I hear lots of complaints about transport, I hear less about houses. People seem to cope
with housing just by moving further out. Then they get clobbered by the transport
system - you become more and more reliant on having an efficient transport system
which we manifestly don’t have.
Within the “square mile” of the City there is less of an issue regarding transport, since
people can walk to appointments. However, the problems of traversing the center of
London, particularly East-West, were identified by many respondents as a key concern.
The following quotation illustrates the nature of the concern, which turns on the
unpredictability of travel and the cost in terms of wasted time and energy:
How much time is wasted? A lot of time and money and someone should add it all up
... All the routes East-West constantly jammed up. The tube incredibly unreliable,
breaking down - the Central and the District Line. And if you’re trying to get from or
to Heathrow, you’re in one of these traffic jams - it’s getting to people.
The major concern regarding international travel is access to airports, especially the
City-Heathrow link and to a lesser extent the reliability of transport once the airport has
been reached. One respondent based in Canary Wharf reported leaving three hours before a
Heathrow flight, and clearly regarded this as being unreasonable. One respondent who
expressed an opinion on whether the problems of international travel stopped people
coming to London expressed doubt that it would. Nevertheless, there were references to
meetings being delayed or cancelled because people arriving on international flights had
difficulty getting from the airport to the meeting. One thing which to some extent
overcomes the problems of getting, for example, from Heathrow to the center of London is
that, once there, it is possible to efficiently arrange a series of meetings with firms in close
proximity.
City Airport is good, it’s nearby, but getting to City Airport is a complete pain and
people’s experience generally of flying out of City Airport is that you’re always
delayed.
The accessibility of Heathrow and Gatwick from the City is a problem. If you look at
where those links go to - you’re talking Victoria, London Bridge . The Heathrow
Express has made it considerably easier to get from Heathrow to Paddington but then
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