On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:29:44 +0000, Tom Anderson wrote:

As the Circle line runs exclusively in Zone 1, I suppose I shouldn't
have been too surprised about the result. The least expensive stop on
the Circle Line is Aldgate, with average property values hovering
around £396,000.

The Victoria Line came as the next most expensive line to buy property
on, with average prices reaching £1,109,107. Green Park was most
expensive stop for property on the Victoria Line with average house
prices above £2 million. The least expensive stop was Tottenham Hale.

Like the Circle, it doesn't go that far out - the five northern and three
southern stations in marginal-to-scummy areas have eight stops in rather
nice and/or central parts of town to balance them.

The Bakerloo comes third and the H&C fourth, and those are also lines
which have smaller-than-average suburban parts, as they only protrude from
central London on one side. The same's true of the Met, of course, which
manages to be quite a bit cheaper. Are houses not that much up in the
wilds of Harrow, Northwood and Ruislip, then?

To my mind, the Met manages to largely avoid the less salubrious areas
of London. I think it's more that the Met is more heavily weighted
towards the outer suburbs - it has fewer stations than average in Zone
1, then skips Zones 2/3 almost completely, and has lots of stations in
Zones 5/6 and out in the sticks (a quick glance at the Tube map
suggests that perhaps a third of all Z5/6 Tube stations are on the
Met).

Meanwhile, the Bakerloo passes through some pretty scummy areas, yet
comes out near the top thanks to having plenty of stations in Z1/2 and
only one suburban branch (that only just makes it out as far as Z5).

The whole table is basically meaningless; as you suggest, it's more a
measure of how a line's stops are distributed in terms of distance
from the centre than how pleasant they are to live on. If they'd
somehow managed to factor distance out of their calculations, they
might have got more interesting results.