A Commuter Protests!

drbluebeat · Post by **drbluebeat** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:29 pm

A sign was put up yesterday by "One Railway "at a North London station. This morning this notice mysteriously appeared over the top of it and the others. Please share with anyone who uses the train network in the UK!

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:43 pm

Genius. You know it's what they're all thinking at the railways, that and how the fuck did we get away with that again and again and again

ands · Post by **ands** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 5:49 am

please tell me more about this

ive never traveled to the UK. the railways that poor?

metalboxproducts · Post by **metalboxproducts** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:31 am

The railways are notoriois. Bob Kiley say's there the worst in any developed country. Infact the whole public transport infastructure is fucked basicly. It's a wander anybody gets too on time. In any other country it would couse a public revolt.

. That's what badly planned privatization does. Blame Thatcher.

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:12 am

metalboxproducts wrote:The railways are notoriois. Bob Kiley say's there the worst in any developed country. Infact the whole public transport infastructure is fucked basicly. It's a wander anybody gets too on time. In any other country it would couse a public revolt. . That's what badly planned privatization does. Blame Thatcher.

Yep, privatisation fucks up any chance of a decent public service. The national railway service gets split into many different regional services, the tracks are owned by one firm and licensed to the others (and I think maintained by another). Prices are increased, whilst service is not necessarily improved (ever) with hilarious (or not) consequences.

To go back to visit my folks by train, a 30 mile journey, is £8.40. It's not far enough to merit an open return, so I have to buy a single ticket each way. Bargain. Buses for the same journey take 3 hours, stop everywhere, but are cheaper (but a six hour round trip is toooo much). Takes about 45 mins by car. And they wonder why everyone drives.

Why no-one had the idea of actually running the service efficiently is beyond me. How do you improve competition when there's a monopoly? It'd be OK if you said "right instead of going to Croydon, I'm going to go from Derby to Leeds", but unless there's an alternative on the same journey you're screwed.

Private funding is just a clever way of financing the private pocket from the public purse. Even when they fuck up the government bails you out. We've put so much money into this via tax or tickets that you'd think we'd be entitled to shares by now.

Rant ends.

dynamixuk · Post by **dynamixuk** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:47 am

london is just simply over crowded, too may ppl too close together

travel up north is fine.

I hate the underground

when i lived in slough (fuk knows why) i had to travel to victoria then from victoria to trafalgar. i always used to get aggro with ppl in suits tryin to push me about for 1cm arm room, i was givin it "nee chance sonna just payed daft amounts for this journy this is MYSPACE"

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:14 am

Actually, I think the South East is pretty appalling for transport in general. Visited my brother in Leicester and the journey to there and back from London was fine. 2 stops too, as compared to the 30 mile journey with 15 stops where mostly no-one gets on.

forensix (mcr) · Post by **forensix (mcr)** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:30 am

Shonky wrote:Actually, I think the South East is pretty appalling for transport in general. Visited my brother in Leicester and the journey to there and back from London was fine. 2 stops too, as compared to the 30 mile journey with 15 stops where mostly no-one gets on.

Thats what you get for living in a massively overcrowded area, public transport is fine up here, yeah the bus gets stuck in traffic every day but usually for the same amount of time, trains tend to leave on time and are pretty clean to be honest

Id move to London but i fucking hate travelling around it, have your face pushed against the window of the train every morning and pay a fucking bomb for the priveledge, fuck that

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:40 am

Yeah, I think the things that put me off London the most are

a/ the price of everything
b/ transport

metalboxproducts · Post by **metalboxproducts** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:46 am

Shonky wrote:Yeah, I think the things that put me off London the most are

a/ the price of everything
b/ transport

Just don't leave you very expensive house/flat.

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:50 am

metalboxproducts wrote:
Shonky wrote:Yeah, I think the things that put me off London the most are

a/ the price of everything
b/ transport
Just don't leave you very expensive house/flat.

Oh, there's that too. It's too fuckin pricey livin in Brighton with the casually inflated-to-London-prices on the sly way of doing things round here, but having checked what similar money would get me in London, I'd probably be paying £350 more a month than I do for what I have here. And there's no beach!

metalboxproducts · Post by **metalboxproducts** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:03 am

According to a documentory i saw about a month ago, things are almost as bad for the rest of the country. Or rather, they are heading in the same direction. If something isn't done right now we're all fucked for public transport.
One example i can site would be the expiriance of trying to get from preston to blackpool. If your coming into preston from say manchester and you want to make the conecting train to blackpool you have to waite 45 mins, even though the train you could have got leaves as the one your on is coming into the station. Back in the day of BR, the train to blackpool would have waited the extra few seconds for people to make the connection.
I imagine this kind of thing is replicated through out the counrty. It is totelly down to the fact that there is no one in control of the infrastructure as a whole. The train from manchester is owned by one company and the train going to blackpool is owned by another.Each company has it's own iterests and isn't flexable. No one is aswerable to anybody other then the private share holders who demand better/ more efficiant ways of making a quick buck.

dynamixuk · Post by **dynamixuk** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:06 am

i'll take a photo of our metro's to show ya how public transport shold be

metalboxproducts · Post by **metalboxproducts** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:06 am

Shonky wrote:
metalboxproducts wrote:
Shonky wrote:Yeah, I think the things that put me off London the most are

a/ the price of everything
b/ transport
And there's no beach!

I wouldn't call alot of pebbles a beach. You should goto blackpool. Seven miles of shit incrusted golden sands..

metalboxproducts · Post by **metalboxproducts** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:12 am

Dynamixuk wrote:i'll take a photo of our metro's to show ya how public transport shold be

You metro has gone down hill since it was originally built in the 70's. It was invisaged as part of a whole public transport netwoerk. Busses would take comuters to one of various hubs around the city where they would got on the metro that was waiting for them.
This was when the local government controlled all the elelments of public transport in your city. Now each element is owned by the private sector and does not opperate like it used to.
A lot less efficiant

stormfield · Post by **stormfield** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:42 am

they're raising the tube / bus fares again... stnuc!

forensix (mcr) · Post by **forensix (mcr)** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 11:16 am

stormfield wrote:they're raising the tube / bus fares again... stnuc!

oh lord how i long to be in london

deamonds · Post by **deamonds** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 1:08 pm

fuck london

drbluebeat · Post by **drbluebeat** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 1:21 pm

I was pleased to notice that two of the posters were still up this morning and a group of cyclists were reading it pissing themselves laughing.

I've also told everyone I see to carry on becasue the "real" notice just says "don't lock your bike to an inappropriate structure" but does not define what constitutes inapropriate...It's a bit of a challenge though getting Suits to engage in any kind of civil resistance, it's becasue they are so sheep-like that the c*nts get away with it all.

edit: I couldn't and wouldn't want to live anywhere else though apart from Brighton where I lived for a few months.

ands · Post by **ands** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 3:48 pm

dunno if the situation is similar here in american south, but still sort of fucked up:

thou its the railway [the only passenger railway, Amtrak] and not the metro or Greyhound, i recently tried to book a roundtrip ticket from north texas to austin. this is an estimated 4.5 hr trip and costs between $43 and $60. the rail is supposed to take less time than Greyhound, be less crowded, and cost less.. so of course i book the rail

come to find out theyve been bussing people due to railwork. delays are several hours and they make no apologies. the guy said to me "if youre riding a train you can't complain, you just have to take off your watch and enjoy the ride". i couldnt help but laugh in disbelief.

even when they are bussing people, the delays are still several hours. and they make no concessions or inform you of how long the delay will be until you nearly board the train/bus.

these delays are pretty inconvenient when you have no transportation yourself and rely on the metro once you get to your destination. or what about people with disabilities who have difficulty sitting that long on a train, etc. and the crazy thing is they get away with it because theyve had a monopoly on the country's passenger rail operations since 1971.
furthermore it's almost impossible for anyone to afford a plane ticket anymore, people can barely afford gas for their cars.

the customer service guy tried to tell me the several hours of rail delays is normal and that the trains run on signals blah blah. point of the matter is its really unreliable and the mass transit system in texas is fucked from what ive seen [including city metros]. i wish it werent so, seems like it almost forces people to drive to get anywhere on time

A Commuter Protests!

A Commuter Protests!

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