OT; Cwedit Cwunch?

I dunno what percentage of journeys made are strictly speaking unnecessary, but I'll bet it's high. Like people driving many miles to visit the latest shopping centre when pretty well all the shops there are available locally. I know this because I've done it.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)
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A key issue in the equation is the cost of parking. In Melbourne city centre, Australia, firms are taxed on each free parking space they provide for employees to discourage them from doing so.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

You could perhaps have taken that into account when buying your place.

Many motorists will find any excuse not to use public transport ever. Most of them fiction.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Pretty certain it's similar in central parts of London - new builds aren't allowed to provide parking for all their staff.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

When I was a yoof getting on for 40 years ago, public transport in the form of buses, was run by the government - local government that is. My town had a magnificent corporation bus service, which ran buses all day long, at regular intervals, on all routes. For the most part, they ran on time to the minute, and this was ensured by an army of uniformed bus inspectors, who roved around the town, and jumped buses at random, to check on the performance of the crew. A bit like Blakey on that wonderful old seventies TV series "On the Buses". You could still get a bus on any route up to about

11pm. It wasn't about whether a route was profitable at any particular time of the day, or not. It was about providing a municipal social transport system, which was realistically priced, and above all, reliable.

Sadly, a few years back, all of the routes were sold off to a couple of commercial operators, whose only interest is margins for their shareholders. Now, when you drive past the bus depot, it is full to bursting by 6pm, and getting a bus after 7pm is a case of it only being on premium routes, and only once an hour, if it actually turns up at all. It's no wonder that people won't use the service any more. It's a self-destructive spiral of lack of use - up the prices - still fewer bother to use them - up the prices ....

It's never gonna change, unless government - either central or local - once again take responsibility for public transport, and operate it as a user targeted service, rather than a commercial operation which *has* to make money.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Not sure about the cost effectiveness of conductors over driver only buses! When I was a student in Birmingham (72-75) the public transport system was superb. It is easy to make an effective PT system in a city though. As soon as you are in non-urban Britain, it is almost impossible to make PT pay.

Reply to
Bob Mannix

You can't get away from facts..

like:-

If you already have a car its cheaper to take the car than the bus on short journeys even for one person Cars are as clean as you keep them, buses aren't. You choose who you travel with in a car. Unless its rush hour and there are lots of passengers on a bus it generates more pollution than a car per passenger mile. On average buses make lots of unnecessary journeys. Buses never go where you want to go at the time you want to go there and if they do they won't come back at a sensible time.

Reply to
dennis

Tut tut, just think how much they contributed to GW by running buses when there weren't enough passengers.

Reply to
dennis

I always do. Sadly, the longest that work has stayed put after buying a place is 4 years. At least I now work for a company who don't care where I work, so I mostly work from home unless I'm with a client or can attend a meeting locally.

I always use public transport in London, and I think it works very well, both busses and tube. Outside of London, I've found local busses to be far too unreliable, although the sample size is small because when they don't turn up the first couple of times I try them, I never try again.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

That depends on the bus fare. As well as the car.

I can only speak for London buses but in general they're fine.

That's the one that always surprises me. Does everyone avoid their fellow humans at all other times? Have their own queue at a supermarket checkout? Book seats either side of them at the cinema to preserve their own 'space'?

That would again depend. Cars on short journeys produce a *vast* amount of pollution until both the cat. and the engine reach operating temperature.

That's different from the usual one of them not being frequent enough.

You can guarantee a journey time by car? The trick with all public transport is to know the timetable. That then gives you something else to complain about. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I'm not sure if I feel sorry or not for those who chose to live miles from work and are now feeling the pinch. Mainly since I live in town and have to suffer commuters.

It does indeed. It's very rare you can do a journey of any length quicker by car. And even if you could parking will eat up that difference.

I think that's probably too general. Like everything it will vary by area.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Ah yes, the DuhgBalls argument. Sadly not everyone in the UK can have a job for life. Every home that I have bought has been chosen to be close to my place of work. And within two or three years I've found myself working somewhere else.

And most pro-PT individuals spout bollocks and claim to have a non-existent solution for every need.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Most people who live in London seem to imagine that the entire country is covered with a network of PT at reasonable cost. That isn't true even within London.

Reply to
Steve Firth

The local school run.

My girlfriend leaves her house in a morning with her child at the same time as her next door neighbour leaves with it's child. My girlfriend walks and her next door neighbour drives. Nine times out of ten the girlfriend's child arrives in class before the neighbours.

Adam

Reply to
ARWadworth

And most motorists still expect to be able to drive anywhere regardless.

Are you disabled?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Not cost effective, just faster. With conductor, the bus stops, a bunch of people get on and sit down, the bus goes.

With driver only there's a pause while they all pay for their tickets. Unless you go for an oyster card type system which is nearly impossible for visitors...

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

My last house was close enough to work to cycle in (which I did). My current house is placed to be in the same school catchment area as the last house - so my kids could use the school bus. Move out of area, and that goes away. Kids of course can't drive.

I'm now 2 jobs away for the reason why I live here. But if I should move nearer work it'd cost me a lot of money (not least stamp duty!) and I can't regard that job as secure - we've merged, demerged, and relocated since I started.

So I checked. Walk to station. Train to work. One change. About an hour, all told. And one train per hour.

By car - typically 30 minutes, door to door. And I go when I want to.

TBH I haven't checked the cost. I don't want to lose that hour a day - I'd rather waste it here.

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

A neighbour used to get her car out of the garage to take her daughter to the local primary school, and then put it away afterwards. They only lived next door to the school. It was 200yards by footpath without having to cross any roads. My kids (after teh first month or so) were just shooed out of the door and always got there safely. We could watch them most of the way out the window.

Reply to
<me9

This is not as true as it sounds. For reasons of no interest here I am actually an investor in a coach and train company (Arriva) & the anaylysts did their analysis, and decided that compared with private transport the fuel cost element of a large coach or train full of passengers is actually quite small: other things like drivers wages and maintenance and general back office functions make up a large percentage of the cost base.

Exactly, IF it goes where you want it to. In our case there is one bus a day that takes over an hour and three quarters to get to the nearest town that can be reached by car in about 20 minutes. And a 10 minute walk to the bus stop as well.

NOt a lot of use if e.g. one of us, or a paet needs urgent medical attention..

What HMG could do is stop silly restrictions on using your home as a place of business.

What Joe Public could do is stop for hitchikers

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

True, although for any small service-type business (eg electronics sales, IT+web services, accountancy etc) it doesn't really matter because no-one notices anyway.

If they must interfere, they *could* try and invent some legislation that heavily adds to the incentive for businesses to allow people to work from home on rotation. When I worked for Imperial College as a sysadmin, 90% of my work could be successfully accomplished from home, including server reboots, reinstalls, virtually any level of day to day sysadmin work and development plus dealing with helpdesk tickets.

I think the reason they didn't like people working from home is either:

a) They thought no-one would work, which was actually the converse of what happened; more work got done from home than on site as verified during various rail strikes.

b) They were worried about lack of manpower on site in the event of a serious problem, which at least is a valid concern.

(a) was a non issue, except in their heads and (b) could be addressed quite simply by managing the process. eg 80% of all sysadmin team on site during term time and 60% (or maybe 40%) otherwise, so people just rotate working at home.

I dare say the same arrangement could be applied to lecturers with careful timetabling. Even more so for research only staff.

The ironic thing was they were always bleating on about the cost of office space (in South Kensington) but seemed unwilling to do the obvious.

My wife is fully enabled for homeworking too, but they (different employer) don't seem to like to make a habit of it.

I conclude another case of British Management disease...

And get murdered.

Not really, but, whereas I used to pick up the odd hiker when I was younger, I look at some of the people now and think: "wonder if he's a looney or a robber?". Not sure why I think that, but I do, so perhaps others do too?

There was one time that a bloke practically stepped in front of me on the A3 thumbing a lift. For some reason based on nothing more than a hunch, I stopped at the next layby and phoned the police, who upon hearing a description got extremely excited. I guess my hunch was right...

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim S

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