Funding disparity

[The Ham]

As a bus example - TfL Buses get £374m per year subsidy (some from Central Government) - outside London funding is much lower - maybe £2/3m per county (and none from Central Government)

Why should buses in say Manchester be expected to pay their way and therefore get chopped and changed with high fares when London's network is fully subsidised and regulated with low fares*. Maybe that's why bus use is declining while London's is growing.

Because it is cheaper to subsidise the buses than it is to try and improve the road network in London. I maybe inclinded to drive into most cities off peak, however I would do everything I could not to drive within the north/south circular almost at all costs!

With the cost of motorways costing about £30million per mile (not including London land values), you don't get many miles of motorway for £374m per year and you would need a lot of miles of motorways to even get close to enough road space to cater for London traffic. You would also have to tear down large chunks of London to do so (meaning a lot more building over the rest of the UK)

It is very difficult to put a cost on public transport travel within London in such a way that it was a fair way of comparing it to the rest of the UK.

 

[HYPODERMIC]

As more bus journeys are made in London that the total for the rest of the country. And more journeys made on London Underground than the whole of the National Rail network. It then becomes obvious that London's transport infrastructure requires more investment than other parts of the country.

These two claims are not true, and as far as I can tell they never have been.

London does not make up the majority of passenger bus journeys as you say - in fact, it accounts for about 40%; an impressive figure nonetheless but not quite the clincher you implied.

Nor does the London Underground carry more passengers (1.2bn in 2012) than the National Rail network (1.5bn in 2012). Even if it did, subsidy per passenger head is one thing but what about subsidy per passenger mile?

London constitutes around a sixth of the population and a fifth of the economy. These are worthy figures by any standard and nobody is disputing that London requires significant levels of continuous investment even if just to maintain the current capacity.

But it is very hard to accept that £2700 per head in London relative to £5 per head in the North East constitutes anything close to a reasonable balance.

In fact, I would say that it is an obscene disparity, another marker of the widening gap between the struggling regions and the prosperous capital - not that there is no poverty or unemployment in the South East; quite the opposite, of course - but so concentrated and skewed a distribution of wealth and prosperity constitutes, in my book, a desperately poor strategic failure on the part of those charged with running this country.

After all, these are per capita figures for both road and rail so even, say, a comparatively-moderate investment in Newcastle's roads would improve those figures relative to spending required to improve London's per capita figure by the same degree.

Not that any of this is London's fault as such and I have no issue with London as a city or with any of its people - indeed it is likely I will be living there soon myself. I don't mean any of this as a personal slight on anyone from London. But I just cannot help but feel that Britain as a country is being left behind in pursuit of a building global alpha city.

 

[Gwenllian2001]

These two claims are not true, and as far as I can tell they never have been.

London does not make up the majority of passenger bus journeys as you say - in fact, it accounts for about 40%; an impressive figure nonetheless but not quite the clincher you implied.

Nor does the London Underground carry more passengers (1.2bn in 2012) than the National Rail network (1.5bn in 2012). Even if it did, subsidy per passenger head is one thing but what about subsidy per passenger mile?

London constitutes around a sixth of the population and a fifth of the economy. These are worthy figures by any standard and nobody is disputing that London requires significant levels of continuous investment even if just to maintain the current capacity.

But it is very hard to accept that £2700 per head in London relative to £5 per head in the North East constitutes anything close to a reasonable balance.

In fact, I would say that it is an obscene disparity, another marker of the widening gap between the struggling regions and the prosperous capital - not that there is no poverty or unemployment in the South East; quite the opposite, of course - but so concentrated and skewed a distribution of wealth and prosperity constitutes, in my book, a desperately poor strategic failure on the part of those charged with running this country.

After all, these are per capita figures for both road and rail so even, say, a comparatively-moderate investment in Newcastle's roads would improve those figures relative to spending required to improve London's per capita figure by the same degree.

Not that any of this is London's fault as such and I have no issue with London as a city or with any of its people - indeed it is likely I will be living there soon myself. I don't mean any of this as a personal slight on anyone from London. But I just cannot help but feel that Britain as a country is being left behind in pursuit of a building global alpha city.

Spot on.

 

[transmanche]

These two claims are not true, and as far as I can tell they never have been.

Well that's what they said on The Tube and The Route Masters documentary series - so you'll have to take it up with the BBC.

 

[RichmondCommu]

In my opinion London sucks the life out of the rest of the country, thanks to inwards looking selfish politicians and a blinkered insular media lead by the BBC whose journalists seem to sometimes struggle with the concept that people outside of Richmond do not still live in caves.

On the contrary. London pays for the rest of the country to exist.

 

[ainsworth74]

On the contrary. London pays for the rest of the country to exist.

Surely it's symbiotic rather than parasitic? London couldn't survive without the rest of the country and the rest of the country couldn't survive without London.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Surely it's symbiotic rather than parasitic? London couldn't survive without the rest of the country and the rest of the country couldn't survive without London.

Exactly! Many people fail to realise this... There is simple examples like agriculture and raw materials but more complex ones i know of but don't understand.

 

[W230]

Surely it's symbiotic rather than parasitic? London couldn't survive without the rest of the country and the rest of the country couldn't survive without London.

I think that the rest of the UK would be worse off without London than the other way round but agree that the relationship definitely benefits us all (despite what people want to think!) I think the main problem is that people living miles and miles away from the capital can't see the benefits it offers the UK as a whole, which is understandable, as I'm not always sure that it is particularly clear.

The thing is there will always be these sorts of disparities between large cities and lower populated areas. Borrowing from the earlier post about health costs per person not being the same, I briefly saw a programme yesterday about doctors flying all over rural Australia to see their patients - which obviously will result in a higher cost per patient rurally than it would in the city. But I'd hazard a guess their local transport expenditure per person in the rural areas would be far less! As I said earlier, it's swings & roundabouts.

Maybe London will be the next place up for devolution and become a self financing city state...