And damn isn’t everyone who lives outside of London indignantly pissed off that the city is being designed for its residents rather than them. Funny that a lot of them also suddenly seem to care about the plight of the working man unlike never before—just so long as we’re talking about the plight of the white van man being able to drive around London.
This same thing is happening in Kansas City, where the city’s been building a streetcar system the last five years. The suburbanites spent a ton of money trying to get residents to vote it down, but we like having better public transit, so it got expanded instead.
And couldn’t they use trains to London, or is the infrastructure lackluster? Or is it just the convenience of a personal vehicle? I’m genuinely curious
The public transport infrastructure is good enough to handle most people’s needs. Trains and buses cover the entire city and are regular enough to rely on.
There will always be journeys that require cars, but a lot of people just want comfort, especially if they come from more car-centric parts of the country
Public transport in and around London is some of the best in the world, there’s even countless park & ride stations which can help with people who are genuinely too far from a station or bus stop to do the whole journey on public transport.
There’s no genuinely valid reason that 99% of people would need to drive in London at all really, just people feeling mildly inconvenienced and blowing a gasket over it.
Another big aspect though, is that we also have our deeply unpopular conservative party in power currently with an impending election where they’re expected to perform so badly, they’re potentially going to get banished to the history books. So naturally they’re stoking up a load of none-of-that-green-rubbish and i-will-be-dead-before-you-take-by-diesel-powered-child-flattener-from-me sentiment in the hopes it turns some of their previous knuckle-dragging voters back away from other parties. The result of this is people in Surrey with minimal intention of ever even visiting London already because of the Daily Mail’s conspiracy theories, complaining loudly online about all the woke militants imprisoning them on a train or whatever bullshit they spout.
The cost is insane. We were looking at going down to London from Lancashire this weekend for a concert, and it would have cost £235 for both of us, return.
Of course the car would cost too, fuel, parking etc but no where near that price.
National Rail prices are definitely out of control, and the London Underground is definitely too expensive as of now. But the latter is the only London-specific transport issue, and something that can’t be helped until the government starts increasing the budget for TFL and allows them to subsidise journeys even more. I don’t see this happening, though. London is basically demonised in the press for being too rich, too diverse and full of the metropolitan elite. Funneling even more money to London while continuing to ignore the crumbling infrastructure in other parts of the country is a sure-fire way for the next government to become unpopular
And damn isn’t everyone who lives outside of London indignantly pissed off that the city is being designed for its residents rather than them. Funny that a lot of them also suddenly seem to care about the plight of the working man unlike never before—just so long as we’re talking about the plight of the white van man being able to drive around London.
This same thing is happening in Kansas City, where the city’s been building a streetcar system the last five years. The suburbanites spent a ton of money trying to get residents to vote it down, but we like having better public transit, so it got expanded instead.
And couldn’t they use trains to London, or is the infrastructure lackluster? Or is it just the convenience of a personal vehicle? I’m genuinely curious
The public transport infrastructure is good enough to handle most people’s needs. Trains and buses cover the entire city and are regular enough to rely on.
There will always be journeys that require cars, but a lot of people just want comfort, especially if they come from more car-centric parts of the country
Public transport in and around London is some of the best in the world, there’s even countless park & ride stations which can help with people who are genuinely too far from a station or bus stop to do the whole journey on public transport.
There’s no genuinely valid reason that 99% of people would need to drive in London at all really, just people feeling mildly inconvenienced and blowing a gasket over it.
Another big aspect though, is that we also have our deeply unpopular conservative party in power currently with an impending election where they’re expected to perform so badly, they’re potentially going to get banished to the history books. So naturally they’re stoking up a load of none-of-that-green-rubbish and i-will-be-dead-before-you-take-by-diesel-powered-child-flattener-from-me sentiment in the hopes it turns some of their previous knuckle-dragging voters back away from other parties. The result of this is people in Surrey with minimal intention of ever even visiting London already because of the Daily Mail’s conspiracy theories, complaining loudly online about all the woke militants imprisoning them on a train or whatever bullshit they spout.
The cost is insane. We were looking at going down to London from Lancashire this weekend for a concert, and it would have cost £235 for both of us, return.
Of course the car would cost too, fuel, parking etc but no where near that price.
National Rail prices are definitely out of control, and the London Underground is definitely too expensive as of now. But the latter is the only London-specific transport issue, and something that can’t be helped until the government starts increasing the budget for TFL and allows them to subsidise journeys even more. I don’t see this happening, though. London is basically demonised in the press for being too rich, too diverse and full of the metropolitan elite. Funneling even more money to London while continuing to ignore the crumbling infrastructure in other parts of the country is a sure-fire way for the next government to become unpopular