All aboard!

One of the widely-touted reaasons put forward by HMGplc for crippling rises in the cost of private motoring is to 'encourage' us to use public transport more. Apparently we were all wrong when we guessed it was simply to raise additional income to offset the costs of their crap policies! Who would have guessed, eh?

So, its onto public transport with the lot of us then. But what public transport, precisely? Trains? Nah, cant be, can it? After all, lets not forget that one of the reasons put forward for bonkers increases in rail fares was that they were trying to price some people off the trains! There is insufficient capacity for even the current passengers on mainline routes into London, and the best way the rail operator knows to lower that number is to raise the prices until less people travel.

So, is it buses then? Ummmmm, nope, that dont work either. Outside of city centres, buses are potentially more harmful to the environment than private cars, because while they may well have the capacity for 80 passengers, only a tiny fraction of those seats are filled. A decent modern double-decker will do about 10mpg, against the 30+mpg of the average car. Travel at peak times, into popular destinations, and the bus might just edge it. The rest of the time, the bus not only doesn't go exactly where you want it to (like your car can), not only doesn't go from exactly where you want it to start from (like your car can), and not only doesn't go exactly when you want it to go there (unlike your car can), but on top of that its less fuel-efficient!

And of course with either of the choices above, you're always going to be the poor sod who gets the seat alongside the tramp. What is it about public transport passengers that makes them forget the basics of personal hygene? I dont think I've ever managed to travel on a train or a bus that didn't reek of BO! And if you manage to avoid the tramp, you get the nutter, the bloke Jasper Carrott talked about some two decades ago (and its as true now as it was then). Live in rural Pembrokeshire? Tough, catch the damn bus - we're still going to squeeze you til you bleed. C'mon, Gordon, if you're insistent that we're being bled dry just to get us to consider taking the train, at least give us some sodding trains to choose from first?