Fiddling amid the rising flames: The future of automobiles
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
- Start date
Firstly, can we remember that there are three countries within the United Kingdom that aren't England?
With that addressed, USS KG5 is quite correct - London is one of the very few places anywhere in the UK where the public transport infrastructure is sufficiently well co-ordinated and integrated to allow people to use it as a viable alternative to cars.
In other parts of the UK, particularly central Scotland, no such co-ordination or integration exists, despite both trains and buses in central Scotland (particularly around the Glasgow area) being dominated by the ever present FirstGroup with little or no meaningful competition. Using public transport in the Glasgow area is more or less pot luck, which isn't really acceptable in the UK's third largest city, whose extended metropolitan area is home to around 2 million people (or almost 40% of Scotland's entire population).
Firstly, can we remember that there are three countries within the United Kingdom that aren't England?
Cheerfully agreed
NYC and London both seemed to have pretty decent public transit systems (I've never been to Boston). One of the best I've seen was the Netherlands' train system. Of course, the country is pretty small, but one can go almost anywhere in the Netherlands by train.
On the west coast here in the US (at least in sometimes sunny California), there's very little in the way of public transportation. San Diego has a train system, but it's not very expansive. San Francisco has one as well, though I'm not sure what areas of the city and surrounding areas it reaches. LA blows (and not just in public transportation)...
I cannot begin to say just how crap FirstGroup are. It's at the point where minsters are standing up in Parliament and saying so. The worst bus services I've ever experienced were run by them; the best has been the largely council-run bus service in Warrington, though here on the island we've got it pretty good too considering they are largely rural services (and also partly council-run, I should note).
What Britain really needs at this point is re-nationalisation of the railways. As it stands at the moment, the government is charging the companies that actually run the franchises large sums for doing so, and is actually expecting them to pay a greater percentage of the costs for running the system through the income from passenger fares. Hence, the ludicrous price rises in recent years without any appreciable increase in the quality of the service, which is naturally having the effect of driving away travellers from the train system unless they absolutely have no choice but to use it. Interestingly, there was actually a motion at a Labour Party conference a few years ago on this topic which passed on a fairly decent margin, but naturally the then PM Tony Blair ignored it.
All the while, of course, we're getting new motorways and roads, compared to the handful (seriously, it's like four) new rail projects in the last twenty-odd years. At least some cities are investing in trams and light rail, but none of that is any thanks to the present or former PM (and let's not forget the baleful presense hanging over it all, Maggie Thatcher). For all they've tried to talk green these past few years, it's really just been business as usual - a lot of wankers in expensive suits talking a lot of hot air. Bleh.
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Vice Admiral
The real question is whether you can get there today. The Dutch railway system is utterly and thoroughly antiquated, and operates at a voltage (1.5kV) that's incompatible with the rest of Europe. Signalling and traffic control failures are a weekly occurrance, resulting in bi-monthly nation-wide breakdowns.
Apart from that, the provinces Zeeland, Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe have negligable infrastructure, and half of it isn't even electrified.
Of course, as anyone can tell you, traffic jams are worse, so during peak hours, the network is utilized at full capacity--meaning jam-packed trains, which aren't going to go away soon.
It may look good on paper, but so does Britain's railroad infrastructure.
And your experiences may have been positive--if you travel between the densely populated areas, and avoid peak hours, it's pretty good.
I had the pleasure of sitting in Schiphol Airport train station four roughly four hours after there was a 'computer failure', whatever that means. What a great way to begin my first ever trip to the Netherlands that was. :thumbsup:
Compared with New Zealand, the Netherlands' public transport is brilliant (seeing as that's the only other country whose public transport I have used for any length of time). But considering the Netherlands has 4 times New Zealand's population while Holland is the size of one of our provinces, you'd expect public transport to be a lot better there.
