On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 15:41:32 +0000, John Ray
wrote:

Ian Jelf wrote:

Although I have some sympathy with such a system, London is so large and
complex (and busy), that charging a supplement for Underground travel
(which is effectively what happens when compared to buses) is I feel
justified in return for the faster journey. (Hamburg has - or had -
something similar for its express buses).

Paris also has no bus-metro transfer beyond the sort of passes available
in London.

Strangely (to me), in Paris, there is in effect a supplement charged for
the buses. One ticket will take you right across the city on the Metro,
but 3 tickets may be needed for the same distance on a bus. I have often
wondered why this is.

This is entirely a guess but I doubt that RATP want to encourage people
to use buses too much. This is simply because the network is nowhere
near as comprehensive as that in London and also it has fairly
restrictive operating hours. Given that a lot of people still live close
in to the centre and that Paris retains its local centres there is less
need for a comprehensive bus service.

In recent years there has been some improvement / expansion of the buses
but it is still the poor relation to the rail network. It gets even
worse once you leave the Paris city area and get to the suburbs. I stay
with friends to the North West of Paris and there is a good RER and SNCF
service but the only RATP bus is once an hour and the local operator
does not provide anything even resembling a bus service when compared to
the sheer excess of service we have in London for the same sort of area.
As an example I catch a SNCF local service from Gare du Nord and then
have to connect one stop by RER. Ideally I'd be able to get a local bus
from the SNCF station which is barely 10 mins by car from my friends
place. However there is NO local bus service between the two places and
I've only ever seen one bus (running off service) at about 8pm. It's
worse than some parts of deregulated Britain!

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!