OT Damned Traffic lights

[Davey]

The mothers here also teach by example that it's fine to hold a mobile 'phone to your ear while you are driving.

[tabbypurr]

One of the journeys I do from time to time takes about 10-15 minutes by car . Just once I went by bus, I forget why, it took well over an hour door to door. That's a fair trade if your time's worth 5p an hour and a bus happens to be going from your A to your B or nearby. But it's just not workable fo r most journeys for most of us.

I'll start a new thread.

NT

[JoeJoe]

Not dying, dead.

[Steve Walker]

I occassionally take my two eldest to school or back by car - first day of term, birthdays or when I just happen to be working close by. It takes me twenty minutes by car. The rest of the time they use the bus, which wanders all over the place - at one point turning off the main road into a large council estate and returning to the exact same spot on the main road 15 minuntes later! It takes fifty-five minutes to get there and due to allowing time to get to and from the bus stop each morning and evening, plus imperfect timing of the buses to their school day, they have to leave for school at 07:30 and don't get back until

17:00 (later some days). Then they have homework to complete. They are spending longer on commuting and working each day than many adults who work full time.

Where I normally work, I start at 07:00 and it also takes me twenty minutes to get there. If I used public transport, I'd have to allow fifteen minutes to get to the station (including a spare few minutes); fifteen minutes on the train; the trains only run every thirty minutes (every hour when I want to leave) so I'd lose time at each end where they don't match my office hours; then it is two miles from the station to the office. I can't walk it due to arthritis and the shuttle bus doesn't start running 'til 07:30 and takes half-an hour to weave all over before arriving.

Even when I worked in the city centre, my arrival time didn't match the train times and my departure time varied - on some days losing me over fifty minutes at the end of the day.

I've got a life to live and a family to spend time with - driving allows that, public transport would waste so much of my time that I'd have no real family life.

On top of that. If you need a car at all, then if you use (expensive) public transport, you are paying double, as you are still paying depreciation, insurance, etc. on your car while you are not using it. Other than cycling, it mainly makes no sense to leave the car and then only for local journeys to pick up a couple of items locally.

SteveW

[DerbyBorn]

alan_m wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Absolutley agree.

[Huge]