at one point.

wasn't there some thing where they'd told Westminster Council they'd increased the automatic fines for dumping them to some actually meaningfully deterrent level, but they'd actually just done nothing at all

anyway yeah the fly-tipped ones should all be gathered up and trebucheted through their CEO's living room window at 3am

Under Westminster’s deal with Lime, users are charged £10, after an initial warning, for bad parking, rather than £2. But she thinks this doesn’t even touch the sides. “Ten pounds – for goodness sake. That’s nothing. That’s a pint. It should be £50 or £100, and it should go up every time you get caught.” Lime’s standard scale currently sees users fined £10 only for the fourth offence (by the fifth they get a £20 fine and are banned).

Yet when I contacted Lime to confirm how this worked in Westminster – did it keep going up from £10? What did it go up to? – it refused to say. A week of incredibly dull emails later, it emerged it was not following the agreement. It was charging users £2, as it was everywhere else – and this only went up to £10 on the third offence. Lime later put this down to a “misunderstanding” and said it would “align with Westminster’s expectations” from now on.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2024/jan/14/lime-bikes-london-pavements-wayne-ting-ebikes-scooters

There were always lots of nice cyclists in London who owned their own bikes and knew how to not be aggressive toward pedestrians. There has been quite a shift where these are now more in the minority, with bikes in London are either this lime mess or middle class people in all this gear cycling as if they were on The Tour de France stage on a weekend.

Corbyn's new party should get on the case with this one

Overtime many of us will need to get away from cars which means more use of public transport or bikes, but there's a real fucked relationship to them here.

The piece linked above seem to be putting the blame of bikes dumped in the river to kids who hack into them but ppl who dump them across the pavement are paying for them. Its cunt behaviour.

I love Limes. They're super useful and make commutes and school pickups considerably less annoying. I would happily use another bike service but none are available near me.

It is easy not being an arsehole on a Lime, if you try -- drive slowly on a street with lots of pedestrians, don't drive in parks or on pavements, apologise if you mess up, park somewhere that doesn't block pedestrians (including disabled pedestrians who need more space), and DON'T PARK IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROAD. These things are not hard! Also: accept that everyone hates you and that's fair enough.

...and cars are still worse.

Getting people out of cars and onto bikes is a great idea obviously and I'm sure most people use these bikes responsibly but ... Anyway you're on a hiding to nothing in London, the City of Fools.

Lime bikes and others are really really useful. Whenever I land in a new city it’s an absolute blessing to be able to get around quickly and efficiently. I’ve lost touch with how people get their days done on transit let alone cars. I even use them a bit in Melbourne when the right bike in the stable isn’t available.

However people are dickheads and there’s some real tragedy of the commons shit with the making and the breaking of bikes and I get infuriated with the traffic rule violations. We need rules and respect for vulnerable road users (and respect from the lunatics in Two tonne murder boxes as well).

Although the minimum age is 18 I see mostly children on our rental e-bikes. The vast majority riding dangerously, running red lights, riding on sidewalks. Injuries have happened, of course.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a child on a rental e-bike over here, strangely enough.

The idiots over her are all adults.

I've seen teens on them, usually stolen. My only moment of contentment whenever I see one.

Yeah I'll be furious if they clamp down on rental bikes now beyond the obvious need to expand designated parking areas and heftier fines for violating that without due cause (battery dying etc.).

I actually have to call Forest support often to lock the bike because on their app/according to gps it's ONE METRE out of bounds when it isn't. But the pros will aleays outweigh the cons for me.

Has some at the Guardian been reading this thread, this has been posted in the last half hour:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/22/hire-ebikes-accumulate-london-border-rival-firms

I'd maybe make these free to use for under-18s too, even just to hardly ever hear that bleep again :)

They’re the worst thing to happen to London in fucking ages. Massive swathes of pavement randomly made inaccessible to wheelchair users, parents having to push their buggies in the road, make the whole city look like a dump. Also there was an article a while ago about how many of them are dangerously broken, faulty brakes etc. Whoever is making money off them should die painfully.

Definitely these companies get away with a lot or are struggling with maintenance. I've had a pedal completely come loose and drop off while riding.

xp yeah its a privatized scam. There should be docking stations all over the city where you have to lock them otherwise you should get a fine/penalty/ban, but you know this would entail building an infrastructure which is not something anyone is ever going to bother with anymore.

If you find a faulty bike, you can register it on the app, but the bike still gets listed as available.

Per London Centric, apparently if you specify the bike has brake problem (even if that's not the problem), it gets serviced more quickly.

A few months ago I picked up a nice pink-sprayed Limebike, drove it home, and my neighbour said "is there a pink swastika on your limebike?" And there was. I used my daughter's poster paints to cover it over.

xp yeah its a privatized scam. There should be docking stations all over the city where you have to lock them otherwise you should get a fine/penalty/ban, but you know this would entail building an infrastructure which is not something anyone is ever going to bother with anymore.

But wasn't this done ten years ago at massive expense, and now it's all been thrown away? That's the bit I don't really understand.

The docking stations are for the TfL bikes.

and the docking stations never made it to Southwark, so Lime made a huge difference for getting about Peckham.

iirc TfL's own bike hire expansion halted many years ago bc TfL expected councils to start paying some or all of the costs of installing docking stations, something like £200k apiece. Few local authorities are willing and/or able to prioritise that.

i feel like some docking stations have been removed even since then? think there was one on my street and it's gone now.

Southwark council has been shockingly bad on accommodating TfL bikes.

The Hounslow situation is interesting as Lime have otherwise dominated the outer boroughs going further and further out. I used one a lot to get from South London all the way to Harrow visiting my Dad in hospital last year.

I hate to keep going on about this, but I'm going to. I'm just back from Lille this morning and there are dozens and dozens of Lime bikes there too. The difference is, when not being used, they are all neatly parked side by side in areas designated for parking bikes. Meanwhile, I just popped down to my local Tesco express, a three minute walk at most, and had to navigate my way past four Lime bikes dumped on pavements - not to mention the one parked outside my flat. On leaving the Tesco Express I noticed a bit further along the road another seven Lime bike four of which were parked side by side in the middle of the pavement, you would have to be Houdini to get past them. As usual when coming back to London I noticed what a manky shithole it is, but that's for another thread.

By the way, just passed King's Cross Station on my way to work and there's a guy on the clocktower protesting about freedom for Iran... and he has a dog with him. I can't see anything about this online as yet.

... how he got a dog up there I've no idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkfA1IrZhmI

I use the bus to go to and from work every day and, there's no doubt about it, people playing stuff out loud on their phones is now so endemic that I'm reaching the stage where I'll either have to learn to accept it, like everyone else seems to, or get the tube instead. This is the thing though, it's not schoolkids or teenagers listening to music, 90% of the time it's middle aged and older people listening to the news or some TV show and I'm convinced the reason for this is simply that they don't have headphones. Kids of course all have the latest headphones and gear but it would never cross the minds of these old farts to buy a pair, so the rest of the bus has to listen to their crap.

it's usually some terrifyingly grifty self-help/get rich youtube vid ime

you get a lot of people mindlessly scrolling neverending max-volume Insta reels, bonus points if they're in the middle of a crowded train carriage with a massive backpack on or shambling at 0.25mph through a busy part of a station

it makes me want to throw my own phone in the Thames so much, but then what would I drown them out with

agonised screaming iirc

Yeah, it's so grim. Are there signs about it on public transport yet? Think they used to have signs telling you to be careful with how loud you play the music through your earphones.

NOTHING IS FORBIDDEN
[cute cartoon of an axe arcing towards a guy with a blaring phone]
EVEN HIS FAMILY WILL REJOICE

I think the genie's out of the bottle with this one because it's not kids doing it.

not reviving the rate people on public transport thread but on the London train back from Villa-Fulham the other week, there was a guy watching the Ryder Cup on his phone, loudly clapping and shouting COME ON EUROPE. he thought the golfers in America could hear him

he later switched to cheering for Arsenal in their game and then made a random lead balloon joke about a woman on the train having chlamydia

and I was like "Mr Smith-Rowe, please-"

And to return to my personal bugbear of Lime bikes, the fact that it's mostly respectable middle class people who use them and, as with phones on buses, not the usual suspects means a blind eye is inevitably going to be turned to their misuse. (By the way, go up to Highgate or Hampstead, as I have these last couple of weekends, and you won't see any sign of them being dumped on pavements, not a single one).

Lewisham's got a bit better on the Lime detritus front last few months I think

To be fair, I've noticed Islington has actually started putting aside aside areas to park hire bikes - not sure what motorists think of this idea - but of course people ignore them nonetheless.

The apps can fairly easily enforce controlled parking like that so not sure why they aren't doing that more esp. in zone 1 but maybe they find the usage just drops 'too much' when they do. Huge spike in use during the recent tube strikes of course.

looking fwd to having to deal with these... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/15/driverless-taxis-from-waymo-will-be-on-londons-roads-next-year-us-firm-announces

well I hope nobody dies in the inevitable crashes on the north circular