I've just spent a weekend in London, and looking at the cost of using the Tube brought home to me the shortcomings of the Tyneside Metro - specifically the cost. Using an Oyster card, each journey on the Tube costs £1.50, compared with £1.30 for a single stop up to a maximum of £2.80 on the Metro. Unlike Travelcards on the Metro, an Oyster card requires no great investment - you can charge it up with as little as £5 per time. I know that the London Underground is a vastly bigger system, but this makes me wonder how it can afford to charge lower fares when it has such enormous overheads, including staff at every station. Metro trains are almost always crowded and stop running from Newcastle city centre at about 11.45pm - in a time when we're all encouraged to use public transport, fifteen minutes earlier than they used to. My feeling is that we have much more to complain about than users of the London Underground: infrequent, crowded and dirty trains (my 11 minute wait today a...
Sometimes a grumpy old man, at others middle-aged but not past it yet. My blog title is a quote from a 1970s Doctor Who story - and, by the way, there is no pause before "probably"! That's the genius of Tom Baker's timing.