I can see how others viewed it as judgmental, I just don’t think you meant it that way. You have quite a direct and blunt writing style, so that’s just how I read your posts these days. You guys need to take your arguing with a pinch of salt more, it’s all just banter.

You would not do newton means to leith in 1.30 apart from in the middle of the night. try it at peak times and it could be 3 hrs by car

I’ve done prestwick to Leith in less than 90 mins many a time, and I’m 20 mins further away than newton mearns.

I’ve not had the chance to read every comment on here but the point that public transport has been a victim of political decisions is exactly right. I work for a local authority public transport body and by way of context our overall budget has reduced by 45% in seven years. What’s left (which isn’t much) is pretty much already accounted for by borrowing costs or statutory travel for the elderly and disabled (we spend £26m on this alone).

So when a bus service becomes commercially untenable, operators either cut the frequency (less attractive), put the prices up (again less attractive) or pull it all together. Historically we might have then considered subsidising the service but that budget is already fully allocated and then some at the start of each year.

All of the above is as a direct result of local authority budget austerity measures.

If you want public transport to work it needs investment and also make the alternatives (namely private car commuting) less attractive. Measures like work place parking levies (see Nottingham), restrictions on new private car parking and congestion or emissions charging. But these are difficult political decisions which aren’t vote winners so are generally avoided.

Ffs let’s not get started on parking these commuter vehicles.

Update on the cupholders.

This bus has no cupholders.

90 mile round trip for me each day. Bus is my only public transport option.

I’ve worked out it costs me £15 to drive and park (excluding wear and tear on car) and £13 per day to sit on a freezing bus in the morning. On the way home there isn’t even a light you can use to read by.

Even where there is good, frequent, cheap, reliable public transport such as the town I live in car owners don’t use it. When I do the people using it are clearly the ones who don’t have a car. It seems car owners would rather pay more to sit in trafic (rather than waft along the bus lanes), waste time hunting for a parking space, and pay for said space rather catch a bus.

Habit, ignorance, comfort, fear of strangers ? I don’t know.

Why is this the only thread where you’re not allowed to be judgemental? My first instinct on hearing of a 90 mile round trip commute is that that is not a good thing. Some people may have little choice, but most people in that situation appear to accept it with reluctance, whilst they could have done more to avoid the situation.

I took a job with a 90 mile round trip commute to escape a hellish local job I’d been stuck in for five years. It took me another four to escape the job with the big commute, and it wasn’t for lack of effort. National Cycle To Work day was a particular pain… 🙂

“All of the above is as a direct result of local authority budget austerity measures.”

At the risk of sounding like someone on the Tory right, no it’s not. It’s because you took on debt when budgets were higher and because you’re subsidising loss making services. That’s not investment – investment gives you a return (like, say, the 147% return that the privatised public transport operators make) not a never ending money pit.

Some people may have little choice, but most people in that situation appear to accept it with reluctance, whilst they could have done more to avoid the situation

Depends on work (location, job type etc – not everyone can work from home), family (where the partner works, where the kids go to school), any dependents (older relatives nearby who need care), house prices, public transport availability/reliability. Very very few people get to choose all aspects of that and you can easily end up living mid way between your job 50 miles that way –> and your partner’s job 50 miles that way <–

And people change jobs, start/end relationships – it’s not as easy as just saying “oh I’ll move to be just round the corner from my new job”.

My first job out of uni: industrial estate out the back of the nuclear power station at Heysham. Very little decent housing nearby but if I’d have lived in Heysham, I’d have needed a car to do anything other than go to work. Or I could live in Lancaster within walking distance of shops, amenities, railway station etc and drive to work. Lancaster was an easy win (actually I rode to work but you get my point).

Public transport should FACILITATE lifestyle choices, not dictate them. And slagging people off for “choosing” to live somewhere and commute is the wrong end of the argument. Slag off Government for failing to provide the means to move people around efficiently.

Public transport should FACILITATE lifestyle choices, not dictate them.

Yes. But it works the other way too. The lovely rural areas of Britain, where many people would like to live, are struggling economically. So better transport links would allow people to live there and work in the bigger towns, but that would also bring money back to the rural places which would in turn grow their economies. Then, with good transport links companies can relocate themselves to the rural places and not be at a disadvantage.

This has already happened in the South East because you can get to and from London really easily. Money and business comes in and out of the capital. With better transport links that money and business could go further. If we make it a 90 minute trip to Manchester or Leeds then that will grow the economy in those places too. We grow by spreading the money around not letting it concentrate – which incidentally is one of the key aims and benefits of the EU.

Basically, geographical separation of any kind inhibits economic activity. So we should invest to minimise that; and the only sustainable way is with a really good rail network. The Victorians knew this, that’s why railways were such a big thing.

The lovely rural areas of Britain, where many people HAVE to live, are struggling economically.

FTFY 😊

It’s not like we can close down the countryside, do away with forestry, food production, tourism etc and all live in large cities.

The Victorians knew this, that’s why railways were such a big thing.

I call strawman.

Railways were a big thing because they were the only way to go long distances.

The Victorians did not all own a Ford Focus and a 3 series per household.

Nor could they trek to a local airport and jump on an Airbus.

What I said was a commute by car is always a result of choices made.

And I’m asserting that it isn’t, not always. Or rather, it’s often Hobson’s Choice.

I could choose to work in a different profession, starting again from the bottom after doing what I do since I was 12. Or I could choose to move into the city, effectively halving my salary with rent / mortgage repayments. But really, are either of those particularly attractive choices?

I can see how others viewed it as judgmental, I just don’t think you meant it that way.

+1.

It’s could be construed as belittling people’s problems, like telling someone suffering from depression to cheer up. If someone is finding something challenging then just going “but it’s easy, what’s wrong with you?” isn’t helpful.

As RBW said, I don’t for a second think that that’s what you actually thought or meant. But it’s how it could come across if folk didn’t know you better.

Even where there is good, frequent, cheap, reliable public transport such as the town I live in car owners don’t use it.

Surely that’s situational? I know plenty of folk in London who don’t even own a car.

If I go to Manchester these days, I’ll drive to the park & ride on the outskirts of the city and get the Metro tram in. It’s a 20-30 minute ride which is about what it would take to drive (and faster at peak times or if there’s an event on) and a £4.80 round trip which is almost certainly less than it’d cost me to park for an amount of time.

if the cost of such good access to public transport is carrying my bike up 5 flights of stairs and getting woken up when my neighbours walk up and down there stairs/leave the window open when having a party.

Previous experiance living in such conditions on multiple occasions in my younger days i can understand peoples reluctance to move into blocks of flats just to get access to public transport when presented with the choice. Ill stick where i am with my once an hour bus – for going to town on a weekend its hands down the best way to travel. For going anywhere else the car wins simply due to the cost of getting the family on the train.

I call strawman.

Railways were a big thing because they were the only way to go long distances.

That’s not what straw man means.

It was a big thing in Victorian times because it was the first time you *could* travel about the country. And that became very important. I’m just saying that transport is economically important. This is why I think it needs to be run on a strategic basis not as a profit making private enterprise. Although ironically in Victorian times that’s what it was, of course.

If I go to Manchester these days, I’ll drive to the park & ride on the outskirts of the city and get the Metro tram in. It’s a 20-30 minute ride which is about what it would take to drive (and faster at peak times or if there’s an event on) and a £4.80 round trip which is almost certainly less than it’d cost me to park for an amount of time.

This. If I’m going into Manchester on my own it takes about half an hour including driving to the station to go by the mighty Northern Rail, vs. 45 min to drive. Cost about the same for parking vs. train fare too.

When we go in as a family then the car is cheaper. Not sure how much a congestion charge would alter this though.

I was going to post an image of my public transport route to my nursing job from rural Derbyshire to Sheffield, but postimage is giving it the 502.

But essentially to cover the 12.4 miles, I would need to get 4 buses taking about an 1 hour 50 mins, which includes 26 minutes of walking.
Whilst I’m good with the walking, it might not suit everyone. Unfortunately, the earliest journey time is after I start work.

I used to work shifts but as the wife left me and has new childcare concerns, I’m essentially a single parent for 90% of the time,so the work pattern I have landed fits well. I can leave my youngest with a neighbour for breakfast as their kids go to the same school and the bus picks them all up from the village. As I start early I sort all the kids from school to make a reciprocal arrangement with the neighbour’s. I believe the fancy phrasing would be to say I am investing in my social capital….

I could clearly move to the city but my youngest gets educational support due to her autism. The chances of replicating this support in another Authority is slim at best, it took years to get to where we are and things are going very well. I do appreciate there are appeal processes etc in relation to services, but I also know how long and how difficult (and frankly emotionally draining) these things can be.

Alongside this about 5 year’s ago we moved my mum and stepdad to our village due to their increasing needs, and the difficulties there were with home care services coverage.

For years, I commuted by bike working shifts, but life now without a car would be tricky, given all the above. In fairness, worrying about whether I use public transport is pretty low on my list of ****s, but I do accept my current ‘choice’ to commute by car is a result of my choices. But I do feel some folks choices are easier than others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bemoaning my lot, I’m rather fond of my life which makes me pretty lucky.

Just google mapped my Journey to work.

7 miles to the next town over from home. to arrive in time for my 8am start.

Car – 18 minutes

Cycle – 41 minutes

Walk – 2hr 15 minutes.

Public transport – anywhere between 1hr 24 minutes and 2hrs 14 min.

I can take a series of buses that’ll save me a whole minute compared with walking.

I could take the bus. One a day from the village, leaves 11am, returns 1pm to the nearest small town. Not really practical.

I could cycle, then get a train into London, then a tube, then a train back out of London, then a bus to get to work but I’m not going to. My commute is 1.5 hours as it is, would be three times that at least.

I could change jobs but what I do is very niche, I’m at the closest employer.

I could move but then my wife would need to change jobs and my kids would have to leave their excellent school.

I could go all Victorian and live in digs near work all the time. I’ve done that before but would prefer to see my kids.

I can take a series of buses that’ll save me a whole minute compared with walking.

But just think of the people you’ll get to meet…

Life is all about compromises, and people obviously have differing priorities.

I’m quite envious of those with a short-ish bike-able commute, but family circumstances dictate staying where we are – and at least my 1hr+ commute is broken up with a nice walk across the city centre and I get a bit of WFH in.

if you get an uber, does that count as public transport? it’s at least you plus the driver, so comparable to a lot of buses.

I’ve done prestwick to Leith in less than 90 mins many a time, and I’m 20 mins further away than newton mearns.

In fairness his 3 hour estimate is about right when we left Troon at about 4 o’clock and arrived in Leith at the back of 7 after getting stuck in gridlock traffic from Maybury Road onwards. But barring home time you could easily do it in your time.

But just think of the people you’ll get to meet…

Where he stays? I’d rather not…

if you get an uber, does that count as public transport? 

Yes.

Chauffeur driven limousine?

If not, what’s the difference?

if you get an uber, does that count as public transport? it’s at least you plus the driver, so comparable to a lot of buses.

You can share ubers with strangers (not the driver) can’t you? If not then it’s a private hire minicab, so no.

Bus companies are dinosaurs who are not Interested in innovating. Encourage smaller buses more regularly, maybe even owner drivers. Take a look at the Hong Kong mini bus model.

You can share ubers with strangers (not the driver) can’t you? If not then it’s a private hire minicab, so no.

Uberpool is active in London but hasn’t been rolled out in the rest of the UK. As a rider if you click the option the driver will pick other people up heading in the same direction. By sharing the cab you get a cheaper fare. All uber cars are licensed private hire vehicles (mini cabs) in the UK.
You can argue whether private hire vehicles are public transport or not, but local authorities consider them as such, just not “mass” public transport. Even though a car journey with 1 passenger is still a car on the road for a period of time, it still helps reduce the number of cars in existence. Many of my customers aren’t car owners, if it wasn’t for taxi’s/private hire they might become one.

Right, time to update the thread with my car-commuting experience, a totally unusual thing for me but I had to as it is getting a service near work. I followed the same route to work as I would use for cycling and if I had taken the bus, so this should be a like-for like comparison.

My first impression is that it is far too easy to use a car. There’s no challenge, no investment in the journey. It made me feel lazy. The actual driving was not too bad though. Traffic was in line with how I would expect for the route, but there were many times when the width of the car compared to my bike was unnerving. I also missed the ability to pop onto cycletrack or road to overtake slower road users. Time-wise though, it was roughly equivalent to cycling*.

The major problem was at the far end… They are resurfacing a road near work and this totally messed up my route. Actually getting to the garage to drop the car off turned into a nightmare or one way streets. I am not looking forward to the journey home.

* – denotes a time saving due to not having to shower and get changed when I got to work.

if the cost of such good access to public transport is carrying my bike up 5 flights of stairs and getting woken up when my neighbours walk up and down there stairs/leave the window open when having a party.

Yup

Many folk would find my choice to live in an urban flat so I can get to work quickly and easily without a car unpalatable. I could easily have moved into the burbs or into commutterville and swapped my flat for a house and garden. However not having a car commute is that important to me that I put up with the urban flat.

Thats my choice. Others make different ones.

Its ALWAYS cheaper and quicker than using a car

PMSL at that.
Flight back was an hour late so I missed the yes it would have been cheaper bus from the airport. Thought it would be quicker to get the train and a check on the Trainline said yes, train leaves in 30 something minutes. Jump on a tram £6 to Haymarket then £20 for a train which arrived so packed only about a dozen people managed to get on and I simply couldn’t have dealt with being in that kind of crush. Only 2 carriages and even with 4 it looked like there would have been people standing. Next train in 40+ minutes standing on a freezing cold platform. Driving Edinburgh – Dundee around £10-£12 and taken 40-50 minutes. So neither cheaper nor quicker and considerably less comfortable than a car

Bus companies are dinosaurs who are not Interested in innovating. Encourage smaller buses more regularly, maybe even owner drivers.

Anywhere there’s a bus free-for-all, you end up with the popular/busy (ie profitable) routes having 4 or 5 different bus companies going down them all competing for a share of the cake but the unprofitable routes (less popular, those serving small communities with fewer potential customers) end up having no buses at all.

And then you have the situation we’re in now where the small community all need cars to access work, shops etc.

And there’s zero incentive to fix it because the private bus companies (franchises) don’t give a ****, they’re all about profit, not serving a community. The council won’t subsidise it because they’re massively cash-strapped. We return to my original point. Public transport should be publicly owned where the public (via local councils and devolved powers) can decide what services are needed and it’s not necessarily about profit.

Bigbutslimmer – thats the comment I apologised for. It should have been prefaced by “where co ordinated public transport exists”

One of the reason london and edinburgh are outliers in the public transport effectiveness is they have public owned and run bus companies that are monopolies and that exist to serve communities not create profits for shareholders.

It’s the unpredictability that I’m struggling with.

Last week:
Scotland to London on new Azuma was spot on time, comfy and worked on WiFi all the way down.
Coming home from London was InterCity 125, delayed the moment we left, again past Newcastle and trains cancelled last leg home to Dunblane. My wife came to pick me up at 11pm at night.

Today: I’m now comfortably in 1st class on Virgin service on my way to Blackpool.
To get here though has meant checking all morning as they’ve cancelled or running late half the trains down to Edinburgh. Even on the platform an hour earlier than intended I discover that that train with ‘Glasgow’ on the station boards is in fact the Edinburgh train – I could see the board inside the train saying so.
Cue me shouting to guard to confirm, local staff saying ‘no, it’s Glasgow’ and guard saying ‘yes, it’s Edinburgh’. Then kefuffle as guard moves to get train away and half the folk onboard getting off and a full platform getting on! Even as I got on the local staff were telling us customers all off for not knowing which train it was!

If I had missed that train, I would have missed the ongoing service at Edinburgh to Preston.

How can the same ‘service’ be so different on different days?

How can the same ‘service’ be so different on different days?

Problems with track, infrastructure, train crew not being where they’re supposed to be, signal/power failures, train breakdowns, suicides/trespassers….

None of them are really the fault of the Train Operating Companies but they can impact on services across the country for hours. There’s virtually no resilience in the system at all.

Cupholders update#2

No cupholders but I think someone may have shat themselves.

I got a bus today, so I could pick my van up from the garage. It was really plush, with fancy seats, USB charging and wifi. It was also pretty expensive and not even half full. Definitely no cup holders.

Unfortunately the timetable isn’t ideal for getting to and from work. I would have to wait 40 mins after work for a bus.

Fortunately I’m close enough to cycle.