--- James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
> >
> >The questions that I'd want answered are, what are
> the
> >figures for those who can travel in by train, which
> is
> >rather more significant. Discovering that those who
> >can't travel by train, choose not to, is
> >unilluminating.
>
>
> I don't really understand your question here.
It would be interesting to see how many of those who commute by car have alternatives. If (to make a number up out of thin air) 50% of those who drive into central London, live in places without a train line (or a train line to their destination), then obviously they don't have any alternatives. Not interesting enough for me to actually go off and find this information out, obviously...
Also if any of those people have train lines like mine, where the trains are ten minutes late, two days out of three...
> >
> >Also where most of those car drivers are going
> would
> >be interesting.
>
> Commuting makes up only 15 per cent of all journeys,
> including rail, car
> and the rest. Car use is growing as more women get
> cars. Many people
> have noted the increase in the 'school run' -
> parents dropping off their
> children. Shopping trips also increase with trends
> in weekend shopping,
> as opposed to shopping throughout the week. Also,
> Britons spend more of
> their leisure time going away for the weekend and so
> on.
Sure. I think rail travel is almost irrelivant for anything other than commuters to Central London (one could possibly narrow that down to the City and bits of the west end). In an ideal world it wouldn't be, but in an ideal world the network wouldn't be centered on London, would be reliable and cheaper.
However in the real world a huge chunk of Britain's economy dependant upon it in a very obvious way. Whereas it's harder for unimaginative politicians to quantify the environmental damage - it's easier for them to quantify economic damage. Especially when they have the city breathing down their necks. I don't know what the last train strike cost London businesses, but I'll bet it wasn't insignificant. Also, the commuter routes to central London are probably the only example in England where even the upper middle classes use public transport and can't easily opt out.
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