Same in Geneva. Until the early 60s, there was a perfectly developed streetcar net, the highest amount of kilometers in Europe for a single city. Then, everything was quickly dismantled in favour of more individual cars and a few bus lines. One streetcar line was maintained, no doubt out of ‘nostalgy’. As early as in the mid-seventies, when pollution and traffic jams started to kick in, it became clear for everyone how stupid (or biased/corrupt) that decision had been…
Then, nothing happened at all until the early 00s (exactly as weird and unforgiveable), when a few politicians from the Green party were elected. Since then, they have developed the streetcar net again, but it takes ages and is expensive.
It seems that these same errors occured a bit everywhere.
I wouldn’t call those places suburban really, I know they say ‘Eastern suburbs’, but I mean the Shire or out West.
We lived in Blakehurst and there was an irregular bus every half an hour or so. I find Sydney very car oriented, but I guess I’m spoilt from living in Berlin.
no they’re definitely not. still very much urban. That said, still a good system. We took transit all the way to Katoomba, Parramatta and a few other day trips. wouldn’t want to be in a rush, but still far better than driving on the wrong side of the road (which I ended up doing, bought a Ford Falcon S wagon)
Yup.
Choose a return date, and then some kind of delay means you can’t make the exact return train.
Winner for them, as you then have to buy another ticket.
Had words with a conductor when I used to travel to Edinburgh airport for work.
I always travelled first class, as I wasn’t paying for it and you got a cup of coffee and a sandwich thrown in.
However, on Scotrail trains the first class carriage seats about 8 people.
I refused to buy a ticket at the station, and always bought on the train - Same price.
Conductor said I shouldn’t do that if the ticket office was open.
I asked if he’d refund me on the train if there were no seats in first class.
Obviously his answer was no and he got a bit arsey about it.
If so, I’m not sure they offer open returns anymore? I remember they were repricing all tickets such that effectively you only ever have to buy singles.
When I land in Gatwick and travel back to W Wales there is a change I have to make in Reading. The last I was home I was travelling with some friends so booked tickets to make sure the 4 of us could sit together. The entire carriage where our booked seats were was missing. Aviva’s response was that we should just find other seats, of which there were not any together, and didnt seem to understand the issue
On my last train journey heading to London from Lime Street, settled into my reserved seat, and just as the train pulled out of the station, some ‘Hyacinth Bucket’ type woman had got on, and proceeded to shout in the loudest poshest voice to man… “You Are In My Seat…”, simultaneously thrusting her ticket into my face… which rightly stated the number and letter of the seat I occupied…!
Obviously, with such a booming statement, everyone turns round and stares, waiting for her to send the next jab across… by this time the entire carriage appeared full, and the last thing I fancied was having to do the ‘walk of shame’ for pinching this woman’s seat…
Standing up, thinking I should have put my glasses on before checking my ticket with this same seat before sitting down… I took the ticket out my pocket to glance again… There before my eyes, was the exact same seat number on my ticket, as was on this steely faced, eyes bulging, neck vein throbbing woman’s ticket…
Couldn’t help but to take my turn now to thrust my ticket into her face, similar to how she did to me… I said, in a rather loud voice of about 90db that imitated her voice a moment earlier “Snooze Ya Lose”… they are the same.!
She snorted and waddled off to find the guard… He came back with her about 5mins later to confirm, after studying both tickets, they were identical, and had been booked for the same seat, for the same time of travel…!
She had not have been such a pratt at the beginning. I would have willingly handed over my seat… but fuck her, manners cost nothing, so she might remember that if there is ever a next time :0)
Rishi’s comments about flying this morning show exactly the degree of shit we are in. There is no political will to make the hard choices in this country, and continued lies to the population that they will be able to and should go on with the status quo. Sustainable aviation is a pipe dream and certainly would not be available to the masses anywhere near in time to help prevent a two degree (or more like 5 degree) warming. But the ‘how dare you’ ask people not to fly or change any part of there consumption patterns is the political norm and I don’t expect anything different from Starmer.
That is a lovely bit of data presentation, kudos to whoever put that together. I imagine the data is based on ‘producer’ carbon footprints which skews the data in favour of countries like the UK that rely heavily on imports and embodied carbon from other parts of the world.
