Playing Snake On My Nokia 3210

Welcome back friends. This week I am going to talk about something that gets up everyone’s nose; public transport. I rarely use buses or trains anymore, mainly due to the fact that most things for me are walking distance away. Anything else I can usually get to in my DeLorean, eventually. It seems now more than ever people are cycling and walking to destinations instead of using public transport. To the naked eye that would seem like the healthier option has been chosen, but I like to scratch beneath the surface on these issues. My take on it is that most people don’t trust the punctuality of buses or trains in the outer city areas. In London the only way to get about is via public transport. The underground is packed at peak times and the buses always look full. This is mainly because getting about in London, although quite entertaining to the passengers, is a challenge to even the most experienced driver. The congestion charge doesn’t help, but I can definitely see why it is in use.

Here in the Home Counties it is a far different story. Many snub the use of these services due to the percentage of the time that they are late to a destination. You can’t blame the service if there is a traffic jam or an old dear is taking their time at a zebra crossing, these can’t be helped. What can be helped is the amount of vehicles used at peak times and the regularity of them. Obviously this is a budget issue to which I know nothing about and won’t even entertain the idea of arguing. It’s just frustrating for the consumer when they are sitting at a station or bus stop for double the amount of time they expect to. In Japan they have The Shinkansen, or the bullet train. A superb piece of engineering that has been in operation since 1964.Tests as far back as 2003 have shown that these trains can reach well over 300mph. That is nearly eight years of known technology at the world’s fingertips and we have only just started the ball rolling on a London – Birmingham line for trains that can go 200mph. Since its inception The Shinkansen has never been late to a destination. Furthermore they are usually on-time to the nearest 10 seconds. That is incredible in my opinion, especially when you can be sitting at platform 3 in Harrow on the Hill and time the next train to the nearest 10 minutes.

Ok I will stop complaining about punctuality and move on to other reasons why so many of us are choosing other methods of travel. When I was at college I would regularly get the bus from the stop a couple of hundred yards from my house in order to get there. I would sit at the bus stop for X amount of minutes whilst playing snake on my Nokia 3210. The bus would pull up and I would board and pay before sitting in a seat next to a window. The bus would begin moving and, every so often, would stop to let people off/ let people board. With the time being between 08:30 and 09:30 there would be a lot of passengers so usually the bus was almost full. We would get to the stop where the nutters would be waiting and my heart would skip a beat. There would usually be three or four of them and, as the bus was nearly full, they would shuffle for a seat. The seat next to me was usually not taken because I would stretch out due to the lack of leg room. You can guess what happens next. One of them spies the vacant seat and, without asking or gesturing, plonks his weird ass on said seat. I look the other way towards the window pretending not to notice or care. Suddenly the bloke starts to whistle, no real cause for concern. He then starts erratically moving from side to side, knocking me into the window. I turn to him and ask him to stop, but to him it sounded like I wanted to be friends for the remainder of the journey. He kept coming out with random comments like, “I like potatoes,” and “My toast is burnt.” To which I would nod and turn away again. Eventually we would get to the bus station and I would quickly jump off and start briskly walking to college.

My point is that there is no segregation on public transport. I just want to get from A to B without fear of sitting next to someone I would consciously cross the road to avoid. I know that if I were to get on a bus in my home town now, the nutter to normal ratio would be far greater than back then. There are a lot of smelly people on buses as well. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for people that sit next to me to not bathe in their own urine. I just don’t want the hassle of it so I choose to drive or walk. If I had to decide between a taxi and a bus I would pay the extra to sit on my own and be dropped off at my front door.

Nevertheless I do think that public transport is vital in urban areas and I would use it if my options were limited. I just wish that they were a more attractive option.

Thanks for reading…