please sign me!!!!!!

it cost me £12 to get the bus up to Newcastle for xmas, only took 5.45 hours aswell which isnt much slower than a car

Trains are pretty expensive if you leave it late but if you book early enough you can get a returnfrom London to Newcastle for under £50......probably cheaper than petrol for car

Does anyone who is knocking public transport in this thread actually use it?

Ive never had a driving lesson in my life and up to now I've never felt the urgency to learn

One of the problems is the amount of people who work miles away from where they live....If they worked where they lived then they would have nothing to moan about. It bewilders me why someone who lives 2 hours away from where they work doesnt actually look for a job within their town. I used to work with a woman who's daily travel was 4.15 hours! She said she worked in London because she got paid more but if you worked it out, her travel costs outweighed the increase in wages.

Sometimes there isn't the right kind of work in the areas you already live, and moving might not be as feasible for some as it is for others (family commitments for example). Often there isn't affordable housing in the areas with the jobs (particularly true in London).

For a while I worked just outside Leeds while still living in Newcastle. I didn't move because I knew the company was ripe for takeover and relocation (which happened and I was made voluntarily redundant after nine months).

Travelling a long way to work is certainly part of the problem, but there isn't always an easy solution.

I find it nearly impossible to use coaches as I have problems with my knees and am in agony by the end of the journey due to lack of legroom.

If you book early enough on trains there are cheap tickets available, yes. But these are limited (you need to book about three months in advance to get cheap weekend tickets between Newcastle and London) and during the week they are often severely time restricted (for example I don't think you can get a cheap ticket for a weekday evening from London to Newcastle until after 8pm).

There are cheap ways to do it, which is fantastic, but they are limited.

It's not really a hard concept to grasp -

those who use the roads more, pay more to maintain them

those who use the roads less, pay less to maintain them

it's about time...

as for trains being expensive - only if you're stupid enough to leave it till the last minute - I rarely pay more than £20 return to anywhere and I use trains a hell of a lot..

They already do through fuel tax.

I do agree with it in principle, but unless it is tied in with a fully thought through transport system as a whole, I don't think it's a good idea.

Not all journeys can be planned in advance.

if they ring fence the revenues or a percentage of them you don't really have an argument provided the integrated transport system works..

and isn't fuel tax the same as tax on tobacco - ie. a disincentive? I didn't know it was supposed to be used for infrastructural upkeep?

Increased rail capacity through hard engineering is surely the most fundamental project the government needs to implement - maybe this might provide funding? I'm not holding my breath though..

I went from Liverpool to London for an unplanned interview last year and it cost me £6.50 each way... I accept what you're saying but the vast vast majority can be planned in advance, people just not to, then whinge..

FINALLY SOMEONE NOTICED

if the facts are TRUE however, it means EVERYONE will be paying alot more, rather than balancing it out. the rich get richer etc...

hardly anyone knows 3 months in advance where they are going - its a false ecconomy - except for travelling gurners

how often do you use it?

i love how people think that putting "fact" on the end actually makes it a fact

Mostly it's kids or idiots using it to back up opinions on music/djs. You're the only who uses it in grown up talk



Why do people keep saying other countries have better transport without naming them? I've been about a fair bit and not seen anywhere that's particularly better or worse than the UK. Also remember just cos you might've been to A city with decent transport it's not always necessarily representative of the country as a whole.