Transit publicity in England

[dmaze]

This probably also belongs under the "transit geek" heading, but it's worth mentioning. In England:

• All of the bus stops in Oxford had complete schedules for every bus that stops there, even when there were multiple bus companies servicing a stop.
• The Tube displays not just when the next train will arrive but the next three trains.
• There are lots of trains: my longest Tube wait was a five-minute wait for a Piccadilly line train that went all the way to Heathrow, and that was the third train from when I showed up, and Oxford-to-London (commuterish) trains ran every half hour.
• Every Underground station I was at in central London had both maps and brochures showing what was around that station and how you might get there (as in, there appeared to be a separate brochure for each station).
• All of the maps were pretty up-to-date with what service ran and what didn't; no map seemed to be older than six months, and the most ambiguous/out-of-date things were about service that reopened in "September 2006" (the Waterloo and City line appears to have just reopened yesterday).

So I was able to find my way around to major sights pretty well with just a day pass and hopping around on the Underground...wouldn't it be great if transit in the US were this frequent and this well advertised?

Comments

[bookwyrm]

I love the Tube. The train drivers are better too.

[jered]

The funny thing is, when I rave about their transit to my British friends, they complain that their transit system is terrible!

Oh, you did leave out the whole "shutting down at 11:30p" thing.

[tla]

Insert lengthy "why the Tube has to have a number of hours of downtime" explanation here.

[tla]

Transit geek? Aha, evidently you should be on my friends list..

(knell here, ackcherlly)

[dmaze]

Yes, I was the one who cheered when it was announced that you took pictures of trains; cf. here and here. But don't you have a new wife to, erm, attend to? What are you doing reading livejournal anyways? Shoo! :-)