Commuting Travel

According to this story, a study by the RAC Foundatioin suggests that about 70% of British workers travel to work by car.

To be honest, I really can’t say that I’m surprised. Up until recently, I’ve always commuted to work by public transport- whether that’s bus, train, or both. It’s been very rare that I can walk to work, and also pretty rare (until moving to Norfolk) for me to drive to work, although that’s primarily due to the fact I’ve only owned a car in the last six months.

While I was in Manchester, it was always far easier to use a bus than to drive in to work. Cheaper, too- by a massive margin. The amount I paid for a weekly ticket into the city centre was about the same as I’d have paid for one day’s parking. Even when I started working in Oldham, and doubled by weekly bus-ticket costs (due to needing tickets from two bus companies) it was still significantly cheaper. Mind you, the service by First Bus from Oldham was fucking abysmal, which didn’t help – but it was still easier than doing the run by car.

In Bracknell (the only place recently where I could walk to work for some time) I didn’t drive to work- the train to Wokingham (once I’d moved from the walk-to-work place) took 10 minutes, and would race past the daily traffic jams on the A329(M) every day. Again, it cost me about £10 per week to do – and parking for the day in Wokingham would’ve run to about £6 or so, which made it cost effective.

When I started here in Cambridge, I was still living in Bracknell, and used the train to get here and back every week. If I’d been driving it would’ve taken me about as long as the train journey, but if I’d had the choice, I’d have used a car – just lugging a week’s worth of clothes on the train every week was a pain in the arse, and would’ve been far easier in a car.

Since we moved to Norfolk, I do still tend to use the train most of the time. As I’ve written before, it takes a bit more time door-to-door, but does have the advantage of giving me extra time to do work, and the like. Works for me.

This week, though, the train line is being fixed/maintained/repaired/whatever along a large section of the train route, which is being replaced by buses. So I’m driving in this week, because it’s easier.

But if Attleborough wasn’t on the main train line to Cambridge, or if I worked outside the city centre, I’d be driving it every day. There would be no point in using public transport, because it would make the commute unfeasibly long. When I change contracts, if it’s a place off the beaten track, I’ll be driving in.

Reports like this that then say people should use more public transport are all well and good, but before anyone is able to get the majority of people onto public transport, the infrastructure for it has to be there – the services have to be reliable, on-time, and regular. More importantly, they have to go where people want them to go – there’s no point creating a huge business park that doesn’t have a good bus service, for example (and believe me, I’ve worked in a few of those).

Until the infrastructure is sorted out, people won’t use it. And until people start using it, the companies will say there isn’t the demand for the infrastructure to be expanded. Good, innit?