Assorted frivolities
Some highlights of Christmas at home with my family:
* buying my first Oyster card to go Christmas shopping and being regaled with stories of relatives’ mishaps paying for tubes, trams and buses; getting renewedly cross about the difference in travel costs in London compared with Oxford (80p anywhere you want to go here vs. £1.50 into the city from Rose Hill there!)
* realising that your mother has stopped walking through the ladieswear department where you are shopping together for new Christmas clothes, and is looking longingly at the very top you’ve bought and wrapped for her already, and that you have to get her to move on before it’s too late without giving the game away; the look on her face when she opens it on Christmas day
* visiting the gym en masse to give moral support to your dad as he takes up the membership bought for him by your mum for Christmas. At one point there were four Bances on treadmills and cycling machines…
And all the usual highlights - spending time with my grandad and parents, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles; hearing all the family news; silly presents and sillier party games; M&S party food (my brother’s working there on his break from university, so we’ve treated ourselves with his staff discount!); presents from my family - jewellery, books, DVDs, clothes, and, once again, driving lessons - this will be the year that I pass my test, I’m determined - watch out Oxford motorists!
Here’s hoping Christmas treated you well too.
I know! getting an oyster card has been a major watershed for me. And a good reason to love Ken a little more this Christmas.
You are right about public transport in London, and Londoners who moan about public transport fares and services should get out of the capital more.
It is annoying when the left attacks Ken for raising cash fares, when the more complex reality is that Ken has implemented a fares policies that has slashed off peak tube fares, radically shifted to the long awaited smartcard system of integrated ticketing and cut transport fares for poorer families by abolishing bus fares for under 18s.
Revenue increases caused by tourists and lazy people continuing to buy cash fares are being spent on a massive public transport investment programme that is going to lead to a revolutionary expansion in public transport infrastructure over the next decade. Ken is not getting the credit he deserves for pro-public transport policies that are working (amongst other things an unusual modal shift from car to bus and dramatic increase in cycling).
The rest of the country needs such radical policies. (what a shame that unlike other European countries we don’t have a constitutional mechanism to shift regional leaders to being a candidate for head of government). In the meantime we need to sell Ken’s agenda as the left working rather than criticising him for arguable compromises, ideological impurities and factual inaccuracies.
Even with an Oyster card, London is not cheap. Where I live (Hong Kong) you can take long bus ride for about 55p. Other bus fares are about 25p. As for the tubes, I worked out that London is at least 4 times more expensive, even with an Oyster card. Hong Kong has had an RFID card for nearly ten years already, and its used almost universally.
Compared to Hong Kong, and to many other developed economies I would suggest, London’s public transport is backward and degraded, although Livingstone is making some progress.
Perhaps in ten to twenty years it may be up to acceptable first world standards. Now, however, it’s still a rip-off.
I’ve never been to Hong Kong, tell me more.
Do under 18s have free bus travel?
In Manchester travel is cheaper but it is an unregulated and shambolic service.
Daniel
I don’t think they do get free travel. But there are range of concessionary fares which apply across all forms of transport using the Octopus card (HK’s RFID card) on top of the already low fares.
I think Livingstone is doing well with implementing concessionary fares etc, but I would say the general pricing is relatively high. I don’t envy his task in sorting out London public transport. But he’s made a start.
The Hong Kong tube, incidently, is unified system: one company owns the whole system, run on a commercial basis, but with the govt owning 51%. It’s one of the few (the only?) of the comparable networks that actually makes money. The model differs quite considerably from London Underground.
HK has natural advantages over London regarding transport because of its extremely compact, infrastructure heavy nature. Everything just works.
But I think the key is to build a critical mass using public transport, building it into the culture, and then prices will stabilise. I think Livingstone is trying to do that. If he can succeed, his will have a fine legacy.
Yes, I just went into the London Transport site as I’m spending a night in London in October and was astounded to see the zone 1 fare for the underground set at £4 for a single trip (I lived in the UK in the 1980s, and it was 50p then, and we were complaining)! I’m in Singapore now and we also have a contactless card for a while, though not as old as HK’s Octopus card. The minimum fare for the underground here is less than 30p and the maximum fare is something like 80p. So even with the Oyster card, the tube isn’t cheap with a £1.50 minimum fare. While the under-18s in Singapore don’t travel free, they can take a bus or underground for a flat fee of below 20p anywhere if they are in school.