Tag Archives: stupid public transport strategies

There goes your weekend in London

Saturday 10th August 2024, 9.35am (day 4,734)

No London train, 10/8/24

Like, I am guessing, everyone else in this picture I was waiting for the arrival of a train that was due to comprise the 9.45 service from Leeds to London King’s Cross. But sadly we all drew the card that says “Cancelled!” in the regular UK Public Transport Lottery. Not only was our train never to arrive but this vanishing act just prefigured a state of affairs that lasted all day. All this on the first full day of the football season, too. I gave up and went home.

At least I could rearrange my weekend’s hotel room without penalty — others will not have been so blessed. Hundreds of people, not just here but up and down the eastern half of the country, with plans wrecked, because the Powers That Be can’t be bothered to maintain their infrastructrure or design a system that has just those crucial little extra bits of redundancy and fail-safe. Up yours, peasants! Of course this will all change now we have a new government *cough*.

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Cattle truck

Thursday 2nd March 2023, 8.05am (day 4,207)

Cattle truck, 2/3/23

Documentary. I got on this train at 7.56am at Hebden Bridge. A few minutes later I got off it again, at Todmorden (where this shot is taken), thanks to it being, as you can hopefully tell,. a stupidly overcrowded two-carriage cattle truck, and waited for the next one. On Monday I have to spend about 10.5 hours on a train…. what we do for our kicks, eh?

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The Oxford Road bus swarm

Wednesday 7th March 2012, 9.45am (day 195)

Oxford Road bus swarm, 7/3/12

It is sometimes said that Oxford Road, Manchester, is the busiest bus route in Europe. Looking at this sight – there are at least 17 buses visible on this shot and I see no reason why the unseen space behind the one in the centre of the picture is occupied by anything different – it is not only easy to believe this, but impossible not to marvel at the mentality of those who think that unregulated public transport is a good idea. Reallocating even one of these buses to the Lake District, say, or a bus-free village in the shires… don’t you think that would be a more productive use of it?

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