Why the car is better than the bus

'Walker' said:

" ''nugget'' you forgot one item off the list. When the bus is late which it will be about twice a week in my area I lose money through missing work which is average 1 hour late. In my area the average hourly rate is £8 so let’s recalculate

Twice a week = 104 days a year
So 104 hours = 832 "

I must say my dear Sir, I am most impresed that you actually work 52 weeks a year.

"Why do you not have a car- get with the times."

What a shallow and thoughtless attitude, and what a pointless and negative comment.

There are many reasons why people don't have a car, or simply choose not to drive. There are people who can't drive for various reasons - not necessarily their fault. There are others who feel that in the interest of the environment and community they prefer not to use a car, and there are people who cannot afford to run a car.

Next time you post something, at least try to validate your point.

Why do you not have a car- get with the times.

Don't be a 'bus wenker' as they say in the Inbetweeners :)

Tell me the buses are good when you dont get a job from an interview because you told them you dont have your own car, or you are late for an appointment for business and the other party tells you that you have given all the reason they need because how dare you be 8 minutes late, they are leaving the meeting room now.
Tell me that buses are good when they cancel the service or the last one goes past you at 5 to 10 at night packed too full to stop for more passengers, leaving you maybe 90 miles from home in the freezing cold and rain in a strange place with next to no street lighting and all the nearby amenities and businesses closed, and is it good when you are on a bus and end up with an overweight smelly drunk person leaning against you drooling and dribbling on route to the next town/city as they are barred from all the pubs in the last place?

I have been on a 3 hour bus journey before with a crazed man of about 50 years of age growling at me and standing up from the seat behing me holding my seat with both hands and violently and quickly pushing and pulling at it as if to try to pull it off the floor, every time I turned round to look he would rest his chin on the headrest and growl like a dog whilst dribbling like an infant over it.
The other passengers kept turning round and looking at me as though it was me and a male passenger looking increasingly angry that his wife was frightened turned round and threatened to pull me off the bus and " effing burst me" to which I had to put him in his place before informing him of the culprit and moving to the first seat that came empty right at the front of the bus, which was unfortunately only at the last 10 minutes of the journey. When I got down there I could still hear him growling near the back of the bus...is this what makes busses good then? I later found out that he was in the nearest city seeing a psychiatric consultant for a day and that he had always been like that (care in community)

Not all bus drivers are bad.

At approx 6.30pm on 17th August 2009 a Toyota Yaris Blue reg X57GDC turned right out of a side road/private property onto a main road with traffic doing 50 mph and bus was coming.

The bus had to apply brakes and this driver continued way below 40 mph in a 50 zone holding up traffic.

Pulling out like he (or she) did without enough space and driving so slow is a hazard on the road.

Recently in a Black Birmingham district I was driving and the traffic was heavy.

Along one stretch there were some bus stops with a bus stopped and I tried to move out to pass but nobody let me out to pass. The slow lane was not a bus lane so it was okay for me to use it. A West Midlands bus passed me but couldn't move into the slow lane because I was there and he didn't let me out so he decided to stop alongside me letting passengers on and off in the fast lane so there was a queue of passengers crossing between my vehicle and the bus in front. When the bus in front moved off passengers were still obstructing my path while getting on the bus.

This held up traffic in both lanes since the bus blocked one lane and passengers blocked the other lane.

Is this how Asian drivers drive on their roads? They should remember they are in the UK and drive properly, not try to be king of the road.

Car is more convenient, according to the anti-public transport brigade, and this is often true. We all know that parking in city centres is difficult, expensive, and time consuming, whereas public transport is often of an acceptable standard.

Where public transport falls down is in rural areas, at night, and at weekends. What needs to be done is to have a proper unified and subsidised transport system, where there is an adequate frequency to obtain and maintain critical mass. Then the various modes of transport need to interface properly at hubs, unlike the disjointed efforts which exist in most UK conurbations.

The best examples of excellent public transport can be found in Holland and Switzerland, where in most urban areas a single ticket or pass is available to cover all modes of transport for a given period. I frequently travel in those countries and never use a car simply because the public transport is so good and it saves me time.

Unfortunately for the type of travelling I do in the UK I usually need to use a car - I wish it were otherwise. UK public transport in most areas is inadequate, unreliable, expensive, and often unsafe due to the thuggish attitude of some of the users. This has come about because public transport in the UK has always been thought of as for people who are too poor to afford a car, or who for other reasons cannot drive. It's a sort of 'poor relation' and it shouldn't be.

Most of the pro public transport fans seem to conveniently ignore several vital factors.

Time - surely the most valuable commodity we will ever posess and how criminally irresponsible it would be to willingly waste a second of our short lives.

Convenience - no public transport system on earth can match the car for this, and certainly not the slow, uncomfortable, antiquated and just plain horrible contraption that is the bicycle.

Security - ever travelled at late evening on an urban bus full of escapees from the local zoo? Sat next to the 'care in the community' client on a very off day. Experienced the delights of a drunk, sitting on the adjacent seat, valliantly fighting back his urge to vomit and untimately failing? It's strange but you never have any of this in one's own car.

The lack of any reasonably reliable or regular public transport in many areas.

Restriction on travel time - restricted services at weekends and evenings (don't forget not everyone works in a cosy office 9 to 5 in the centre of a large city)

And the final nail in the coffin of public transport or bicycles - choice. We can choose to use our car, a bicycle or use public transport an while the car offers so many advantages then most people will continue to make the only rational choice and it will be the car.

I sympathise with this gripe. I drive to my workplace in 20 minutes. Doing it by bus would take over 2 hours and I'd have to go 15 miles in the wrong direction to get a bus back in the right direction. If somebody wants to give me a bus from my doorstep to my office (just like my car route) then I'll happily take it. Until then I'll stick with my car, thanks.

The answer to the question is simple, "If I have to sit on a urine soaked seat, I'd rather it was my own urine"

I use the car because I can be at work in 10 minutes, whereas the bus would take over an hour due to changing half way. And I can listen to my own music in my car, not the crap blasting out from some bogan's cheapo mobile phone.

Public transport is a good idea in large towns and cities, however in rural areas the buses are few and far between (if at all) they are also more expensive than driving if you only us it 2/3 times a week. So if I use only public transport I can't work! Also the government does not want everyone out of their cars, cars raise too much tax to even contemplate people not driving and paying this...cars are a revenue raiser public transport is not.