To think it's no wonder people use cars so much?

[Parapapampam]

I work in a large city, always try and commute by train, this week, no strikes past 4 days on this line, my train home has been cancelled every single day, tomorrow there are strikes.

Different excuse every time, driver's seat broken, bad weather, staff shortage, or no reason given at all, the train just disappears off the board as if it never existed.

Tonight, my train, and the three after all cancelled, I imagine the later ones will be too (flooded tracks aren't suddenly going to clear whilst still pissing it down with rain).

So, I'm going to have to fork out £35 on an Uber.

This is not abnormal, happens at least twice a week, and the government wonder why people drive rather than use public transport.

So

YABU - keep using the shit trains, it's better for the environment and you can do work, read a book whilst on the train and don't have to worry about parking

YANBU - Start driving to work clogging up the roads (electric car) but get home before 8pm every night and save the £35 uber fee which is clogging up the roads anyway

As someone who used to be fairly anti car, I am very pro car. Nice and warm, reliable, goes where I want it, can carry things around for me, can drive me off route quickly to find a loo safely.

I have changed my view completely and actually feel that new towns/cities should be built around car use, not trying to deny the inevitable. We need parking, underground parking, proper wide enough roads on new build estates, garages that actually fit cars in them.

Agree Op, same with buses. Last time I tried to catch one, it was 45 minutes late! It would have taken me 30 mins to drive to my destination but the bus is about twenty because of bus lanes. And no parking to pay then (more than fare). In the end, 45 minute wait plus got stuck in roadworks where the bus lane was closed. Arrived in town about an hour after I would have done, had I just driven. Have used the car since 🤯

Atomicblonde, so your car was free then and costs nothing to run?

I've had to go on train twice this month, to different places. Both cancelled. Train to London on Tuesday was +£200 as well. It's an absolute bloody mess and needs to be a government priority to sort! But then same as most things...

Was in Spain earlier in the year.

Never waited more than a few minutes for a bus.

Trains on time.

Where I live... buses have been cancelled at school times and at peak travelling times into town so that folk that need to get into work now can't.
It's utter madness.
The road traffic in the mornings are standstill.

Trains are hit and Miss in the mornings.

. . . and if you try and walk the roads just aren't designed for it unless you are walking within a town. I tried to walk 1.5 miles from a b&b to a place I had a meeting recently and ended up having to walk down the edge of a dual carriageway then along a narrow country road with cars hurtling round bends at 50mph.

This happens to me a lot and the stupid advice of 'walk if its less than n 2 miles' only works if you live in an area with pavements and crossings

Imagine hoards of people suddenly walking down country lanes and dual carriageways.

Cars are here to stay.

Yes. Just ordered a new one!!!

100% with you here. My two adult daughters in their mid to late 20s - and their 30 or so friends they've got between them, have been let down by the trains, and STRANDED, late at night, between 10 and 15 times each in the past 3-4 years. Every. Single. One... They've been stranded in Brighton, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Norwich, Cambridge, Manchester, Leeds, Bournemouth, and many more places. A few times they have had a replacement bus service, but 80% of the time they haven't.

On countless occasions they have had to get a family member or friend to do (sometimes) a 150-500 mile round trip to go and get them by car. Not gonna get a flipping taxi - it would cost between £125 and £450+! Trains are shit. There's hardly ever a seat. They're always late. And that's when they bother to turn up. For this reason they never go anywhere by train now.

There's always some reason for them to not be running - and they are on bloody strike half the time! I usually drive in my everyday life, but I have always loved travelling by train to places away from my town. Up to about 4 years ago that is... Me and my husband were supposed to go Birmingham to the Christmas markets, and a show in December 2019, and were ready for the trip, stood on the platform waiting for our train, and had actually booked a hotel to stop overnight.

Inexplicably, the trains suddenly stopped to Birmingham, and they couldn't tell us when another one was coming. So we couldn't get there. Bus was not an option. Only 2 a day go from where we live, and you have to book in advance. Our trip was ruined. We lost what we paid for the hotel, and lost out on seeing the show/lost the ticket money.

It wasn't the first time we had been let down by the trains. They had let us down quite a few times in the previous year for short trips/shopping trips we had planned. But this took the biscuit! We gave up on them after they let us down with our Birmingham theatre/Christmas markets trip, and have never gone by train since ... We drive everywhere now. So do my DDs and most people I know. Trains are fucking shit in the UK now. Imagine having to depend on them for work? Fuck that. How do people cope?

In addition to bus services being cut left, right, and centre, I can't fathom why anyone would not do their best to learn to drive. Must close so many doors for people. If I couldn't drive, I'd be scared to get a job I couldn't walk or cycle to.

I live 20 minutes drive from my elderly parents, and often have to go over at very short notice if there's a crisis. To go by public transport I'd have to walk ten minutes to the bus station here, get a bus to an intermediate town (guessing about 20 minutes once on the bus, and I don't think they're that frequent), then change to a bus to theirs (takes 15 minutes, buses every half hour).

I won't be giving up my car....

Just drive! If the government genuinely wanted more people to use public transport, they'd make it work properly and ensure the companies running it had appropriate money and resources so if one train was out of action they could put another on the line instead. The fact the government doesn't give a shit about public transport shouldn't be your problem.

Bang on. Public transport is like those irritating retail websites that claim your search and urge you to buy the item you're looking for from them, maybe offering an apparently cheaper price - but they never have it in stock, ever, and apparently never have nor ever will. No thanks, I'd rather pay a slightly higher price to get it from the site that does actually have it available.

I lived in an EU country for a year and the public transport - trains, trams and buses - were impeccable. I used my car about four times in the whole year, when I went to the enormous out-of-town shopping complex. It just was less hassle to jump on a tram or a train, so why wouldn't I?

There was one - ONE - isolated occasion in that year when the trains didn't run to the timetable: when a passenger who used a wheelchair needed assistance with a ramp (pre-booked and right there waiting ready for him, at the closest door to his pre-booked seat) and he was understandably slightly slower getting off the train. It delayed it by just under two minutes, which the driver then made up by the time it got to the next station at the scheduled time!

As for cancellations, they weren't on their radar, as they simply never happened. They would have been puzzled if you'd asked about the possibility of them and would have directed you back to the timetable, assuming you somehow didn't understand that you could be confident of there being a train there when it said there was one coming!

They also offered considerable discounts for groups travelling together, so that you would never be in the position where you wanted to get the train, but driving in one car would otherwise have worked out cheaper for several of you.

Any idiot knows that, if you offer what should be a carrot to encourage people, but then make it worse than a stick would be, people are just not going to trust or bother with you.

Yanbu 10 min train journey.
Can be 20 to 45 mins in the car depending on traffic.
Train is just not reliable enough

Didn't see what happened on the Elizabeth Line today then?

There are always cancelled and delayed trains for commuters in and out of London in all directions and endless strikes. And a higher price is generally charged for the same number of miles. It's just as bad.

I agree OP, it is a shambles. I always drive everywhere, even into central London.

I drive (electric) - it’s 30 miles and takes about 1hr. The traffic to get 5 miles across the city is a bitch (25 miles is rural). It costs me well under £5 in home charging I guess. Parking is £20pm.

The train from our nearest station is only hourly and I’d have a choice of leaving before nursery opens or arriving well after my work start time. The drive to the station is 10 mins, £5 to park and £18 for 25 min train (return) with a 1 mile walk through pollution to the office. So total cost £23 a day and duration is longer than 1hr but I couldn’t arrive until 9.30am and would have to leave before 4pm to get home for nursery.

The train is a joke.

I used a car to get to uni placement. Took 15 minutes to get there.
If I got the bus, it would take an hour. It was early morning, so not much traffic... but the bus took the scenic route, plus I would have had to get one that was too early as opposed to the later one to get to my placement on time.

Car driver here. I drive everywhere as I live relatively close to the city and important places I need to go... but every single time I need to get the train whether that's for a night out, to see friends or just travel to work on the rare occasions, there's ALWAYS a cancellation or strikes. It's becoming tedious and i cannot imagine how infuriating it is for people working in cities like London or Manchester for example. It has a huge affect in people's livelihoods and the people striking are complete wankers IMO.

I often wonder about this. I don't believe it's purely a funding issue. Or at least not in a straightforward way.

From an environmental perspective, I think there also needs to be some serious rethinking about how housing stock is related to employment. The fact that so many people are commuting so far to work is foolish on the face of it, but to a large extent it's caused by the way cities are designed, and the way housing costs distribute. But it means that infrastructure to move people around has to be far more extensive than if more people lived relatively close to work.

Also, PO, agree with a pp, electric cars aren't really all that environmentally.

Why isn't there electric trams everywhere? Would make life so much easier and environmentally friendlier!

I don't use the trains much because of where I live but the bus network is terrible, even without strikes. I work a ten minute drive away but it would take me over an hour to get there by bus.

DD used to use the bus for school. The morning bus was co sta tly late or cancelled so we had to start driving her.

I drive. My town has no train station. I was driving into the next town and getting the train into the city once a week for a month, so 4 times. One time the trains were cancelled for a technical issue. So 25% of my train rides were unsuccessful. I won't be giving my car up anytime soon!

YANBU Same here this week.

I only go to the office twice a week and those days are exhausting and stressful due to the commute.

Tuesday luckily a colleague was watching the live updates and came to tell me they had started cancelling trains. We headed out early - which was a good job as they then cancelled the four trains after the one we planned to get. Whilst on the platform we were told anyone for my stop or beyond needed to go and get the replacement bus service. Kind colleague told me to go to her stop and she would give me a lift. The train then announced it was stopping at my stop anyway! All those poor people they're probably still on a bloody bus somewhere!

They then send four carriages. People were being pulled and pushed on so the doors would close. I've had spinal surgery quite recently and I have an autoimmune condition and it was frightening and dangerous.

Wednesday - delayed in the morning and then I had half a day AL. Got on the train and it announced there was a delay and we were stuck basically - after 40 minutes it announced that we were off but it wasn't stopping at the 5 stops before mine so lots of people had to get off to find a train that was. Complete waste of my half a day.

I can't drive in with my car (congestion charges) but I'm thinking of swapping with my husband (electric) but then parking is a problem as I can't get in early enough due to restrictions around school drop offs etc.

It's awful 🤷🏻‍♀️ I've used public transport in many countries and I've never seen issues like this.

Oh and a couple of weeks ago about 10 police officers were waiting for us at the station in the morning to check for ticket dodgers - one man was being wrestled to the ground. I'm sure he was being a dick but I have started to sympathise with people who take their chances not paying to be honest how expensive it is and how crap a service we get.

Thanks for the rant.

This pretty much sums up the situation, and despite what many of you understandably feel, it's even the case here in London.

Transport for London runs the only public transport system in the world that depends mainly on passenger ticket sales rather than tax subsidies. So of course they lost billions (at least £6b on their past three years' balance sheets) during the pandemic. Even with Westminster's exceptional, and loudly grudging, £4b of support, TfL has been cutting bus routes and bus frequencies.

At the same time, driving gets harder by the day. As a condition for Westminster's £4b, London's mayor was required by our central government to increase the Congestion Charge and ULEZ. Westminster also gave all the London councils subsidies to put in LTNs, without public consultation.

Even in London: make it harder to drive, make it harder to use public transport. Apparently, we're all supposed to ride bikes. Or use our wings.

Regarding lack of trams: there used to be trams in every city and you can still see the evidence in the really wide roads that lead into the city centres. But we ripped them up in the 60s because they were old fashioned. Replacing them is massively expensive and political decisions have meant that return on investment isn’t always great. Eg Sheffield Supertram was first rolled out to areas of higher deprivation (understandably) EXCEPT that they ended up not receiving as much income in fares as they needed to roll out the investment to the wealthier areas where a higher proportion of customers would have needed to pay full fare. So the roll out to the south and west never happened.
But I agree, having trans everywhere would be really good.

I take the bus across town. Takes 20 mins to drive and an hour or more by bus so 40 mins total travel time there and back by car and 2 hours plus by bus. We have screens to say how long the wait is for the next bus which I like, but the buses are always late and often cancelled. I think they don't have enough drivers because they don't pay well enough.

My daughter has a highly expensive bus pass to get to college and work in the next town 6 miles away. Half the time at least one or more buses don't turn up and she is constantly late as a result. There is no delay repay on the bus and when I complain I just get a standard blah response. In the past week or so I've ended up driving her out of desperation. I would happily use public transport more if it was more efficient but I can't as it's not fit for purpose.

Yes I agree. I used to commute to work, via two trains. But it was embarrassing when I was late twice a week, because of train delays. I think they thought I left late. When I bought a car I was only late once in 2 years. My petrol cost less than my train season ticket.