green-eyed

I use a lot of public transport and every so often I get a bit knarked with it all. The other day I wanted to come home from Derby to Nottingham, a distance of merely 18 miles, less than half an hour by car. I went to a gig, and would have happily got the train home, except for the fact that the last "train" left at 9 something or other, and the last "train and bus replacement service" also left not only before the gig ended (10.30 on a sunday), but would have taken an hour to get home. It also would have cost me a fiver on the train, plus either a 20 minute walk and then £1.50 on the bus on my own in the middle of the night, or £6 in a taxi, which aren't very environmentally friendly. I actually only live a mile and a half out of the city centre.

A while ago we car shared to get to Leeds, and the petrol worked out at about £5 each, unfortunately the car broke down just as we were leaving to come home, and the AA tow guy could only take 2 people in the truck, so 2 of us needed to get the train home. The walk up fee for a single home was £31 each. £62 therefore for both of us, 12 times the cost of the petrol, and a longer, colder journey, well not longer and colder than the journey in the broken down car, but you know! What motivation is there to take public transport?

Today I was on the bus with some canadian people who had clearly just moved here. "How do we know what stop we are at, Dad?" the kids kept asking. They mused on how they would know, would the driver announce it? Would it stop at each stop like a train? Where was the screen to tell them where they were? "Should I explain it to them?" I wondered. Eventually they concluded that they were OK cause they remembered where they were.

It throws open the question though of how do you know when to get off a bus if you don't actually know the route or the area that you are travelling in? If I get a bus to somewhere I don't know I like to have a map with me to assist me with knowing when to get off, and also where the hell I am should i get off in the wrong place! But it isn't always practical or possible to have a map with you. Do all buses in canada have screens telling you where you are? Trains have those screens, plus they pretty much stop at each of the possible stops and there are huge boards on the platform which tell you where you are. Trams have screens telling you where you are and what the next stop is. Of course you can ask the bus driver to tell you when you get there, but they don't always remember.

And then, today after thinking all this, I got on a bus to come home, and there it was, a screen, with all the info you would need about the route, the destination and the next stop. Maybe this is the future of buses?

I hope so, whatever we can do to make buses seem more appealing the better IMO!

None of this of course solves the problem of when you turn up early for a bus and the bus must have been even earlier or didn't exist and then the next one is late, which happened to me twice today. I can see how all but the most keen of public transporters would be put off.