Hacker News Reader

Comment by stegosaurus | Hacker News Reader

Intuitively this seems like an obvious result of the network effect. (edit: I'm not intending to belittle anyone here and I apologise if it may seem that way).

Axiomatically, socially the sum of two humans is greater than the two humans apart.

And large cities, with metros, many villages that melt into one, employment opportunity, talks, bars, etc, are the embodiment of what it means to be social (with some exceptions - community feel being an important one).

In the UK this is at the forefront of politics - it is obvious to anyone that the country is governed as 'London plus appendages'. The rail and road networks are basically built around the capital. Most public transport subsidies go to the capital. The important (in a status sense, not in an absolute sense) businesses are headquartered there.

View on HN

> Most public transport subsidies go to the capital

Most public transport revenue also comes from the capital. While literally millions of London's commuters pay thousands of dollars a year each for the privilege of being herded into overfilled cattle cars twice a day, Welsh/Scots/Northerners don't actually use the public transport they demand and hence it runs at a massive loss until it inevitably gets shutdown yet again.

Sure, I'm not making a value judgement, just stating how it is.

In my opinion, it makes a lot of sense to do that anyway, at least viewed from outer space.

Stepping away from 'the economy', London's public transport system is used because it's the only option. The roads are at capacity. I say this having driven basically every possible route in rush hour. They are full. I'm often surprised that we don't literally end up having gridlock and just all getting stuck forever.

A metro system in my small northern hometown would be pointless because there's hardly any road traffic so everyone just jumps in their car and has their nice personal space.

I find this quite interesting. Public transport has to be a better option for a critical mass to use it. This can happen either by it being much better (quicker), or by the alternatives simply ceasing to work.

> Most public transport revenue also comes from the capital

This is incorrect. 40% of 'Transport for London' (TfL) spending comes from fares, and approx. 27% from government [0]. That represents a real cash subsidy of £3.1B per year for londoners.

The disparity in infrastructure spending per resident is even more stark [1]. London receives more than half of all such spending in England despite containing less than a sixth of its population.

[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-ar... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/07/london-...

What proportion of that 27% comes from taxes collected from Londoners?

That's a reasonable argument because roads have zero subsidies. Wait, no.

The real issue is does London pay more or less in taxes for transportation than it receives in transportation projects. Considering the population and relative income of London it ends up subsidizing the rest of the UK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com