In't Public Transport Brilliant?

Well, there's the question, and now here's the answer.

Yes and no.

Yes for several reasons: if you don't have a car, it can get you where you want to go. If you do have a car but it's knackered, then it'll do the same. It's good for the environment, if you're one of those hippy types (man). There's more, but if I just sit here and tell you why public transport's the best thing since Jesus said 'Hang on, why don't we try being nice to one another instead of jabbing swords into our enemies' eyes all the time,' then you'd be looking for a sword to jab into your own eyes before long. So here's why public transport isn't so great: it's praised for being cheaper than a car, but if it's a choice between putting a fiver's worth of petrol in the tank or paying �2.90 for a half-hour bus journey that takes ten minutes by car, I'd rather pay the fiver (at least that lasts longer than half an hour). The train station in my village is a good mile away, and if I'm trying to get there on time, it takes a lot of running and a lot of swearing (if I end up being thirty seconds late). That also brings me onto another point: trying to get to a bus or train station on time is often the worst part of the journey, as you're constantly wondering if you've missed it, whether or not the fares have gone up, and whether it's going to get you to your chosen destination on time (which, if you're using it to get you to work, is a real pain in the derriere). If a train timetable tells me it's going to get me to a place for ten to six (which would be an ideal time for me to reach my destination), then I'd quite like it if it got me there for that time, instead of six o'clock or later. I mean, don't get me wrong: the train service is better now than it was fifteen years ago, and I'll take a ten minute delay over five hours waiting for whatever problem's decided to arse my day up to clear off, but surely if companies (and the government) wants people to use public transport, it's got to be more efficient. Safety's a bit of an issue as well. I, along with great swathes of the public transport-using public (wow, what a wide vocabulary), listen to rock music, and I often dress in a manner that indicates this. I'd appreciate it if I was shown the same courtesy I show to other people. But when I get tracksuit-wearing troglodytes calling me every name under the sun, smacking me round the head, punching me in the face and causing similar offence and harm to others like me (whether they're friends of mine or just random people sitting on the bus or train), it's kind of hard to feel like the world's a fair place. This doesn't just mean on the buses or trains, either. I've lost count of the amount of times that, while waiting in a bus station, I've been intimidated, spat at, insulted, punched and otherwise menaced by the Adidas-clad scum who come out of the woodwork in my hometown after ten o'clock and think that Wigan bus station's the most righteous, happening place to hang out of an evening since Studio 54, the Wigan Casino or the Ha�ienda. It's just not on. If I've had a good night out with friends in the pub and I decide to roll on home and have a good night's kip, don't I deserve it without having to clean blood off my Nirvana shirt when I get there? You really do fear for your life sometimes. The Night Bus service, which runs in Wigan of a weekend, is a very good idea, but as the man who invented the chocolate fireguard found out, theory and practice are seldom the same. Picture the scene. You've had a good night out. You roll out of your chosen watering hole or nightclub at ten to three in the morning. You go to Abrakebabra or any burger house of your choosing and get some fatty, hangover-enhancing sustenance, and then it dawns on you: 'How the hell am I going to get home?'

But never fear! Help is at hand! For out of the mists of the night comes a grey-and-purple lifeline: the 635 Night Bus! For only two quid it'll take you to your chosen town, village or hamlet and you can get home to bed for quicker and cheaper than a taxi. Sorted. But it's not all a bed of fragrant roses here either. It's an excellent idea, and I'd much rather use the Night Bus service than a taxi or, God forbid, walk (if it takes half an hour by bus, who knows how long it'll take on foot?). But the same problems are encountered with the night service as with the day service. As we all know, alcohol and young people have a strange relationship. Sometimes it's a nice one, in which the alcohol turns the young person into a great example of what it is to be a human, and sometimes it's a terrible one, in which the alcohol becomes the Devil possessing the soul of the young person and turning them into a good argument for bringing back capital punishment. Unfortunately, the latter usually seems to be the case in Wigan. Once again, I often find it hard to get through a trip on the night service without getting at least three clips round the ear, slurred demands for me to 'Give us a bit of that f**kin' pizza,' or worse. It's almost a relief to get off the bus, but even then the horror's not finished: it's my own fault for living in the back end of nowhere, but I have to get off the bus about a mile and a half away from my house, and the walk isn't a nice one. Few streetlights, huge forests overshadowing your every step and a jaunt past a hospital where a girl was murdered some ten years ago make it come in around #465 on Dennis Norden's Bumper List of Romantic Treks. A few months ago there were some roadworks on the route, and as a result the bus ended up dropping me off at the end of my road, but eventually it was back to the old school. So what's the way around these problems? I've heard that Wigan's bus station is patrolled by Greater Manchester Transport Police, but that doesn't stop the cavalcade of abuse from Wigan's leisurewear-clad University Challenge hopefuls. The price of buses is shockingly high in contrast to trains, with an average difference of at least one pound for a return ticket; a return ticket that is, of course, dubbed a 'Day Saver' on buses now. Day Saver is actually another way of saying 'This is our new name for this service, and a new name means it's better and thus, more expensive: we'll be after the shirt off your back next'. I always thought trains would've been more expensive to run than buses, anyway. All I ask for is that the masses of money that the bus and train companies extract from us all on a daily or weekly basis be put to some use other than marketing and advertising or making sure that the coffee machine in the staff canteen works properly. Bouncers at bus stations, there?s a novel concept. Bring back the old days of conductors on buses, too. And give them the power to clout the insolent. It's either doing that, or dispensing cattle prods to passengers who look like particularly obvious targets for abuse.

Author: Gregg Mather
Manchester iJourno group