--- James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
wrote: > In message
>
<20020115110529.54445.qmail at web20010.mail.yahoo.com>,
> Cian
> O'Connor <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> writes
>
> >The vast majority of people who commute into
> central
> >London from the suburbs come by train
>
> What's your source for this assertion?
Anecdotal. Still, the people I know who work in the city would make a pretty large and diverse sample, so maybe it's reliable. I'd be interested to see published stats on it. I work there, and I don't know one person who drives to London. Quite a few people ride motorbikes in, though.
Also look at the difference a railway line, as opposed to a road connection, makes to house prices. That would seem to back up my 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.
I'm not talking about outside London, though. The railway networks have always been about London first and foremost.
> What is all that traffic on the North and South
> Circular, the M1, M40
> etc., at peak times, if it is not commuters?
How many of them are going into the centre though? And how many of them drive because they don't live on a commuter line?
> >Getting into central London from most suburbs is
> >murderous.
>
> Yes, because so many are doing it.
Surprisingly easy to get into the city though, which would seem to suggest that they're going elsewhere.
> >If most people drove there would be an
> >additional problem with parking.
>
> There is a problem with parking.
A bigger one. Though maybe they'll knockdown Dalston and build car parks there. Or the unfashionable bits of Hoxton.
> >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?
Wouldn't most people in London catch the tube, or bus? No idea what the stats are, but I would think London has a disproportionate use of public transport (as well as taxis, etc). I wouldn't expect trains to figure that strongly in internal journeys, as large parts of London are served by tube, or bus. People driving into London from the suburbs (which extend as far as Cambridge and Brighton these days) wouldn't be measured by any of the stats you've produced.
As for the extra driving. Assuming this is a serious question, I think a country where people would rather drive than walk for ten minutes, has no problems getting those miles in. People drive to the corner shop, instead of walking ten minutes. I don't even drive, live in the centre of London, but manage a disturbing proportion of miles in a car.
Do you have median stats, out of curiosity? And any for the SE of England?
> >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.
Yeah, but the companies they work for are. A lot of pressure has been put on the government by large London based companies (especially the city). The pretty powerful company that I (reluctantly) work for, was badly affected when the trains collapsed in 2000. Suddenly they couldn't make plans, meetings had to be cancelled, etc. Multiply that ten thousand fold.
Also the newspapers have been covering the collapse of the rail networks in far greater detail than something which only affects a small minority really deserves. I think the rail network is pretty much dead now, but the government is going to take a lot of damage over it.
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