Waiting for a Change

Ian Eveleigh isn't rushing for a bus today

By PH Staff / Friday, 9 May 2003 / Loading comments

It must have been some kind of joke. Having sent off my application for halls of residence accommodation extra early to ensure a prime place, I found myself assigned a room in a remote complex some four miles away from the university and the city centre. On student money this could mean only one thing: public transport.

It has, without doubt, scarred me for life. Despite the overriding memory of those happy days being endless afternoons spent in sunny beer gardens, for some reason every time I had to catch a bus it was cold and wet, and the bus was late. Every time.

There were benefits, admittedly. Last-minute invitations for an evening of refreshment in the Union bar never had to be declined on the grounds of having to drive home. But even then I had to make sure that I never made myself too comfortable: the last bus home left at ten-to-eleven. To this day I still get fidgety at around 10.25pm if someone is being a bit slow buying their round.

Not for me...

Sadly, positive experiences of public transport since then have also been few and far between. Buses remain an enigma – never there when I'm waiting for one, always right in front of me when I'm trying to get somewhere by car.

By the way, who is the king of irony that came up with the idea of placing claims of environmental friendliness in the shuddering back windows of these monsters for us to read just before they pull away, smothering us in plumes of black smoke?

Your lungs are no doubt safer on the other side of that glass, but there your patience gets severely tested. A recent attempt to tackle a journey that regularly takes me 10 minutes by car took an astounding four times as long by bus, thanks largely to thoroughly round-the-houses routes and stops placed every couple of hundred metres. Call me fussy, but I rather like wearing a seatbelt too.

Trains fare little better. The second I climb aboard one, some kind of delay is almost guaranteed. Take a recent trip to London. The outbound train suffered unknown difficulties with its engine, while a handful of Underground journeys in the city itself featured one points failure, one power problem, and, on our final tube adventure to catch our mainline train home, the last-minute discovery that part of the line we had cunningly chosen as an alternative to the already-closed Central Line was also out of action, with a bus service running in its place. Thankfully, contingency time, a determined driver and a spectacularly lucky run of green lights got us to the station with two minutes to dash from bus to platform.

Training

Not that the problems ended there. The normally-direct line home was undergoing repairs, meaning a coach service handled the middle section of the journey, adding half-an-hour to our travelling time. Admittedly, we had been warned of this in advance, although sadly not of the gentleman I would have to sit next to in the stuffy confines of the coach who was clearly not familiar with the words "deodorant" or "anti-perspirant" (nor, I'd wager, "soap", "bath" or "shower").

I've been guilty of that offence myself, though. I have particularly uncomfortable memories of a 6.30am train journey taken in the previous day's hard-worked clothes on one occasion when an ill-judged late night out had caused me to miss the last train home the evening before. Not a massive inconvenience in itself, but I could have done without the train ahead of mine catching fire, blocking the line for two hours – a delay that taught me to always carry reserve reading material on such journeys.

Pie

Still, at least I had the luxury of being one of the few passengers with a double seat to themselves, although I've never been entirely sure whether this was down to my appearance or the smell emanating from the microwaved limp-bacon-in-rubber-bun breakfast my captive state had lead me to reluctantly attempt to consume.

With careful planning the food is, thankfully, avoidable, but the inconveniences, delays and discomfort are not options when it comes to public transport. Small wonder, then, that we favour our cars so much. It's rarely stupidity or stubbornness that causes us to regularly reach for the ignition keys – when public transport offers a distinct advantage, we're there. But, in the UK at least, this only seems to happen when you have to travel in a particularly crowded city, or when you don't own your own means of transport, or when you're drunk.

With services so poor, and – ridiculously – prices often offering little saving, why would we bother to make the switch? Money is finite, and life is too short to waste precious time doing The Right Thing for no obvious gain.

We're told time and time again by government and do-gooders that our attitude towards public transport needs to change. They're wrong. It's not our attitude that needs to change – it's public transport.

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