It was going well until you name-checked Red Ken Livingstone.

So foolish.

I don’t like to be boringly predictable here, but let me try to guess why this might be. Well on the one hand we have a Trade Union that has monopoly control over the wages people who work on the Underground are paid. It is too powerful for any politician to take on as well.[*] On the other hand we have a wealth of airlines that provide ever cheaper flights.

People should be protesting the Union. Not demanding that tax payers subsidise Union greed even more

[*] Rumour has it train drivers are in the top 10% of British workers for income.

Lucky Ken’s promising a 5% fare reduction, then. That’ll make my annual zones 1-3 pass £1,223.60. Oh! But that’s still more expensive than that round the world ticket…?

Well on the one hand we have a Trade Union that has monopoly control over the wages people who work on the Underground are paid.

Wow, really? And yet they restrict themselves to only the top 10% rather than the top 1% or 0.00000001%? – such self discipline is surely to be lauded.

Nevertheless, the Hong Kong metro is also unionised and the average fare on that is around 60p, then again it’s not a Victorian system trying to be something it clearly isn’t.

4. DisgustedOfTunbridgeWells

Wow, really? And yet they restrict themselves to only the top 10% rather than the top 1% or 0.00000001%? – such self discipline is surely to be lauded.

Isn’t it?

Nevertheless, the Hong Kong metro is also unionised and the average fare on that is around 60p, then again it’s not a Victorian system trying to be something it clearly isn’t.

The Hong Kong Metro was recently privatised so the Unions have not had much time to screw it over yet. The Unions are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party which does not want trouble. The MTR has two House Unions so they can hardly screw the pooch in the same way the British Unions can. And the legal environment is such that in the last round of wage negotiations, the management declined to even speak to the Unions and the Unions did not strike.

Nevertheless, the Hong Kong metro is also unionised and the average fare on that is around 60p, then again it’s not a Victorian system trying to be something it clearly isn’t.

Advocating a Chinese solution to Trade Union problems? Effective, but I’m not sure entirely appropriate in the UK.

number of working days in 2011 251, let’s say you have 28 days holiday so you work 223 days, travel twice a day so that’s 446 journeys.

- an Annual Zone 1-3 travel card (£1288) is now more expensive than a round-the-world flight visiting Dubai, Bangkok, Sydney, Christchurch, Auckland, Melbourne, and Kuala Lumpur (£1199)

446 journeys vs. 9 journeys.

- It would cost less to purchase five return flights from London to New York (around £350 each) than to buy an annual travelcard for Zones 1-5 (£1880).

10 journeys vs. 446.

So another way of looking at it is that lots of journeys are a little bit more expensive than a few journeys.

OMG.

Buses in HK are also around half the price of London buses, and a short taxi fare costs about 2-3 pounds. I can only presume that the absence of high taxes and powerful unions results in cheap and superior services.

Well well well, stop the presses! Prices for long-distance flights run by commercial operators in cut-throat competition while attempting to cut staffing costs and despite new aviation passenger taxes appear to be low compared to a subsidised monopoly service run at the whim of a powerful union which has secured tube train drivers with salaries and benefits comparable to those received by highly qualified and skilled airline pilots.

Has anyone compiled the numbers for when Ken was Mayor?

Would be interesting to see if a season ticket was cheaper than a round the world really. I’m sure I can recall round the worlders at £700 or so a few years back…..

@5

The Hong Kong Metro was recently privatised so the Unions have not had much time to screw it over yet.

Eleven years ago, that’s plenty of time, though the state still owns 76%.

http://mtr.com.hk/eng/sustainability/sustainrpt/soc-staff.htm

Labour relations in MTR have remained healthy after the Initial Public Offering in 2000.
.

The Unions are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party which does not want trouble.

Sure, if there’s one thing anathema to the Communist Party of China it’s a spot of bother.

The MTR has two House Unions so they can hardly screw the pooch in the same way the British Unions can.

And the legal environment is such that in the last round of wage negotiations, the management declined to even speak to the Unions and the Unions did not strike.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2011-07/07/content_12850869.htm

Union representatives met with corporate management on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the salary adjustment.

The Hong Kong Railway Employers Union delegates staged a walkout in the middle of the meeting to show their disapproval of the offer

Doesn’t sound like the actions of a particularly cowed group of people to me.

@6

Advocating a Chinese solution to Trade Union problems? Effective, but I’m not sure entirely appropriate in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_statement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement

Er, that’s not actually a round the world flight….

For the flights you have used STA Travel, which are discounted student prices. Therefore, you should use the discounted student travelcard prices as comparison (£900 & £1312, zones 1-3 & 1-5 respectively). So in your first paragraph (in respect to flights):

New research has shown how the cost of transport in London is now so high that many Londoners could purchase an around-the-world plane ticket or two-week cruise holiday for less than their annual travelcard spend.

The ‘many londoners’ would have to be students to get the discounted airfare, but then would also be eligible for the discounted travelcard. So that is a false statement, no?

I don’t know the ins-and-outs of STA travel, so perhaps there is a way a non-student could get the fare, but would have thought that any qualifying requirements for STA would also have lead to qualifying for the student travelcard.

@2 – And that makes up about 2.3% of the increase.

Thanks for spewing Tory propaganda as usual, though.

Some simple graphs comparing like with like would be better. Ken’s time as mayor and now. The prices for transport in London have always been exorbitant and it’s the ”user pays” principle that makes it so. Untold billions more have to be spent on the underground and Crossrail, and London’s population is set to grow for decades to come.
Maybe we should just build all over the greenbelt and make a mega-city and be able to put hi-tech infrastructure from scratch.

@15 – Really? There’s no deacent case for crossrail, and never has been.

With a travelcard you have unlimited travel on any participating operator’s service in the specified zones during the specified times: you just hop onto a train, Tube, bus or tram. In contrast, a round-the-world air ticket is typically limited to a particular number of flights, and in a given direction (you probably can’t travel ‘backwards’, e.g. from London to Moscow then St Petersburg then Bangkok). Also there may be restrictions when presenting yourself for a flight, for example an airline will probably have quotas for how many holders of round-the-world air ticket they will carry on a given service, and may thus deny boarding to someone with a a round-the-world ticket even if the flight is not full.

Anyway the purpose is different. People use travelcards to commute (essential travel), while round-the-world tickets are leisure travel products.

So this is not a like-for-like comparison. Rail travel in London *is* rather expensive, but you cannot compare it to the cost of a round-the-world leisure trips. They are apples and oranges.

LC shoots itself in the foot again with a non-story.

What? No EDL link either to find? LOL

Wot UKliberty said. I agree that transport prices in London are too high, but you can’t demonstrate that by comparing non-comparables.

Also, I’m not sure where you get the unspoken assumption that the air ticket ought to be more expensive. What involves more outlay: allowing a consumer to go wherever they want in zones 1-3 for a year, or allowing a consumer onto a single round-the-world flight? I don’t know the answer myself, but the question doesn’t seem to have troubled the OP at all.

It was all going swimmingly well until the only person at LC with a half a brain pointed out the reason the reason tube travel is so expensive is because of the strength of the RMT union. I take it LC now opposes the militant RMT?

A truly pathetic epic fail I would say.

@20 – Nope, there was no water in the pool, and you jumped in anyway. Wages are, oh, 2.3% of the price rises over the Boris administration. And you’re yelling that the Unions made you crack your skull open.

Yes, your post IS an epic fail.

@18 – No, but you come here to ensure everyone knows you’re a neo-fascist anyway, thanks for that.

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