| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Time to reconsider the west london tram scheme | |
| Posted by: | Chris Veasey | |
| Date/Time: | 08/08/10 15:47:00 |
| Quite a number of problems - just for example:- Most of the bus stops in my locality (and many many elsewhere) are completely without shelter (of any kind, let alone adequate), seating and real-time bus arrival time info displays; The vehicles themselves are noisy, unpleasantly vibrating, often overcrowded and unbearably hot, and with painfully cramped and inadequate seating, suspension shot to pieces, and are often driven in a way that throws standing passangers around; The bus routes don't necesarily take us where we want to go (there's in fact only ONE route, the 65, here) without time-consuming and otherwise inconvenient interchange between services, often having to cross one or more busy main roads from one bus stop to another. Similar well-founded criticism can and should be made against the rail network. Most of the journeys I have to make (both for my own purposes and/or to take my wife or neighbours) can be made in a fraction of the time, and in much greater comfort, by car. By contrast, all too often public transport travel is inconvenient, unpredictable, time-consuming, uncomfortable, even a painful and downright humiliating experience. IMHO those that don't agree are too easliy pleased and have too-low standards and expectations - to the detriment of the rest of us. It needn't be so if the providers didn't have the wrong attitude. A few years ago I made a sustained and etermined 9but regrettebly ultimately abortive) attempt to become a public transport operator in the hope of puttting some of my beliefs about public transport quality into practice. The fact (of which I'm only too well aware) that public transport is even worse in most of the rest of the country, which is being comprehensively screwed for the benefit of London and Londoners, is no comfort or compensation whatever - at least not enough to make me abandon the car when and where that is just the only sensible means of travel. |