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

YANBU. To buy a house I can get to work from by quick, regular, public transport would cost me a fortune, so I had to buy a house I could afford, then drive to work.

It is possible to get to work by public transport, as I had to during the stupid fuel shortages a couple of years ago, but it consisted of:

• either a bus or a taxi to the train station. Taxi = £5, bus = £3 with a walk, and a very unreliable service where buses break down regularly.
• train (to get in for 9am I have a 7.30 option that takes an hour (£25), an 8am option that takes 37 mins (£10.50), or a 8.20 option that takes 35 mins (also £10.50). It is quite reliable though.
• 15 minute walk (free thankfully!)

Then obviously all of this repeated on the return leg.

Total cost for the day = £27, using the cheaper options for each bit.

Total time for the day = minimum of an hour each way.

Compare that to my drive - 17 miles each way, my car does about 50 mpg, so 0.68 gallons = £4.75 in fuel. Obviously I have to pay running costs, repairs, insurance, etc. Free parking at work.

Time taken = 25 mins each way.

I'll do it if we've got a boozy night out after work, or if I have car problems, but it's totally unsustainable otherwise.

Mumsnet is full of threads about people wanting to work from home. That's fine, but there's an accompanying reality. Which is that train companies have taken a big revenue hit. The commuters formerly subsidised a lot of the off-peak and leisure travel that people here are complaining about.

So...who wants to give up working from home (or pay a WFH-tax) to subsidise the rail system? Thought not.

My son chose his flat to live in at his new work city because it was on a bus route - he checked where the bus stops were and checked the timetable. He discounted other potential flats because they weren't on bus routes.

Made no difference in the end because the buses are so unreliable, turn up when they want, regularly cancelled without notice/warning - just disappear from the tracking app along the route and disappear, never to turn up at the bus stop. Sometimes even just drive past the bus stop pretending not to notice everyone waiting (when it's not full, it's understandable if full, but it's not!) - they seem to just "not bother" stopping when they're running a bit late! Not too bad if it's a regular service, but it's every 30 minutes daytime and only every hour evenings and weekends which means very long waits when one doesn't turn up.

Anyway, he's got his car now, so drives instead!

Thing is, it's rammed at peak times and even then, they just cancel random trains or put on 2 coachers. Cross country trains are rammed full all the time, not just peak times, yet still they're too infrequent and too short. In Northern England, they're pretty full all the time, even at off peak times, and peak times are just horrendous.

The whole thing needs a re-think. Passenger flows have changed since covid, yet the timetables, types/lengths of trains, etc haven't been amended to adapt to the new "normal". Statistics show that whilst commuter numbers are down, leisure etc numbers are up, meaning it's "peak" commuters numbers that have fallen and off-peak have risen, but the formations/timetables etc havn't changed to suit!

Train companies (now mostly controlled by Govt) need to make better provision for the off peak travellers which is the growing market. It's insane that they have 9 coach trains Monday to Friday, mostly carrying around fresh air for most of the day outside peak commuter times, but then only put 3 coachers on at the weekend which are rammed most of the day!

It's not just the commute that's an issue. It's the religious fanaticism most firms have about a fixed 9-5 that means you get 80% of the traffic compressed into 20% of the day. Something which just hasn't changed one iota since 1980.

It's more the school traffic really. It's very noticeable that the roads are a lot quieter in school holidays.

It's not just trains (though they are abysmal).

It's a half hour drive from my house to my mums, almost two hours on public transport.

15 minute drive to work. An hour on the bus, no train link.

10 minute drive to my friend, 45 minutes to an hour by bus, if the once an hour bus shows up, again no train link.

Where I live if you want to go into the city centre or out of it, it's not too bad. If you want to go across the city, you may as well walk it takes that long.

If you live near the city train line it's not bad. Our local trains are every 15 minutes, mostly clean, and rarely late or cancelled compared to many other networks (looking at you northern).

They are one of the best train networks in the country (Merseyrail) but they're still not great. They don't serve a great deal of the city and there are very stations with connections to other lines

Nonsense. Rail companies made and continue to make record profits year on year. Their shareholders are absolutely rolling in it and all that would happen if more people took the train is they would be rolling in it some more.

The service has been crap for years, not just since people started working from home.