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Originally Posted by nito
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Not often that I’d quote myself but the ONS have released the latest half-yearly figures on migration. The previous reporting periods saw provisional estimates revised up. Net migration levels are still expected to fall, but at a slower pace.
Source: ONS, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ngdecember2023
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Originally Posted by iheartthed
London and New York have systems that move similar numbers of people. Good transit does exist in the U.S. that is on par with the best transit systems in the world. Transit policy is treated as a local issue in the United States though, unlike most other countries, so results will vary.
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Prior to the pandemic, I think the ridership was starting to diverge, a divide that has only grown post-pandemic.
Looking at the daily counts for both systems, Tube ridership is now regularly beating Subway ridership (last week of April: 22.87mn v 22.31mn) which would have been inconceivable half a decade ago. London Buses move 5x as many people as NYC Buses (34.63mn v 7.32mn).
Total MNR, LIRR, SIR, NJT and PATH ridership in 2023 totalled just 254mn. The Elizabeth Line alone was 209mn. You then have the London Overground, 18 other Train Operating Companies (TOC’s), the Docklands Light Railway and Tram. The divide is certainly down to London’s stronger post-pandemic recovery relative to New York, but it is also down to sound investment decisions over the past two decades to drive a better ridership experience that encourages people to use public transportation.
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Originally Posted by Crawford
Ridership isn't directly related to transit quality, obviously. Washington has a world-class subway system; one of the better ones anywhere. There's no real subway system in the UK outside of London (yes, there's a tiny 19th century loop in Glasgow).
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Newcastle has a metro system, and Liverpool has a quasi-metro/commuter setup similar to BART, but most of the UK tends to be dominated by S-Bahn/RE like systems. The early development of railways in the UK meant most cities tended to have large rail networks prior to the arrival of metro systems.
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Originally Posted by Crawford
And the Chicago suburban rail network is far larger/more comprehensive than anything in the UK outside of London.
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It’s hard to make a direct comparison as British cities don’t tend to operate their own commuter rail networks, instead being served by multiple different TOC’s providing different services. Even London which is served by 20 TOC’s, only has direct control over two of them. Birmingham as another example is served by 5 TOC’s, but if you took the West Midland Trains TOC, that has a network spanning 900km (compared to METRA’s 785km), of course WMT doesn’t serve every passenger line in and around Birmingham, so the actual network is larger.
This is a consequence of the dense urban settlement landscape of Britain that has produced an interconnected, overlapping rail network. Contrast that to North America where city rail systems are isolated and predominantly hub-and-spoke. London Northwestern Railway as an example operates as a commuter service operator for Birmingham, London and Liverpool, and also provides a stopping long-distance intercity service. It would be a bit like NJ Transit’s Northeast Corridor Line and SEPTA’s Trenton Line being the same commuter service between New York and Philadelphia.
Of course, having a large network is irrelevant if the actual service that operates is substandard, whether that be slow moving trains operating on antiquated tracks and signalling, at-grade crossings and other conflicts, and services that only operate in one direction at peak, or intermittent and unreliable frequencies. With the interconnected setup in Britain, you have all-day bi-directional frequency services across the country which probably comes as a surprise for anyone in the States.
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Originally Posted by lio45
South Asian food was good in London when I was there (many years ago).
In general, yeah, you don’t visit Britain for food.
In the case of homebucket’s home region of the Bay Area, if all you care about is food, I’d say there’s little need to travel internationally (great for the environment, too!)
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Over the past twenty or so years, the London food scene has experienced a rather dramatic (and positive) transformation which makes pre-2000 food look comically laughable. London now hosts more restaurants with Michelin stars than New York for example.
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Originally Posted by iheartthed
I don't think Tokyo's rapid transit system is as long as NYC's.
I think Tokyo's regional rail is so seamless with the urban rapid-transit that it makes it feel larger, but everything I can find online says that the NYC subway is longer than Tokyo's two rapid-transit systems combined. That said, I think Tokyo is the clear overall winner. I do recall there being major gaps in coverage where I walked a lot farther to get to a station than I would in similar circumstances in NYC. So I still give NYC the edge on coverage, but I do agree that Tokyo is the overall better system.
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The combined Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway is smaller than the New York Subway, but they are but two mass-transit systems that operate in and around Tokyo, many of which are for all intents and purposes identical in operation to a metro service, e.g. the Yamanote Line. The scale and density of the Tokyo rail network has no peer.
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Originally Posted by iheartthed
One thing I dislike about the Underground is that the cars are cramped and can be uncomfortable for standing if you're taller than 6 feet. That fact, the lack of express routes, and the absence of 24 hour rail service makes the Underground a little behind NYC's subway, IMO. The Tube is definitely cleaner than the NY subway and stations are generally better kept, but I think the NY subway is a little better to use. NYC also has a flat fare for the entire system instead of distance zoning, which can make a trip on the Tube absurdly expensive.
The Overground feels much more like a NYC subway car to me, while it operates like a hybrid of a subway and commuter line. Admittedly, NY metro doesn't have a lot of middle ground rail service between a rapid-transit line and a commuter line like Paris's RER and London's Overground. That might be because there's not much need for it in the area covered by the subway. The PATH is the closest we have to that in the region.
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Express services are a bit of a misnomer; the average end-to-end service line speed for Subway express lines are the same as the average for Underground lines (c. 42.77kph). Local service speeds in New York are possibly the slowest metro services on the planet which I suspect due to the degradation of the historic infrastructure, close station distances, and lack of modernisation such as digital signalling, the latter also explains the low line frequencies.
London also operates a limited 24-hour service on several Underground, one Overground line and Thameslink, with plans to introduce more lines, but I can’t envision 24/7 operation as that would compromise the integrity of ongoing maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, which is part of the reason behind issues present in New York but not elsewhere.
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Originally Posted by hipster duck
If the New York metropolitan area was limited to the City of New York, then maybe. But there are 12 million people living beyond the city limits, and the rail service in these places is pretty spotty. Sure, compared to other North American metros it's fine, but can we compare diesel lines that run hourly to places like Port Jervis or along the Raritan valley to European RER?
Even within NYC, there are huge gaps, especially in Queens, and then there's the fact that with the exception of the neglected G train, all routes require you to travel to Manhattan to make trips between the outer boroughs.
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New York metro area rail service is the best in North America, but it is significantly behind peer cities on pretty every conceivable measure (network scope, capacity, frequencies, rolling stock, destinations, ridership, connectivity, accessibility, investment, etc…). The lack of orbital rail inside the city and further afield is a massive handicap, particularly in the post-pandemic world where not everyone wants to go in and back out again.
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