Comment by TuringNYC

I remember that one of Stockholm's train line is also endearingly tiny too?

Budapest subway is something similar, too.

I've lived in and visted many other cities in Europe. Public transport is often much cheaper than London, but there's few examples where I'd really say it was /better/. Can you think of an example?

To people who have to commute to London, particularly if it's not a mainline train, it's tragically bad and overpriced. Train outages happen on a daily basis, the fare is very expensive compared to mainland Europe and the quality is quite a bit worse.

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The Piccadilly Line was opened in 1906 for gods sake, forgive them for not catering to people with 3 suitcases very well! That's part of the reason we built the Elizabeth Line, to enable a better transport option for people coming into heathrow.

> a lot of stations just have stairs

Very few, if any. They may not have escalators (Covent garden, for eg., but no-one in their right mind uses that - just use Leicester Square and walk on the street) but there are almost always ways of getting up to the street, and assistance is signposted for people with problems.

> platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars

Not sure what you mean here - mind the gap? Typically less on the Piccadilly than some other lines - Bank on the Central is particularly scary.

Based on living 30-odd years in London, most of it using the Piccadilly line on my daily commute and to get to LHR.

Sounding like a TfL groupie here, but it is a pretty good transit system, given geographic and budgetary constraints.

Although Yes CrossRail was partly funded by a levy on London homes and businesses, London get's more funding per capita for public transport than anywhere else in the country

Imagine what we achieve if we invested London levels of money in transport across the rest of the country

This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact opposite.

Transport spending in London was £1,313 per capita in 2023/24, compared with just £368 per head in the East Midlands[0] - nearly 4x the investment. Over the decade to 2022/23, if the North had received the same per person transport spending as London, it would have received £140 billion more[1]. The East Midlands got just £355 per person, the lowest of every nation and region[1].

Yes, London generates a fiscal surplus, but that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. London receives the highest investment spending for both economic and non-economic areas, relative to population size[2]. In 2022, infrastructure construction spend in London was £8.8 billion, whilst Scotland came second with £3.6 billion[3].

It's circular logic:

* invest heavily in London

-> infrastructure drives productivity

-> higher productivity generates more tax revenue

-> claim London 'subsidises' other regions

-> use this to justify more London investment.

Infrastructure investment enhances productive potential[4], but all other regions are systematically denied it.

London has returns on investment because it's the only place that actually gets proper investment. You can't starve regions of infrastructure for decades, watch their productivity stagnate, then point to London's tax surplus as proof they are subsidising others, that's fucking stupid.

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[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-spendi...

[1] https://www.ippr.org/media-office/ippr-north-and-ippr-reveal...

[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity...

[4] https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/what-role-infrastru...

It's based on the Centre for Cities report: "How productive are the UK's big cities?" which mentions Liverpool's, Leed's and Manchester's productivity growth and The State of London Report 2025 which reports London's productivity decline

https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/how-productive-a...

https://data.london.gov.uk/blog/the-state-of-london-report-2...

I'm with you. Tokyo is incredible. It's the only large city I've ever been to where I left thinking, "I'd love to live there."

Transportation in Japan is a whole other level compared to my experiences in Germany and Austria.

I've never been to England, though, so can't make that comparison.

> American who's never been to large Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing

30% of all Americans have never left the North Western hemisphere.

I think the fundamental issue here is that many in America don't actually want dense cities, public transit, and more generally shared spaces. I, for one, would not want to live in condo when I can live in a house. When enough people want this, you end up with "urban sprawl" and one or more cars per house.

There was a big argument on my local (American) Nextdoor recently because someone encountered a line of cars on a road that had recently had a bike lane added to it. People were outraged about bike lanes. And not just in the sense that they had to pay (via taxes) for something they didn't feel was useful. The fact that the lane even existed was an affront. They seemed to actually believe that the bike lane caused delays for cars merely by existing.

As I understand it the US car lobby had a big hand in designing modern America, in such a way that for most cities it really isn't possible to use anything else.

On the other hand a lot of European cities were laid out in the time of horse and cart.

I wouldnt call dc's metro "great", maybe relative to other cities, it is, but globally it's subpar. Often late, dirty, limited reach etc

DC's system is OK. It suffers from being both a commuter rail system and a city transit system mashed together. It needs more tracks so that maintenance can be performed without massive delays and so express trains can be run. Coverage is lacking. It's good if you're going places it serves, but there are a lot of places it doesn't go, like Georgetown. And the hub-and-spoke model makes it quite painful for a relatively decentralized city. Going between, say, Bethesda and Tysons is physically possible but takes ages because you have to go all the way downtown first.

It gets a lot of things right and is great if it has a good route for the trips you want to make when you want to make it, but mostly it shines because the situation is so much worse in any other American city that's not New York and maybe Chicago.

Thanks, good to know! How are the trains across the country though?

Compared to rest of US? Maybe. Compared to Europe? Absolutely not.

If they ran the suburban rail more frequently Boston would have a phenomenal system.

Its good in NYC for american standards. For european standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.

Yeah or “the signs all say to walk down this long passage, and then back via a circuitous route for flow control, but my destination is actually 100 feet away through this unmarked passage so I’ll just go that way” situation at Bank

That cost doesn't show up on government books, so we can pretend it doesn't exist. The joys of decentral planning.

> But what is also expensive is every single citizen taking $100 Uber rides to the airport, like in NYC.

Last time I went to NYC I took the AirTrain to Jamaica station and then an express train to Penn. it took like 35 minutes total.

Wrong, $100 Uber rides boost employment and the economy! (Just ignore the impacts of congestion, wasted time, road spending)

Yes national money once again mostly being spent in London. Coincidentally where these decisions are made.