Travel, or more precisely, public transport, the everyday way in which we get from A to B is a very peculiar thing. It's also for the most part class based. Even your ticket on some modes of travel will indicate if you're standard or first class.
Britain would collapse without public transport, but just recently I have realised it really does alienate the poorer or financially challenged citizen. We have to book weeks in advance to bag the best deals and if we want, nay need to go somewhere in a hurry...well you either have to fork out at least 5x more for a train ticket (generally a one way ticket at that) or compromise on speed, spontaneity and time and get a coach. All this and I'm not even going to start on my opinions of my daily commute.
So I missed my part train/part bus route to visit relatives in Yorkshire. The ticket is a unique compromise offered by 'Mega Bus' a cheap alternative to booking the train, slightly longer travel time but still do able. I approached the ticket desk and was faced with staff who weren't allowed to assist. There was no one working for the company based in the station to come to my aid. I was buggered. I couldn't transfer to get the next one. I couldn't even go online to make a last minute booking for the next train leaving in over an hour's time (this is surely a missed revenue opportunity). I was told "you use it or you lose it".
So I had to call my relatives and my wonderfully internet connected boyfriend to help solve my dilemma. Same day trains for less than £50 one way did not exist. I resorted to my transport of student days of yore...the National Express coach. Six hours later I would be in the NORTH!
From the beauty, boutique shopping, coffee shopped vistas of Kings Cross St Pancras, I took the tube to Victoria coach station. The grey monolithic facade with hints of art deco, the ambience, the lack of Cath Kidston or Paul, not a Samsonite or Louis Vuitton wielding traveller in sight, replaced with an overpriced newsagent, huge flocks of pigeons, Primark matching luggage, it was a world away.
Should I have leapt home and forked out for petrol for my car? On a comparison it actually may have worked out cheaper.
Victoria Coach station is an odd melting pot of students, European travellers, the elderly, pigeons, the homeless and those who simply can't afford to travel by any other route. Misery pretty much oozes from the very brickwork, morbid mortar. Even the sandwiches in the Quick snax look sad. Travellers are corralled like cattle into waiting areas, chomping at the bit for the little glass doors beneath the digital display to open beckoning onto the leather seated, air con cooled comfort of the National Express coaches which lay a few metres beyond to be whisked away from the grey.
But what's the excuse? Why is the travel backbone of the country so damn costly? Fuel? For the price of tickets I'd expect trains to be running on molten platinum. It's little wonder we're unwilling to give up our cars.
I'm embarrassed we're hosting the Olympics this year, because it can only mean increases in pricing for a transport network which is lacking to function properly day in day out, let alone with a million more extra travellers.
Train operators' fare setters seem to exist in their own happy little land, with prices rising alongside everything else whilst our salaries remain stagnant. They squeak 'but you can get a cheap ticket, log onto our website, register your details...' Sure I'll do that and get my ticket when the moon is in the 12th house of Aquarius and the groundhog sees his shadow. Great way to sell ourselves to tourists, maintain happy regular commuters and we don't even have a 24 hour tube network in London.
Bring down the costs, just make it more affordable, not idiotic. Improve the services or the route options and make travel on our own island more accessible to those who actually live here? Simplistic? Maybe but perhaps that could bring us one step closer to having some of this National Pride we're having rammed down our throats in this Jubilee/Olympic year?
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