TFL has issued a press release about
London Underground breaking their record again for carrying a whopping 4.821
million passengers!
Figures released today by Transport for
London (TfL) show that October's record for the number of customer journeys
made on the Tube in one day has been broken again.
On Friday
4 December 2015, 4.821 million customers travelled on the Tube making it
the network's busiest day ever.
That week was also the busiest in the
Tube's history with 28.76 million journeys, beating the previous record of
28.69 million journeys set in the week ending 31 October. In addition, 18 of
the top 20 busiest days ever recorded on the Tube network are in 2015.
The daily and weekly records have been
broken this year and TfL expects them to be broken again before the end of
2015. Overall, the number of customer journeys on the Tube has risen by a third
since 2001, with the rate of growth increasing in the last five years.
Nick Brown, LU's Managing Director, said:
`The Tube continues to break records for the number of customers we're carrying
as London's economy and population keeps on growing. The vast majority of the
busiest days in the Tube's 152-year history have been recorded this year.
London is growing faster than any other
European city. Its population of 8.6 million today will become nine million by
2018, and 10 million by 2030. The city's public transport and road networks
need steady and sustained investment to enable productive growth and the creation
of the new jobs and housing the city needs.
The top five busiest days on the London
Underground were:
·
4 December (4.821 million)
·
27 November 2015 (4.795 million)
·
9 October 2015 (4.735 million)
·
28 November 2014 (4.734 million)
·
29 October 2015 (4.719 million
LU has reduced its operating cost per
passenger kilometre, driven down the unit costs for maintenance, and invests
every penny of public money into improving the network as London's population
continues to rise.
Recent years have seen major
improvements made across the board, with customer satisfaction rising to its
highest ever level, capacity at record levels thanks to new trains and
signalling systems, and more than 1.3 billion customer journeys now made each year.
I wrote in my previous articlethat TFL’s fares are set to rise again, but it’s mostly Pay As You Go price caps for Oyster and Contactless Bank Cards. Zone 1-6
price cap will rise by 10p from £11.70
to £11.80 by January 2nd 2016.
London Councils, a local government association that
represents London’s 32 borough councils and the City of
London has raised concerns about fare rises affecting low paid workers.
Travel costs hitting outer London’s low-paid workers
London’s low-paid workers, already struggling with high housing and
living costs in the capital, are being disproportionately affected by rising
transport costs according to a new report.
The report – ‘Living on the Edge’ – was commissioned by London Councils,
London TravelWatch and Trust for London and reveals the group of Londoners most
affected by the rising cost of travel and the overheated property market. This
group is excluded from central London due to the high cost of housing, but
still commute to low-paid cleaning jobs and manual work in hotels and offices
located in Zone 1.
The report also found that travel costs
are a problem for all Londoners, with one in five London workers choosing the
cheapest route to work rather than the shortest or most convenient – in outer London this equates to around
145,000 people – while around the same number make
sacrifices in other areas of their expenditure to pay for travel.
The findings also show that there is a
lack of knowledge about the transport discounts available to part-time workers
and jobseekers. The report makes a number of recommendations on how to help
those struggling with travel costs.
Cllr Julian Bell, Chair of London
Councils’ Transport and Environment Committee,
said: “On average, Londoners spend around
seven per cent of their monthly earnings on travel to work – but low earners are spending almost 10
per cent (1). Combined with housing and living costs the odds are increasingly
stacked against people on lower incomes.
“This report raises real concerns over
how the quality of life of many thousands of Londoners is affected by the cost
of travel. People have no choice but to put up with high travel costs if they
want to access the jobs available in central London, but the cost of travel is
the same if you’re earning £15K or £50K a year.
“What’s clear is that more needs to be done to inform low-paid and
unemployed people of the travel discounts available to them currently and look
at what can be done for this group.”
The average London worker needs to work
for 44 minutes per day to pay for daily commuting costs – this increases sharply to 54 minutes
for those earning £200 to £599 per month and 1 hour 56 minutes for those earning less
than £200 per month.
Stephen Locke, Chair of London
TravelWatch, said: “Public transport is a vital service for
most Londoners, and especially for people travelling to work. Many low-paid workers are now commuting long
distances and spending a high proportion of their incomes in the process. While
there are no easy answers to this problem, we hope this report will help to
open up the debate on this important issue.”
The research found the average London
worker spends around £100 a month on travel, equivalent to
7.3 per cent of their monthly earnings. Higher earners spend 6.8 per cent,
while lower earning spend 9.2 per cent.
Recommendations in the report include:
·
introducing a concessionary fare for low-income workers
·
improving awareness of existing discounts
·
making it easier to obtain season ticket loans
·
reintroducing off-peak Travelcards to benefit flexible work
schedules
·
encouraging employers to cover travel
costs to interviews for low-paid jobs
The research was conducted by BDRC Continental, commissioned
by London Councils, London Travel Watch and Trust for London.
With season ticket loans, I found out about a company called
Commuter Club; they are a financial service and they
claim to offer prices for an annual
Travelcard cheaper than TFL provide. This scheme is not run by the
government or any authority as Commuter Club is a private company. You can see
more on their FAQ page.
In the Republic of Ireland, the CIÉ (Córas Iompair Éireann) runs a scheme called TaxSaver where the employer can get tax free monthly annual tickets to provide to their employees which
saves businesses' thousands of Euros. Perhaps TFL and the government should
take a look at the scheme which will help employers as well as their employees.
The above is mostly aimed at full time workers, but usually
low income workers are part time.
Off-Peak Travelcards cost more than the daily price cap and
if the Travelcards go down it would mean that TFL would need to reintroduce the
off peak price cap which could cause the ‘anytime’
price cap to rise again.
What I will say is that just like with most public transport
systems around the world, they provide cheaper fares because the system relies
on subsidies provided by the government. The main purpose of the transport
system is to enable people to travel to places which in turn, benefits the
economy, that’s what some transport systems in
various countries recognise.
No matter how many passengers use the transport system, it
generates more income for the transport system and increased profits for their
operating companies which they contract out to.
This is not a London problem, many transport systems around
the world are raising their fares. Greater London is a big region, fares could
be restructured to make them cheaper and benefit local people commuting in
their local area. Take a look at the bus fare map from year 2002.
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Image Attribution
"Busy Central line platform at Oxford Circus tube station". Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Busy_Central_line_platform_at_Oxford_Circus_tube_station.jpg#/media/File:Busy_Central_line_platform_at_Oxford_Circus_tube_station.jpg