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Govt wants to dissuade car usage...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
The government wants to dissuade car users and to persuade drivers to get out from behind the wheel and use public transport. However, public transport prices go up year after year, and the quality of the journeys don't seem to get any better. Does anyone here have a transport system in their town/city that actually 'works'?
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I live in North London and the public transport here is easier than trying to drive and park as there is v little parking spaces. Buses are frequent, there is tube, the London overground and National rail. So yes.
I drive a lotus which isnt to bad for fuel but the Nissan Navara pickup i bought the missus last year is a bit thirsty.
I dint buy these motors and pay for insurance so that we can take a bus yhat never comes and costs a small fortune.
Very interesting. I live in London too (East) but I find that the tubes are pedantic and overpriced - not to mention having to smell the other person's breath in front of me if I want to travel to work in the morning. The Jubilee Line always has something wrong with it and travelling by bus is useless as the traffic is so bad. At least by car (I don't drive) one can have a comfortable drive, and taker detours if traffic is bad on a particular route. A day's travel into zone 1 can cost £7-£8; that's 3-4 days worth of travel from Stratford to Palmers Green in a '10 VW Polo - simply crazy.
The buses in my town are half decent though.
Well the DVLA took my license so I don't have much choice. I do sometimes get taxi's though but only if I'm not feeling well. I have a freedom pass for medical reasons so I don't pay for zones 1-6 on public transport.
Have only been to London a handful of times, but loved the tube system, found it easy and reliable, though a bit expensive and wouldn't fancy doing it in rush hour.
Personally, my experience suggests that Londoners don't know how good they actually have it, when it comes to public transport.
For me to get to my office I have one bus every 30 minutes from near my home, then I need to change buses (this one every 15 minutes)... at the end of the journey is a 20 minute walk. By the time I'd reach my office would take me about 90 minutes, with no traffic.
Of I can get there in 15 minutes by car.
:yes:
you get used to it, so you whinge (that's what I did!) but it's really good.
I'm lucky that there's a bus every 30 mins to work, but it takes a good 2 hours to get there (20 miles, 35 mins by car) and is hopelessly unreliable. It makes it very hard to work late or do evening events because of the travel time.
The town I'm in is pretty well-connected on the train, too, but it's commuter-belt so it's pricey. To get to my regular hospital appointments by train will cost £15 each time (the bus there is only once every 2 hours, presumably in order not to starve the train companies of custom...)
Having said all that, I can't drive for medical reasons and I get around pretty well.
Seriously though, o dont have a problem with public transport. Quite like train journeys but not enough to ride them for the fun of it alone.
I take the bus and the train to work. It's about 45 minutes in the car to do the 25 miles, it's about 60 minutes by combination of bus and train and walking. I have a bus to town every 10 minutes and there are four trains an hour between the two stations I use. It is expensive though, because I have to buy bus and train tickets separately, though when you factor in the maintenance costs of a car as well as the petrol there's not much in it.
Anyone who says public transport in London is overpriced or difficult to use is an idiot. On Oyster a Z1-4 tube single is all of £2.70 and a bus Oyster single is £1.40. If you live in London and you don't have an Oyster then you're a tool.
As with all other public goods in this country though, we privatise the fuck out of them so some powerful people can skim some more off the top. Using a stick of taxation to make cars less attractive won't work because it just means poor people are better off selling their car and giving up their job, and that rich people have to have one less £300 meal a year. Probably get the tax wrote down as an expense anyway.
But that's an ideological thing. The Chinese seem to think that mass transit systems are an important state asset, but Bonkers Boris and the rest of the Tory filth think that public transport is something to be privatised and turned into a profit-making opportunity for their fat cat mates in big business.
Look at Stagecoach plc, for instance. They sued the government for £140m in "revenue support" for their two train franchises because fewer people used the train than they expected. They then paid their shareholders a total of £1bn in dividends over the last five years, including £70m to Brian Souter and another £70m to his sister. Souter, a whackjob Christian nutter, then used his money to bankroll anti-gay political campaigning.