Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more similar to the hundred year plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail feasibility studies at several points in his career across decades.

London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as bad as the Glasgow one, which feels like travelling on a 2/3 scale model of a subway with alarmingly narrow platforms.

It is however a point of contention within the UK that London public transport is better than public transport in almost every other city, due to being properly nationalized.

View on HN

> Not as bad as the Glasgow one, which feels like travelling on a 2/3 scale model of a subway with alarmingly narrow platforms.

For anyone who's not aware, the Glasgow Subway is literally smaller - the track gauge is 4ft (85% of standard gauge), and the rolling stock (trains) is similarly scaled down, to the point that you probably have to duck if you're over 6ft.

Budapest subway is something similar, too.

The oldest line which was inaugurated in the late 19th century, yes. (Though IIRC it is standard gauge.)

The three modern lines are spacious and high-capacity.

I remember that one of Stockholm's train line is also endearingly tiny too?

Half the Berlin lines are weirdly narrow, but not short.

Very true. If you really want to see rail lines materialise out of thin air, go to any major cities in China.

To americans, London public transport feels amazing. To rest of Europe, its lets say OKish

To people who have to commute to London, particularly if it's not a mainline train, it's tragically bad and overpriced. Train outages happen on a daily basis, the fare is very expensive compared to mainland Europe and the quality is quite a bit worse.

True, but it's not london public transport (e.g not TFL) and that may actually be the only reason it's bad. Look what happened when TFL took over national rail services inside london (silverlink > overground).

I've lived in and visted many other cities in Europe. Public transport is often much cheaper than London, but there's few examples where I'd really say it was /better/. Can you think of an example?

Oslo and Madrid come to mind. For the worst than london, The Rome underground is so sparse, it not really usefull. Paris is dense, chaotic and overcrowded.

Every single time I've been in Madrid the metro has been on strike. Every time. They run about 50-60% of services which means everything is slow and packed. I would actually say it's one of the worst in europe in my (I guess limited) experience due to that. I will have to try Oslo!

Ok, Oslo would be a small city in the UK - London has 12x the population. Madrid is closer. Paris is great - the ride is very smooth.

Anywhere in Germany? E.g. Frankfurt has much higher density of subway lines and trams.

Of course the transport is good in most DE cities but seriously, Frankfurt is a village compared to London. London's network is both vast and dense.

Frankfurt is less than a tenth the size, I'm not sure it's really a comparison. I found Berlin to be no better/slightly worse.

It's a pretty extensive system and the pretty new Elizabeth Line is great. But if you take something like the Piccadilly Line in from the airport, you probably shouldn't have a lot of luggage because a lot of stations just have stairs and platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars. (The double decker busses also work pretty well although they're not generally my default.)

> a lot of stations just have stairs

Very few, if any. They may not have escalators (Covent garden, for eg., but no-one in their right mind uses that - just use Leicester Square and walk on the street) but there are almost always ways of getting up to the street, and assistance is signposted for people with problems.

> platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars

Not sure what you mean here - mind the gap? Typically less on the Piccadilly than some other lines - Bank on the Central is particularly scary.

Based on living 30-odd years in London, most of it using the Piccadilly line on my daily commute and to get to LHR.

Sounding like a TfL groupie here, but it is a pretty good transit system, given geographic and budgetary constraints.

It's not just the gap. The platform can also be a somewhat significant step up from the car. Normally not a big deal but a couple years back I had both real dress clothing and clothes for a long walk in my luggage on a fairly long trip overall.

Agree that the Underground is good in general. I've used it a lot. That particular trip was just a case of having heavier luggage than I usually carry and I should have handled things differently.

The Piccadilly Line was opened in 1906 for gods sake, forgive them for not catering to people with 3 suitcases very well! That's part of the reason we built the Elizabeth Line, to enable a better transport option for people coming into heathrow.

It is interesting how infrastructure silently reflects society of its time.

In 1906, people travelling with three suitcases would likely have servants carrying them, and no one cared particularly about comfort of servants.

I'm not sure they'd of gotten the tube at all, unless perhaps to connect to a mainline station for a trip to the country? I still feel it more likely they'd of been driven, either by horse drawn or maybe even car (at least to the station) even in 1906.

I remember some rather old photos with very well-dressed people waiting for the tube... so probably "it depends". Compared to horse-drawn carriages, the tube was fast and not prone to traffic jams.

Most people of that era were "very well-dressed" relative to their wealth compared to today's "pyjamas and slippers to go to the local shop" level of couture, so I'm not to sure how much you can read into that.

relative to their wealth

But total wealth was a lot lower than today, while clothes were much more expensive relative to the average income than today. Many people wore their best clothes on Sundays only, and street photos from the same period show that an average person was dressed rather simply.

I don't even think that the tube was affordable to average working class public. When I read historic accounts from much later (the 1930s), they mention that fare on public transport was expensive enough that you had to choose between a breakfast and a ride.

About the same as today then, although breakfast at home costs way less than the shortest fare on the tube.

Other way round is my understanding. Road based transport was for the poor, especially trams, and the underground was for the fancy folk looking to shortcut past all of that.

I'll be visiting Glasgow in May, and very much hope I'll have a chance to visit the miniature subway. Third ever built, first to be called a "subway", never expanded since it opened in 1896 - how can you not love a system like that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com