>The vast majority of people who commute into central
>London from the suburbs come by train
What's your source for this assertion? The published statistics on miles travelled by car and rail would seem to go against it. Outside London, people travel 6804 miles by car a year, and just 533 by rail (which would let you commute just two miles per day, by my reckoning). That's a factor of 12 to one.
What is all that traffic on the North and South Circular, the M1, M40 etc., at peak times, if it is not commuters?
>Getting into central London from most suburbs is
>murderous.
Yes, because so many are doing it.
>If most people drove there would be an
>additional problem with parking.
There is a problem with parking.
>Also a significant
>chunk of Londoners commute internally by train
Indeed, but Londoners still drive four times further than they travel by train. Since you rule out the possibility that they are driving to work, I wonder when it is that you think people are getting all this extra driving in?
> Whether the rail
>network is profitable, or not, I don't think London
>could operate without it
I agree. I think it is a good thing, and should be provided as a public good, since plainly it has not been organised profitably since the end of the 2WW.
>there's a limit to how long ANY government can piss
>off a group as powerful as London commuters.
I'm less optimistic about that. Every government seems to have operated a below par rail network since the seventies, without let up, and without ever having to pay a price for it. Commuters are not a powerful group, merely a grumpy one.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org