Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

Transport for London has a budget of over 10 billion pounds, how is that a 'shoestring budget'?

If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

TFL is actually profitable, you could google that in less time that it would take to write this comment, these wild hypotheticals are just noise

uxp8u61q's point is not a wild hypothetical, and is a valid point regardless of the profit status of TFL.

- If your budget is $10 but it costs $100, that's shoestring.

- If your budget is $10 but it costs $1, that's not shoestring.

You need to know both values; shoestring is relative.

TfL was profitable pre-covid. It is not currently profitable because remote work and such have lowered ridership, only running a surplus this year due to government support.

> Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

Other large cities with comparable transport infrastructure?

You, or any passing reader, can just spend 30 seconds with a search engine and find dozens of papers, reports, presentations, etc... doing this kind of financial comparison.

Do you not understand rhetorical questions? I know what the budget should be compared to.

Then why submit a reply that adds nothing to the conversation?

You might as well submit replies saying that rivers flow downhill instead of uphill.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com