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

I currently have no choice for work and have to take public transport (north west England) but dear God it's stressful and unreliable and over half the bus drivers appear to think they're on Top Gun or something, judging by their VTOL attempts at takeoff from every stop. I have a disabled partner and it's even more noticeable if we try to go anywhere together. The morning commuter buses are all right ish but the teatime ones are almost always cancelled or delayed and I swear the road planners here were non driver eighteen year olds on crack with a box of Lego given the number of bottlenecks and lack of filter arrows on lights.

And don't even get me started on Avanti, Northern and Transpennine trains in particular. For our first few months here I thought they were a mirage until I managed to book one that wasn't cancelled. Beautifully clean and about eight passengers on the entire bloody train.

We moved back here a couple of years ago and the transport is so bad it's a major reason for buyers remorse.

Exactly why I don't use it. Waiting around for ages when they've took a metro off again or for buses that don't turn up. Taking the car means I get to work on time. It's just the way it is.

The buses between towns in my part of the SE are a bit like that.

I could get a bus from the main road, 15 minutes walk from my house, all the way to the end of the road where my SIL was living. I thought this would be brilliant: green, free (I'm a pensioner) and I could have a drink!

Then I looked up the timetable and found it took over 2 hours. It took 40 minutes max by car, so I carried on driving and not drinking.

Yes, YANBU. My son got his first proper job last Summer after graduating, which was in a different city. It was a city he actually chose as his preference because it's relatively easy to travel between home/work city for occasional weekend visits etc - just 2 hours and one change. When we looked for flats, we were looking around bus routes so he could get in/out of town easily for work and also for socialising.

Out of the 10 weekends he's tried to get home by train on the Friday evening, he hasn't made it 7 times, and had to go back to his flat after a wasted/abandoned journey. So many cancelled trains on Friday nights "due to staff shortages" or a broken down train, or tree on the line, etc. The "last" train home from the intermediate station is a ridiculously early 7:20!! It's either cancelled, or the train from his work city is late/cancelled meaning he got there after 7:20. He started having to have the afternoon off work and leave mid afternoon to increase his chances of the trains actually working.

Buses are also useless. At least twice a week the scheduled 815 doesn't appear and he ends up late for work because the next is 845 and takes longer than 15 minutes. The earlier one is 7_15 so gets him to work far too early.

He';s bought a car!

Great for them, but not everyone has the option to live in London.

Public transport needs to be much better outside the M25 than it currently is.

When I visit London, I am always struck by how (relatively) amazing their public transport is. Coming with a mindset of 'if the next bus/train is cancelled I will have to wait an hour for the one after' and having them rolling up every few minutes is mind-blowing.

It's rubbish where I am. E.g. a town DH and I like to go to that's 20 miles away. By car, 40 minutes each way - in our small 78 mpg car, fuel costs less than a fiver, parking about £3 when we get there.

By train, journey time 1 hour 35 mins each way, including 1 change, fare £12.50 each, and that is the off-peak fare assuming we would normally go at the weekend. In the week, we would have to pay peak fare if travelling before 9:30 or returning after 4pm, which would be £14:40 each

ETA: there is also a 20 minutes each way, not flat walk to the railway station, adding another 40 mins to the overall time to get there by train - or, driving and parking for the whole day would add £6 to the cost.

Train reliability for the operator is only 61% meaning the change isn't guaranteed.

DH and I both commute to work by bus and train, and DD will commute to college in September.

It’s fine when it works. Good even. The bus lanes mean it’s much quicker from the edge of the city to the city centre.
Buses run every half hour. There’s an app that tells you when your bus is due, so theoretically you can plan when to leave the office.
It only costs £2 each way compared to at least £10 to park.

But often the tracker isn’t working, so you just have to turn up and hope the bus is coming.
It’s usually fairly on time in the mornings, within about 3 minutes, and about 10 minutes late in the evenings. Sometimes it’s a minute or two early and just whizzes past the stop. Sometimes it’s just really late.

Occasionally the bus just gets cancelled. Maybe once or twice a month on average. Sometimes it says so on the app, other times you’re just waiting and waiting. If it’s in the morning, I can run to the station, get the (three times more expensive) train, and still arrive on time if I walk briskly.

At the work end, you can either wait another half hour for the next bus - sometimes it’s so full with the previous one being cancelled it doesn’t even stop to let more people on.
Or you can get the train again.

DH usually gets the train as marginally more reliable. If it gets cancelled, he resorts to the bus.

Really the only reasons we can make it work is we are fortunate to have the option of flexible start and finish times, and we can get both trains AND buses. If it was just one or the other, it wouldn’t be reliable enough. If we had rigid start and finish times, we’d have to always get an earlier bus or train to make sure we got there on time, and we’d spend a lot more time stamping at bus stops having just missed one.

Ds travelled home from Uni yesterday evening on the train. It cost £100 for the ticket and he phoned us part way through the journey because when he had to change trains, it was cancelled. No warning just cancelled. The nearest he could get to home was a city miles from us and dh drove off late to collect him. I don’t know if they’d laid on a bus but if they had he’d have been hours on it late at night.

Ds is a strapping young man and was okay and had his dad to meet him, but it’s surely a safety issue for more vulnerable passengers.

With two dc at university we’ve rarely had smooth train journeys for either of them. It’s expensive, unreliable and frustrating. I’d never trust a train for an appointment or an onward connection. It just gets so you expect it to be a disrupted awful trip

The service vs what you pay for is non existent.

I had to try to get the bus a few times when I was having the car fixed. I say try because more often than not it was cancelled or late and I was late to work. I can’t risk that on a daily basis.

Trains are worse. Often late so missed connection. Or cancelled/on strike.

Transpenine in particular. LNER is better but as I have connections via smaller local services I’m often in danger of missing that too.

Not to mention times and frequency- the local train for my area to the nearby cities is one per hour. One. Which is often late or cancelled.

I now try to avoid public transport on principle - I refuse to be stung for a shite service.

The last time I was delayed by an hour on a train with no working toilet, then missed the connection due to the delay so had to wait another hour on a freezing platform I was offered something like 40% of my ticket which was about £8. Not good enough.

When I moved to my current city 7 years ago, I'd get the train to and from work (25minutes to a different city. Work and home a ten minute walk at each end). Due to the increasingly dire service (esp later at night when I finish work), I've started driving more and more. I hate this as it's so bad for the environment but the infrastructure has just fallen apart.

Our small city has made all bus journeys £2 and it’s worked really well. Now far cheaper than parking if just 1-2 of us. Our trains are good too though not cheap but then sitting in traffic jams is my idea of hell

My parents retired to London and now they are in their 80s have retained independence due to the great buses and tubes (both stopped driving due to health and confidence). They simply would not have had that in their rural home town. They have adjusted brilliantly to city life (zone 3) and love it.

The trains where I am are a joke, there is multiple excuses daily as to why the train is cancelled or delayed. Just this week there have been several electrical faults, driver not available, more trains than normal requiring maintenance. Sadly at least 3 people have been hit by a train this month alone and yesterday trespass on the line caused delays.

I live in London, and I have to say , that public transport is a million times better than where I grew up , there are still issue . Buses often don’t go where you need them and can also be unreliable. I also live in a very pro cycling borough, and there have been a lot of road closures.

Return train to Cardiff is £7. Goes once an hour and takes an hour each way because it stops 500 times. I can drive it in half an hour and spend £4 on parking regardless how many of us are in the car, and leave whenever I like. No brainer.

I quite happily pay for parking when i have 2 young kids, as my bus can take 40 mins to get to town and is quite often late on the route back. Drive takes 16 mins and I don’t have to worry about pushchair space etc.

I got a car when I was 27 as there was no public transport route between my flat and my office.

When I was a student, it was cheaper to get a taxi into town if there was 2 of us, instead of paying bus fare for a 5 min journey. Bus would also often just not turn up on Sundays.

I feel zero guilt over driving everywhere.

My car has been in the garage for a couple of weeks as it's got a major fault which has been tricky and time consuming to repair and I've been getting two buses to my work which is 8 miles away.

I'm having to leave the house two hours before my 8am start time to make sure I get there on time and coming home can be an absolute ballache at times. If a bus doesnt turn up (which seems to happen frequently) then I usually have to stand after boarding and I've got back problems, which means I struggle to tolerate standing still for more than 10 mins.

I'm really missing my car and leaving home/getting home within 45 minutes!

I am always shocked when I visit my mum in Yorkshire at how patchy and difficult using public transport is. I live in London and I think we're shielded from the problem nationally because London public transport is generally pretty good. I really worry for the day when my mum has to stop driving.

Agree. And if you don't know the public transport at the other end it's tricky.

After my c section I went to visit my gran in her care home with baby.
Train from my town to the town nearest her then a bus.

A journey that's an hours drive each way took me all day and cost a fortune.

I missed three busses because where Google maps said they picked up, and where there was a stop, turned out to be out of service - but with nothing at the stop to say so.

By the end I was tired, cold and sore from the uncomfortable seats.

Public transport only really works in local urban terms, not as a way to get between places or rurally.

SW market town. Very few buses and those that take you anywhere worthwhile are infrequent and take forever to get to the destination. There is a station but I've only used the train a handful of times since I moved here 12 years ago as they are so expensive and unreliable. So we either use the brilliant local coach company service to London though its only once a day or drive and use the P&R in our two nearest cities.
Currently in Nice and have been using their brilliant and cheap tram service and the coastal train service which has been spot on. They are packed.

Unreliable, expensive and patchy service where I live. I could get the train to work, but I'd either have to walk 40 mins to the station or drive to the station and there is minimal parking near it. Whereas driving to work takes 25-30 mins and dh and I go in the same car. My station is one of the worst in the country for late and cancelled trains, apparently!

Indeed.

Trains are unreliable, very expensive, dirty and overcrowded.

The tube is equally awful, expensive and lately full of angry people who would step over you to get in or out faster if they could...

I can completely understand why people choose to use their car.

Bad for the environment but until public transport improves nothing will change.

Where I am (seaside SE town) trains are constantly messed with or completely suspended at weekends which must have a real effect on businesses as people find it hard to travel to nearby towns for leisure and shopping activities.

At least my local buses are fairly reliable and the staff is really friendly.

Not much help if you have to catch a place though, or trying to get to an important meeting, or even if just trying to get to work in time.

Reliability, lack of flexibility, and cost.

Reliability is a major consideration. I wouldn't rely in trains to get to the airport, for example. The route we would need to use is always delayed or has cancellations. It's not worth the risk. And once you've paid for 2 or more of you the parking charges may well not be much different.

Train prices here can be extortionate especially if booking last minute, and even more so if you want any form of flexibility in times coming back.

It costs about £5 per person one way to go to town on the bus here. It's a 20 minute bus ride. As I have an electric car I can park in town for free, so it makes no sense for me to go by bus unless I want to have a drink or two when out. The buses also become less frequent as the evening goes in and the last bus is fairly early. So you end up using a taxi instead.

We live on a TfW route although don't live in Wales.
Using the train means you need a plan B as trains are often late or cancelled or replacement buses are put on, which take longer (fine if we're just going to somewhere on our line but useless if you're heading for a connection from the main junction station). I've lost count of the number of times I've had to drive to Crewe to rescue family members.
We're planning an Interrail trip around Europe this year. The one bit I'm most worried about is whether the train from our home station will arrive/be on time as if it isn't, the rest of our plans for that day (including Eurostar) come crashing down. (We only have a 2 hourly train service at our station!)