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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think public transport in the north is dreadful

43 replies

yesterdaysunshine · 21/10/2016 07:52

Trains zoom past small towns with either no station at all or a station that only goes to a major city. Buses are regular but expensive and meandering.

Would it really be a dreadful thing if someone stopped to consider that some of us would like to get the train to work? It would reduce road congestion hugely. As it is to get to the town next to me I have to go to Liverpool and back again!

OP posts:

frikadela01 · 21/10/2016 09:23

I live in a northern town and whilst the buses into town are pretty good, getting anywhere else can be a pain. I live 15 minute drive from work yet it takes me over an hour to get there on the bus. When I finish late shifts it can take about 2 hours to get home so I generally have to get a taxi.
I'm begrudgingly learning to drive because it's not sustainable now I have a baby

cavefelem · 21/10/2016 09:40

frikadela I used to be in a similar position
Living in one town in Gtr Manchester, working on the outskirts of another, about 4.5 miles as the crow flies.
By bus, would take 1 hour on a good day (due to the timetables) as it needed 2 changes.
When the weather was good I walked part of the way & took a different bus so that took about 45 mins if I timed it right.

It was while I was working there I bought my first car, and I have to admit the chore of waiting 20 mins (and often longer in the winter) for a bus that I'd only be sat on for 12/15 mins was a major factor.

By car, the direct journey door-to-door took 15 mins

thetemptationofchocolate · 21/10/2016 09:51

I'm in the South; we have a branch line train, the station is ten miles from us. The nearest mainline station is 40 miles away. Buses are few & far between. I did once get the bus to work. It has to be two buses, and it took an hour and three quarters to go 15 miles. I might even have walked/run it quicker!
I'm not posting this to moan about it really, just to show solidarity with you OP - you are not alone and many of us also struggle to use thecrap public transport.

ShotsFired · 21/10/2016 10:04

As pp have said, YABU to claim this is a North/South thing.
It's a city or town centre/suburbs things.

I am in the South and live about 10 miles from a large city with transport interchange, so = plentiful buses and trains. But if I want to get to that it is a good 45mins-1hr on the bus+walk just to get to my local station; plus another 15mins on the train. Would cost best part of a tenner for a return journey. Buses are hourly I think, but I better not be coming back after 4pm on a Saturday, as they finish then (and none on Sundays)

Or I could hop in my car and drive there in about 15mins

BakeOffBiscuits · 21/10/2016 10:08

Please don't assume all the south is the same as London!

We're in Hampshire, and only 80 miles form London. Our village has one bus a week and the nearest train station is 30 minutes away car journey.

Public transport is shit down here too!

frikadela01 · 21/10/2016 10:15

I think public transport in most of the country is pretty dire to be honest. Like someone upthread said it all tends to be radial so you can get to town but not the village next to you.

But it's ok people because in 20 years time the people of leeds and Manchester will be able to shave 25 minutes off their journey to London... It's the small things

GiddyOnZackHunt · 21/10/2016 10:17

I'm in the South. My drive to work is about 45 minutes.
We once used a journey planner to see if I could do it on public transport. In order to get to work on time I would have had to leave home before I'd arrived home from the previous day. I could have walked or cycled to the train station but my trip would still have taken 2 hours.

ShowMeTheElf · 21/10/2016 10:20

I'm in East Anglia and it's much the same out of the cities. I don't think that it's a Northern divide thing particularly.

BowieFan · 21/10/2016 10:21

We're fairly lucky living in Huyton (well, just outside) and so have very good transport links. The kids are able to get the train into Liverpool and the tube to school. We can get around Merseyside fairly easily on public transport but it's a pain in the backside if you want to get to somewhere like Widnes or Runcorn.

Manchester is fairly good now, especially with the Metrolink.

Owllady · 21/10/2016 10:22

It's not any better down south tbh. If I couldn't drive I really don't know what I'd do!
I live on a rural lane off a rural village and town and no buses ever venture here. You need to walk to the main A road to catch a bus that isn't accessible with scant service

idontlikealdi · 21/10/2016 10:27

I commute into London from SE London and I appreciate that we have more frequent services but I live quite far up the line and quite often I have to let trains go past as I just can't get on them. The tube is great and busses are cheap and loads of them but the rail network is quite frankly shit even here and it costs ££.

ErrolTheDragon · 21/10/2016 10:45

There's no 'joined up thinking'. There's a good mainline train station in the nearest town - but how to get to it from the suburbs or beyond? There is a bus through our village to the town (I'm afraid I don't know the frequency) but it doesn't stop near the station, the bus station is the other side of the town.

A big new tranche of development is going to have a 'parkway' station included, not sure whether that will have any bus services to it from the vicinity though.

DH goes to quite a lot of things in Manchester (has to drive, careful timing to make it 45 mins not 2 hrs) , his impression is that transport there is good if you live near enough to a tram line.

pugsake · 21/10/2016 10:45

I'm in the north east. When I worked it used to take me an hour to get to work (biggish city) 9 miles away and two and 3 bus journeys back.

I now drive.

frikadela01 · 21/10/2016 10:51

You're right about the joined up thinking Errol. I used to get the first bus out of my village on a morning into town (5:40am ish) this bus got pretty full considering the time then once it got into town nearly everyone on it uses to have to run like the clappers to the train station to get the train into leeds. It's quite a sight to see 30-40 people in varying grades of professional dress running through town. Many of us petitioned the bus company to start the service 10 minutes earlier so it joined up better with the train service but that never happened.

cavefelem · 21/10/2016 11:02

frikadela01 Fri 21-Oct-16 10:15:56

I think public transport in most of the country is pretty dire to be honest. Like someone upthread said it all tends to be radial so you can get to town but not the village next to you.

But it's ok people because in 20 years time the people of leeds and Manchester will be able to shave 25 minutes off their journey to London... It's the small things hmmhmmhmm

But these transport boffins haven't factored in that it will take me over an hour longer to get into central Manchester because they are going to REDUCE the trains from my local station & I'll have to go by bus!

cavefelem · 21/10/2016 11:25

(needs a full blooded rant now)

The Northern Powerhouse is a big joke. They are planning to reduce journey times between Manchester & Leeds (& further out to Newcastle) by reducing the number of smaller stations the trains stop at.

Which is going to INCREASE overall journey times for the people who want to use those smaller stations. Many of these cross-country trains are used by commuters simply because of the lack of frequency and capacity on the smaller local services.

By the time the HS2/North link is built, you'll need to take out a second mortgage to afford a ticket to London. But hey, it will provide jobs for cheap foreign labour

JellyBelli · 21/10/2016 11:33

I used to live in the Fens. There was a bus once a week to the local market town.
The bus to come home left 10 minutes after it arrived.
If a route isnt profitable, the companies wont run a service, because they are not nationalised. They are private companies. You either have to pay taxes to subsidise a service, or accept the situation the way it is.
People who pay more tax are more likely to be able to afford private transport and dont care about public transport.

Northanter · 21/10/2016 11:51

It is not too bad where I live - that's because we specifically chose to live somewhere that isn't a city, but with good public transport.

We have trains to two cities, and buses to at least five cities and towns.
They are frequent and don't take too much of a ridiculous, meandering route. For that reason, they are popular, and usually well-filled.

But in general, YANBU at all, it is a disgrace that public transport in so many areas is just not fit for purpose. I often think that the people planning the services just haven't thought things through at all - some places have just one or two services a day, and then they are timed to be at a ridiculous time that is no use to anyone at all (probably because that is the only time that the buses are available - they will be being used on city centre routes at other times, to make sure that the service is every 4 minutes instead of every 6 .

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