Public transport

[DogDaysNeverEnd]

Getting to work and home again is driving me mad. The light rail (metro Newcastle) is on its knees, with trains being cancelled due to lack of drivers and/or trains, and delayed thanks to slippy tracks. The busses are on strike this week so limited alternatives. My car has failed its MOT and in any case there's no parking near work for under £15 a day. It's too far to cycle comfortably (for me anyway), and there are no showers in my office, plus it's getting cold and rainy.

After a long day I stand on the platform whilst apologies bumble from the barely audible tannoy about more delays before squishing onto the horribly stuffy and overcrowded train. I'm fed up.

Is it the same everywhere, or has somewhere (outside of london) cracked public transport and is getting right? If the high ups had to use it would it get better? I feel like the people in charge have no clue because they never stand on the overcrowded train, or wait for the bus that never turns up.

So AIBU?

YABU - public transport where I live is reliable and well priced (and where is this utopia?)

YANBU - public transport is unreliable/overpriced and needs sorting out

Yanbu.
I live a 15 min train ride from town centre.
Work would subsidise a season pass.
Too unreliable, don't turn up or late.
So I drive and pay for parking at a shopping centre.
If train was reliable I'd have used it.

I’m in Manchester and I’ve always found public transport really good.

We live on the Metrolink line in South Manchester and trams are generally regular and reliable. The bus services are frequent, although I rarely use them.

We’re also near a mainline station with 2 trains per hour into the city centre. Again, they are rarely significantly disrupted.

I occasionally drive into the city centre and the cost of parking can be astronomical. However, a lot of places do deals or offer season tickets that bring the cost down fairly significantly.

It's shit. DH planned to get the bus home last night, after 45 minutes at the bus station someone finally came out to say the bus was cancelled and because it was after 6pm the next one would be in an hour. I ended up having to go get him in the car.

We're not on the metro line and there's only one bus service which run every 30 minutes until 6pm then every hour until 11pm. On a Sunday it's every hour all day, doesn't start until 10am and last bus is 9pm. It doesn't run at all on bank holidays.

Is there anyone at work you could car share with? Or do you have the option of working at home a couple of days a week to give yourself a break from the misery of it?

It's a bit of both where I live.

Unless there are strikes, the trains are generally pretty good and not too extortionate. We've also just got our first public bus service in at least a decade that seems popular.

But the main issue is timings and destinations. The bus only runs once a day at about 9.45am, so it's totally useless for commuters. The trains are a bit better but only if you want to go to about six different places. For anywhere else, the connections are useless and prices skyrocket.

As an example, my parents live 22 miles away - it's about 40 minutes in the car. There is no bus in that direction at all which leaves you with the train, but it takes four and a half hours and even then you need to catch a bus at their end as the train deposits you seven miles away.

Im lucky that I work from home 2 days a week because I do the school run those days and I get the fear if I have to rely on public transport to get back on time. Too much of my already stretched mental energy goes on wondering what time I have to set off to get where I need to be on time. Work are starting to book in person meetings every day of the week, so it could get more stressful.

Can you wfh a few days a week?

It seems ridiculous that, despite needing much more use of public transport and less use of the car, pretty much everywhere in this country is stymied by the lack of affordable and reliable trains and buses. I can get to a big shopping outlet in half an hour, using the car. It takes three hours on the bus. Many people commute from here into London and have been significantly impacted by regular train strikes. To the point now, where no one is surprised when they aren’t running. How is that going to improve the use of public transport.

Cycling might be fine for some, but is often u realistic for a commute. Now that people are having to use cars because they can’t rely on buses and trains, the roads are ever more crammed. It’s time the government took the infrastructure seriously, if we’re expected to reduce car use.

I'm in Nottingham and it's alright. The buses aren't always on time but they're very frequent and run 24 hours a day. The tram system is good too.

I'm in London and it took me nearly two and a half hours to travel 4 miles by bus yesterday

The metro is taking delivery now of new trains ( at least a decade late due to central government) so will improve but it will be next year.

Buses, for the most part, are private for profit transport, the idea they were public transport went out the window in 1987.

I full support the GNE drivers on strike, a quid an hour over minimum wage is not enough for service bus driving.

I know people always think London is the utopia, but for most Londers living outside central London it really isn't.
The commute from South London (Kent/Surrey borders) is just as bad, and expensive. Trains cancelled and delayed. Sometimes so full it's impossible to get on. No tubes in huge areas of South London. Buses stuck on congested roads.

Yes, I'm a SAHM with no car and public transport is such a pain. I live on the outskirts of a town and anywhere that isn't in the town centre takes 2 buses and 1 hour+ to get there. It can be hard to squeeze in an outing between meal/nap times with infrequent buses too, and I feel I often have to rush my son so we dont miss a bus. Plus there's lots of places that I'd love to go to but are just inaccessible by public transport. We end up spending a fair bit of time just at home!

Pretty reliable where I am in Oxfordshire unless there are roadworks. We have two train stations that go to London, one to Birmingham, Oxford where you can transfer to more cities including Reading and Bath and 3-4 buses that go to Oxford. Town is a commuter hub. We were quite lucky to move here when we did about six years ago or we wouldn’t have been able to afford it now.

I used the Metro last weekend, Whitley Bay to west Jesmond. £4.30, if I remember correctly. I think the prices are ridiculous.

What gets my goat is that people are up in arms about car park fees here rising to about £3/day, and a congestion charge of £5. It's £9 to park at the station car park and then another £8-odd quid on a train fare to get to the same place - and no one is whining about that, or thinks it's unreasonable!

I'm fed up with subsidising motorists through externalisation of costs, when it's car usage that clogs up everything.

Public transport should be just that, IMO. Publicly run and with joined-up planning so you don't have a hundred different companies doing a hundred different things.
The Tories (Thatcher then Major) privatised the buses and trains so most of the system is in chaos. We're lucky in London that everything comes under TFL so it's reasonably organised and coordinated.
Where I grew up..down in Somerset, they're axing all the bus routes that aren't profitable.
I suspect though that our ruling party have no time or interest in public transport (why would you when you travel everywhere by private jet) and think that those of us that use it are losers.
There's that old quote “Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life.”

The tube in London is rubbish and getting worse. Even the 'new' Elizabeth line is constantly down with points failures, signal failures, faulty trains.
My usual commute should take 1 hour 20 minutes each way, but regularly takes 2 hours each way, due to the above reasons/excuses. That's regularly 4 hours a day commuting!

The latest one is where my tube train goes from an overground section to underground and the automatic signalling system takes over and didn't recognise my train...
And the latest gem for delays on the the TFL route planner, "severe delays due to cancellations"!
And for this I have to pay £12 a day!

I live at the edge of a small city. We were HA tenants but when we were in a position to buy we decided to stay in the same area, partly because of the excellent bus service in the area. That was around 12 years ago. The bus service has been getting gradually worse and worse, the time table is greatly reduced (from every ten minutes, to twenty minutes, to half an hour at peak times) and even when a bus is scheduled half the time it has been cancelled or just doesn't arrive. It is now so unreliable that there is no way that I could rely on it to get to work so I went by car. (I am on long term sick at present, so not travelling to work right now). This is in a city that prides itself on going green, including changing to electric buses on some routes.
My grandson now goes to school in the centre of the city, and needs to be there early for compulsory activities before school. On more than one occasion we have received a call to say that the bus has not arrived and could he have a lift please. They live 5 miles away from us so altogether that is well over an hour to go and get him, deliver him to school and get home again. No inner city train, tram or tube service (small city) so no alternatives. My work is on the other side of the city and in any case I'm not well enough to cycle.
Public transport is pants!

Successive chancellors have whined incessantly about low UK productivity without twigging that a 1% improvement in peoples commutes - whether by car, public transport or heli fucking copter - would translate to an immediate 1% boost in productivity. And that's before you factor on the money going into the infrastructure creates more jobs anyway.

Been this way since I left school, so no reason for it to change now.

Absolute shite service here in rural southeast. Stagecoach don't even bother to heat their buses. Every journey takes at least an hour but by car it's 20 minutes. This is what you get when you privatise public services.

I commute from Essex into London. The trains are new, and more reliable than the old days, and a lot less crowded than 1 BC*

However, Greater Anglia have a habit of cutting the trains from 10 cars to 5, or randomly shutting the ticket office so there's a queue at the (single) ticket machine.

I've noticed over the years journey times have crept up and the demographic has changed. Once upon a times it was all suits. They got on, read the paper then got their head down. Now it's people who think they're on a ride at Alton Towers. They bring bikes, listen to shit out load on their phones, or yap yap yap to each other, shoes on seats, and oh my suitcase needs its own seat etc. I'm like, shu'up will you I've had a long day at work.

But the worst is the cost. £50 return. Fifty fucking quid just to go to work.

*Before Covid

A bit of both here. The trams are awful and hardly go anywhere. Trains are expensive but unless there is a strike they are generally on time. Buses are a £2 flat rate 1 bus, 1 journey any distance. If you pay for the bus with your bank card and need to use 3 or more buses then the fare is capped at £4.50. Whilst you still need to tap your card on any bus you use that day you no longer get charged that day. I can travel six miles across the city in an hour without changing bus outside of rush hour.

Ours is getting worse. Train went from being every 15 minutes to 3 times an hour, every train is overcrowded and they don't allow anyone on at some of the stops. I usually drive up to the station further up the line so I can guarantee I get on it rather risk it at the station 5 minutes from my house. It's cheaper to drive to our closest city and park all day than it is to get the train. Buses have so many diversions on them due to roadworks that the timetable is now non-existent so you just have to hope a bus turns up.