People are fawning over TfL relative to the train companies and relative to public transport elsewhere in the UK. In that context they are indeed doing well given the really bad cards they've been dealt. It's a standing joke that there is no weather the UK train companies can't use as an excuse for delays, for example (I have personally heard them use weather as an excuse when it was slightly overcast, no wind, and temperatures in the mid-teens celsius).
The biggest problem with transport in the UK in general tends to be cost more than anything.
E.g. there are regular examples of people doing stupid shit like buying a car for a single journey for less than the train ticket, or some student who took a detour between Sheffield and Essex by plane via Berlin[1] because it was cheaper than the direct train even factoring in travel to/from the airport (though marginally enough that presumably his motivation was more wanting to actually go and because it was ridiculous than the few pounds he saved).
While TfL is not that extreme, they're still not cheap either. I think the biggest problem with TfL pricing is that the discounts for passes is very minimal compared to many other places.
> Honestly though, it's 2023 and I still need to buy paper tickets for the Paris metro...
It's been a few years since I went to Paris, but the contactless Navigo Easy pass was introduced in 2019. Are there places in Paris you still can't use it?
The biggest problem with transport in the UK in general tends to be cost more than anything.
E.g. there are regular examples of people doing stupid shit like buying a car for a single journey for less than the train ticket, or some student who took a detour between Sheffield and Essex by plane via Berlin[1] because it was cheaper than the direct train even factoring in travel to/from the airport (though marginally enough that presumably his motivation was more wanting to actually go and because it was ridiculous than the few pounds he saved).
While TfL is not that extreme, they're still not cheap either. I think the biggest problem with TfL pricing is that the discounts for passes is very minimal compared to many other places.
> Honestly though, it's 2023 and I still need to buy paper tickets for the Paris metro...
It's been a few years since I went to Paris, but the contactless Navigo Easy pass was introduced in 2019. Are there places in Paris you still can't use it?
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/teenage...