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

They’ve amalgamated a lot of bus services here, so slow buses take even longer.
Loads of schools no longer have a bus service that arrives before school, just creates more traffic.
we have several large towns very close but they changed it if you want to go town to town you have to go in and out of the town centres.
I got a car, I had to take DD to an activity in another town and it was taking over an hour to get there and it’s a 20 minute drive.

I live in Northern Ireland. It’s pretty necessary to have a car here as public transport usually stops early, is very infrequent and/or doesn’t go where you need it to go.

There have been a few times I’ve looked at getting the train to Belfast, but I’ve even decided against that every time because either the travel times didn’t suit or the cost was too much (£40 return for a journey that costs less than £20 by car).

Miss living in Leeds. From my home and ten minute walk in any direction, I could have caught 5 buses into the city centre and if I walked 15 mins, 3 more buses. This was 4 miles from the city centre and in the mid 00s. I remember there was a RTA about a mile north of the city centre where two A roads meet up - killing at least one of the drivers. Could see one of these A roads from one window of the place me and my ex lived and saw the traffic was at a complete stand still. I said to my ex - I am walking into work, which was three quarters of a mile the other side of the city centre, before we moved 2 miles further away 5-6 weeks later.

Walked past various bus stops on the way and people were trying to get taxis. Urm if the traffic is not moving at all how the fuck are taxis going to get through eh?

The money wasted on HS2 should have been put into regional/provincial public transport. It's shocking to read how bad it is and it would be so good for everyone.
I live in Zone 2 in London and the public transport is outstanding and, being over 60, it's free. I can't remember which London Mayor it was, but they over supplied buses and, if some were far from full, it was acceptable in order to make reliable and frequent service. That's when bendy buses came in! I don't know if TFL is unusual, or even unique, in being non-profit with all surplus going back into the service. That is a good model.

My friend took a bus which was a 22-25 mile trip to a hospital to see her sister after an op.

The bus driver decided to pull over in a lay-by for 20 mins - having the bus being late by 15 mins and read the paper. Passengers were naturally furious as others on the bus had hospital appointments. Driver was only ten minutes away from the bus station in the town. Passengers couldn't leave the bus as the bus was on an A road which had no pavement between the layby and slip road which bus would take to go to hospital.

She complained to the bus company but didn't acknowledge her complaint.

I would love to travel on the bus to the hospital but the bus is now HOURLY, having been every 20 mins.

The main city hospital is a joke to travel to by car as last month took my dad an hour and 20 mins to drive the final 1.75 miles and ten minutes before my appointment was scheduled, I gave up and got out the car to walk - we were in the queue for the car park. Dad said he would see me at the dept. He turned up 35 mins later - the last 5 mins the walk from car to the dept.

The other two hospitals in the NHS trust are more easily to get to by car - no issues with getting there. But one of the departments I go to 3-4 times a year is in the city hospital.

There's another bus which takes me to the city centre but not going past the hospital. I got off at the bus stop nearest to the hospital thinking its only a 10 min walk. It was deceiving as took 25 mins.

When I went to the hospital in covid days I walked to it and its about 3.5 miles.

took the train yesterday with Dd and Dh and it was largely a good experience. However way back was ruined half way by some doughball deciding to play his shite music out loud on his phone. Wtf do people do this!!! same with the people behind me doing video calls/chats without headphones (though they did quiet down). gives me the rage and less likely to use again.

Completely agree with so much of this. We live on London/Surrey border. Post covid, our train frequency remains reduced. As for busses- the ones we have are pretty good and fairly reliable but we dont have many and routes are useless. We have a handy bus for straight into town- great. And if we walk 10/15 minutes into the village we can get one or two options heading towards london.

But me/the dc cannot take a bus or public transport of any sort to any of the other places we go. Dance class, sports group, even most of dc's friends who live locally.... a bus would require multiple.changes AND lots of waiting around. It's so frustrating. Ds in particular wants to be more independent. He can and does ride his bike some places, but the distance can be significant and many of the roads are a bit terrifying for cycling.

I would love to use public transport more- I am concerned about the environment, don't really enjoy driving and hate being caught up in traffic jams/stressing trying to find somewhere to park. But where I am buses are infrequent, unreliable and take ages to get anywhere because routes are very limited so getting to most places nearby requires several changes of (equally unreliable) bus. Trains are no better and frequently fail to stop at our small local station.

I live near a small town and the nearest city is less than 20miles away. It takes over an hour on the train (as it stops at lots of other small towns) and stops at a station a long way from most of the offices/shops etc. So to get where most people will want to be takes more time and more expense on buses/trains or a 20-30 min walk. There is less than one train per hour and the last train back is at 10.30pm. However, trains are frequently cancelled so this can't be relied upon. There is no direct bus service to the city. The cost of a return fare (including buses to get across the city) is about £25 per person. So if my family were to go for a day out in our closes city by rail it would cost us £100 just in transport. Even using the most expensive car parks we could drive for a fraction of that cost, and know that we had reliable transport and no waiting around or worries about missing the last train home if we want to go for dinner. This seems to me insane.

When I was working in Central Bristol it made no sense to catch a bus or train from my town just outside the city. Time was the factor when I also had to do the school run. I couldn't get back from the school to the station in time to catch a train that would give me enough time to be at my desk on time. Annoying too was the fact that although a lot of trains go through our local station which is on the Bristol to London line, not so many of them stopped at ours.

I'm not surprised @AllProperTeaIsTheft - it's horrendous. A friend of mine had to buy a second car to get to work because he just couldn't rely on the train and his wife works somewhere inaccessible by public transport.

He was late so often (or missed work entirely) that he got a warning for it, lol.

Yep, I'm in Cumbria too, @fieldsofbutterflies . I'm a teacher (over the border in Lancashire) and lots of our students arrive by bus or train. Every morning loads are late because of delays and cancellations.

Yep agree. I commute to London, £25 per day return, £10 to park at the station. Trains constantly on strike, revised timetables, signal failure, points failure, "shortage of drivers" - it's a rare day I can just turn up and get the train I expected to get.

Buses around here turn up randomly, don't know why they bother with a timetable. Even if they just had a screen that told me how much longer until the next one (using Uber type tech) I'd be able to ditch the car and use the bus more. As it is, it's impossible

Put some extra carriages on then, surely, if you already know it will be packed?!

The problem with this (which I in no way think was a good idea on the rail operators' behalf) is that most trains now come in fixed units. Gone are the days when they could put extra carriages in. Now the only way to get a longer train is to attach two trains together - which, guess what, means they need two train crews to run the service, so it doesn't happen because they have difficulty pulling together one train crew.

I'm disabled and flights are the only public transport I take. I find stations are really inaccessible and the unreliability of trains and buses makes life impossible. I just can't risk a train being cancelled or not having a seat.

I used to commute 28 mi by bus/train and it took 3 hours each way. Local buses here are reasonably priced but the experience is grim (sat behind someone sinking a succession of beers and in front of a vaper yesterday, regularly have to dodge abandoned half-eaten takeaways) and routes are patchy. The price of train tickets is just mad and you can't rely on them to turn up/get you to your destination - I can be in SW France quicker, for a tenth of the cost and more reliably than I can be in my London office. I'd like to cycle more but the infrastructure is appalling (the few metres of cycle lane that exist flood, are full of broken glass/spent hubcaps etc and/or have cars/skips parked in them) and (as every cyclist-bashing thread on MN demonstrates) motorists are on the whole absolute tools.

Without a proper coherent public transport infrastructure, that’s reliable and affordable, people are always going to opt for independent travel, to ensure they can get to their destination in a timely manner.

Buses and trains, aside from being unreliable , are often dirty and unpleasant environments, so, as much as anyone would want to support caring for the environment, many things need to change before using public transport outweighs using independent transport.

I also remember looking at train costs when I worked in the Lakes (we're about 40 minutes drive away). I started work at 10am and finished at 6pm.

There was no way of getting to work by train. At all. The earliest train was at 6am and would get me to work nearly five hours later. To get home the same day, I'd need to leave work at 2pm, and even then I wouldn't get home until gone 7pm 😂and it would have cost me around £50 a day in fares.

Driving cost me £40 a week in fuel, give or take. Parking was free at work.

We're in rural Cumbria.

We have one bus a day to the nearest "big town" - doesn't leave until 9.45am and has to be back by 2pm or so to be available for the school run, so it's completely useless for anyone who works. It also doesn't run on weekends or bank holidays.

The trains are (on paper) decent but at least two trains a day get cancelled, and a huge part of the line was shut for a month recently due to a derailment. The replacement buses took twice as long and often never showed up anyway.

DH and I both drive everywhere and neither of us could do our jobs without our cars.

I've paid a jaw-dropping amount for return tickets by train for a UK holiday later this year and not only am I getting alerts saying some of the legs may be cancelled due to strike action but also if I go by a different route "these trains are likely to be extremely busy". Put some extra carriages on then, surely, if you already know it will be packed?!

Went for a short break with my daughter earlier this year to nearest city and had return tickets by train. Discovered we would have no return train as every single one on the day we planned to return had been cancelled due to strike action. Had to return on National Express which made DD extremely travel sick (neither of us do well with road travel) and the coach was an hour late too.

Added to that our local buses are frequently late or cancelled, and public transport is a complete farce.

I live semi rurally outside Norwich - the council seem determined to make it hard for people to drive into the city - closing roads / putting up car park costs significantly - and tell people to use public transport.

Except buses only go through our village once an hour (and stop very early evening) which I can’t make work with school runs and work and the park and ride works out more expensive and less convenient than just driving in. Luckily our work recognise that and pay the parking in city costs.

Councils need to make public transport reliable, frequent and cheap if they actually want customers.

Yes buses are very hit and miss the more popular routes are not too bad becsuse.they are quite regular ,but the less popular ones can be appalling ,it can literally take hours ti travel a relatively short distance.

I must be lucky, I'm between three different bus routes with busses from 5.30 am to 11pm or midnight for one bus.

Yep. I live less than 5 miles from my place of work, they're always trying to decrease the number of people driving in by increasing parking charges and refusing permits for those who live in a certain radius. For me it would be one bus taking an hour, as it goes all round the houses, or changing which has take 40 minutes at best, over an hour at worst. It's under 20 minutes early morning/school holidays to drive, under 30 other times. I suck up the parking charges twice a week because my office days are long enough without having to factor in 2 hours of traveling to somewhere so close to my house.

Yes-I would use the bus to get to work if I could. Parking is a nightmare and we only have one car so it seems daft for me to take if it I can get the bus. BUT, whenever I do, the bus is full, massively late or cancelled altogether. It is totally inconvenient.