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Comment by matthewrudy | Hacker News Reader

China has the benefit of building all it's metro systems in the past decade. Hong Kong's is a bit older. But if you visit London you'll be shocked by the price, and the lack of good technology.

It's a true legacy system, that will take decades to modernise.

There is no mobile coverage on the London Underground. In Hong Kong 4g is continuous and uninterrupted all the way from the Shenzhen border to Central.

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The lack of mobile coverage on the London Underground is because the phone companies refused to pay the rent demanded. (I don't know if the demand was fair.)

Fares in London cover 91% of operating expense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

London's system is OK for it's age. Trains very in age from under 1 year to approaching 40 (with replacements on order, or planned), some lines have new signalling systems, others don't -- yet. That's not much different to Hong Kong.

Another thing Hong Kong does that's awesome, is interchanges.

Typically two adjacent lines will share two stops in common. The first will be designated to transfer in one direction, and the second for the opposing direction.

They arrange these transfers so that your next train is waiting on the opposite side of the platform.

London is never going to be able to do that.

London does this on plenty of lines — there are plenty of cases of stations where the platforms are parallel with a 5m tunnel between them.

Does interchange really matter when there is a train every 3 mins?

I always laugh at the idiots getting stuck in the doors after a mad dash. Can they really afford not to wait?

Interchange means changing from one line to another.

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Cross-platform interchange means the tracks are aligned so (for example) the more-or-less northbound tracks of both lines are close together, rather than the opposite track being the same line but in the opposite direction.

They exist in London where it was possible to install them, but it's very difficult to retrofit (if underground) so many of the old lines are stuck the way they are -- with an underground walkway between lines.

> Fares in London cover 91% of operating expense

Note that capital expenses (fixing tunnels, buying new trains) are not included in operating expenses, so London Underground runs at a significant deficit:

2,542m (Operating expenses) + 1,227m (Capital expenditure) - 2,286m (Fares) = 1,483m

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/annual-report...

No mobile coverage is the best thing about the tube.

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