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by williamvds 995 days ago
I'm aware of just how under invested the rest of UK infrastructure is outside of London, but that doesn't make complaints about its services invalid.

With the billions spent on the purple pine you'd reasonable expect a decent quality of service that doesn't involve so many cancellations, delays, and days of complete deadlock. Bet if you look at to comparable European countries this reliability would be a joke to them.

The train being every 5 minutes is only for central London, if you live further out you're only served by at most 1 in 3 trains. Missing one sucks much more, during rush hour you can bet you'll be crammed like sardines if you're not early.

I've only been commuting twice a week for about a year, and there have been several occurrences where I get to the station and all upcoming trains are delayed or cancelled due to some line failure. The alternative route takes about twice as long if I want it to cost the same. You bet your arse TFL won't give you a refund if your regular route is untenable.

London gets more investment, definitely. But even so the outcomes still lag behind what you'd expect from the capital of such a wealthy country.

2 comments

My experience with German trains has been that they're often delayed and canceled. Lovely smooth tracks though.
If London infrastructure investment isn’t working out why don’t we try spending the money elsewhere, you know, for science.
Agreed, that's my personal plan for my own money.