Admitting defeat
Driving to Maidenhead was a Good Idea (being code for A Really Bad Idea) and was reasonably Fun (being code for Nightmarish). Nevertheless I’m going back to the train for the rest of this week.
It sucks having to be at the station at a certain time only for the train to be late and throw you off your schedule by thirty minutes but at least you don’t get run off the road by people on your outside deciding they want to turn off the roundabout in front of you, and you don’t have to park your car on the M25 for an hour.
The numbers, though, are not so good. I drove to Maidenhead and back twice and filled up once. Assuming I did drive every day that would work out to about three fillups per week which would cost me about £90. A weekly season ticket on the train is £138.
I went to the ticket office tonight and was told that since I only want to travel tomorrow, Thursday and Friday (for reasons outside the scope of this document I will not be traveling next week) it would actually be cheaper to buy three full-price return tickets at £40 each.
Doing the Right Thing and using public transport is up to twice as expensive as driving. Now I’m a big fan of public transport (in other countries) and my car is unsuited to long journeys but let’s assume I owned a different vehicle. Why would I not drive when
- I’m not tied to someone else’s schedule
- I’m guaranteed a seat
- I don’t have to sit with Other People
- It’s an hour quicker
- And it’s half the price
Note that this is simply a gratuitous rant. Of course I don’t honestly believe that I’m the first person to notice that the UK’s transport infrastructure is rutterly ubbish. I did live in Lyon and Hong Kong, remember.
Footnote: The line above was supposed to read utterly rubbish but I liked my typo so much I’m keeping it in.