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Topic: Gas Prices in your area
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-01-2008 02:56 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
But there are many rural villages or even market towns which have one or two buses a day to or from the nearest major conurbation at most. If you work outside that village, you have to have a car - it's that simple. Of course it's these people who have been hit the hardest by the fuel price rises recently.
A few years ago I was looking at a bus timetable, I think it was for either Devon or Cornwall. There was one route which operated just once per month, sonething like the first Tuesday of each month, one bus in each direction. Most of the places on this route were also served by other buses, but I managed to find one village which seemed to have no other service. I'd hate to just miss the bus if I lived there.
There is also an infamous railway line in England, near Manchester, which used to have a proper service, but something like fifteen or twenty years ago almost all of the service was diverted onto a different line. The original route is retained for occasional diversions during engineering works, I don't think there's any freight on it now. Other than that the only service is one train per week, in one direction only; there's no service at all in the opposite direction. There are two intermediate stations on this line, Reddish South and Denton, which are served by no other trains. Now, this isn't a transport service, it's a farce. Either there's a need for a train service in this area, in which case a proper one should be run, or there isn't, in which case the line should be closed. I've no idea which is the case, I've never been there.
This is so ridiculous that the line has become quite infamous; the journey is only a few km, but people actually travel from all over the Country just for the novelty of riding on this line.
It's much easier to operate a good public transport service where there is a high density of population, and almost impossible to operate one where the population density is very low. I suspect that the average population density is quite a bit higher than it is in the US. Of course, in major cities, say London and New York, things are very similar.
There is another factor which I think can swing the advantage heavily in favour of the car, and that is the addition of one or more babies or small children; something which doesn't apply in my case. Getting on and off buses with a single baby in a buggy is a struggle, I've never done it myself but I've seen plenty of others doing it. By the time that gets up to about three children life is getting very difficult indeed, and the there's all the maintenance kit that you need to carry around for the young ones.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-01-2008 04:05 PM
quote: Stephen Furley
There is also an infamous railway line in England, near Manchester, which used to have a proper service, but something like fifteen or twenty years ago almost all of the service was diverted onto a different line.
Another equally infamous example is the station at Durham/Tees Valley (formerly called just Teesside) Airport. Apparently the station was put there in the '70s when plans existed to build a new terminal building right next to it. This never happened, and the existing terminal building is about a mile away (the station is at one end of the runway, the terminal at the other). So it's completely useless for passengers. However, in order to actually close down a station you have to get an act of Parliament and jump through lots of other legal hoops. In order for a station to legally remain open, at least one passenger train has to stop there each week. Network Rail doesn't want the expense and hassle of going through the closure procedure, and so every Saturday morning, one Darlington to Middlesbrough train stops at the airport station. No-one gets on or off, and then the train goes on its way again. Meanwhile, a free bus from Darlington station (on the main line) takes people who actually want to get to the airport without driving there.
quote: Stephen Furley
There is another factor which I think can swing the advantage heavily in favour of the car, and that is the addition of one or more babies or small children; something which doesn't apply in my case.
And also extra adults. I reckon that if one person travels from York to London (for example), the difference between the cost of the petrol and a rail ticket is not much. But if you've got three or four people going, then you're looking at £50 for the petrol or £250 for train tickets.
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