How The Price Of London Public Transport Compares To Other Cities

We all know Londoners get a raw deal when renting and buying property (just look how little you get for your money compared with the rest of the UK). And when we’re travelling to and from the job that pays for our cupboard-sized accommodation, we’re paying through the nose for the privilege.

In fact, Londoners are paying more to travel around the capital than any other city-dwellers in the world, according to a new study by Deutsche Bank, which compared 47 cities. We all knew our travel cards were expensive – especially considering the overcrowding, strikes, delays and cancelled trains – but this really puts the dire situation into perspective.

A monthly travel card in London costs £135 on average – almost a third more expensive (30%) than Dublin, the second most expensive city, and nearly 50% pricier than New York, reported The Times.

If it weren’t for the fall of the pound since the vote to leave the EU, the gap between London and the rest of the cities would have been even starker. In 2014, a monthly travel card in the capital cost nearly double its New York equivalent.

Drivers don’t have it much better, with London being the third most expensive place to hire a car and the 10th most costly city for petrol, the study found.

Mumbai is the city with the cheapest transport system in the world, where an equivalent travel card costs just £11 – that's 12 times less than in London.

Most expensive
1. London £135
2. Dublin £102
3. Auckland £95

Cheapest
1. Mumbai £11
2. New Delhi £15.50
3. Prague £16

The study also compared the cities on other metrics and found London to be the fourth most expensive for rent. It was also in the top 10 priciest cities for gym memberships, cigarettes and hotel rooms.

Not only that, but Londoners aren't even earning very much to make up for this high cost of living. The capital is no longer in the top 10 for average salaries. Average monthly pay is £2,150 – a third lower than in New York and less than Sydney, Oslo, Copenhagen, Singapore and Tokyo.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given all this, London only came 33rd in the rankings for quality of life. Great. "London [and other big cities] rank very low mostly due to high living costs, crime, pollution and commuting time," said the report. "This is highly subjective and one person's long commute may be another person's chance to catch up on Netflix," it added.

The cost of travel is an ongoing gripe for most Londoners. Despite the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, having frozen fares on buses and trams until 2020, travel card prices may well rise again as they're set by train operating companies and not controlled solely by Transport for London (TfL). In February, TfL said it had taken £90 million less in fares income over the last year.

How long until Londoners are forced to shell out even more of their cash on an already overpriced transport system?