The public transport within the UK, specifically rail service (run by National Rail now), is absolutely, completely, totally and utterly useless. The atrocious service, lack of convienience and terrible comfort conditions coupled with the ever soaring cost of travel makes me wonder why anyone uses the UK public transport system. As you may tell I’m slightly annoyed at the moment, let me give you an example why with a story from the past few hours…

16.30 Thursday 24th February 2005, a housemate and I are preparing to go to a Simple Plan gig at Manchester Academy. We check train times for both outward and return journeys on the “Plan My Journey” application, part of the National Rail website. We decide on the 17.30 outward train and the 23.20 return; the latest that night.

Problem One: Just before we leave for the station, I quickly check to see which station we were heading to — I was just thrown back some ugly application parse errors. I quickly try thetrainline.com and get the same response. We leave with an educated guess (and get it correct!).

17.30 Thursday 24th February 2005, the outward train from Bradford Interchange leaves on time and arrives at Manchester Victoria station in the same fashion.

18.45 Thursday 24th February 2005, my housemate and I meet up with a friend who has come over from Liverpool. We all get a taxi to the venue which is pretty far from the station. Noting the time taken to arrive at the venue so to allow consideration to get back in time for the last train.

The Gig: Was pretty cool. We all stand near the back of the venue because we’re “getting on a bit”. Maybe more on this another day — after I get some kip! [1]

23:02 Thursday 24th February 2005, we rush out of the gig half-way through what we believe was the last song. We walk in the direction of the station looking for a cab. No lit cab lights (meaning they’re free for hire) for over a mile! By the time we flag down a taxi and get to the station it’s cutting it fine.

Problem Two: We arrive at the station at 23.18, that’s two minutes before the scheduled departure time, and the train had already left. The last train home had already left. This leaves all three of us stranded in Manchester with no where to go at 23.30. An idea was suggested so we headed over to the coach station. Upon arrival the information desk worker states that we’d “missed the Bradford bus by 2 seconds” which wasn’t terribly helpful. But, luckily there is a coach back to Liverpool which we take.

00:50 Friday 25th February 2005, now we’re in Liverpool, twice as far from our original destination to our home! We head back to the house after a quick stop off at a bar and curl up on a sofa and a chair. Little sleep is had between 03:00 and 05:30 when my alarm goes off. We walk, dazed and cold, towards a bus stop where we wait for 20 minutes for a bus. We get to Liverpool Lime Street station at 06.30. Nine minutes before our targeted train back to Manchester Victoria.

Problem Three: However, by the time we’ve brought a ticket for the trip back to Manchester, it is 06:40 and the train had left the station. We then had to wait forty minutes, on some extremely cold chairs, for the next train.

08:30 Friday 25th February 2005, we arrive in Manchester Victoria station with a strange sense of deja-vu. We head up to McDonald’s for a breakfast, but the chain in the station doesn’t open ‘til 09:00 and our train was at 08:49! Annoyed, cold and hungry we sit on the platform waiting for the train — which arrives and leaves on time.

Problem Four: The return ticket we hold on our train is a “cheap day return” which means it’s only valid on the same day as purchase. Oops. But it isn’t our fault the train left earilier the night before. I explain the last seven hours or so to the nice ticket-checker man and he lets us off. And so he should!

10.05 Friday 25th February 2005, we arrive back in Bradford and grab a taxi up to University. I make it to my meeting with ten minutes to spare. Now that’s timing.

This backs up my stance of how farcicle the public transport is within the the UK. Last trains are just after eleven which doesn’t give much time to get anywhere after the pubs close. Note, that none of this farce was caused by Virgin trains, you get that joy if you travel south of Leeds towards Birmingham and London.

20:00 Friday 25th February 2005, 32 hours and still going! Time to go out parte-ing soon!

[1] Note: If Simple Plan hadn’t have talked as much inbetween and during songs, the drummer hadn’t played a crappy bass solo, Pierre tell a long joke while Sebastian went AWOL to the bathroom for a pee and them playing a minute cover of “Sweet Child Of Mine” then the gig would have finished earlier thus we’d have made the train easily!

[2] Note: Please ignore any spelling/grammatical mistakes as I’m just a tad tired ;)