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Old November 6th 19, 10:54 PM posted to uk.transport.london
John Levine[_2_] John Levine[_2_] is offline
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Default Heathrow Express slashes fares (so it says!)

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
I don't think you are a very typical traveller. Most are very
unadventurous when it comes to foreign countries, and hence the race for
taxis (and HEx's mission to replace taxis).


Depends who the travellers are. I'm currently at an ICANN meeting (I know
you know who they are) whose travel department's phobia of public transport
that is not an airplane is just comic. But I don't think it's universal.

As a result, and even as a more adventurous traveller (colleagues were
amazed I dared get a bus from Geneva to the airport, and didn't even
consider rail) I think I've only once got a train on first arrival at a
suitably equipped overseas airport.


Huh, I do it all the time. I can think of Frankfurt, Paris CDG,
Munich, Barcelona, Narita, Haneda, Seoul (now permanently bustituted),
Hong Kong, and Singapore. And Gatwick and Prestwick, since I live in
the US.

I was a bit put off by the difficulty of collecting a pre-bought TGV
ticket in Paris, though.


Gee, it's easy to put your SNCF ticket on your smartphone. (Yes, I
know.)

It also seems to me that when Crossrail is running through trains, the
HeX time advantage will be a lost for many places Crossrail goes
beyond Paddington. It's not just the fares.


How many of the Crossrail stations will have taxi ranks?


I dunno. I was thinking that a lot of them will be within walking
distance of where one wants to go.

And how widespread is contactless outside the UK? The USA is catching up
rapidly, but is probably still in single figure percentages.


In the US and Canada I see lots of contactless cards, now that it's a
standard feature of new point-of-sale terminals.

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