SUCKS big style

I left work [liverpool street station] at 14:30 today & got home [near wimbledon] at 16:50, its only 12 miles, solid trafic, red lights, road works blah blah

not happy needed to be home by 16:00 for a hospital visit but missed it, Ken Livingstone your a wank3r & so are a lot of 318I BMW drivers, yes its a scooby, yes its quicker than your car, no I dont need to race everything to prove it

Barge

Move to Cambridge ;)

Cheaper housing, better air, less traffic, wide open countryside etc etc

Takes me (Vectra) 80 mins in & 65 home & I'm a little bit further ;)

:)

If you're talking about in Cambridge then unfortunately it's not much cheaper than London :(

Buy a bike!!

Then you can scoot past all the BMW drivers sat in the traffic..

JGM :)

Move up north :D

I know what you are talking about i drive round london for work and the changes that Ken has brought in mean my journey home and in has added an hour per day of MY time that is 250 hours a year i am losing because of him. Ignoring weekends which are also effected. He is obviously pleased as he travels in his Taxi down the empty bus lanes with the fare payed by the tax payer.

Barge

My sympathies - as you know I used to live around Sutton and I know the route you are talking about only too well - it's a pile of crap. Doesn't matter which way you try....

I moved to Hertfordshire. Although I do still comuute to Slough 2 or 3 times a week, I can do the journey in roughly an hour - which isn't too bad.

Driving through South London sucks.

Chris

Why the fcuk do you drive it when you can tube/train it? It's not Ken's fault that the roads are blocked - it's people like you using the roads when there are alternatives!

Exactly. If other people used the tubes/trains/buses then there would be a lot less traffic and barge would have a clear run home ;)

LOL at carl.

Barge
Nothing to do with the fact either that our reptile (loving) friend Ken is deliberately causing congestion by narrowing lanes/rephasing lights/creating pedestrianised areas everywhere in London too, just to justify the road pricing.....:rolleyes:

Make the congestion worse, then say the road pricing has solved it - my bet is that it won't make a jot of difference after the first month:(

What an arsehole way to solve a problem[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Chris yep you took the best option moving out, I hope to do the same after fatty has dropped end of October.

Dave TS must meet up for a lunch time beer again soon, but yes the roads are getting narrower, bishopsgate is a joke now.

reason I drove, the hospital was not next to my home station, meaning I would have needed a bus to the hospital or walk home & get the car, what ever I missed it anyway.

Driving is my only option as i have to vist jobs in and around central and west london and i frequently take materials and tools to the people who work on my team and funny enough i am not allowed to take 3 metre lengths of trunking on the bus!

Also by everbodies admission the tube is at capacity. Anyway i think if Buses are so good Ken, Tony and Two Jags should lead by example and use them all the time.

Also the congestion is a lot worse because Transport for London are deliberately reducing trafic flow in partnership with local councils. As part of our contract with certain London Councils we work in the departments planning how to do this the most effective way.

Obiviously dont know about the south bank back double. 20 minutes and it gets you from London Bridge to Victoria bridge. No matter what time of day or weight of traffic.
I could tell you the route, but then you'd explode in 5 seconds.
:p
astraboy.

Kings Cross to Uxbridge (8 miles) down Maryleborne road/A40 now regularly takes upto 2 - 2 1/2 hours between 3:30pm/6:30pm :(

Not happy, 18mths/2 yr ago it never took more than 1 hour at this time.

In clear traffic (10:30am) it takes about 20 minutes.

fatherpierre, either you need to put a smiley in your post to indicate humour/sarcasm, or you are talking out of your ar$e.

Public transport is not a nice option for that journey. I live/work in Central London and regularly need to drive to Ewell in Surrey. Taking the train is pretty grim and I end up a 30 minute walk from where I want to be. Carrying the kit I need for the TA makes it impossible by train.

Also, recently, my gf and I travelled by bus from Victoria to Blackheath by bus (what were we thinking!). It took absolutely ages, and we had to change buses several times. Often the bus stop of the next bus after changing is a fair walk from where you just got off. If my gf hadn't done the journey before we would have been screwed. Add sharing the bus with foul mouthed kids shouting at each other and into mobile phones and it's a really really unpleasant method of transport.

As for the tube, Wimbledon is at the end of the tube line and takes ages from Liverpool St. Often the tube station is nowhere near your final destination. With the temperature on the tube at the moment, you'll be sweating buckets by the time you get off. Assuming the tube is actually running that is.

The overground trains are also fairly grim - expensive, usually late, dirty, packed and arrive miles away from where you need to be.

I assume you live on the same planet as Ken Livingstone.

I know most of the back doubles, all you need to do is watch the black cabs, if they are in trafic & suddenly dart off follow them, its a very good bet they are short cutting.

Still I got the tube it in today nice pleasent lots of room, good views, air conditioned, on time, quiet, clean what more could I have wanted, no that is what i wanted, I got in a cramped tube, in a dark tunnell, with no air movement, which was late, which was very noisy & bloody filthy still I kept my car off the road just to please the tree hugging pr@ts

In answer to Fatherpierre and others. As someone who spent 6 years commuting into London on 'public transport' I can safely say these were the most unpleasent of the lot. Getting onto a knackered old train in the middle of summer which has been left in a siding for most of the day to get really hot is horrible. How we haven't managed to at least get a/c onto trains is a mystery to me. Don't even mention the Tube....

Add in freezing cold trains in the winter where the heating has packed up (a regular occurence) and on top of that, they expect you to pay for the 'service'. I'd laugh if it wasn't true.

When you visit places such as Switzerland or Germany and see how public transport can work, then it becomes a viable alternative. Until then, Ken's policies will just shift the problem from one area to another.

Incidently, the best rush hour journey I ever had into London was a few years back when there was a bus / tube / train strike. They opened up the bus lanes for use by cars. Without the buses on the roads and the extra space, the traffic flowed amazingly well - maybe there's a lesson here?

Chris

Barge
Yep, we must have a lunchtime meet soon:)

Chris
We have a/c on the Stansted Express - except it doesn't work :rolleyes: - what a surprise! They spent £10m refurbishing nine units a couple of years ago as dedicated trains for the airport and they are crap - the a/c doesn't work in summer, the heating doesn't work in winter, they are falling apart already inside - trim peeling off etc, filthy toilets with no water, coffee stains on seats etc - I shan't go on[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

And this is supposed to be the premier service out of Liverpool Street - they don't give a fig about people that have planes to catch and every week hundreds if not thousands of people miss their flights because of rail delays. Last night the 1800 airport service was 45 minutes late and this is fairly normal.

What a way to run a public transport service :rolleyes: - they are more interested in turning trains round before their destination to fiddle the timekeeping figures than getting people to their flights on time [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

[Edited by Dave T-S - 8/14/2002 8:53:25 AM]

In my (limited) experience it does work, except that it pisses gallons of water out of the aircon units in the middle of each carriage :(

I started commuting into london about 6 months ago by train, i was dreading it after all the horror stories. In six months the train has been cancelled or substantially delayed (i.e. not a 2 minute delay) perhaps 4 or 5 times, usually for good reason (body on the tracks, etc). I strongly suspect that there'd be a far higher number of problems if you were driving.

Traffic congestion arguements are like talking to the American NRA about guns - they refuse to believe that allowing the population to carry weapons increases the use of armed crime, despite evididence and pure logic.

Traffic congestion is caused by cars and drivers, not by mad Ken, not by traffic lights, not by a government masterplan, but by cars & drivers. Is this really contentious ?

Places that have no congestion have no cars - and there is nowhere I can think of that has the number of cars & drivers as in London and is not heavily congested. I'm no fan of Ken and I'm a commited petrolhead, but pedestrianising the centre of London is a good thing - look at St James park as an example. Its completely lost on me why people think that they should be able to cruise through London at rush hour ? It doesnt happen anywhere else in the world, how can you expect it to happen here ?

I commute from Kent to London every day. Okay, it's not brilliant, but it's not too bad. I catch a train early enough to always get a seat, and the train's never crowded anyway. On the way home I always get a seat too. It's a PITA when there's no air/con, but it's not the end of the world.

Can't see what all the fuss is about, actually. ;)

BTW, Dave T-S, barge and any others in the Liverpool St area, why don't we meet up for some food/beer sometime? :D

I gave up driving from Gatwick to London about a year ago, a friend of mine and I used to commute to Chancery Lance every day, took at least 2 hours each way, pure nightmare, plus it was rape and pillage for parking £12 per day, not good, got fed up with constantly sittin in traffic, some days used to take nearer 3 hours to get home a pure nightmare.

Get the train nowdays, takes me 1h 15 max to get to the office (door to door) and home again, yeah pubic transport is genrerally w@nk but it's better than sittin in a car for 4 hours a day to do a 50 mile round trip, prob have 1 problem per month of trains being stuffed, the worst thing is the tube but thats not bad at the mo.

carl
Ah, yes, the free shower option with the aircon on the Stansted Express - but that's only when it is working which seems to be only sometimes and only in some units :rolleyes:

When it first started playing up they had to get an engineer from Germany to try and fix it :eek:

Of course, when they fitted the a/c they left the opening windows, so people get in, open the windows, and then the poor old aircon is straining its nuts off trying to cool down 40 miles of the M11 corridor - no wonder it is bust :rolleyes:

I emailed the manager of Stansted Express recently to compliment them on its fine timekeeping ;) and also suggested it might have been a sensible idea when they originally fitted the a/c to put a sticker on the opening windows telling people not to open them when the a/c is on - pretty obvious really - would you drive around in your car with the a/c on and all the windows open :rolleyes:

jon
I agree with you, but in general public transport is crap due to government indifference and decades of under investment. I travel on public transport, but if dear old Blair, Prescott and Livingstone are trying to force people out of their cars they should at least offer them a viable alternative - fat chance!

MarkO
Time for a lunchtime get together methinks:D

Try the other way round :D

I live in London on the river and work in Kent - drive isn't too bad as I'm going against the rush hour both ways - only takes 30 mins at the moment with no kid-running people carriers and Jeeps about despite Blackheath hill still being closed, the views of the sun setting over the City every evening are breathtaking and I get to live in one of the most spectacular cities in world.

Marc

dave - yep, i agree with you. but i also think that generally things seem to be better and improving. However its not part of the british public or press's nature to comment on things that are improving - look at the new Hungerford bridge at Waterloo, its absolutley the dogs; no publicity whatsoever. I guess anything like that would take away impact from the fact that (god, i dont know) tony blair is destroying the country, or aslym seekers are bringing about the destruction of life as we know it. :)

what cracks me up though is the folk who seem to think that there's a solution to the transport problem that will let them effortlessly drive through cities in their own car...

funny old game

Dave- the stansted express train are like palaces on wheels compared to the grotty 'Mk1' carriges that I have to get every morning. I pray to several gods when a train with stasted express carriages stops on the odd occasion at stansted mountfitchet) as it means I don't have to share my half of the seat with some fat birds arse, or some 6' tw*t trying stick his feet over my shoes opposite.

If they push all this airport expansion through then they're talking about separate line for the stasted trains as well, which will speed things up for those lucky b*ggers.

I drove back from London Wall to stansted last night and it took me 45 minutes - similar to when i use to bike it. There was hardly an traffic - even on the a13 roadworks. Amazing!

14:30 in the afternoon is not what I call rush hour

Jon
We groan when it *does* stop at Mountfitchet LOL ;)

But don't remind me - I suffered the Audley End trains for 19 years, and still on the odd occasion such as Tuesday night when I had to get on the 1735, which had 16 :eek: stops in it to the airport, and stood until Poxbourne [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

They will prise my parking ticket at the airport out of my cold dead hand.......

I am led to believe that the reason nearly all the trains stop at Audley End (which, let's face it, is the middle of nowhere) is that whoever owned the place (3rd Earl of Something-or-other) when they first put a train line in only allowed a station to be built on the condition that all trains stopped there :eek:

I think the 'standing room only' thing is a deliberate ploy to get you to buy a first class ticket. It's only about 7 quid dearer from Bishop's Stortford, too...

LOL. Sod that - I just sit in 1st anyway. :D