You know what really grinds my gears?

Did a post about the Swedish railway a while back. Terrible! It’s what happens when you outsource stuff. Same with the Post and Pharmacy’s here. It all became more expensive and have worse service. Well no shit! You only need to look at our neighbouring countries, who did it years before us.

The prices have sky rocketed traveling by train, if your more then 2 people. When traveling to the in-laws with 3 kids it now costs us €350 (there and back) and it takes us 8-9 hours (the fastest route by train).
By picking alternative routes and other companies we can bring it down to around €200, but then we have to switch trains 3 or more times. The waiting time between the changes are anything between 10 minutes to 1,5 hours. Because they’re hardly ever on time (or brake down so you get to go by buss instead) it’s not reliable and i don’t fancy being stuck in nowhere with tired kids. The cheaper trip will also take anything from 11 to 14 hours.

If we drive it takes us 5-6 hours and the petrol cost us €140 (there and back). Naturally we chose the less environmental option.

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@Cristo yes it’s shit. At peak times the DART is every 12 minutes and there are huge areas of Dublin it just doesn’t serve at all, including where I live. Our trams are a bit better at every 4-5 minutes peak but again, no use to me personally.

If you want a public transport system that works that’s exactly what you do, within reason of course.

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Please expand further, I don’t get what you mean here.

Are you implying you need to create additional routes and increase services without being guided by existing demand as measure?

This “build it and they will come” idea doesn’t make any sense. It isn’t guided by practical sense or cost efficiency.

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The main reasons people don’t use public transport is because it isn’t reliable and it isn’t frequent enough. Even something as simple as an extra train or an extra couple of buses a few minutes apart at the appropriate busy commuting times as a starting point will make a difference. I’m not talking about having Underground capacity the whole of Britain.

I’d argue that the commuting map posted earlier that shows outside of London pretty much everyone is in a car points to a completely disfucntional public transport system.

I’m not a huge believer in cost efficiency when it comes to public transport tbh, I’d prefect to focus of societal and environmental impact which are both improved by reducing the presence of cars on roads. So it’s unlikely we’ll agree here I would think.

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I’ve never had the feeling of wanting to drive.

Mainly because I’ve lived besides a train station and it’s a decent service tbh.

A car is a massive waste of money for me

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I dont think they should’ve cut as many lines as they did in the 60s, especially crazy how the cut the line that linked Oxford - Cambridge, two cities with world leading universities that would probably benefit from it. Also equally crazy how you always have to go through london to basically get anyway

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The problem is that depending on where you live and how far you’re travelling, running a car can be cheaper than getting a season ticket which in my opinion is ludicrous.
Unless you’re in a busy city a car will always be the more convenient and quicker mode of transport, with a guaranteed seat and additional comfort.

Choosing the train over your car should be the far cheaper option to save the planet and reduce congestion.

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Stuff like this. Not everything in the world is discrimination. If the movie producers think you sound too old then, you sound too old.

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Where are the stats to back this? In terms of on time record, public safety, frequency and customer satisfaction the UK is no different from other European nations.

It’s the opposite really, London receives a disproportionate amount of investment for transport because the demand is huge to the point of excess in comparison to the rest of the UK. There’s a reason why 18bn is being invested into the London cross rail and why the London section of the £106bn HS2 is being developed first

It’s part of the wider topic of wealth disparity between London and UK, which when you start to address that the demand for intercounty and county to county services for public transport services naturally increases.

Your last point is fair, agree to disagree one that one.

Yes because that’s where all the money is, not necessarily because it’s in proportion with demand.

One of the most common journeys I have consistently has only 2 or 3 carriages provided for it, perhaps 80-90% of journeys are delayed, (often due to faults or breakdowns in part caused by how outdated the trains are), and commonly every seat is taken with queues of people standing all the way through the train.

London is a different world to that and I’m not saying there should be max length brand new trains running services every 10 minutes for the rest of the country, but it doesn’t seem in proportion to demand to me.

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Scotland isn’t as strict as England for train tickets.

In normal life if you sit in the end carrage I hardly have to buy a ticket as I get off three stops in for work.

I was in work for 4 days this week as a 70% of our work is from physical mail so we’ve had about 4 months of mail to scan on. Only 10 were allowed in for an office of three floors and you can get on the trains for nothing right now as the ticket inspectors aren’t allowed to go round the train checking tickets haha

Hang on. Are trains officially free? Or are people just not bothering with tickets because they know they can get away with it?

I need to see real evidence of this? Polling or stats

What you’re saying here is that companies in the business of public transport are intentionally handicapping their services and inturn their ability to generate income because? It makes zero sense to offer services where the demand is not sufficient

Number one mistake people when discussing transport is putting too much emphasises on service at peak times. Go to any central European country and you’ll encounter similar issues with delays, queues and overcrowding at peak times

Fair question. I don’t have numbers to back up my assertion but it’s what I hear time and time again on radio and tv shows about public transport and pretty much any time the topic comes up in a social or work setting. “You can’t trust the buses” “they are always packed” etc. Not a great plank to build an argument but I’ve also lived with a shit public transport system my entire life and been reliant on it for a good part of that too (family never had a car growing up) so it’s not coming from a place of complete fantasy.

I don’t believe they invest in public transport in London because of demand, I think they do so because it’s politically expedient. If they could get away with letting it rot then thats what they would do.

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Cocky Scots.

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This is literally the whole point of public transport…

Prices are at a premium in London, and people in the London area tend to be able to afford it because they earn more. This is a completely separate issue to the level of demand, because you could have half as much demand making the company the same amount of money as an area with high demand but low prices

Peak time experience of Public transport is skewed due to the excess demand in a short space of time.

Think about all the trains coming down to London from throughout the UK in the 2 hours before 09:00. It’s physically impossible and unsafe to increase the frequency of trains so there is going to be overcrowding and delays.

It wouldn’t make cost sense to design public transport systems around solely improving the peak time experience for users.

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This option :joy:

It’s 30 been years since I lived in London, but each time I visit I’m astonished to see the same beat up trains as back then still being used.

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