My public transport experience (long)
15 April 2005, 03:55 PM
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My public transport experience (long)
While my car is in for repair, I had to get from Aylesbury to Liverpool to do half a days work. Normally I would drive this route which takes me 3 hours (at legal speeds) and about £25 worth of Petrol. I've not used the trains in 5 years because I found then unreliable and slow, apparently they're improved now.
After some difficulty hiring a car, I decided to get the train. It's supposed to be the environmentally friendly alternative to my air-conditioned, polluting ways and public transport is supposed to be good, making cars irrelevent and unnecessary. The trip should be fairly simple, Aylesbury to Birmingham and then on to Liverpool. Lets put this to the test.
(Most of this was written as it happened on my PDA, there is a summary in the last two paragraphs if you don't want to read it all.)
I arrive at Aylesbury station at 9:30 after a 10 minute walk. My shoulder is starting to ache a little from the weight of the company laptop. I'm glad I'm not carrying a weeks worth of clothes like I normally would, and I'm starting to miss my 12v portable fridge which would contain cans and sandwiches, but these inconviniences are to be expected, I guess.
I arrive at the station and the staff are friendly and helpful, I am told I can travel via London for £65 or "not via London" for £33, the difference in time is half an hour. Naturally I choose the non-London route and offer my credit card, as she is putting it through I notice I'm being charged for a return and get it changed to a single. I suppose it's reasonable to assume most people want to come back too, but it would have been nice to be asked. A single costs £29.50, a saving of £3.50. Now I know why they didn't bother asking.
She gives me a print out of the route I need, which is nice, tells me what platform I need, my first change is at Princes Risborough, and I need to cross over the bridge from there, then I'm on my own.
It is only when I'm on the train to Princes Risborough do I realise the horrors that await. I have to wait an hour and 3 minutes before getting a train to Birmingham M St then a 22 minute walk to Birmingham N St. I assume thats New Street, but have never heard of M St. Good job I'm not going the other way.
I arrive at Princes Risborough after a fairly pleasant trip and find myself in a crappy little town with nothing interesting immediately obvious, there is however a cafe at the station called "Bonjour" which offers such delights as "Le Bacon Roll" and "Le Hot Dog" all served by an old bloke with a bad fake french accent. I get charged £3.10 for a coffee and a bacon roll which is about double what I would pay at a snack van on the A41.
As he's handing me my roll, I notice a train arriving on my platform, it may be another Birmingham one, so I run across the bridge, spilling half my coffee down my sleve, I shout to a guy on the platform asking if this is the Birmingham train, it is, I reach the train, press the open door button.... the train drives off. The guy on the platform apologeticlly explains that once the orange lights go off they cant open the doors. Just great.
So I sit on the uncomfortable metal seat to eat the bacon roll thats just cost me an hour's time. It tastes like crap, I throw it away.
Metal is a good conductor of heat, and it's currently doing a great job of conducting heat away from my ****. I get my PDA out and start writing this. 10 mins later another Birmingham train is arriving but it doesnt stop, 20 mintues later a train stops but the sign is broken, I ask the driver and am told that it only goes as far as Bicester, meanwhile some ******* has gotten off that train and is now sitting on the bit of metal that I have been patiently warming up with my **** heat.
Writing this has killed 45 minutes so far, but I have to stop typing as my fingers are going numb as well as my ****, hopefully I can continue when I get on the train. I darent cross over the bridge and sit in the cafe, in case I miss another train. It's now 10:50 and I would most likely be on the M42 by Birmingham if I was travelling by car. I would also be a lot warmer and still have the use of all my fingers.
The guy in the french cafe has a very loud voice which I can hear from over here, I think monseur and merci are the only french words he knows, listening to this has me picturing a stage production of Alo Alo put on by the children from a local special school.. "Bonjour cafe... it's window lickin good!". I hope he didnt dribble in my coffee.
Another train with no sign arrives, this one terminates here and some **** steals my warm spot again! There is a tannoy anoucement for the next train, it is mostly unintelligible, apparently the next train is going to "Birmingham Snow-Linton"
10 minutes later and I'm on the way to Birmingham, someone has left a newspaper behind. but it's the free Metro, after reading it I see why they didn't want it. I'm now starting to feel ill from the bit of bacon I did eat.
We pause for a bit at Warwick station. According to the clock outside it's 17:12. I knew trains were slow, but not that slow. I double check against my phone, and it's actually 11:58. If I were driving, I would be on the Thelwall viaduct by now, with about half an hour of M62 to go before arriving at Liverpool.
A pair of chav girls get on. one of whom sounds like someone from the south of the USA trying to impersonate a Walsall or Dudley accent. They're both very loud and have **** ringtones. One of them switches to an even sillier voice when answering the phone. I resist the urge to walk over and stab them both in the face, realising that I'm in no position to complain about stupid accents when I come from Liverpool.
At the next tannoy announcement, the drivers boredom is undisguised, despite the fact that it is still unintelligible "approaching Lapworth, the next station is Lapworth, Cornwall", fortunately there is an LED thing, and I realise that I want the second to last stop, Birmingham Moor Street, and the last stop is Snow Hill, not Snow Linton.
Coming up to the last stop, and the chavs are discussing a failed attempt to sign up for a website, "I tried the username sally and it was taken, so I tried sallywally and that was taken, and so was just wally, then I got pissed off and left" "you need to come up with something, original the no one will have" "like camel poo?", "thats good cos if someone already has that they must be disturbed", "yeah!", "Unless they've been to Tunisia, then it'd be obvious"
I start the trek to new st, passing 4 police officers who are trying to subdue some chav who seemingly has just given someone a bloody nose and stolen his phone in broad daylight. I miss having a locked car door separating me from these people.
It's a 2 minute walk to new st, not 22 minutes, which was a relief. However once at new st I find out that another form of relief is going to cost me 20p. I decide in that case that I should get my money's worth by having the largest dump I can manage and using up half a bog roll, but none of the cubicles are sufficiently clean that I would be prepared to commit my **** to the moist porcelain, the entire area smells the way your **** smells after a curry. It's now 12:45 any my train leaves at 13:22. I would be in the office by now if I'd driven.
I get a very **** Burger King and head downstairs to the platform. The air is thick with diesel fumes, you can taste the diesel, my asthma kicks in right on cue and I realise I've left my inhaler in Aylesbury. I never need it when driving and I thought trains were supposed to be environmentally friendly. The only good thing about new street is there are lots of student types in little tops and miniskirts wandering about, then an announcement reminds us that all areas are under CCTV surveilance and I get this image of the CCTV operator in a darkened office zooming the camera down these girls tops and having a good tug. This combined with the burger leaves me feeling ill again.
There isn't a single bin in this station, most people seem to use the floor. I pack all the burger rubbish into one bag and hand it to the old guy who collects the rubbish. Presumably this is an anti terrorist thing so that bombs can't be hidden, have they not heard of transparent bin bags. I could just dump my bomb into his rubbish cart any way, it's not like he's going to check, or even notice until it goes off, and even that is debatable.
My train is from Platform 4c, when you go down the escalator, the sign says that 4a and 4b are on the right, 5 and 4c are on the left. i exit left to platform 5 signs tell me that 4c is straight ahead, I reach the end of the platform and it's still platform 5. I actually needed the other side of the platform because it continues for another 50 feet or so, with the left hand side being platform 4c. I nearly miss my train because of this. But I'm on my final leg now, should get to Liverpool by 3:30 as long as nothing else goes wrong, however the train is calling in at Crewe... trains always used to break down at Crewe.
The train didn't break down at Crewe but my laptop battery ran out here. I've gotten an hours work done which is about right for an engineers laptop. There's a bloke sat behind me who smells like a wet alsation and someone who is either smoking or stinks of **** just got on, there goes my asthma again.
At runcorn there's an advert "Trains, planes, forget your automobiles. Take the stress out of travelling with...", yeah right. Last stop now, I see the Jaguar factory go past, the office is a few minutes from there, but of course the train only stops in the centre of town, from there it's a tenner for a taxi to take me to the office (there are no sensible bus routes and I'm getting short of time anyway), this at least goes without a hitch, other than me getting soaked getting to the taxi rank.
So in conclusion, the trip was £15 more expensive (compared to a gaz guzzling performance saloon, I wonder how much it would cost in a Prius?), took twice as long, food was more expensive, conditions were unpleasent, you have to deal with smelly, smokey annoying people and the risk of being mugged. If you need to take luggage or kit with you then forget it. The whole journey was stressful and frustrating on a par with an M6 traffic jam, and this was when nothing actually went wrong with the trains. I'm knackered, my bum still hurts from Princes Risborough and I want to go to sleep, but I've got an hour and a half left in the office before I can take the pool car and do the 3 hour drive home. The benefit that you can get work done so it saves time is a fallacy unless you're a sales rep with a slim low power laptop who doesn't run anything more powerful than Word, Excel and Solitaire.
How exactly is public transport a viable alternative, perhaps if you only want to travel on routes that the company allow and are prepared to rotate your life around these routes, and only work in city centre jobs then it will be possible. Or perhaps you are a lentil eating student with plenty of time on your hands, and a useful bus route between your halls and the university. For anyone trying to make a living, you have no chance. I have wasted a day on this crap service and do not intend to do it again.
Edit: Typos and a few points that were unclear. Nokia 9500 is not the best device for writing long essays on.
After some difficulty hiring a car, I decided to get the train. It's supposed to be the environmentally friendly alternative to my air-conditioned, polluting ways and public transport is supposed to be good, making cars irrelevent and unnecessary. The trip should be fairly simple, Aylesbury to Birmingham and then on to Liverpool. Lets put this to the test.
(Most of this was written as it happened on my PDA, there is a summary in the last two paragraphs if you don't want to read it all.)
I arrive at Aylesbury station at 9:30 after a 10 minute walk. My shoulder is starting to ache a little from the weight of the company laptop. I'm glad I'm not carrying a weeks worth of clothes like I normally would, and I'm starting to miss my 12v portable fridge which would contain cans and sandwiches, but these inconviniences are to be expected, I guess.
I arrive at the station and the staff are friendly and helpful, I am told I can travel via London for £65 or "not via London" for £33, the difference in time is half an hour. Naturally I choose the non-London route and offer my credit card, as she is putting it through I notice I'm being charged for a return and get it changed to a single. I suppose it's reasonable to assume most people want to come back too, but it would have been nice to be asked. A single costs £29.50, a saving of £3.50. Now I know why they didn't bother asking.
She gives me a print out of the route I need, which is nice, tells me what platform I need, my first change is at Princes Risborough, and I need to cross over the bridge from there, then I'm on my own.
It is only when I'm on the train to Princes Risborough do I realise the horrors that await. I have to wait an hour and 3 minutes before getting a train to Birmingham M St then a 22 minute walk to Birmingham N St. I assume thats New Street, but have never heard of M St. Good job I'm not going the other way.
I arrive at Princes Risborough after a fairly pleasant trip and find myself in a crappy little town with nothing interesting immediately obvious, there is however a cafe at the station called "Bonjour" which offers such delights as "Le Bacon Roll" and "Le Hot Dog" all served by an old bloke with a bad fake french accent. I get charged £3.10 for a coffee and a bacon roll which is about double what I would pay at a snack van on the A41.
As he's handing me my roll, I notice a train arriving on my platform, it may be another Birmingham one, so I run across the bridge, spilling half my coffee down my sleve, I shout to a guy on the platform asking if this is the Birmingham train, it is, I reach the train, press the open door button.... the train drives off. The guy on the platform apologeticlly explains that once the orange lights go off they cant open the doors. Just great.
So I sit on the uncomfortable metal seat to eat the bacon roll thats just cost me an hour's time. It tastes like crap, I throw it away.
Metal is a good conductor of heat, and it's currently doing a great job of conducting heat away from my ****. I get my PDA out and start writing this. 10 mins later another Birmingham train is arriving but it doesnt stop, 20 mintues later a train stops but the sign is broken, I ask the driver and am told that it only goes as far as Bicester, meanwhile some ******* has gotten off that train and is now sitting on the bit of metal that I have been patiently warming up with my **** heat.
Writing this has killed 45 minutes so far, but I have to stop typing as my fingers are going numb as well as my ****, hopefully I can continue when I get on the train. I darent cross over the bridge and sit in the cafe, in case I miss another train. It's now 10:50 and I would most likely be on the M42 by Birmingham if I was travelling by car. I would also be a lot warmer and still have the use of all my fingers.
The guy in the french cafe has a very loud voice which I can hear from over here, I think monseur and merci are the only french words he knows, listening to this has me picturing a stage production of Alo Alo put on by the children from a local special school.. "Bonjour cafe... it's window lickin good!". I hope he didnt dribble in my coffee.
Another train with no sign arrives, this one terminates here and some **** steals my warm spot again! There is a tannoy anoucement for the next train, it is mostly unintelligible, apparently the next train is going to "Birmingham Snow-Linton"
10 minutes later and I'm on the way to Birmingham, someone has left a newspaper behind. but it's the free Metro, after reading it I see why they didn't want it. I'm now starting to feel ill from the bit of bacon I did eat.
We pause for a bit at Warwick station. According to the clock outside it's 17:12. I knew trains were slow, but not that slow. I double check against my phone, and it's actually 11:58. If I were driving, I would be on the Thelwall viaduct by now, with about half an hour of M62 to go before arriving at Liverpool.
A pair of chav girls get on. one of whom sounds like someone from the south of the USA trying to impersonate a Walsall or Dudley accent. They're both very loud and have **** ringtones. One of them switches to an even sillier voice when answering the phone. I resist the urge to walk over and stab them both in the face, realising that I'm in no position to complain about stupid accents when I come from Liverpool.
At the next tannoy announcement, the drivers boredom is undisguised, despite the fact that it is still unintelligible "approaching Lapworth, the next station is Lapworth, Cornwall", fortunately there is an LED thing, and I realise that I want the second to last stop, Birmingham Moor Street, and the last stop is Snow Hill, not Snow Linton.
Coming up to the last stop, and the chavs are discussing a failed attempt to sign up for a website, "I tried the username sally and it was taken, so I tried sallywally and that was taken, and so was just wally, then I got pissed off and left" "you need to come up with something, original the no one will have" "like camel poo?", "thats good cos if someone already has that they must be disturbed", "yeah!", "Unless they've been to Tunisia, then it'd be obvious"
I start the trek to new st, passing 4 police officers who are trying to subdue some chav who seemingly has just given someone a bloody nose and stolen his phone in broad daylight. I miss having a locked car door separating me from these people.
It's a 2 minute walk to new st, not 22 minutes, which was a relief. However once at new st I find out that another form of relief is going to cost me 20p. I decide in that case that I should get my money's worth by having the largest dump I can manage and using up half a bog roll, but none of the cubicles are sufficiently clean that I would be prepared to commit my **** to the moist porcelain, the entire area smells the way your **** smells after a curry. It's now 12:45 any my train leaves at 13:22. I would be in the office by now if I'd driven.
I get a very **** Burger King and head downstairs to the platform. The air is thick with diesel fumes, you can taste the diesel, my asthma kicks in right on cue and I realise I've left my inhaler in Aylesbury. I never need it when driving and I thought trains were supposed to be environmentally friendly. The only good thing about new street is there are lots of student types in little tops and miniskirts wandering about, then an announcement reminds us that all areas are under CCTV surveilance and I get this image of the CCTV operator in a darkened office zooming the camera down these girls tops and having a good tug. This combined with the burger leaves me feeling ill again.
There isn't a single bin in this station, most people seem to use the floor. I pack all the burger rubbish into one bag and hand it to the old guy who collects the rubbish. Presumably this is an anti terrorist thing so that bombs can't be hidden, have they not heard of transparent bin bags. I could just dump my bomb into his rubbish cart any way, it's not like he's going to check, or even notice until it goes off, and even that is debatable.
My train is from Platform 4c, when you go down the escalator, the sign says that 4a and 4b are on the right, 5 and 4c are on the left. i exit left to platform 5 signs tell me that 4c is straight ahead, I reach the end of the platform and it's still platform 5. I actually needed the other side of the platform because it continues for another 50 feet or so, with the left hand side being platform 4c. I nearly miss my train because of this. But I'm on my final leg now, should get to Liverpool by 3:30 as long as nothing else goes wrong, however the train is calling in at Crewe... trains always used to break down at Crewe.
The train didn't break down at Crewe but my laptop battery ran out here. I've gotten an hours work done which is about right for an engineers laptop. There's a bloke sat behind me who smells like a wet alsation and someone who is either smoking or stinks of **** just got on, there goes my asthma again.
At runcorn there's an advert "Trains, planes, forget your automobiles. Take the stress out of travelling with...", yeah right. Last stop now, I see the Jaguar factory go past, the office is a few minutes from there, but of course the train only stops in the centre of town, from there it's a tenner for a taxi to take me to the office (there are no sensible bus routes and I'm getting short of time anyway), this at least goes without a hitch, other than me getting soaked getting to the taxi rank.
So in conclusion, the trip was £15 more expensive (compared to a gaz guzzling performance saloon, I wonder how much it would cost in a Prius?), took twice as long, food was more expensive, conditions were unpleasent, you have to deal with smelly, smokey annoying people and the risk of being mugged. If you need to take luggage or kit with you then forget it. The whole journey was stressful and frustrating on a par with an M6 traffic jam, and this was when nothing actually went wrong with the trains. I'm knackered, my bum still hurts from Princes Risborough and I want to go to sleep, but I've got an hour and a half left in the office before I can take the pool car and do the 3 hour drive home. The benefit that you can get work done so it saves time is a fallacy unless you're a sales rep with a slim low power laptop who doesn't run anything more powerful than Word, Excel and Solitaire.
How exactly is public transport a viable alternative, perhaps if you only want to travel on routes that the company allow and are prepared to rotate your life around these routes, and only work in city centre jobs then it will be possible. Or perhaps you are a lentil eating student with plenty of time on your hands, and a useful bus route between your halls and the university. For anyone trying to make a living, you have no chance. I have wasted a day on this crap service and do not intend to do it again.
Edit: Typos and a few points that were unclear. Nokia 9500 is not the best device for writing long essays on.
Last edited by Lum; 15 April 2005 at 04:28 PM.
15 April 2005, 04:09 PM
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I couldn't send it to the times without heavy editing. I don't think comparing the railway cafe bloke to a special school trying to perform "Alo Alo" would go down too well with that lot.
15 April 2005, 04:15 PM
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good write up. people have to suffer from this cr@p everyday. I try to avoid Trains where ever possible. Was in Italy last week though. clean, quick, comfortable, easy to use trains and cost 65euro for 2 people to travel first class from Naples to Rome....
15 April 2005, 04:24 PM
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good read 
Shame its a true story
.... has that seat sparked off your farmer giles? 
Used to get train several times a week to london, until i realised it was quicker and cheaper to drive direct to my flat there-including driving through central london!
Wont be doing that again in a hurry......
Shame its a true story
.... has that seat sparked off your farmer giles? Used to get train several times a week to london, until i realised it was quicker and cheaper to drive direct to my flat there-including driving through central london!
Wont be doing that again in a hurry......
15 April 2005, 04:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Freak
good read
Shame its a true story .... has that seat sparked off your farmer giles?
Shame its a true story
.... has that seat sparked off your farmer giles? Trending Topics
15 April 2005, 04:31 PM
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Walked to Epsom station. Took all of 10m. Bought a ticket (£8!!) to Victoria. Got off the train 40m later.
Erm. That's it. Only the price pissed me off. The train was new, had good seats, I looked at the totty across from me the whole journey while pretending to look out the window.
Erm. That's it. Only the price pissed me off. The train was new, had good seats, I looked at the totty across from me the whole journey while pretending to look out the window.
15 April 2005, 04:34 PM
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Originally Posted by catherine666
Walked to Epsom station. Took all of 10m. Bought a ticket (£8!!) to Victoria. Got off the train 40m later.
Erm. That's it. Only the price pissed me off. The train was new, had good seats, I looked at the totty across from me the whole journey while pretending to look out the window.
Erm. That's it. Only the price pissed me off. The train was new, had good seats, I looked at the totty across from me the whole journey while pretending to look out the window.
Didn't I say that it's probably ok if you are prepared to arrange your life and work so that you're on a main route.
I have considered flying, but there's no flights from Luton to Liverpool. I've done Luton -> Glasgow by plane, but it wasn't cheap, and getting to Luton from Aylesbury is not easy.
15 April 2005, 04:37 PM
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stansted? for the extra time in driving it might make life a little better? apart from that theres only heathrow I can think off. not ideal though
15 April 2005, 04:39 PM
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Originally Posted by davegtt
stansted? for the extra time in driving it might make life a little better? apart from that theres only heathrow I can think off. not ideal though
15 April 2005, 08:46 PM
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Aww, but I liked my "Window Lickin' Good comment"
Anyway, I left the office at 5. There was a huge jam on the M6 by Knutsford, at which point I went and killed half an hour in Knutsford services, and I'm home by 8:45
That's under 4 hours in bad circumstances by car, vs over 6 hours in normal operating conditions by train. I borrowed a modest diesel saloon from the company, and have used about a tenner's worth getting back to Aylesbury.
Will I use the train again. Not if I can possibly help it.
I'm suprised no-one has suggested that the London option may have been quicker and with less changes. Yes it would, but hiring a car for a day is not much more expensive (probably less expensive if I had less points on my licence and actually had my licence with me) and gets me there much quicker. I will definately go down this route next time.
Anyway, I left the office at 5. There was a huge jam on the M6 by Knutsford, at which point I went and killed half an hour in Knutsford services, and I'm home by 8:45
That's under 4 hours in bad circumstances by car, vs over 6 hours in normal operating conditions by train. I borrowed a modest diesel saloon from the company, and have used about a tenner's worth getting back to Aylesbury.
Will I use the train again. Not if I can possibly help it.
I'm suprised no-one has suggested that the London option may have been quicker and with less changes. Yes it would, but hiring a car for a day is not much more expensive (probably less expensive if I had less points on my licence and actually had my licence with me) and gets me there much quicker. I will definately go down this route next time.
16 April 2005, 12:59 AM
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For a minute there I thought you were going to end up in cornwall.
I got on the wrong train in a hurry once at manchester station.
Quickly asked the platform guy if it was the right train and he said it was.
Turns out it wasn't!
Realised after the first stop I was going south rather than North west!
Not a nice experience.
Glad you had an event free journey home
cath
I got on the wrong train in a hurry once at manchester station.
Quickly asked the platform guy if it was the right train and he said it was.
Turns out it wasn't!
Realised after the first stop I was going south rather than North west!
Not a nice experience.
Glad you had an event free journey home
cath
16 April 2005, 01:22 AM
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Originally Posted by Lum
my bum still hurts from Prince Risborough
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