Live tube map

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Originally Posted by Drew

I bet that Toronto is a lot more spread out that London is and has less people too. Toronto was probably built as a car city, whilst London was being built well before the car was even invented. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be typical for North American cities.

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Because of the system of blocks that seems to be used on the other side of the pond it seems much easier to get around. Also the roads looked nice and wide. I still found the Subway to be a good way to get around, although it was longer distances between stops. Also there are only a handful of lines, although this does make it less confusing for visitors.

As a rule I hate public transport but the Tube is a great way of getting around, just that it isn't of much use in the majority of cities.

From what I gather one of the big advantages of the tube in London is that it goes some considerable distance outside of the city centre, and connects up with lots of mainline rail services too.

In Newcastle and Gateshead, because of the topography building railways everywhere is not easy so the Metro doesn't reach a massive amount of the population.

My local railway station has such infrequent trains because it's on the East Coast Main Line, which is chock full of trains going between Edinburgh and Southern England, and there's no room for a more regular service (such as the metro) to use the same tracks.

Of the cities I've visited where you don't need a car, London is one, New York is another as mentioned. But also Zurich, which doesn't have a subway, but it does have an excellent and extensive tram and trolley bus system which will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go! And to go outside of the city you have the Swiss rail network by reputation the best in the world!

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Originally Posted by Mark

Of the cities I've visited where you don't need a car, London is one, New York is another as mentioned. ...

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Hong Kong :up:

To a lesser extent, Montreal. Although not nearly as extensive as the tube in London, Montreal does have an underground "Metro" (modelled after the one in Paris), connected to a network of buses and trains that reaches a fair bit into the suburbs. The general consensus with Montrealers is that they will avoid driving to the city centre as long as public transportation is reasonably nearby.
It's been a while, but from what I remember, subway arrivals were less than 5 minutes apart during peak hours, dropping to ~10 during non-peak times.

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Originally Posted by Mark

Of the cities I've visited where you don't need a car, London is one, New York is another as mentioned. But also Zurich, which doesn't have a subway, but it does have an excellent and extensive tram and trolley bus system which will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go! And to go outside of the city you have the Swiss rail network by reputation the best in the world!

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I've managed plenty of visits to Manchester without using my car. The railway and tram network is quite well integrated and regular. Although living there would require a car until the networks expansion is completed.

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Originally Posted by Brown, Jon Brow

I've managed plenty of visits to Manchester without using my car. The railway and tram network is quite well integrated and regular. Although living would require a car until the networks expansion is completed.

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Visiting a place is one thing. Working and living there is quite another!

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Originally Posted by Mark

Back in the day, Metro's used to be every 3-4 minutes, but then they built the Sunderland link and are now operating a much larger network with the same number of trains, so the frequency has gone down.

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Ahh I had no idea that it used to be so frequent, well yes that's annoying.

I'd like to add loads of cities in Germany to this public transport list. Berlin and Frankfurt have extensive underground, suburban and regional trains. The Ruhr area (I dunno the english name, but Cologne, Bonn etc) are all extremely well connected too. Plus you can buy a card called the Bahncard 100 for about €3,500 which gives you unlimited train travel within Germany. But still Germans complain about their trains :p :