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Instead, what happens is you have the same number of cars, much more closely spaced, driving slowly and taking longer to get to their destination.

You won't have the same number of cars. You'll have more and more cars.

You mis-read me. I said if you increase congestion in London, you won't reduce the number of cars; the number of cars will remain broadly the same. As indeed has been the case for the last decade.

London has a low rate of car journeys as a percentage of total journeys, and that would absolutely skyrocket if you gave the cars more room. The low rate of car journeys is there despite the rather sorry state of the London Underground these days. Making cycling viable would reduce the car journeys even more, assuming that you use the freed-up space for bike lanes and not for letting more cars in.

You complain that I insulted you because I said you were talking with authority about London despite not knowing much about the city, but you keep on making egregious errors of fact. Here are three in just that paragraph:
1. You can't "give cars more room" in London in any meaningful way because the built environment is too dense. You can't widen a material number of roads, for example. No-one is going to agree to buildings being knocked down in significant numbers. Instead, congestion levels are managed through road fees and traffic flow (eg traffic lights, traffic islands, pedestrian crossings, etc).
2. London Underground is not in a sorry state. The only reason I can imagine you think that is you've read some articles online and that's given you a false sense of how it's functioning. But a few news stories don't give anywhere near a reasonable picture, and on all metrics that matter to passengers, LU has improved in recent years (finances are another issue). See https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/p... for example. Also, passenger numbers have been trending up for at least a decade. That wouldn't happen if the tube was in a sorry state. People would switch to buses (which carry twice as many passengers as the tube). They wouldn't get in cars in significant numbers though.
3. Cycling is already viable in London. Boris bikes, cycle lanes, and now cycle superhighways have been introduced, with more to come. These typically involve taking some or all of a lane and dedicating it to bikes only. On those roads, the traffic in the remaining lanes increases and slows down, and pollution worsens. The bike lanes are still a good idea, but they're not going to shift people out of vehicles, because private cars are the only traffic where drivers could be encouraged to use a bike as an alternative mode, and private cars are only a small fraction of the vehicles on London's roads. A van, minicab, black cab, bus or lorry is not substitutable with a bike from the perspective of the driver. In fact, minicabs in particular have significantly increased in number (thanks Uber and AddLee) despite congestion.

Congestion only slows buses down when you let it. If it does, you make more bus lanes and dedicate some roads to public transport, further increasing congestion for cars.

Bus lanes don't prevent congestion from slowing buses down. I mean, honestly I take the bus down the Finchley Road with my kids every morning, and it goes down a bus lane and it goes really frigging slowly due to congestion. Because London has narrow roads and it takes just one lorry in the middle lane to make it impossible for a bus to pass by in the bus lane. Never mind vehicles turning onto and off the road. The pollution is awful because of the vast numbers of vehicles on the road -- the entire road is bumper to bumper for miles with slowly moving cars, so the exhaust fumes really build up. There is zero prospect of dedicating Finchley Road to public transport because it's a major arterial route for commerce.

Interesting. Taking the London as an example:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/a...
https://www.google.co.uk/searc...

So that's 10.2 billion / 8.1 million people... or £1,259 (1,620 USD) for each person. We could spread it across the country, but then we would need to include the costs for other transport companies.

Is it worth it?!? Maybe... but there are many angles to that argument.

Glad to see other cities catching up, as enabling use of public transit is one of the best ways to reduce traffic, pollution, etc

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-...

Under 5 - Free with a paying adult
5 to 10 - Free with a paying adult, or on their own by using a free Oyster card
11 to 15 - Free when using a free Oyster card
16 to 17 - Free when using a free Oyster card... but only if you LIVE in London.

Uber is a minicab company. Minicab drivers do not need to pass the knowledge. The difference between a minicab and a black cab is that minicabs can't just pick up customers off the street, they always have to be prebooked either by telephone or by app.

Uber drivers in the UK still have to get a Private Hire Licence and commercial insurance and if you check Uber's UK application page, you'll see that |Uber acknowledges this.

Incidentally, London implements a licensing scheme for its public transport. I presume plenty of other cities do the same.

The Oyster card only tells you which which entrance someone came in and which exit they went out. Using the WiFI MAC you can determine routes and train taken and follow walking routes through station.

When there are multiple routes a passenger might take this information can be used to suggest less crowded options, shows station designers if they have inappropriately sized facilities for the spot demand, etc.

Here is the reports on the kind of results they got: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/revi...

Honestly, this infatuation with buses has me a bit baffled.

Perhaps it's from people who live in cities with functioning bus systems. I do. The city in question is called "london". I don't know if you call 6.5 million journeys per day infatuation, but I call that "working".

Sure, they do a great job of moving lots of people from point A to point B, but everyone seems to forget to take the actual consumer participation factor out of account.

Well, the nominal population of London is 8.7 million, so the bus system averages a little under one journey per person per day. Which is pretty good.

anecdote about your city to match my anecdote

Perhaps your city sucks at public transport. Maybe you don't have a well integrated transport system. Maybe you have too few busses, or not enough priority given to them. Perhaps they're too expensive, too infrequent or too unreliable. However the fact that London has a working system is an existence proof that shows a working system is perfectly possible. London is not unique in this regard either.

The problem is not with busses, the problem is with your city. I for one welcome electric busses because they don't spew wretched diesel fumes all over the place.

Maybe not but it's not exactly easy

taxi company so do they have drivers with small 'topographical test' in order to obtain a 'Private Hire' Drivers Licence??

Yes private hire licenses require topographical assessment. Called the "The Knowledge" it is the most stringent test in world apparently.

You will need to undertake a topographical skills assessment from an accredited assessment centre

The requirements seem sensible:

• at least 21 years old
• valid drivers license at least 3 years old (no new drivers)
• valid work eligibility in UK (no illegal immigrants)
• background check
• medical exam
• topological test aka "The Knowledge"

The person was talking about drivers licenses, not taxi licenses. You don't need to speak English to drive in the UK.

Yes, and the GP was talking about literacy, not language. This is all off-topic anyway; the original article was about taxi (including Uber) drivers' ability to speak English. The UK requires that all licensed private hire drivers are able to communicate in English at an appropriate level. Drivers need to be able to communicate with passengers to discuss a route or fare, as well as read, understand and respond to important regulatory, safety and travel information. More here.

Purely to put up roadblocks against competition from foreign diesel passenger car makers in order to favor domestic makers of gasoline engines.

Yep. Nothing to do with smog and proposals for center city bans on diesel vehicles (never mind the alternating day travel schemes already being imposed). European smog problems are clearly rumors. The London ULEZ is simply a scheme by U.S. engine manufacturers to take over the European market.

No technical reason at all. You hear politicians discussing making London and Paris-type proposals for LA, SF, NYC, Boston, and Chicago all the freaking time... right?

Try again.

I was on the No. 88 bus yesterday
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/bus-...

"slowing down" is the goal in residential areas.

Specifically, the problem is asshole drivers hitting 40-50mph on urban/suburban streets. The liklihood of pedestrian death if it approaches 100% - and there are associated noise and stress issues to go with the cars. It's clear that some people woen't be reasonable in their driving, so they need to be forced to do so - and speed humps simply aren't working (they tend to get treated as part of a slalom course with the assholes accelerating hard after they pass each one.)

Roads are _not_ the domain of cars, despite 100 years of attempts by manufacturers to lobby governments for rules pushing things that way.

Removal of paint and other moves are mostly being driven by the Living Streets initiative http://www.livingstreets.org.u... coupled with Transport for London's policy of dramatically reducing pedestrian deaths and injuries by 2020 https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/s... - which is concentrating on undoing changes aimed at prioritising vehicular traffic at the expense of quality of life for non-drivers (and for the most part haven't done that much to improve traffic flow in any case), but also removing "safety" changes such as pedestrian fencing and excessive parking restrictions which have statistically proven to have the opposite effect to what was intended.

Slashdotters would do well to look it up and consider the

One would assume that after 10 years there would be some study on the effectiveness of the approach or other data available. A quick Google search turned up a government report done in London that measured speed differences both before and after. It doesn't report to the same level as a scientific study, but they did include a control for measurement, so presumably there is a more detailed version of the publication that details the methodology.

This particular study is limited in that it's concerned with roads where the speed limit is 30 mp/h (48 km/h) so it may not be reasonable to conclude it works on roads with higher speed limits, but for lower-speed city roads it does, in fact, appear to result in a natural reduction in traffic speed. They also point out it has the added benefit of reducing city work on roads (the roads don't need to be completely shut off for repainting) which I think some people would agree is worth it for that reason alone.

The report I linked above refers to a few other studies or reports, but does not provide a citation, so I can't look them up directly, but it would seem that there is a fair bit of support for removing the lines, at least in specific circumstances. Whether that holds true for other cases remains to be seen, but there is reasonable empirical support for doing it in urban areas and it would be something to study in more remote roads with higher speed limits.

London's taxi system is an overpriced, government created monopoly with stiff barriers to entry.

Do you enjoy being woefully ignorant or do you just like making stuff up.

I suggest you look up what the definition of a monopoly is before you make yourself look even more silly.

You might want to also look up what the barriers to entry to becoming a basic taxi (minicab) in London.

Nah why bother eith facts or educating yourself. It's better to angrily spew ignorance all over the internet.

Here you go, you can educate yourself here:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/p...

However I've argued with you before, and I remember that you are completely impervious to facts and reasons. I don't hope to persuade you that you're talking utter rubbish, since you're a poster child for the backfire effect.

Hopefully however someone with un-formed opinions will read the post and not be taken in by your outlandish claims.

There ^^, fixed it for you. Catalonia isn't a separate state (yet). For most of us outside the US we don't even need to qualify which country Barcelona's in because we all know this as a given, and anywhere else in the new world that has the same name is the exception and needs to be qualified. Interesting that you mentioned "Catalonia" though... pushing some sort of political agenda or just ignorance of the place? Also interesting that you picked Barcelona and not some other better known or more congested city. This whole story just seems a bit weird and parochial.

Actually why even this story about San Francisco? It's hardly the worst offender in the US for pedestrian deaths at 1.7 deaths/100,000 - picking three comparable sized cities from Table 8 of this doc:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...
* Detroit, MI: 3.99
* Jacksonville, FL: 3.23
* Austin, TX: 2.97

It looks to me like a lot of US cities could do a lot to reclaim their cities back from cars, when you look at London which is vastly bigger and more congested with pedestrians. There were 65 pedestrians killed in London in 2013 compared with San Francisco's 29, which is a city a tenth the size:
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/me...
http://www.transalt.org/sites/...

Oh, and nice bit of LOLbertarian bias in the summary.

The best bit FTA "A leaked copy of the rules for consultation"... which is available online, at https://consultations.tfl.gov.... , TfL

It's quite rare to see a bicyclist come to a complete stop . . . or even slow to walking speed at a stop sign and it's common to see them blow through red lights without even slowing down significantly.

A 2007 study of 7,502 cyclists at five random intersections in London concluded that "an average of 16% violated red lights, whilst the remaining 84% obeyed the traffic signals."

A similar study of 2,617 cyclists at seven intersections across in Oregon in 2013 found the red light compliance rate to be 69.1% (89.7% excluding right-turn-on-red which is illegal but generally safer since you're not crossing traffic lanes which was your complaint).

I don't consider 16% and 21% high enough to call "common."

Licensed cab drivers have comprehensive record checks.

In places where the regulators aren't simply an extension of the taxi unions and want to see innovation and an improved service they work with Uber and Uber drivers have comprehensive checks too. If Uber are using unlicensed drivers in your city you've got the regulators to thank for not licensing them as much as Uber for employing them.

Licensed cab drivers have adequate insurance.

See above, although AFAIK Uber drivers are required to have appropriate liability insurance everywhere.

Licensed cab drivers (in any decent place) drive very identifiable cars, and anyone else trying to drive in a similar car will stand out like a sore thumb.

I can't speak for other cities but, in London, anyone can drive a black cab as a private car, you just can't use it as a taxi. The reason people don't is that they're designed to be practical as taxis, not private vehicles. (Interestingly a number of celebrities drive them precisely because it means they don't stick out like a sore thumb.) And unlicensed taxi drivers certainly exist and do drive black cabs (although they're a much smaller problem than minicab drivers operating a hail and ride service outside their license... but the passenger has made a conscious choice in those cases so I don't have a problem with that).

Licensed cab drivers (in the best places) have to take some of the toughest exams in the world for spatial awareness (i.e. London's "The Knowledge" exam).

If this is so great then taxi drivers don't need to fear competition from Uber, the markets will choose their superior knowledge. Oh wait, it turns out this feted exam utilises obsolete technology (the human memory) to create an excessively high barrier of entry to protect the jobs of taxi drivers who don't want to face true commercial competition.

An Uber driver need give so little evidence to become a contractor that he could easily have faked his identity.

That depends heavily on jurisdiction. Again, if the regulators would work with Uber this could easily be overcome. It also ignore the fact that it's much easier to know I got the driver I ordered with Uber while if I hail a random cab I have no idea if the driver's license is genuine, even if it is a really rigorous process to get a genuine license.

An Uber driver has much less invested in his job, so does not stand to lose so much if he drives the long way (any decent place regularly tests its taxi drivers for honesty) or otherwise abuses his passenger.

Yet again Uber wins. They can review the route and arbitrate appropriately. With the traditional taxi even if you know the drivers details and file a claim it's basically he said, she said. But hey, the current system works so well why change it?

An Uber driver (who already has false id) wanting to cause great harm will switch off the GPS and/or report that the fare is no longer in the car.

Yet he's still the last known point of contact with that person. If I were a psychopath that puts me a darn sight nearer the centre of the police's radar than I'd like. So yes, it's an effective deterrent.

Many genuine taxi services have cameras in the cabs, which is a much safer prospect if you think a technical solution to a social problem is the way to go.

Oh sure. Once you know which cab they hailed off the street you can review the footage. These solutions (trip logging/camera) are neither solving the same problem nor mutually exclusive.

You just defended evil.

Nope:

Either all regulation of commercial transportation should be repealed, or, as I personally prefer, remove the restriction on taxi medallions and reduce the cost of these medallions to be the token amount necessary to verify the safety regulations are being met.

That is a very US centric opinion. Since this is an article about Uber not in the US, I'll weigh in. Well, to be honest, the taxi medallion system in the US is beyond insane and seems designed to cause rent-seeking and all sorts of other bad things. In other countries, taxi licensing is much more sensible.

To be a black cabbie in London (Hackney carriages have all sorts of extra rights and priviliges beyond minicabs which is what Uber falls under, including right to pick up passengers hailing a cab, use of taxi ranks, and a bunch of extra protections), you get an application form, get a background check done, do a self assesment, written and oral exam of "the knowledge" and then that's it.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for...

It costs about a grand, and basically anyone can do it.

So licensing of taxis is not evil per-se. It ensures that the taxi drivers are not rapists, murders end etc, know how to drive, have a good grasp of the local geography (a satnav is no substitute for knowing your way around in a busy city) and etc.

If done properly it's not some awful, corrupt, rent-seeking enterprise.

If you're only used in big cities you're better off just going pure electric. The efficiency is much greater, the vehicle cost is lower and it's far more convenient to charge up at night than to have to wait in line at a hydrogen filling station.

The bus depot will have it's own diesel (or hydrogen) pump, so it's probably only a small saving. In a major city with a significant electric night bus service they'd probably need rapid charging points instead.

London has six electric buses on various trials. I saw a video clip about them -- there were so many batteries they'd taken up the whole back of the bus, and obscured the read windscreen. That might not be the newest ones though.

Trolley buses are a cheap solution, still used widely in the ex-Soviet Union, China, Pyongyang etc. The buses are light as well, so there's much less damage to the road surface. A small battery could add the flexibility to make minor route changes away from the wires.

General-purpose train lines, with something unlike single-purpose engines running on open tracks with interconnection? The page does not list any.

Clearly you have never seen the Docklands Light Railway (DLR): here's a map. This is not simple A-to-B track you can catch trains to different destinations from the same track on the same platform e.g. London City Airport has two platforms: one for trains heading to Woolwich Arsenal and the other which has trains headed to both Bank and Stratford and it used to have trains that also went to Tower Gateway but those were dropped before the London Olympics so the routes shown in the map are not static and can be adjusted to match traffic.

If the cab companies had their way it would be illegal to drive yourself in the city..

It's not illegal, but you do have to pay £10 per day to do so.

London Underground toilet map (not so great in the centre, but pretty good elsewhere).

They're in probably half of European underground stations, on average. Expect to pay 0-50c, depending on the country.

My local station (in London) has one, it's always very clean. I don't think many people use it.

It tracks mileage, hard brakes, and driving times - nobody knows the exact formula. Progressive claims a decrease of 7 mph or more in one second is considered a hard brake. Don't bother living in a major city.

Maybe you would be fine in London...

Average traffic speeds for the 12 hours between 07:00 to 19:00 across Central London in Quarter 1 was 8.98 mph compared to the 8.82 mph observed in Quarter 1 last year, a 1.8% increase year-on-year.

mortality rate of 1000 for men and 600 for women, per 100,000 ... In London alone the expected death rate on that day alonw was 219 people ...

It's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison. Every living person will die at some point. Comparing a single cause of death against all causes of death combined will result in a small number for most causes of death. In this case, you're comparing death rates for people who mostly had a long and healthy life behind them to a death cause that hit mostly people between 20 and 50 years old, and moreover that also involved 700 injuries. (I'd like to know how many of those 700 are actually people who were rendered severy crippled for the rest of their lives.)

It would be more fair to compare the numbers against deaths from accidents (e.g. traffic or work-related). For comparison, traffic deaths in Greater London were 204 in the year 2009; compared to that, the 52 deaths on 7/7 is not that small of a number.

When you've a map where all the lines are geographically correct it makes it hard to understand how to get from station A to station B, make out the station names and there is a lot of wasted space! Have a look at the London underground geographical map [wordpress.com] vs the actual tube map [bbc.co.uk] for example.

Here's a London Tube Map. What is the quickest way to get to Bayswater from Queensway?

I have a friend who's a Londoner (or was), and she says that the Tube is very nice. If I may ask, what are the fares? In DC they are quite high: from $1.80 to $5.50 for a one-way ride, depending on the distance and time of day, and the real cost is twice that, since it's 50% subsidized and taxpayers pay the rest.

See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx for fares and http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf for a map of all Tube, rail and tram lines.

Tube:
£2.10 for a single journey in the central zone (any time).
£1.60 for a single short-ish journey not in the central zone (peak time).
£3 for a very long journey off-peak, £5 at peak (zone 6 to zone 1).

Bus: Any bus (or tram) journey is £1.40.

There is an automatic limit to what you pay if you use the contactless payment card (which everyone does), see the web page ("price cap"). There is a lower limit for only using buses or trams.

Road: driving between 7h-19h within (roughly) zone 1 costs £10.

I can't find reliable figures on the amount of subsidy. It seems to be mostly of interest to right-wing crackpots. The revenue from the £10 congestion charge is spent on public transport.

Fares have increased significantly with the current mayor, I think he has shifted what the subsidy pays for.

I have a friend who's a Londoner (or was), and she says that the Tube is very nice. If I may ask, what are the fares? In DC they are quite high: from $1.80 to $5.50 for a one-way ride, depending on the distance and time of day, and the real cost is twice that, since it's 50% subsidized and taxpayers pay the rest.

See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx for fares and http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf for a map of all Tube, rail and tram lines.

Tube:
£2.10 for a single journey in the central zone (any time).
£1.60 for a single short-ish journey not in the central zone (peak time).
£3 for a very long journey off-peak, £5 at peak (zone 6 to zone 1).

Bus: Any bus (or tram) journey is £1.40.

There is an automatic limit to what you pay if you use the contactless payment card (which everyone does), see the web page ("price cap"). There is a lower limit for only using buses or trams.

Road: driving between 7h-19h within (roughly) zone 1 costs £10.

I can't find reliable figures on the amount of subsidy. It seems to be mostly of interest to right-wing crackpots. The revenue from the £10 congestion charge is spent on public transport.

Fares have increased significantly with the current mayor, I think he has shifted what the subsidy pays for.

London does it successfully:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/congestioncharging/

Oyster Cards

This is what they use in London. They work on trains and buses, and work reliably and efficiently. They seem to work in exactly the way you suggest, as not 100% bulletproof security but only good enough.

I think the balance is stored on the card, but all transactions are sent through to a central authority, which would certainly be able to detect any fraud and disable cards found to be behaving suspiciously. Or, more likely, have the ubiquitous CCTC cameras in London identify those using fraudulent cards and presumably punish them appropriately.

I thought the whole car thing was dying because we're running out of oil.
Can you build a UAV that carries a whole person AND a stack of lithium batteries?
Mass transit is still the way to go whether you're flying or not.
See, for instance, London's new Cable Car. I live in a hilly place and I can't for the life of me imagine why nobody thought it would be useful to simply go from hill to hill.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modalpages/23828.aspx

He lives in London. A car is probably the slowest, most annoying, and most expensive means of transport in this city. Even the car-loving Top Gear guys had to admit it.

The first London subway line opened in 1863, so it's not a new thing. In terms of milage, it's the second largest metro system in the world (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems) And 45% of its 249 miles are underground. There are some facts and figures here: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/modesoftransport/londonunderground/1608.aspx

I've tried Google's public transport option a few times, but it's given bad plans. I don't know if they don't have good enough data, or if their algorithms aren't tuned to working in a city with so many frequent services as London, but the official route planner is much better -- and covers everything in London, which is enough for most people in London. Google's is very keen to switch from the Underground to buses -- it forgets that it takes much longer to get from the deep-underground platforms of the London Underground, crammed with people, out onto the street (which exit?), to the bus stop (which side of the road? which stop?) than to walk to a different platform for a different line. It's also optimistic with journey times during rush hour -- buses are often slowed by traffic/people, trains aren't much affected.

Also, when service frequency varies, it's most useful to know "take bus 23, buses are every 10 minutes" than "take bus 23 at 08:23". I've been approached by tourists concerned that there was no London Underground train at 20:42. Well, no, but there was one at 20:40, and another at 20:43.

Many European cities, and many elsewhere, have a single website with a routeplanner for that city. I expect many, many people still use these websites rather than Google.

There has been a quiet revolution in real-time public transport information in London (UK) also.

Transport for London has equipped all buses with real-time GPS and this info is available via web and SMS.

Apparently they are looking for third-party developers to use their APIs but I've not seen anything yet.

Here's how to find when the next bus is coming:
          http://countdown.tfl.gov.uk/#/

Since most ticketing is now electronic (the Oyster card system) there is also live info an nearly all the millions of passengers; at the Transport Museum they have some displays showing this off.

There is a similar system in place in London. Taxi's and motorcycles are able to share bus lanes.

This report from 2007 show's the enforcement cameras are improving things in London

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/static/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/6042.html

After that it get's more complicated because congestion charging at peak times has come into effect for traffic entering the centre of the city

An apostrophe doesn’t mean, “Watch out, here comes an S!”
An apostrophe actually means something in a word: it indicates missing letters (as in “can’t” for “cannot” or “it’s” for “it is”), indicates possessive case (“the woman's penchant for proper usage”)

There is a similar system in place in London. Taxi's and motorcycles are able to share bus lanes.

This report from 2007 show's the enforcement cameras are improving things in London

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/static/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/6042.html

After that it get's more complicated because congestion charging at peak times has come into effect for traffic entering the centre of the city

That sounds like something I've heard before...
Oh yes. the "Boris bikes" scheme in London. No need for expensive EN-Vs. Bicycles will do
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14808.aspx

The maximum speed of a R142A train (found randomly on Wikipedia) is 55mph (25 m/s). Subway trains don't go very fast. I can't find any information for New York, but in London they barely hit 30-40mph (13-18 m/s) in the centre of the city. (Though that's fast compared to road traffic.)

That gives an elevation of 8-16m.

(More technical facts about the London Underground than you could possibly want: Key Facts)

For the NYC subway, you pay at point of entry, and you walk through a turnstile on exit.

Is the fare the same, regardless of the length of the trip? Wikipedia suggests it is.

In the largest European cities I've visited it's not, but I live in London so I'll describe that.

In London there are 9 concentric fare zones (1 to 9, with 1 being the central zone, and few tourists venturing further than Zone 2. Property is often advertised as "5 minutes from a zone 3 station" etc). [PDF map]

The fare depends on which zones you travel through, and the time of day (peak/off-peak). e.g.: (from this ridiculous table)
zone 9 to zone 1 is £6.00 or £3.50 (peak, off-peak)
zone 9 to zone 3 is £3.50 or £1.40 (peak, off-peak)
zone 2 to zone 1 is £2.50 or £1.90 (peak, off-peak)

Hence, if you use the electronic ticket (Oyster card) it needs to know what zone you start in, what zone you ended in, and whether you went through a more central zone (from zone 3 in the east to zone 3 in the west, through the centre, costs more than taking an orbital route avoiding the centre). The Oyster card must be used to open the ticket barrier at the start and the end of the journey. (Paper tickets must too -- they have the zones they are valid in encoded in a magnetic strip)

Anyway, my point was that in London the transport network has the origin and destination data for the majority of tube or suburban train trips. It must be interesting to mine this -- you could see the effect of delays, how people respond to a planned closure, how many people don't make it home on Friday night, who goes to a political protest...

There is some sample data here but I don't want to register at the moment.

For the NYC subway, you pay at point of entry, and you walk through a turnstile on exit.

Is the fare the same, regardless of the length of the trip? Wikipedia suggests it is.

In the largest European cities I've visited it's not, but I live in London so I'll describe that.

In London there are 9 concentric fare zones (1 to 9, with 1 being the central zone, and few tourists venturing further than Zone 2. Property is often advertised as "5 minutes from a zone 3 station" etc). [PDF map]

The fare depends on which zones you travel through, and the time of day (peak/off-peak). e.g.: (from this ridiculous table)
zone 9 to zone 1 is £6.00 or £3.50 (peak, off-peak)
zone 9 to zone 3 is £3.50 or £1.40 (peak, off-peak)
zone 2 to zone 1 is £2.50 or £1.90 (peak, off-peak)

Hence, if you use the electronic ticket (Oyster card) it needs to know what zone you start in, what zone you ended in, and whether you went through a more central zone (from zone 3 in the east to zone 3 in the west, through the centre, costs more than taking an orbital route avoiding the centre). The Oyster card must be used to open the ticket barrier at the start and the end of the journey. (Paper tickets must too -- they have the zones they are valid in encoded in a magnetic strip)

Anyway, my point was that in London the transport network has the origin and destination data for the majority of tube or suburban train trips. It must be interesting to mine this -- you could see the effect of delays, how people respond to a planned closure, how many people don't make it home on Friday night, who goes to a political protest...

There is some sample data here but I don't want to register at the moment.

For the NYC subway, you pay at point of entry, and you walk through a turnstile on exit.

Is the fare the same, regardless of the length of the trip? Wikipedia suggests it is.

In the largest European cities I've visited it's not, but I live in London so I'll describe that.

In London there are 9 concentric fare zones (1 to 9, with 1 being the central zone, and few tourists venturing further than Zone 2. Property is often advertised as "5 minutes from a zone 3 station" etc). [PDF map]

The fare depends on which zones you travel through, and the time of day (peak/off-peak). e.g.: (from this ridiculous table)
zone 9 to zone 1 is £6.00 or £3.50 (peak, off-peak)
zone 9 to zone 3 is £3.50 or £1.40 (peak, off-peak)
zone 2 to zone 1 is £2.50 or £1.90 (peak, off-peak)

Hence, if you use the electronic ticket (Oyster card) it needs to know what zone you start in, what zone you ended in, and whether you went through a more central zone (from zone 3 in the east to zone 3 in the west, through the centre, costs more than taking an orbital route avoiding the centre). The Oyster card must be used to open the ticket barrier at the start and the end of the journey. (Paper tickets must too -- they have the zones they are valid in encoded in a magnetic strip)

Anyway, my point was that in London the transport network has the origin and destination data for the majority of tube or suburban train trips. It must be interesting to mine this -- you could see the effect of delays, how people respond to a planned closure, how many people don't make it home on Friday night, who goes to a political protest...

There is some sample data here but I don't want to register at the moment.

I think an upgrade to Oxford Circus station is warranted anyway; I don't need to use it at peak times but a housemate does. Presumably when the escalators are renewed it will be better, was it as bad before they started work on them? (Maybe that is the upgrade?)

Crossrail should ease congestion on the Central Line, though perhaps not for long (there's probably latent demand).

yea and at only 3,000 dollars it's affordable as well

If cycling is your hobby $3000 isn't unreasonable. I know plenty of people that spend roughly that amount every year on transport, so it could even be easy to justify.

Personally, this year I expect I'll spend about £200 on bicycle-stuff (comprehensive insurance, a new chain, someone might steal my lights at some point, I'll probably impulse-buy something expensive, shiny and pointless, ...). That covers getting to and from work, and other associated journeys (e.g. shopping on the way home, meeting people after work). The bike cost about £500 two years ago. I'll also spend about £250 on local public transport, since I'm not trying to save money and often prefer to travel with friends.

That surely depends on the shape of your city. Seattle and Chicago are both on the coast, but I live in London, which is a circular city -- there are lots of bridges and tunnels over/under the River Thames.

All the London Underground (subway) routes go right through the centre of London -- even if most people get off (or change) in the centre, some will want to go through (it's probably much simpler to build this way anyway). There's only one intercity rail service through the centre, that was a political decision in the 19th century. (Map showing both networks, PDF).

For many people the quickest way to go across the city is still to go through the middle, but the solid orange line (Overground) is busy, and if you're only going ~45 degrees round there's probably a bus.

(I was given a lift in someone's car from home to a place just the other side of the centre of London on NYE. I'd not done this before, so I was amused to find it took longer than walking to the station and taking the train (2 changes) would have done. And there was nowhere to park, so we had to walk further anyway.)

Careful, $100,000 doesn't sound that much to me.

According to this document [PDF] Transport for London are spending £1,672 million on 191 new trains. That's over £8 million per train, $100k doesn't sound so much any more.

Argue against it because of liberty, not economics.

A very limited (you need a severe disability) free taxi service exists here. I don't know anything about it, beyond what's on that page, although I've seen smaller vehicles than the one pictured -- that would qualify as a decent-sized bus in much of Scotland!

The first bus services grew from taxi services.

Speaking of google, you do realize that Google Maps already has routing options based on whether you're walking, biking, or taking public transit?

Google's directions for anything except driving are pathetic in the UK. Where public transport is an option it's missing most routes -- it doesn't even have trains, so to get from Reading to Maidenhead Google suggests a 90 minute bus ride -- with one bus per hour, including a change. The obvious option is the train, there's one every 15 minutes and the journey takes 14 minutes. In London the "transport" overlay shows the London Underground lines, but doesn't show the other rail lines, which are essential for any route planner.

There's no cycling option for Google Maps UK, but since the map doesn't have any bike paths it wouldn't be any good anyway. It doesn't have footpaths either, which can make for some inefficient walking directions.

CycleStreets gives you three cycle routes: a fast (may use busy roads) one, a medium one, and a leisure one (very few roads, take some little kids with you). It also gives the profile of the route, and tells you what kind of road you'll be cycling along (e.g. dedicated cycle path, cycle lane on busy road, road with no cycle path etc).

For general public transport routes over the whole UK http://www.transportdirect.info/ is the best option, although there are better options if you know you need to use a train, or if a local/regional organisation has provided their own route planner. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ has an excellent journey planner for London, including all public transport (bus, tram, tube, train, boat), cycling and walking.

Most city bike rental systems charge very low fees for short periods of time (a couple of hours, say), but high fees for longer than that -- they want the bikes to be used, not locked up somewhere where other people can't use them. The result is bike shops still do the same business they always did, renting bikes for half-days or longer (example).

In fact, the Minneapolis scheme is exactly like this: free for half an hour, $1.5 for the next half hour, $3 for the next hour, then $6 for each half hour after that.