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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 11 January 2008

Berlin shows us right direction

• I HAVE just returned from Berlin, with its fantastic integrated public transport system, where you can criss-cross the city fast and with ease from appointment to appointment on a single ticket, using the Underground, buses, trams, local rail network and the regional trains.
This afternoon, in London’s West End, Shaftesbury Avenue, I wanted to take a 19 or 38 bus to the Angel for tea, and go on with friends to a recital. No buses. No information. One solitary 38 passed the other way.
I waited for half an hour with the rest of the mystified would-be travellers. I finally had to abort my visit, miss the recital and return home and have tea alone.
I don’t know who runs this show, but they run it abominably badly. They have no business to interfere with, to curtail, my social or my musical life.
They have no business to make getting around London on a Sunday by public transport an insurmountable problem, the subject of conversation and letters to the press.
I know comparisons are odorous! But I suggest they go to Berlin to learn how it should be done. Tourists may find this chaos quaint and endearing.
I am just annoyed and appalled, and slightly ashamed.
PETER ZANDER
Romilly Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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