Public Transport System that costs as much as motoring - thought experiment

[HSTEd]

So something a little different.

Currently the UK spends about £84bn each year on private motor cars etc, including purchase, maintenance, fuel etc.

If we have £84bn/year to operate a public transport system for the entire country, what could be bought with that money?

Passenger transport only obviously - lorries are a separate pot of money!

(I'm not literally proposing this but thought its an interesting thought experiment)

 

[Nova1]

I guess you'd end up having to spend a lot of money on generally increasing capacity, and then more money on building a railway to places that don't have one.

 

[HSTEd]

I guess you'd end up having to spend a lot of money on generally increasing capacity, and then more money on building a railway to places that don't have one.

I imagine you would - for reference TfL's operational expenditures are about £7.5bn per annum.

So per capita we are looking at expenditure on operations of about 50% greater than TfL.

Obviously London has major economies of scale in terms of number of people travelling in any given corridor at any given time - but they have diseconomies such as due to heavy traffic.

A bus stopped in traffic costs almost as much to run as one on an empty road per hour - but much more per kilometer.