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

Yep. Which is why we need safe cycle routes that arexactually usable, and secure reliable bike storage

Exactly. Services during the Victorian era were more extensive than today. We can do better.

Not possible for everyone. I definitely couldn’t cycle to my local station, which is about a 10 minute drive - there’s no safe cycle route and even if there was, I have nowhere to keep a bike.

And that's why our roads and environment are fucked

A 10 min drive is possible to cycle

We invented the train. We should have bullet trains like Japan running to every major city and they should leave and arrive on the exact second they are supposed to. We should also have fast and reliable rapid transit systems (like the Tube, but better) in every major city and town, and frequent and reliable buses in rural areas.

If the government want to cut down on car use, make public transport so good that keeping and running a car becomes pointless because public transport is so good (and cheap).

Get the journey time down to below four hours and rail does start to out-compete air travel. Airports (particularly those favoured by the cheap airlines) tend to be located in inconvenient places and the security requirements are tedious. So the actual travel time doesn't need to be less than air for the door-to-door time to be competitive.

And what about Manchester? Anyone who has any experience of Manchester's rail network knows that it is incredibly fragile. At one end Stockport is heavily congested. At the other end so is the route through Castlefield. Projects to provide greater capacity in Manchester largely rely upon HS2 infrastructure.

Public transport works best when its all coordinated and frequent.

It can be cheap and comfortable, but if its going to take you 2.5 hours to travel a journey that would take 45 mins by car, people are going to take the car every time.

Where i live trains into london are good - fast etc & definitely better than driving. For anything else locally the buses are slow, infrequent & expensive so we don't use them.

The government can incentivise all they want. They could offer me £100k and they would still have to take my car away from my cold dead hands.

The worst thing I did was to catch a train to Sheffield to Leeds and it stops at every single station in between and diverts to Castleford. Took 2 hours when VT just stops at Wakefield Westgate in 25 mins.

So if Sheffield or Leeds trains mentions Castleford - don't even bother.

This why I hate the ulez. I’d rather be using public transport, I don’t need forcing. Just give me working options that don’t require hours of my day. And before anyone says ‘London public transport is fine’ it’s really not in outer London. A ten min drive can be a forty min wait for buses that never turn, stupid routes that take half an hour. There’s only connections that go to the centre and out, everything else is crap. I know there’s far worse, but it’s doesn’t mean I have 4 hours to spend every day on two trips to someone 10-15 min away by car.

@Disturbia81 there is an outer ring bus service here which is rubbish - buses hardly turn up and when you do, you realise its more quicker to get a bus in and another bus out.

I think experts are overruled by vested interests, especially when it comes to money and back handers. Certainly something needed to be done about the WCML. Thing is, though, that the trains north of Preston/Lancaster are pretty empty and don't really justify the frequency and train length. I live near Lancaster/Preston and journeys to Glasgow/Edinburgh are my most common train journey these days - unless there've been earlier cancellations/delays, they're usually pretty empty with plenty of room. The London<>Scotland Avantis mainly served more Southerly stations and particularly Preston where they all stop (crew change). Not sure what the answer is, or whether the trains should even try to compete with air travel between London and Scotland - will they ever be faster/cheaper to compete - I suggest not.

Do you not think that the experts considered all options before recommending this one?

The former Great Central route would have been no use. A more direct route between Rugby and Nottingham perhaps, maybe it might serve Sheffield quicker, but it wouldn't serve Birmingham at all and would be a very long way around to get to Manchester - London to Manchester is the most profitable flow in the UK. It would certainly be no use for anyone trying to get between London and Glasgow, a route where trains are consistently busy and which needs faster journey times and cheaper fares to compete with short-haul flights. You can't cut fares until you increase supply.

Yes, we needed a new route North, but we didn't the ruinously expensive and disruptive all singing, all dancing HS2. We could have used some of the old Central route and made it a "normal" speed line with curves etc. We didn't need a straight line brand new route that was only needed for the highest speed trains. A lower spec line, lower speed, maybe only for freight (meaning even lower speed) would have cost a fraction of HS2. As it is, because it was started and now won't be finished, the huge problem of Crewe isn't being addressed and we're stuck with a massively compromised barely fit for purpose link between the Northern end of the shortened HS2 and the original WCML.

But there were issues with local authority transport. Mainly that they didn't run into other LA areas. In our town, if we wanted to go to the next town, we got a bus which terminated at the edge of our town and had to walk quarter of a mile across the boundary to get a bus belonging to the next town which also terminated at their boundary! Yes, there were "county" buses which went across town boundaries but they were basically town centre to town centre stops with very few stops in between. When they were deregulated, we got a much better service that actually went from the suburbs in one town through to the next town so was far more useful.

Where we live (fairly rural) public transport just isn't adequate. There are regular buses but to get to most places would mean changing bus at the nearest big town, there is only one bus that goes directly to the supermarket. Going to work on the bus would mean 2 buses, going miles out of my way and a journey taking over twice as long, plus time to walk from bus stop to work plus morning buses being unreliable and sometimes being too full to stop.
Also expensive, for me and 2 DDs it is more expensive to get the bus to town than drive and pay for parking.
Then there's all the places we literally can't get public transport to because they're not on a bus or train route.
People won't use it unless it's reliable, convenient and cheap!

My elderly mum was unfortunately in St Thomas' (Waterloo) for three months at the beginning of the year and it was interesting to travel by TFL with my 82yr old dad by train three-six times pw to visit her as he couldn't cope driving into central London, and neither could I.
He hadn't used public transport for 50 years.
Trains were mostly on time, off peak and every 25mins. He saw places on route that he knew before they'd moved out to Z5 and hadn't seen for decades. He was rather upset how the areas had changed (not the trains).
He actually enjoyed using his contactless card through the train barriers and tubes, learning how things work now. I was ill one week and couldn't travel to see my mum and my dad did it alone, bless him!

I'm lucky that I live in outer London so still benefit from TFL. My children had free travel until 18.
Our trains and buses are quite reliable, affordable and run often (trains into central London every 20 mins) My elderly parents have free passes after 9.30 for train, buses and tubes.
From where we live, we can get to a lot of towns by bus easily, running 10-20 mins until after midnight.
We can get back from central London after midnight in 30 mins.
Then we have night buses.
I can travel on and off buses for 2 hrs for £3.10, Every route on TFL.
Parking in central London is so expensive so we never drive in.

They've changed the zones by us, it would now be £10 return for DS and I to go to our nearest town by bus. A 15 minute journey that's walkable in 30 mins if I'm on my own, probably more like 45 with DS but DS can't always manage the walk.

When we found out the new cost a couple of weekends ago DH just drove us and joined us for lunch.

Train would be nearly half the cost but there's no direct route so we'd have to catch two trains with a 20 minute wait between then so whole journey would end up taking closer to an hour probably - if they were running on time.

For me it's cost. Time is similar
Train £145
Flight £68 + £16 local train to airport
Driving £100

@PracticallyYesterday you're right, I should book assistance. Hopefully I still have time to do that but also we don't always travel on the specific train we had intended to (not my fault she is so anxious she ends up chronically late or wanting to leave early). As for coaches as I said previously, she is very Very travel sick.

I'm getting the bus more now all buses no matter how long the journey is is £2.
Making use of that and hoping it stays!
Trains on the other hand are an utter joke.
They're always on strike/cancelled and cost an absolute fortune.

Ultimately the people running the railways now are HM Treasury. If you told them that you could invest £1 for a guaranteed return of £1.20 they'd just say that they'd rather that you didn't spend the £1.

I stopped using the bus because I couldn’t stand the people. Obviously the majority were fine, but over the years I was groped, sworn at, had men press themselves against me, and often got jammed next to people who stank. The lack of personal space in this country is awful. I’d rather sit in traffic but have my own car, just as I’d rather have a tiny private garden than a giant communal one.