Public Transport

Every government, at some point, seems to want more people to use public transport. Be it to reduce congestion, to make the planet "greener" or just because they can't stop coming up with bullshit proposals. However, as someone who regularly uses public transport (as I hate driving) I see two flaws with trying to get people to use public transport. They are:

1. The public is allowed on them. Which is generally ok, but we shouldn't lost sight of the fact that some members of the public are not that nice. Like the chap on my bus ride this morning who turned up singing to his copy of the Metro, before preceding to burp, fart and chunter his way through the first part of the journey. Before passing out and then having a tiny chunder. He was clearly wasted; no mean feat, given it was nine thirty in the morning. And frankly I don't want to have to deal with people like that at all - let alone when I can still taste the toothpaste.

And he's just one (albeit extreme) example. On our nation's buses I have seen a passed out woman who had wet herself, had to listen to some feral youth having a blazing (and profane) rant against his mother on his mobile and a woman sobbing hysterically at lunchtime. And this is all since October. Frankly, the public are often rubbish and I don't want to have to bear witness to the worst of them as I am transported from one location to another.

2. It is shit at transporting you. Seriously, trains and buses are generally unreliable and prone to stopping their service at the slightest provocation. Take the snow; it has made the buses of York and Leeds more inefficient than ever despite the fact that the roads are clear! There is no reason for it, none at all. But still four buses drove past me yesterday - for no reason other than, presumably, the drivers are jumped up little jobsworth pricks. And the trains aren't much better. The wrong kind of leaves on the line, snow, rain, sun, too many passengers, too few - pretty much anything will stop them operating effectively. I don't who designed trains, but they must have done so with a view to operating them in a vacuum - or at least for use in a world without weather.

So public transport is undermined by the fact that the public use it and it isn't good at transporting you. Generally speaking, using public transport will leave you running late, a bit angry and having had to share a compact space with people you would normally cross the street to avoid. There is nothing relaxing about it. And, these days, it isn't that cheap either.

Fuck it. I'm going to get a car.