Many articles were also mixed as they acknowledged improvements being made but were also negative as plans are always based on 5 to10 year developments and cost millions if not billions of pounds. This seems to make people loose faith in public transport as it is slow and costly. An example of this is the £10bn investment into the London underground found in appendix.
Many articles brought forward positive opinions of public transport these opinions and facts are as follows.
There are new websites being created to help people plan their journeys by public transport. These sort of sites help people by telling someone which, buses and trains they may need and which ones. A site which I used is . A site like this gives people confidence as they know what forms of transport they may need and how long a journey may take. In appendix this site can be found as AP6.
New investments are being made to link major cities. An example is Leeds and Sheffield being linked by one train route. This is designed to help reduce congestion on the M1 this can be seen in appendix AP7.
Appendix article AP8 shows achievements made over 2003 and 2004 and tells us of more park and rides schemes being used and set up more. This is a good result as park and rides help to reduce motorway congestion.
Many precautions are being made to help reduce crime at train stations and on buses this has helped as people may now have more reassurance when taking public transport.
Birmingham airport had a good result when they were offered a 25% reduction on the cost of public transport. Many staff decided to take the incentive and change from car to public transport to come to work. This sort of system could be used more to attract people to public transport.
In the capital congestion charging has been found to be effective as 30% reduction has been seen. This has raised the use of public transport in the capital which can be said to be an effective system so far. This can be read as document AP11 in appendix.
There have been protests by people who live in countryside’s. Protests have been carried out as many commuters are now cutting through countryside’s to avoid traffic and the result is the countryside is becoming congested. Protesters are trying to urge developments to be made so that people do not choose to cut through the countryside to escape congestion.
The above topics were from articles which were very positive in the use of public transport. The following situations and statements are from articles which are negative towards the use of public transport.
A major way of commuting is the use of trains however recent surveys and articles show how trains are becoming more and more unreliable. This in some cases has been ever since the railways have become privatised. Delays have been caused due to routes being closed down due to repairs with little indication of delays. This has led to people arriving at their destinations late and leading them in some cases to use alternative transport. An article can be found in the appendix as AP13.
The BBC conducted and experiment where a man was asked to swap his car for public transport for a week. The article mentions how transport was unreliable, uncomfortable and not as convenient as a car. After the end of the week public transport was not used as it added 2 hours to the day and took away from time the he got to spend with his family. A similar article showed how a man chooses to use public transport instead on a car to go round Devon. The end result was the journey taking more than 5 hours to complete whereas the use of a car would have been less than 2 hours. These articles can be found in the appendix as AP14 and 15.
The census shows how when people are asked about travelling by train they find the service to have many problems. The main opinion was that travellers found that travelling by train was expensive, had safety issues and found it hard to get quality information about times and fares. This can be found as AP17 in appendix.
The census also shows how in autumn 2002 people decided to travel by car, van or minibus up to 9 times more than bus or train in regions around the UK. This is shown as AP18.
An article from the guardian mentions how public transport in other European countries is far more efficient and far more used than our current system. Maybe a solution could be to look at European idea on methods of transport. Document AP20 shows this in appendix.
Many documents have found public transport to be the cause of congestion. This is mainly in areas where bus lanes are not set up correctly and congestion is caused by buses slowing down traffic.
A major issue which is also holding people back from using public transports seems to be the facilities provided by buses and train as seats are normally scarce and small.
I believe that public transport in the UK is an issue which needs a lot of work. I personally travel 100 miles each day and choose to drive due to the convenience. I believe I like others choose to drive as when making your own way to a destination we feel more in control and are not so venerable to factors such as late trains and buses. When driving, there is a comfort level of heating, space and music which, is not the case in public transport. I believe if people could be sure that they could reach a destination on time with more confidence then they may consider not using cars as much.
I also believe that people are unwilling to part with the use of cars so much due to the cost of running them. When owning a car a owner is to pay for the car, maintenance, fuel, an MOT, insurance and tax. After paying all these costs I believe people don’t want to use a service which is unreliable.
