Public Transport

I am yet to pass my driving test.  It is a burden that grows heavier with each day and the longer I leave it the more painfully evident it becomes that it is something I need to accomplish; not because I am restricted in my travels, nor because it will make me a more accepted member of society but, above all else, because I have a strong and impending feeling that public transport will be the death of me.

I spend more time on public transport than most, be it a bus or a train I can more often than not be found staring vacantly out of a window watching the world as it passes by me in an unrecognisable blur, urging the minutes to pass so that I can escape the torment.  The pain of using public transport would be dramatically softened if the destinations to which I was travelling were somewhat more exotic than Stockport; hardly a cultural melting pot.  So you can imagine my angst, as the sound of walking sticks and the elderly being thrown the through the front window - after a less-than-considerate slam on the breaks from the surly driver - signals the end to another journey, when what greets me is a town in which the people are as dilapidated and in need of repair as the buildings that make it up.

One of many preferable alternative modes of transportation to the Megabus

I am going to enlighten you now with a tale of one particular mode of public transport with which you may not all be familiar. Providing a valuable service to those hard-up on cash, the Megabus is the transportation of choice amongst tramps and students.  Let me first outline the advantage of this service: there is no cheaper way, short of tying yourself underneath a car, of getting from A to B, although the risk of injury is roughly the same.  Prices are an eighth of what you will pay for the same journey on a train and there is good reason for this.  If you ever book with the Megabus, keep your expectations low, for this bus service is like no other.  For a miserly fee you get a bus service that has been on time only once since it was founded in 2003: this was in 2006 when, to the shock of puzzled on-lookers, the 14:45 service from Fife to Edinburgh screeched into the bus terminal a full 3 hours early due to a brakes failure.  In addition to the tardiness of the Megabus the leg room it provides is appropriate only for victims of double lower limb amputation, I have spent many an hour with my knees in my face fighting off cramp and pins and needles in conditions that vary from arctic to something resembling what I’d imagine the temperature is like in the Devil’s living room.  The Megabus truly epitomises the saying ‘you get what you pay for’.

It’s not just the vehicles and the conditions inside them that make public transport a thoroughly unpleasant experience but also the people that use it.  The majority of citizens who use trains and buses are just normal human beings who recognise the importance of social fair play and personal hygiene.  However there are a select few amongst the hordes who set foot on Britain’s public transport on a daily basis who have clearly never been taught the importance of soap and water in modern society.  More often than not one of these unwashed cretins finds that the seat next to me looks more appealing than any of the others in the empty carriage and parks him or herself down, before proceeding to fidget in a manner conducive to producing regular bursts of fragrance like a warped Glade air freshener.  If you have ever been victim of such a crime then that stench will have remained with you ever since, no amount of scrubbing can rid your nostrils of it; If there was a way that we could separate the foul-smelling from the showerers on public transport in some kind of hygiene apartheid, I for one, would be all for it.

The experience of public transportation is a rite of passage, until you have waited at a bus stop in the North West of England’s equivalent of a monsoon, for a train that is destined never to arrive or been battered black and blue by on-rushing passengers boarding the train as you attempt to alight, you cannot be considered a fully integrated member of society.  Those people whose only exposure to public transport is the plane journey to and from their summer holiday destination don’t know how lucky they are!