Underground trains, Green Line coaches, trolleybuses and trams then began to operate as London Transport, although the name 'General' continued to be seen on buses and their timetables for a few months longer.

[14] Partly thanks to the success of Canary Wharf, the system has expanded several times and now has five main branches connecting the Isle of Dogs and Royal Docks to each other and to the City of London, Stratford, Woolwich and Lewisham south of the river.

[21] Constantly increasing pressure on the commuter rail systems and on the Underground to disperse passengers from the busy terminals led to the multibillion-pound Crossrail project to develop the Elizabeth line.

[25] Among the firms operating passenger services in London, some are owned by foreign companies or by state-owned railways of other European countries.

Because the termini and intercity routes were largely built by competing companies, many termini serve cities in overlapping regions or different parts of the same region: St Pancras provides international Eurostar services via the Channel Tunnel to cities including Paris, Brussels, Lyon and Marseilles, with journeys to Paris in around 2 hours 15 minutes and to Brussels in around 1 hour 50 minutes.

Attempts to tackle this go back at least to the 1740s, when the New Road was built through the fields north of the city; it is now just another congested central London thoroughfare.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new wide roads such as Victoria Embankment, Shaftesbury Avenue and Kingsway were created.

By the end of the 20th century policy swung towards a preference for public transport improvements, although the 118-mile (190 km) M25 orbital motorway was constructed between 1973 and 1986 to provide a route for traffic to bypass the London urban area.

Due to the opposition to the Ringway plan and earlier proposals there are few grade-separated routes penetrating to the city centre.

Many of London's major radial routes continue far beyond the city as part of the national motorway and trunk road network.

These roads generally link suburbs with each other, or deliver traffic from the ends of the major routes into the city centre.

[41][42] From 25 October 2021, ULEZ will be extended to the North and South Circular, covering an area containing 3.8 million people.

[46] Fatal road casualties have decreased by half in since the mid-2000s, with a Vision Zero target of 2041 for no deaths and serious injuries on London's transport network.

Transport companies may bid to run London bus services for a fixed price for several years, with incentives and penalties in place to encourage good performance against certain criteria.

[27][28] Many services are operated with the iconic red double-decker buses, virtually all using modern low-floor accessible vehicles rather than the traditional open-platform AEC Routemasters, now limited to two city centre "heritage routes" after a phase out in 2006.

The bus system has been the subject of much investment since TfL's inception in 2000, with consequent improvements in the number of routes (particularly night services), their frequency, reliability and the standard of the vehicles used.

They are driven by the only taxicab drivers in the world who have spent at least three years learning the city's road network to gain "The Knowledge".

Black cabs can be hailed on the street or hired from a taxicab rank (found at all the mainline railway termini and around the major business, shopping and tourist centres).

[69] There has been a move, led by Chris Smallwood, chairman of the London Pedicab Operators Association, to bring in more relevant legislation.

Smallwood helped to draft an amendment to a bill to be put before the House of Lords that would introduce these 'lighter' pedicab regulations.

With a single runway and two terminals, it handles about 32 million passengers per year from domestic, short-haul and long-haul flights, and is linked to London by the Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Southern rail services, and by the M23.

Southend is to the east of London, and was developed rapidly to be usable by short-haul passenger flights in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

With a single runway and terminal, it handles about 20 million passengers annually, mostly from low-cost short-haul and domestic leisure flights.

It has a single terminal and a runway considerably shorter than the other London airports, and like Stansted it caters mainly for low-cost short-haul leisure flights.

[75] Four of London's airports provide varieties of automated people mover (APM) along guided tracks to shuttle passengers between terminals.

Although they now carry few goods, they are popular with private narrowboat users and leisure cruisers, and a regular "water bus" service operates along the Regent's Canal during the summer months.

[85] The service comprises a 0.62-mile (1.00 km) gondola line that crosses the Thames from the Greenwich Peninsula to the Royal Victoria Dock, to the west of ExCeL London.

[90][91] In 2006, London became one of the first major cities in the world to have an accessible, low floor bus fleet – 10 years ahead of the national requirement.

[93] The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transport in London, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 84 minutes, and 30% of passengers ride for more than 2 hours every day.

Light rail and tram travel also continued to grow, to the highest level (0.3 million journeys) since comparable records began in 1983.