But the Tube is already foolishly expensive, even by London standards. If you compare it with e.g. the BCN Metro the fares are typically about five times higher.
The only thing to be said for TfL is that the passengers are generally very well behaved and never look at each other.
Compare the whole running cost, not just the ticket price. More than half comes from general taxation.
Also compare to similarly sized cities. Transportation has a massive scaling benefit. If there are 1000 people on a tube train, charging £2.50 each, that's £2500. The drivers salary for the half hour journey could be perhaps £15. The train and track are going to have their costs spread out over 60 years or more. The land was in most cases given to them for free. The electricity for a 5 mile journey for a train costs £0.50.
How else are they spending the remaining £2484.50?
Answer:. Staff salaries are insanely high because of unions. Productivity is insanely low because of government work ethic and red tape. Tech is all contracted out an great expense, and all tech is both ancient and custom, stopping them buying in cheap systems from other countries. In some cases, trains are still controlled by men with big mechanical levers which raise flags!
- TfL isn't just the Tube. Tube profits are used, among other things, to cross subsidize the buses and ferries and whatnot, which carry less passengers per driver. There's also the stuff like bike infrastructure which has most of its cost frontloaded.
- Track is not a sunk cost, there's also ongoing maintenance and renewal. They've spent billions and are spending billions of pounds on upgrading the signals, and are also spending billions of pounds on upgrading the fleet and make it bigger. Not to mention capital works like building out the Northern Line Extension, the upgrade of Camden Town and eventual separation of the Northern Line, the continuous drive to build accessible access to stations, the assorted array of Crossrail-related upgrades, etc.
- National funding. TfL has seen its operating grant from the Department of Transport shrink to zero since 2017/2018, and has to make up for it from other sources.
Sure they spent billions on new signals... But signals are really just lights in boxes. If I gave you a pile of raspberry pi's, some light bulbs, and a few months salary, I think you could do it.
The expense comes from the ancient methods they wanted to use. In the same way a handwritten book is much more expensive than using a printing press.
The new signals are trains communicating their exact location with each other and a centralized control system, and determining their speed based on the train in front of them. The same kind of vehicle-to-vehicle communication that doesn't really exist in personal automobiles today, despite billions of dollars in investigations. You can't use LIDAR or anything used in commercial AVs, because trains are much heavier and take longer distances to come to a complete stop, and line of sight is not sufficient.
If a satisfactorily reliable solution for such a problem could be engineered on the cheap, a private company offering it for much less would make a fortune off of all the railways chomping at the bit to save billions of dollars. The fact that no such solution exists anywhere leads me to believe that it isn't trivial.
Now compare it to other countries in Europe or even my home; Hong Kong, the region with the most expensive real estate in the world. I live and work in the equivalent of Zone 1 and pay 5.1 HKD (50p) to get to work, even less because there's currently a government fare subsidy scheme in operation.
I thought part of the issue was to raise prices in order to reduce demand, since you can’t even get on the trains at some stations during the rush hour.
It is falling to have to pay five quid to stand on a platform looking on as several train loads of sardines poke their heads through open doors, before you can squeeze on.
