Public transport...

[HalifaxSeagull]

With the weather closing in and my route to work quite hilly, I thought I'd give public transport a trial run... It's only a short journey by car, less than 30 mile round trip as its only £5:20 per day return. i used to commute every day by train and can honestly say ill only be doing it when it snows! The train is noisy, there are two people on next chair who are clearly still out and stink of booze and the seat looks 'marked'...

Give me my car any day! Not very environmentally friendly I know, but I can't see any upsides of train travel for me!!

 

[West Hoathly Seagull]

To be fair, much as we moan about our trains down here, we have a pretty decent train service compared to the north - fairly frequent trains and mostly new, apart from the clapped out 313s on the Coastway routes, though even they've been refurbished. My main gripe is fares - £11 or whatever from Three Bridges to Brighton; what is that about? I think up in Halifax, you've still got those old Pacer units, which were introduced by British Rail back in the 1980s, and are basically buses on rail wheels, but with the ride of a bus. Also, I think even long-distance trains have only 2 coaches (those on the main Trans-Pennine line between York and Manchester have only 3, whereas most of our trains are formed of 8 or 12 coaches). That's not a lot of good when a whole train load tries to get on at Leeds or Manchester. No, if I lived up north, it would be car every time. What's the point of taking the train when you can park in central Leeds for £6 for a whole day?