Next train? We don't know - why are you asking us? What? Oh *that* sign? It's just a clock... definitely not just useless at its job... no no.

This is not unusual, and if I had not been a frequent enough user of this system to have glimpsed it telling me when the next metro is due to arrive, I would assume it isn't meant for that purpose at all. I waited for a few minutes, as other people were doing, hoping the sign would give us a clue, but eventually I decided I'd better just walk to Victoria. I walked fast, and was only asked if I'd 'wan a fight mate' by 2 drunkards along the way - a record low.
I arrived with a slight sweat and boarded the last train to Rochdale with 9 minutes to spare. As the train left, I looked back at the station to see the metrolink from Picadilly just pulling in across the platforms.

To fix this, we simply need more frequent services and perhaps to run them later... at least on a Friday and Saturday. That is if it needs fixing. If the message from Greater Manchester Public Transport is 'If you want to have any flexibility, get a car', then it's working perfectly as it is.

This is no isolated thought. I've had experiences like this frequently as I'm sure have many others. For the last 2 weeks, I have intentionally not used a car. Having just moved to Manchester I haven't got my own, but I could have had a car to use because my wonderful Manchester based family have gone out of their way to make theirs available to me.
I have been trying to see if public transport is at all workable, without owning a car or putting on my friends and family constantly, so I know if I'll need to buy one or not.
The answer appears to be that I do, and this is a shame - I'm someone who's been convinced; who has come to the point of accepting cars as something you own if you 'have a distinct need for one', rather than something you 'get by default, unless you're allergic to Magic Trees'. The former is an attitude we (as a nation) are trying to get as many people as possible on board with and in my case, they got me all the way there only to lose me to GMPT..E... or whatever they're called. My desire to be green and to not needlessly clog up roads is now at odds with my desire to be able to get anywhere outside my home. Maybe I should get a horse. But even a horse, or more sensibly a bike will not work for me most days, because amongst other unpleasant weather conditions it rains here most of the time, which means being green has the cost of a permanent runny nose.

On top of all this, the cost of public transport is very high. It's more expensive to get around Greater Manchester than it is to get around Greater London. I caught the bus with a friend a few weeks ago and it was £1.80 each for a 5 minute journey (similar journey is 80p in London). It's £2.60 to go from Stockport to Manchester by bus (similar journey £1 in London)! Train tickets are usually in the £3-£5 region for declared finite routes, though admittedly the ranger tickets (that the ticket masters often wont tell you about unless you know to ask) aren't much more.

It's not even a pleasant journey. The stations are mostly run down, unheated (you're luck to get a shelter at all), dark and dangerous places with no conveniences. And that's Victoria, I'm thinking of, not some satellite station up in the Pennines somewhere.

When I'm shovelling out note after note on a daily basis, and having to buy a ticket and have it checked 3 or 4 times from journey start to finish, after standing in cold and wet for times up to and occasionally over an hour... I have to ask myself... what's the relative cost of a car?

But we want public transport to work. We all do, even those who don't know they do. I don't want to give up on it. It's green, it's efficient, and it frees up the roads for those who actually need to use them.

So here's my suggestion... make regional train services free. Express/Intercity trains, ok, buy tickets for them. But regional loops and lines, internal to Greater Manchester - make them free. If every region did it, people who wanted to use only regional train lines, making 10 transfers to get from Manchester to London, would even be welcome to do that for free, but that's not really the aim - it's about making public transport work for people in and around cities for their daily travel needs.
Or... if free's too far, simple and attractive - a flat fee of say, £1 for any single train journey, capping at £3 where it becomes a travel card for the rest of the day. And what's the deal with rail tickets not working with buses up here? Buses should be £1 per journey too, cap at £2 if you use buses exclusively that day, but be cumulative with the train spending you do. If I've bought 2 bus tickets at £1 each, I should only need to pay £1 to upgrade that to include trains too. That's peak time - because if you only make public transport cheap off peak, your target group - commuters - still wont be using it. If it's heaving in commuter time, make off peak even cheaper, and/or stick another carriage on these 2 carriage 'peak capacity' trains.

This whole 'upgrade' and 'cumulative' tickets thing sounds like it'll be a mess to work out. But fear not! There's already systems developed to handle this very kind of logisitcs. We have the 'Oyster Card', which is like a TopUp Card for pay as you go phones, only you use it on buses, tubes, and trains. You wave it by a yellow pad as you board some Public Transport, and it deducts the credit from your card. It upgrades your ticket as you use more transport. Let's just use that - no development or testing costs, with the added bonus of being able to use your transport card in London should you visit. No tickets, no fuss.

Where does the rest of the money come from? Well, if the people start using it you may not even need more. But assuming they don't all start using it on the day, and given the need to run higher frequency as well, I say tax for it. Yup I said it - raise taxes. Unpopular thought, but look at it this way - If we all use PT where we can, the world will be a better place, and if we are all using it, it doesn't matter if we pay in tax or tickets. Tax makes income more predictable which for some organisations makes spending more effective, getting more for our money instead of pouring heaps more fluctuating cash sums into the bottomless pit of choppy starty stoppy programmes and plans they run our rails with right now.
Even those people who would say, 'I don't use it - why should I pay for your travel?' there's an answer for. Better PT isn't really about individual use and individual benefits - it's about mass use bringing mass benefits. Less car usage means petrol costs, congestion, and pollution go down - me using PT along with another few thousand people in Manchester each day does benefit the people not using it themselves (who will, if the price and service is right, be only a minority of people anyway). Even the people walking benefit from clean air and less aggressive drivers.
There's also some savings to be made, or at least, not as much increase in costs as you'd think. We don't need lot more employees to run the extra trains because the 3 people who sell me tickets don't need to be there (one station guard will do), the 4 people who check tickets at my destination don't need to be there, nor the many ticket sellers at the destination. Across the whole of GMPT..X? S? E? whatever... there's a lot of redundant and unnecessary posts already that could be put to better use. If we're doing the capped ticket thing, a driver and guard per train (or just some on random trains) will do nicely. If we're doing the free thing we wouldn't even need that (though some presence of train guards will still be required as guards are for more than just tickets).But however the numbers work out, here's the vision. Clearer streets, cleaner air, and the pride of having the best Public Transport system in the country. Better than the Capital even, and bringing Manchester up to it's level for public services and secured as the Second Capital of the UK.
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Phil

Job interview on Friday, and I'll be the last interview held I believe. Hopefully then, I should know by next week if I have this job, which is one I really want.

It feels like being on the apprentice. :)

I've been staying at my parents house for the last week. MSN has been a bit of a nightmare - their router it would seem, likes to disconnect it every few minutes. I say their router because all PC's in the house suffer from the same condition. It's pretty annoying and I've even set MSN not to automatically load on startup - no point in it taking up my resources if I can't use it, and MSN is a cripplingly hungry piece of software these days for no good reason that I can think of. I'm considering going back to Trillian while I'm on underpowered machines.

Am off to see Spiderman 3 tonight - woohoo :-D

It has been a bit odd to not go to ROOTS this year. Noticeably absent as well were Tom and Edward, one for reasons quite similar to myself, the other for more complicated personal needs who my prayer continue to be with.
As for me (and Tom I'd guess), it rather came down to not having a reason to go, and not having a car or the justifiable spare money to make it worth being there. There was also reason to be around Rochdale for the last few days and it has yielded some good time with family instead.
A chance arose to go on the Monday, just to help pack up, which would have paid for transport. But being bank holiday Monday, and as it was packing up, I wouldn't have actually seen anyone anyway, and the journey would probably have been more hassle and cost, or at least, equal hassle and cost, to the returns.

It makes me wonder, will I be at ROOTS and other such things ever again? Am I going to attend a corps from now on? Will I be involved in any events work? Will I have the holiday time to take? My daily connection with the SA is pretty mute now, and having left Crown Lane, my professional connection stops being automatic. From now on, to be an active part of the Salvation Army requires a conscious and continued decision on my part. I'm sure I will be a part of the army in some way or other for a long time to come, and I'll probably end up being involved in then occasional divisional event if nothing else... but the absence of ROOTS this year feels to have marked the end of an era for me. And if that turns out to be true, it's a shame I didn't go if for no other reason to see people I wont often see in the future.

Still - there's always next year for that, and who knows, I might become the most army barmy person you know and diligently attend every single army function I can get a ticket for - we just don't know.

Anyway, that's all from me, got to dash for Spiderman now - wish me luck for Friday!
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Phil