I like driving (in my car) (Railways in general)

Member Name: adamdavid

Product:	Railways in general
Date:	28/01/01 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Don't have to worry about parking

Disadvantages: Expensive, slow, unreliable, used by the "public"

I am a student at Aston University (in the centre of Birmingham in you don't know) and I live in Solihull (a nice town about seven miles south of Birmingham). I am in the second year and I spent the first year and the first term of the second year travelling in by train. I'd walk to the station, wait at least ten minutes for a train (didn't matter what time I got there, it was never less than ten minutes) and would squeeze on to a dangerously overcrowded train (in rush hour) and spend an unpleasant fifteen to twenty minutes travelling into the city centre. I then had a ten minute walk to the university. Coming home was much the same thing, only with a longer wait at the station. All in all, the journey in to university takes about forty-five minutes.
Last week I had some exams so I was only in late morning on four days, so I decided to drive. The journey took me less than half an hour and once I'd found somewhere to park (without having to pay) the whole journey had taken me an hour and a half. So the journey was twice as long. Coming home took me about forty minutes of crawling along the Stratford Road through Sparkbrook, an area of Birmingham where bus lanes and indicators have no meaning to people.

Anyway, I should get to the point (bet you wondered when that would happen, eh?)
Next week I'm back to my normal timetable and I will be drving into Birmingham from now on. Why? Because the train ticket price recently went up. I really, really, REALLY object to paying even more for a reduced service. If I drive, I can listen to my stereo and not have to put up with the public. I can leave when I want and not have to stand on a freezing platform on the off chance that a train actually turns up, and if it does whether I'll be able to get on it.

Trains in this country have got slower and less reliable than they were when Stevenson's rocket ruled the roost. Why should we pay 21st century prices for 19th ce
ntury service?

I have tried to do my bit by using public transport but why should I when my car offers me heat, comfort, music and the company of the people I choose rather than the public option? I would rather take twice as long and have the freedom to choose when I leave than use the trains.

POLITICAL RANT TIME
Public transport is just the governments way of trying to control when and where people go. The government would prefer it if people stayed at home so that the didn't clutter the place up. The cost of public transport is criminally high and woefully unreliable and private transport is portrayed as the root of all evil - if people didn't have cars then the world would be a pseudo-Utopia where only the richest fifty politicians could own cars and drive around on miles and miles of empty road.
I will go back to using my car and it will take something extreme to make me use public transport again.

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