To think people don't use public transport as its so unreliable

@Nettleskeins

yet they never put on more buses at peak times

They don't have car parks full of buses standing idle that can be brought out at peak times. Nor do they have drivers who they can employ for just a couple of hours per day.

The logistics just wouldn't work. The bus companies start and end the day with a skeleton service, but during the bulk of the day, they have the full quota of buses and drivers doing the full timetable. Inevitably the buses are a lot quieter at the beginning and/or end of each route, but pick up more passengers as they travel through the busier areas.

Not only would you need lots of extra spare buses to be bought, and lots of extra "zero hours" drivers to just work a few hours, but you'd also need buses with shorter routes just where the bulk of the passengers are. Cost would be astronomical.

We already have buses virtually carrying fresh air for large portions of their journeys outside of the peak periods.

You can't have even more buses and drivers just stood around idle for several hours per day just so that they can put on an extra few services at the busiest times.

They already have first class on longer distance trains. Trouble is that either the guard doesn't bother enforcing it (especially on shorter duration routes - they're make an effort on very long distance but that's usually because they feed you, not because they're wanting to weed out the dross!), or you get chavs with money who buy first class tickets and are chavvy in first class. Money is no longer a distinction of behaviour!

It would never work on buses because there'd be no one to enforce it unless you wanted to double the fares so they could afford to employ conductors/inspectors again!

I don't drive and use buses all the time for short journeys/shopping. What amazes me is that the buses are packed and there is clearly a demand for the service yet they never put on more buses at peak times.
In London there is a high demand for public transport.
And we have the ridiculous non routes that take 5 mins by car and yet there is no bus connecting those two points, yet there is a big main road. For example I live very near Kew Gardens....by car. Yet no bus connecting those points within two miles. Tube requires a change and several flights of stairs. Old people want to use buses and people with pushchairs. The planners never factor it in.

They should bring back 1st, 2nd and 3rd class travel on all services, including buses.

Not round here they dont Im not in London.

They do have air conditioning, sometimes it is too cold.

And its like a fucking sauna. I wonder what people will choose this week Sweatbucket public transport or their cars with built in air conditioning

Want people to use public transport/ PUT AIR CONDITIONING IN

I use trains, it’s a pain when there’s a strike but other wise they’re okay

West Yorkshire buses and trains are covered by WY Metro. Can buy a ticket for buses or buses and trains. As my ex had to take two buses to work and both were different operators - First and Arriva. Took advantages of it on our days and weeks off work going to places about 25 miles away.

I went to uni for 2 years at the city where I live. Lived in a village about 5 miles from where I live. At least one day of the week, I had a lecture at 5pm and at 6pm I had to run to the bus stop which was about 15 min walk to catch the 6:20pm bus, the last one to the village. By the time it takes to get out of the lecture theatre and out of the building - missed it about 90% of the time as two major roads to cross too. Got the more frequent bus service to the town about 2 miles from home, ringing my parents who collected me.

Fast forward 5 years. I got the HND which the uni agreed to do and convert that to BA (Hons) at another uni 100 miles away. I was back living with my parents after splitting up with my ex and was made redundant. First job I got was in the city centre. By this time I passed my driving test. Drove down to the town mentioned above, parked down a residential street and got the bus. There was no way I could do this without doing this as one week, shifts started at 8am and the other, shifts finished at 8pm.

I 100% agree. Public transport is an utter joke where I am.

Makes me nervous using it because I might get sticks somewhere

It all got so expensive! I hate being held to a timetable and I hate having to sit with people I don't know. Some of them can be right crackers (mainly on the bus it has a different kind of clientele to put it politely).

If you're going to a city then parking is often expensive. Although if there are a few of us it's cheaper to go by car and pay the parking. For instance I'm about £5 return to city centre. Parking for the day can be as cheap as £9 booked on the app.

I also get a special rate nearby my work at an ncp which is cheaper than the train and much more convenient. I pick kids up from school so I need to know I'll be there. I have no back up and if the train is delayed or cancelled I'd have to jump in a very expensive taxi!

Buses are also extortionate even just for a few miles.

Thatcher's bus reforms mean that (outside of London, and now Manchester), bus companies don't have to offer joined up ticketing. Nor are there any penalties for lack of reliability. This is especially frustrating when the service is tendered by the Local Authority as it meets a social need.

Our village is served by a service subsides by the LA, but there are no accountability or audit processes as part of the contract, which I think is the fault of legislation that ties the hands of the LA. So the bus just never turns up and the bus company rakes in the cash.

Meaning that rail, like road, is also used for freight

Also, the vast majority of road use is private cars.

But public transport cost the uk goverment 4.3 billion in 22 - 23. That is a long way from 26 billion. As far as I can see, that figure doesn't account for the income it generates.

But the amount you quoted for rail is not spent on public transport.

Where I worked before we had branch offices in both Birmingham and Manchester, everyone drove or cycled into these offices from home as the trains were so appalling in both cities.

To all those who think we have it easy in London:

in 2015-16 Southern cancelled trains from Clapham Junction to Kensington Olympia. So all the passengers on that line who travelled that way had to use the Ginger/Overground line which was packed as it had double the amount of passengers.

I was lucky as I spoke to my boss and asked if I could start 30 mins later and finish 30 mins later and he agreed, he did the journey the other way round so knew how bad it was. I was lucky, some people were fired because they couldn't make their journeys.

I've been at Clapham Junction where there's been flooding in the passageways/walkways between platforms and have had to get the bus from there to Hammersmith where I worked.

That's not counting the myriad number of times I've been late/delayed due to cancelled trains, weather conditions. There was one place I worked in Baker Street and we had to change at London Bridge for the tube and the queues at the ticket barriers were awful, no matter what time you arrived, if it was good it was fine but at least once or twice a week, forget it. Our boss (head of the dept) used to be unsympathetic, she travelled in from Peterborough. When there were at least 5-6 of us coming in late twice a week due to delays and ticket barriers, she realised we weren't lying and there wasn't much we/she could do about it!

An express bus (now called Superloop) which ran from West Croydon to Russell Square, fast from West Norwood to Waterloo - you'd get idiots who'd jump on the bus and try to get off on the fast service, which would delay the bus. And then don't get me started on speed limits and bus lanes with cyclists in them.

Actually I think it does. Because the spending on public transport is ONLY on public transport. The spending on roads covers far more uses, including public transport.

Yes, but it still does not support your original point.

The same can be said for roads - after all they're also used by lorries, vans, emergency vehicles, building supplies, even vans delivering bikes and workers/materials to build cycle paths! You really can't start splitting out such costs because you basically can't have one without the other. Even with the railways, staff get to/from their depots by taxi, maintenance crews take themselves and equipment by road to access points, trains themselves are often transported by road.

You can't include the biggest cost - railways - unless you break it down. What does that include? Freight trains?

Of course a bike path that doesn't go anywhere useful isn't used. I mean, what is even the point?

In many places, if you converyed some on street parking (storing private property on public land) you'd have plenty of room for a bike path, at very little extra cost.

Public transport spending 3 times more than roads - I'd say that's an alarming extent, especially when people wrongly claimed we spend more on roads than public transport.

Perhaps they aren't using the cycle infrastructure because they simply don't want to, or in the case of our by pass, it doesn't actually go from anywhere useful to anywhere useful, and probably never will. Just thrown a shed load of money to make a cycle path to tick boxes rather than there being an actual need for it in that location! Where a cycle path would actually be useful in our town would be ruinously expensive and involve demolition of various buildings as there's simply no space for a cycle track unless the road itself is closed as it's already narrow and doesn't even have pavements!

So hardly an "alarming extent", especially when you think about how much of local road area is used for parking private cars.

If people aren't using the "brilliant integrated system", then it's not brilliant. These are usually built by people that don't regularly ride bikes, and are usually unusable.