HYPODERMIC
Member
Agreed; more people use London commuter rail. But that said, some of the North's shorter trains can be just as busy, per-carriage. The most overcrowded train I've seen in my life was a peak-time service departing Bolton for Manchester. It really was crammed all the way down the isle to a point I would almost consider dangerous - intense cramming happens all the time in London too, but this was the first time I'd felt so uneasy at how tightly squeezed people were becoming.you think that's busy and packed... you are kidding right?!
trying living in the south east and getting a train from charing cross or victoria in london around 6pm, TWELVE carriage trains with every carriage fuller than that one.
I know intense overcrowding is very regular in the South East - I've seen it and experienced it myself, when I lived in the South - but while the frequency may differ, the intensity of the problem is not always so different between the North and the South. There are spots in the North where each carriage is just as rammed per square metre, but it happens there are only 2/3/4 cars to each train; 12 car units would eliminate or at least dramatically alleviate most of the North's problems (at least for a while - perhaps more car users would make the switch if so much space became available!), but unfortunately for London little much more can be done to ease the crowding of peak flows.