$1000M for 9 miles of light rail isn't completely crazy (expensive, but believable). The average cost in the UK is £25M/mile ($40M), but Edinburgh's cost £100M/mile ($156M). A lot of the cost is moving whatever's buried under the road out of the way, to allow future repairs without disrupting the tram.

It's a lot cheaper to build something outside a city on worthless land, whether rail or road.

The 2009 cost per mile for building a 2+2 road in the UK was £13M, for a basic two-lane road £8M. Are you sure your final figure is correct?

(NB the British rail costs will include all appropriate safety systems. This article is interesting. It's over 8 years since a passenger on a train died in Britain, though some have died falling down stairs/escalators, off platforms etc.)

There are four London Underground lines with Automatic Train Operation. There's even a Wikipedia category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

It's not 100% automatic, the driver has to press a button to close the doors, and another (I think) to tell the train "go when ready".

165mph through Ashford, Kent.

(I'm sure there are faster examples, and this isn't the top speed of the train, but that could be the track layout rather than the urban area.)

I don't think much has changed from older usage. The terms "motor car", "motor vehicle", "motor boat", "motorway", "motorbike", etc aren't new.

Fuel is the easy one -- the truck pulls into a fuel station, and the attendant fills it up. The truck company has a contract with the fuel station franchise.

Lots of journeys probably don't involve any complicated roads. Port or rail freight yard to supermarket distribution centre, from there to the out-of-town supermarket, etc.

The core demographic seems to be grouchy, middle-aged, American libertarians, going by the comments.

See http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/... in fact, average age was 38.2 in 2012. Can I assume no new users, and say the average is now over 40?

You're a fucking idiot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

http://www.newstatesman.com/po...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-...

You have no idea about London.

When I was a student I lived 15 minutes walk from St Pancras International Station. Immediately north of the station used to be really bad, but since its redevelopment (The Guardian / Google offices etc) you need to walk a little further -- about 10 minutes is plenty.

Council (social) housing on all sides on Copenhagen Street, 0.7 miles from trains to Paris.

The main local issue for the area is the expansion of one of the stations, which is criticised because an area of council houses behind the station would be demolished.

(Incidentally, I live relatively close to LHR, it's about the same time by public transport to either that airport or St Pancras. I'd still prefer the train if I'm going to Paris.)

You might be correct in 10 years or so, if the new government's desired changes to the way social security is paid are fully implemented. (Poor people will no longer be allowed to live in inner London, and the state-owned housing will be sold off.)

Trains are obviously a terrorist target worldwide, but the only one I know of in Europe with a security checkpoint is between London and Paris/Brussels (where there is a passport check anyway). If someone wants to crash a train, it's *far* easier to drive a road vehicle onto the tracks, and probably more deadly and disruptive to target a busy commuter train (example).

Trains should be something like every 30-60 minutes, if the service is to be useful. Compare http://traintimes.org.uk/londo... or (so I'm not picking such major cities) http://traintimes.org.uk/brist...

Seats have airline-style fold-down tables (but larger), except the facing ones that have real tables. It's generally possible to pre-book the type you prefer — 4 seats around a table is nice for a family, but on a peak-time train will be used by business travellers. There will be power sockets, WiFi, a drinks trolley.

750 people can sit on the 387 metres of a London to Paris/Brussels train. They're particularly long, since they were built for a system with a serious limitation (a very-much-in-demand undersea tunnel) and the expectation of high demand.

French TGV trains carry 350-500 people. British national long distance express trains a bit more, up to 600.

There are 16 London-Paris trains per day (plus London-Brussels, and some others), from 05:40 to 20:31, slightly more than one per hour.

The Eurostar is one of the few services in Europe where there *is* a security check and a requirement to arrive 10-30 minutes beforehand (it's 10 with the expensive ticket, 30 otherwise, and they're actually very accommodating if you're late). California shouldn't need this, as there's no international / undersea borders.

For other trains, 2 minutes is a bit short. For a long-distance journey, I aim to be waiting at the correct platform 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time, or a bit more if it's an infrequent (>20m) service.

I'm not too bothered by the distance from LGW and STN -- the platforms are below the terminal buildings, so it's little more bother than in many European airports. Train ticket price is perhaps a shock for many visitors, especially as the cheaper non-express almost-as-fast trains aren't advertised very well. Gatwick has good connections with Thameslink. It's not reasonable to compare London to smaller cities, and the travel time is similar to other metropoli.

I agree the old LHR terminals are terrible, one of the worst airports I've used. T5 is great though, for an airport its size. I've never queued more than a couple of minutes when leaving, maybe 5 when arriving though UK Customs. (I use it every two-three months.) I haven't used T2 yet, work favours BA.

Connecting between terminals is probably confusing and awful.

I'd never heard of that (too young), but I found an article from 1999 discussing an argument between London Underground and Railtrack.

Probably it was shelved in favour of Crossrail, which calls at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool Street and others. Service starts in December 2018.

I've never flown to New York, but...

Building a better railway to JFK seems a good idea regardless of what happens to Newark.

My nearest airport is London Heathrow, which has the cheap option of an hour-long metro ride (using that word, since most of it is above ground), but there's also the "premium" Heathrow Express train, which takes about 15 minutes, a cheaper (and slightly slower) train, and the new Crossrail line will open from 2019 or something providing an excellent new route.

For completeness, London City is the closest to the centre of the city, and popular with business travellers. It has direct "light" rail to both financial centres, taking about 20 minutes and with an excellent view. The three other London airports (LGW, STN, LTN) are relatively far away from the centre, LGW has the best rail connections, STN is in between, and LTN is a little annoying (there's a 5 minute free shuttle bus from the airport to the near-ish station).

The hardware cost is irrelevant. It's the cost and time to thoroughly test / migrate / rewrite lots of bespoke software, made to the lowest quality by some company like Accenture on a contract, for which the source code probably wasn't supplied and all the original developers have left. And if the system fails the Daily Mail will write about it. And the tories slashed the budget, so all that's left can just about cover the new thing the new regulation requires.