What next for LU? At full capacity...

[edwin_m]

Why is the Victoria line so busy? Was looking at the usage figures for different underground lines and noticed that, going by average journeys per mile, it is by far and away the busiest route and that's including the anomaly that is the one stop only Waterloo and City.

The Piccadilly serves roughly the same route but has more stops, so proportionately more people will take the faster journey on the Victoria. The Victoria has also recently had a capacity upgrade so is capable of carrying more people than most of the other lines. Crossrail 2, if built, should relieve the Victoria in the same way as Crossrail 1 will relieve the Central.

 

[Busaholic]

The Piccadilly serves roughly the same route but has more stops, so proportionately more people will take the faster journey on the Victoria. The Victoria has also recently had a capacity upgrade so is capable of carrying more people than most of the other lines. Crossrail 2, if built, should relieve the Victoria in the same way as Crossrail 1 will relieve the Central.

I can't agree with your reasoning - the numbers taking the journey between Green Park as the southern extent and Finsbury Park as the northern extent pale into insignificance compared to the numbers for whom the Piccadilly is not an option, regardless of journey length, particularly northbound in the morning peak and southbound in the evening peak.

 

[urbophile]

People have to go where the the work is and if that work is London then that's where they'll go. Higher wages perhaps but that means more tax for the Government.

London is fast becoming uninhabitable for people under 30, for people on low wages, for public sector workers... Government policy that keeps investing in the capital's infrastructure at the expense of other regions is short-sighted and doomed to fail. Housing is already at crisis point and transport (despite Crossrail et al.) is fast getting there.

How about redistributing cash, jobs, resources to cities and rural areas elsewhere where housing is more abundant and the environment healthier? Other European countries are nothing like as centralised as this one.

 

[Hadders]

How about redistributing cash, jobs, resources to cities and rural areas elsewhere where housing is more abundant and the environment healthier? Other European countries are nothing like as centralised as this one.

London doesn't compete with the provincial cities. London's competition is New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo etc.

Companies will always attract top talent to London.

 

[NY Yankee]

London doesn't compete with the provincial cities. London's competition is New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo etc.

Companies will always attract top talent to London.

Competition implies two evenly matched opponents. London is definitely a better city than New York...

Back to the main point, the Tube is at capacity, but Londoners can take advantage of other modes of transportation. Crossrail will provide increased rail capacity in the London area. There's also the Overground and DLR. If people live close enough to the downtown area then they can bike. London is a spread out city. Even if the downtown area is congested, businesses can eventually move outward.

 

[jon0844]

Competition implies two evenly matched opponents. London is definitely a better city than New York...

Back to the main point, the Tube is at capacity, but Londoners can take advantage of other modes of transportation. Crossrail will provide increased rail capacity in the London area. There's also the Overground and DLR. If people live close enough to the downtown area then they can bike. London is a spread out city. Even if the downtown area is congested, businesses can eventually move outward.

In my work, just about every agency wants to be located in zone 1 and must pay a heavy price to do so... But for a lot of businesses, prestige appears to be worth paying for. Even if it means high rent, and difficulties for staff to get to and from work (but many will actually both complain and also be proud to work in the centre of town).

I'd always expected with rising prices, more people and businesses would move out but that doesn't seem to be happening. Perhaps those businesses already in the outer zones are, but they were never really part of the problem in the first place.

 

[AM9]

In my work, just about every agency wants to be located in zone 1 and must pay a heavy price to do so... But for a lot of businesses, prestige appears to be worth paying for. Even if it means high rent, and difficulties for staff to get to and from work (but many will actually both complain and also be proud to work in the centre of town).

I'd always expected with rising prices, more people and businesses would move out but that doesn't seem to be happening. Perhaps those businesses already in the outer zones are, but they were never really part of the problem in the first place.

Furthermore, the growth of world class cities is driven by the opportunity that a high concentration of skills and support services gives over competing cities. For a while, failing to match the demand for public transport doesn't hold that growth back much, it just creates a modal change (read roads) until the place siezes up. It's naiive to think that depriving the South-east of transport infrastructure investment will force both employers and jobseekers in any meaningful quantities to rush to the ex-industrial spaces elsewhere just because it might be easier to get to work.

 

[jon0844]

I wonder how it will pan out in the future. Retailers struggling, many retail jobs being replaced with technology. Apps and services rendering other jobs obsolete.

You'll have out of town, but near major road/rail routes, distribution centres employing people on minimum wage - but unless you work in law/finance/media or perhaps for some other tech firm - you may not even have a job in London unless it's a low paid one, working in a bar, cleaning, delivering packages from online retailers for 40p a drop etc.

Obviously I'm not going into a huge level of detail here, and some people working in certain professions will earn a lot of money that will likely be spent in the area (plus there's tourism), and others earning very little - and perhaps not that much in between.

They'll all need to get about, but more and more people will be coming in to London from further and further out. Putting more pressure on the outer zones and beyond.

 

[Clip]

London is fast becoming uninhabitable for people under 30, for people on low wages, for public sector workers... Government policy that keeps investing in the capital's infrastructure at the expense of other regions is short-sighted and doomed to fail. Housing is already at crisis point and transport (despite Crossrail et al.) is fast getting there.

How about redistributing cash, jobs, resources to cities and rural areas elsewhere where housing is more abundant and the environment healthier? Other European countries are nothing like as centralised as this one.

Quite but others have answered the majority of yoru post however I will highlight that there are still enclaves of South London where it is affordable but guess what? People dont want to live there and do want to live north of said river and then complain that they cant afford it. So whos fault is that?

 

[dcsprior]

London doesn't compete with the provincial cities. London's competition is New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo etc.

Companies will always attract top talent to London.

I work for a company that employs ~70,000 people spread throughout the country with ~3,000 people (incl me) working in a cluster of head offices in central London; the presence abroad is fewer than 100 people.

Many other people working in London also work for companies that aren't realistically going to base themselves outside the UK; and others work for the public sector. For all these people, London surely doesn't compete with NY, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc but with Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, etc.

 

[Taunton]

What I think the general public, and indeed many politicians, feel about transport in London is this :

The fares are generally understood to be the highest of any major conurbation in the world. And yet vast numbers pay them. The vehicles are substantially overcrowded with passengers all paying these highest fares.

And yet the system needs a a substantial subsidy as well. This is despite this ever-increasing, often substantially, number of customers, which any commercial business would think was great. And major improvements such as Crossrail need what seems to be their entire capital cost paid for out of further public funds, despite which it is reliably expected to be full from day one, with passengers paying those highest fares.

So the question is, where does the money go? Why has rolling stock cost, both trains and buses, risen in price well above inflation, despite which it seems to regularly lose many of the features that passengers actually value, such as seats. Why despite this substantial and ever-increasing revenue are trains continually in short supply on the infrastructure? Why are 2-car trains run on busy routes which are full and standing outside the peaks? Why does the time taken to recover from disruptions on the system go ever upwards?

Meanwhile the price of comparable motor vehicles has risen at less than inflation. The specification and standard of them has risen very substantially over the same period. The seats have got significantly better, whereas on rail where once you had even a basic seat you now have to stand. In some cases, although no longer in Britain, these motor vehicles are produced by the same manufacturers as rail vehicles, yet the value for money has gone in opposite directions.

How has all this been allowed to happen by the industry professionals?

 

[Clip]

You raie some valid points but generally people who use both tube and LO are not expecting a journey of more thatn say 20 mins, so standing is acceptable so the trains are designed to carry as many as possible including standing and some seated.

I never imagine getting a seat on LO into liv in the morning as much as I didnt with AGA. Last time I did at the time I go work was about 2009 by chance.

Does it matter? Not in a large city it doesnt.

 

[urbophile]

London doesn't compete with the provincial cities. London's competition is New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo etc.

Companies will always attract top talent to London.

I doubt if those other capitals suck the life out of provincial cities to the same extent as London does. And companies that are based in London will of course attract people to London; the question is, why are more not based, or encouraged to be based, outside London?

I don't know Japan, or Germany for that matter, but France has Marseille, Lyon, and several other vibrant cities besides Paris; New York is the commercial capital of the USA but balanced by Washington as the political capital, as well as many others; Milan and Rome hold a similar balance in Italy, and so on.

 

[edwin_m]

Evan Davis did a TV programme a couple of years back showing how the size difference between the largest city and the next largest cities was much greater in the UK than in most other countries.

 

[Taunton]

Evan Davis did a TV programme a couple of years back showing how the size difference between the largest city and the next largest cities was much greater in the UK than in most other countries.

Nothing unusual. France is more pronounced, Greece and Finland even more so.

 

[TRAX]

I thought the Northern Line was the busiest, or perhaps was it with another calculation ?

 

[Comstock]

Evan Davis did a TV programme a couple of years back showing how the size difference between the largest city and the next largest cities was much greater in the UK than in most other countries.

He did a whole TV programme just to illustrate that?

 

[edwin_m]

He did a whole TV programme just to illustrate that?

He did a few other things as well, including suggesting that Hebden Bridge should be the centre of a new northern megacity (Stupid idea! It's gotta be Uppermill). It was when the "Northern Powerhouse" was just starting to be talked about.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Nothing unusual. France is more pronounced, Greece and Finland even more so.

From Wikipedia:

Top cities in France:
1) Paris - 2,230k
2) Marseille - 860k
3) Lyon - 500k
4) Toulouse - 460k
5) Nice - 340k

Top cities in Finland:
1) Helsinki - 630k
2) Espoo - 270k
3) Tampere - 220k
4) Vantaa - 210k
5) Oulu - 200k

Top urban areas in the UK:
1) London - 9,790k
2) Manchester - 2,550k
3) Birmingham - 2,440k
4) Leeds/Bradford - 1,780k
5) Glasgow - 1,210k

The difference is pretty stark, and the UK is worse. Paris is roughly as big as the next four cities, but less than three times as big as the second. Helsinki is smaller than the next three cities put together, and only just over twice as big as the second. London is bigger than the next six cities combined, and almost four times as big as its nearest rival.

Most countries have an inverse law for population - you have one big city, two roughly half the size, four roughly a quarter the size, etc. The UK doesn't have that, it has one overwhelming city and only two cities which get to a quarter London's size. The five listed above are the only urban areas above a million population.

 

[Bromley boy]

I thought the Northern Line was the busiest, or perhaps was it with another calculation ?

The Northern line is busiest in terms of total passenger numbers carried across its extent, whereas the (much shorter) Victoria line is the most intensively used, in terms of number of passengers carried per mile.

 

[Hadders]

Couple of other points:

The UK doesn't need a city as large as London as its capital city. It's a historical anomaly as London was not just the capital of the UK but effectively the capital of the Empire too.

Top talent from across the UK and beyond will always be attracted to London. With the best will in the world it won't be attracted to the UK's provincial cities.

 

[AM9]

From Wikipedia:

Top cities in France:
1) Paris - 2,230k
2) Marseille - 860k
3) Lyon - 500k
4) Toulouse - 460k
5) Nice - 340k

Top cities in Finland:
1) Helsinki - 630k
2) Espoo - 270k
3) Tampere - 220k
4) Vantaa - 210k
5) Oulu - 200k

Top urban areas in the UK:
1) London - 9,790k
2) Manchester - 2,550k
3) Birmingham - 2,440k
4) Leeds/Bradford - 1,780k
5) Glasgow - 1,210k

The difference is pretty stark, and the UK is worse. Paris is roughly as big as the next four cities, but less than three times as big as the second. Helsinki is smaller than the next three cities put together, and only just over twice as big as the second. London is bigger than the next six cities combined, and almost four times as big as its nearest rival. ...

It depends on how the numbers are viewed, - look at the percentages secondary cities have compared with the capital:

France:
2) Marseille - 39% of capital population
3) Lyon - 22% of capital population
4) Toulouse - 21% of capital population
5) Nice - 15% of capital population

Finland:
2) Espoo - 43% of capital population
3) Tampere - 35% of capital population
4) Vantaa - 33% of capital population
5) Oulu - 32% of capital population

UK:
2) Manchester - 26% of capital population
3) Birmingham - 25% of capital population
4) Leeds/Bradford - 18% of capital population
5) Glasgow - 12% of capital population

So apart from Finland, the UK isn't significantly different to France and Paris was the centre of the 'French Empire' as Hadders has noted about London. When the north west stops arguing about it amonst themselves, Manchester and Liverpool will effectively be merged to become a single larger conurbation, certainly from a transport aspect, so a population approaching 40% of London's is likely.

 

[exile]

The thing is:

a) some jobs can't be done remotely

Indeed - but very many jobs could be (my previous job for instance, working in IT support). It's management distrust of employees that's holding it back.

Admittedly not everyone likes working from home - but do they like 2 hour commutes in traffic or crowded trains?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

From Wikipedia:

Top cities in France:
1) Paris - 2,230k
2) Marseille - 860k
3) Lyon - 500k
4) Toulouse - 460k
5) Nice - 340k

Top cities in Finland:
1) Helsinki - 630k
2) Espoo - 270k
3) Tampere - 220k
4) Vantaa - 210k
5) Oulu - 200k

Top urban areas in the UK:
1) London - 9,790k
2) Manchester - 2,550k
3) Birmingham - 2,440k
4) Leeds/Bradford - 1,780k
5) Glasgow - 1,210k

The difference is pretty stark, and the UK is worse. Paris is roughly as big as the next four cities, but less than three times as big as the second. Helsinki is smaller than the next three cities put together, and only just over twice as big as the second. London is bigger than the next six cities combined, and almost four times as big as its nearest rival.

Most countries have an inverse law for population - you have one big city, two roughly half the size, four roughly a quarter the size, etc. The UK doesn't have that, it has one overwhelming city and only two cities which get to a quarter London's size. The five listed above are the only urban areas above a million population.

You're not comparing like with like. The actual urban area populations for France are

1. Paris 10.6 million
2. Lyon 1.6
3. Marseille 1.6
4. Lille 1.0

So Paris is 6 times the size of the 2nd city. The 2.2 million figure is for Paris within the peripherique - which is a small part of the Paris urban area, which is at least as large as Greater London.

 

[Busaholic]

From Wikipedia:

Top cities in France:
1) Paris - 2,230k
2) Marseille - 860k
3) Lyon - 500k
4) Toulouse - 460k
5) Nice - 340k

Top cities in Finland:
1) Helsinki - 630k
2) Espoo - 270k
3) Tampere - 220k
4) Vantaa - 210k
5) Oulu - 200k

Top urban areas in the UK:
1) London - 9,790k
2) Manchester - 2,550k
3) Birmingham - 2,440k
4) Leeds/Bradford - 1,780k
5) Glasgow - 1,210k

The difference is pretty stark, and the UK is worse. Paris is roughly as big as the next four cities, but less than three times as big as the second. Helsinki is smaller than the next three cities put together, and only just over twice as big as the second. London is bigger than the next six cities combined, and almost four times as big as its nearest rival.

Most countries have an inverse law for population - you have one big city, two roughly half the size, four roughly a quarter the size, etc. The UK doesn't have that, it has one overwhelming city and only two cities which get to a quarter London's size. The five listed above are the only urban areas above a million population.

Having two cities vying to be the 'second city' doesn't help either. When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties Birmingham was undeniably the second city, with its motor and engineering industries, and was often referred to as such without an explanation. Now, if someone uses the term, you don't know where they're referring to without a qualification. George Osborne obviously chooses to regard Manchester as the second city, but if he represented East Surrey (say) in parliament then he might not!

 

[edwin_m]

When the north west stops arguing about it amonst themselves, Manchester and Liverpool will effectively be merged to become a single larger conurbation, certainly from a transport aspect, so a population approaching 40% of London's is likely.

That's pretty much what the Northern Powerhouse is trying to do, with the addition of Leeds as well. If it's as quick and convenient to get between them as it is between east and west London then they are more likely to function as a single city. That's the theory anyway, one difficulty being that a Manchester-Leeds single is unlikely to be as cheap as a Zone 2 single.

 

[urbophile]

I would have thought it was considerably quicker (if also dearer) to get from Liverpool to central or even east Manchester, than from say Heathrow to Upminster, though no doubt that will change with the advent of Crossrail. Manchester to Leeds is more problematic because of t'Pennines. And there is a cultural independence to each of the northern cities which isn't true of the various districts of London. But if Liverpool had the courage to develop its own distinctive role rather than playing second fiddle to Manchester and resenting it, the Northern Powerhouse might come real, and be more interesting than the capital for that reason.

 

[Taunton]

You're not comparing like with like. The actual urban area populations for France are

1. Paris 10.6 million
2. Lyon 1.6
3. Marseille 1.6
4. Lille 1.0

So Paris is 6 times the size of the 2nd city. The 2.2 million figure is for Paris within the peripherique - which is a small part of the Paris urban area, which is at least as large as Greater London.

Quite so. Likewise Helsinki and Espoo are the same urban area, as is Vantaa, which is where Helsinki airport is. Helsinki metropolitan area is about 50% of the Finnish population, in possibly 1% of the land area.

 

[agerj001]

Tbh, I still think they should get rid of the trains and track and instead, you can roller skate down the tunnels!