The ridicule of public transport
May 18th, 2010Why is public transport so expensive and so rubbish? We all want to be green. We all want to do our bit but as I say time and time again, if you want to encourage people to be green then you have to make it REALLY easy for them, or they just won’t do it.
Public transport really winds me up. So many people commute to London every day and therefore a train would be a perfect solution. However, to buy a ticket from Cheltenham to Paddington on the day (7am commuter train) can cost £145. Why would you do it? If you drive it will probably cost you about £30 in petrol there and back if you have a small car. If you have 2 or 3 people in the car it is a bargain. Yes you can be organised and buy tickets in advance, but they are still not cheap. Why not make these tickets cheaper? Add a few more carriages on to the train. Run a few more trains.
Another perfect example is the humble bus. My colleague gets a bus in from Winchcombe every day. It costs him £2.30 each way. That is getting on for £5 a day in bus tickets. Not only that, but the buses run at ridiculous times. He can’t get in until 9:30 and they run about every hour, but sometimes only every 2 hours. If he doesn’t have childcare for example and needs to get home for 3pm, he has to leave at 12!! This is ridiculous when you have got to work at 9:30. In a car he can leave at 2:30.
There is no real excuse for this. Instead of the government investing billions in hair-brained schemes to improve the environment, why do they not subsidise and reform public transport so that we can actually use it? I appreciate that I am taking a very simplistic approach, but it strikes me as odd that the Japanese and other cultures can get it so right and we can fail so miserably.
May 18th, 2010 at 23:23
Sadly you’re a few weeks too late to stand for parliament Nai! It does actually work out cheaper for me to commute by train, but that’s because I buy a monthly saver ticket.
June 1st, 2010 at 11:20
I think we tend to do things half-arsed in the UK. In Japan they still have conductors on buses who stand by the door and welcome you in. They wear white gloves and enough people use it to make it worthwhile. In the UK we only half-support public transport and don’t really dissuade driving so there is not enough money to subsidise the loss-making routes and not enough to put on such a good service that everyone uses it. Also in Japan they really encourage cycling so many people can literally get rid of their cars and still get around. As far as trains are concerned, there is a stupid amount of externally moderated elf-and-safety gov, which means private companies are slaves to pen-pushers telling them how often to check things.