themodelcommuter

Lamentable as they are, the price hikes foisted upon the the users of London’s public transport notwork do tend to get rather sensationalised in the media. The Sun, for example, has an expose on the most expensive rail journey in the world, a 43 second trip on the tube that, at £4 for a single paper ticket, works out at 1.5 pence per meter for the 0.26 km trip. The implication is that journeys like this are killing London’s commuterate which is actually a fallacy. Journeys like this are ripping off visitors to London.

The reasoning for this is simple. Any self respecting Londoner knows that taking a tube between Covent Garden and Leicester Square is a pointless waste of time. By the time you have battled your way into a lift, or walked down the stairs at Covent Garden, got to the platform, waited for a train, fought your way onto a train, travelled to Leicester Square, exited the train, headed up the escalators, and out of the station you could have just simply walked which takes about half the time. Embankment to Charring Cross on the Bakerloo line is even worse since I think you actually end up walking further if you take the tube.

On top of this most Londoners will have, at the very least, an Oyster card which will reduce the cost of the journey, if they decided they were too lazy to walk, to £2. Lets factor in that they’ve probably not started their journey at Covent Garden, nor are they ultimately terminating at Leicester Square so they’ve probably actually got a travel card which makes the cost of the individual journeys pretty much irrelevant.

Finally, your average commuter had a monthly, or, more likely, a yearly travel card so the cost of this one trip is completely irrelevant. So, should a commuter find themselves being ripped off to the tune of £4 for this journey its pretty much their own fault for being lazy and not having their travel card with them.

Of course, the commuterate are still being royally ripped off with a Zone 1-6 annual travel card costing £1720. I still have the extra special joy of purchasing that beast to come.

~ by The Model Commuter on January 4, 2007.