What is 'Anyway'?

You may, or may not, recall that some time ago, inspired by Sharon Astyk’s Anyway challenge I had decided to tackle my own life. You may wonder if I’ve achieved anything. Hm. More on that later. Perhaps when I’ve achieved something.

But let’s take a step back. Let’s begin with 'The Theory of Anyway’. This is Pat Meadow’s theory, popularised by Sharon and it makes absolute sense to me. Many of the things I do cause my friends and colleagues to wonder. Why take public transport, for example, when I could get where I am going more easily (sometimes) by driving? My often-incoherent answer is made up of various points that come down to, ‘I think it’s the right thing to do.’ The component thoughts that lead to this conclusion for this particular choice are these.

If I need to travel I should pick the option that emits the lowest amount of carbon dioxide. Climate change is cumulative and my decision will not, on its own, make a noticeable difference but it contributes to the problem and it’s the right thing to do anyway.

Similarly for transport congestion. Going anywhere by road in Sheffield is unpleasant because of the huge numbers of, mostly singly occupied, cars on the road. The car advert where a couple of gorgeous young people speed thrillingly along empty roads through glorious countryside is a dream. The reality is lines of little boxes on wheels, some shaking with heavy bass, containing grumpy unhealthy people, inching forward enshrouded in a miasma of their own exhaust fumes. Again, this is cumulative. One car on the road could get anywhere in the city in minutes. When everyone tries to do it unpunctuality ensues. Getting out of that collective misery takes away only my small contribution to gridlock but it’s the right thing to do and I do it anyway.

Then there is effective use of resource. I am struck by this when I look at the clutter of close-parked cars occupying all conceivable curb-side positions, and some frankly inconceivable ones, around where I live. During the day the street doesn’t clear, although there are fewer cars. The value in terms of money, embodied energy and resource tied up in these machines is vast. I know. I sold my car to pay for a kitchen. It’s not just the capital cost either. It’s the ongoing cost of tax, fuel, insurance and maintenance. If we owned our means of transport collectively think of the money and space that could be freed up. The road I live on is a tetris of steel, plastic & glass; without cars it is spacious, quiet, safe – a place for kids to play and adults to sit around chatting. Once a year when we close it for the street party. I can’t do anything about my neighbours’ choices but I can choose not to own a car myself. It’s the right thing to do; I should do it anyway.

The last two things are clear positives for me. One is exercise. For some years I used to drive to the gym, work out on the treadmills and steppers and bikes whilst watching MTV and then drive home again. ‘Like the doped white mice in the college lab.’ Being inherently lazy and having a certain amount of sense I have always struggled to exercise with the only aim being getting fit. My radical idea is to combine travel and exercise. Instead of walking to nowhere on an exercise machine I can walk outside, see the seasons change and arrive somewhere new, if only at work. Walking or cycling to my (fairly local) destination is the right thing to do for my health and wellbeing.

And finally, the time issue. I can get somewhere faster by driving, all being well and assuming no one has had an accident anywhere on my route. (I occasionally listen to Sally Traffic on a Friday afternoon just to remember how horrid driving can be.)

I’m not saying there are no delays on trains. Obviously not. But during the delays you can still get to the toilet, get a cup of tea, catch up with your mail etc. And if the delay is longer than an hour you can get a refund of the fare. But that is only one aspect of the time issue. In terms of actual time spent in travel, public transport requires more, but what you can do with that time, the quality of the travel time, is better on a train. You can read, write, work, knit, sleep, chat to your fellow travellers (or hide in the private aural world of your iPod), eat your lunch, drink a bottle of wine or just gaze out of the window. I am prepared to ‘spend’ a little extra time on public transport in order to enjoy the time I spend travelling. For me it is the right thing to do.

You can see that I am little short of perfect. Except last week Julia dropped me off at college and Doug gave me a lift home from Julia’s after a particularly fun evening at her house. This weekend I made Ian take me to a garden centre to buy two pots and two bags of ericaceous compost for planting blueberry bushes into. The first two trips were pure lazy indulgence, the last could not have been done without a car. What I am hoping to achieve is a minimisation of indulgence trips.

There are many other choices that I apply ‘Anyway’ to. Generally, like the issue of transport choices, they are built on a number of reasons. Why eat seasonally and locally? Why cook from scratch? Why eat at non-chain restaurants and cafes? Why make my own clothes? Why grow my own food? Why work for a small environmental consultancy? Why have a store of food in the house? Why be polite to people? Why try to form my own picture of what is true and important? Some of the reasons are based on a perception of environmental limits, on a sense of fairness, and some are just because I enjoy my choice but all come under the heading of ‘It’s the Right Thing To Do’, and that I should do it Anyway.

A jolly nice weekend

Ian was back from America this weekend and drove down to see me. Hurrah! We’d had tickets booked for this weekend away for months. It was Eve’s 60^th birthday and she was having a party. I like parties. However, a drive from Motherwell to Sheffield then Sheffield to Ware seemed like too much driving for Ian so we decided to let the train take the strain.

Which was all well and good, but having missed lunch at FFW (Food & Fine Wine) for weeks we went there first, Ian dragging our little red trundley bag on wheels and me carrying my knitting and Dune in my new Ecorotic (because sex should be sustainable) bag, a gift from Good Vibrations in San Francisco. Sally came with us and we arrived in good time, a little damp from the grey Sheffield drizzle. The food was excellent, as always, and the Shiraz/Grenache red wine was lovely. And, of course, there was lots to talk about; winery visits and French versus Californian wines and etc. So much so, that we forgot the time a little.

We tumbled out of the door with half an hour to catch our train. On any ordinary day we’d have made it in time but when it’s wet in Sheffield the people who normally walk huddle under bus shelters and catch buses. At every stop it seemed to take forever to load the passengers aboard, the traffic was reluctant to let us out, the lights were against us. To cut a long story to its sad conclusion, despite running we missed the train, bought as an advanced (non-transferrable) ticket. Damn! Two new singles to London would have cost over £120. Oh. I suggested we just ditched the party and went home. Ian was coming round to that way of thinking when he had a thought. How much would it cost on a coach?

We trundled to the bus station where it turned out we could get to London for under £40. We climbed on board and sat in the front seats. As the coach meandered through Sheffield I started to worry about travel sickness but once we got onto the M1 I was fine. It was a revelation. Comfortable, speedy and so cheap! Our fellow passengers were from a very different demographic from those on the train. Other than one small family and the driver we were the only white faces on the bus. Wonderfully, the constant irritating iPhone tones were not heard during the journey, not even ours. I shall be looking at this travel option in the future. We got off at Golders Green and dived Underground heading for Tottenham Hale to pick up the rest of our train journey. We arrived an hour and a half later than planned but otherwise in good order.

Julia and Dougs were already at the hotel so we met to stroll to the Drill Hall together. As we walked other fans emerged from the dark and we converged on the party en masse. The Drill Hall is an interesting place. A huge cavernous space with scattered tables and vast quantities of food laid out on one side, drink on the other. The consensus was to camp out by the wine and so we did, a rowdy fannish table. Luckily the other friends and family members were up for dancing and having a good time. Most of us remained determinedly rooted at our tables, gossiping delightfully.  Despite this I didn’t catch up with Joe and Judith or Rob and Avedon. We need more parties! John’s band was enjoyable, as always and if I hadn’t been so busy chatting I might have danced. Another time. We need more parties! Again, the food was wonderful and I ate more than I should so that at midnight I was ready for my bed. Luckily there were fun activities to keep me going for a little longer. The clearing up, performed as a group activity, didn’t take very long and then Claire and I ganged up on Nolly to get a lift back to the hotel, there to keep the bar open in the traditional fannish manner. Julia arrived a little later, thoughtfully carrying wet wipes so I could divest myself of the makeup I’d put on without thinking how to get it off. A good sized group gradually gathered in the debris of someone else’s party but we gave up by 2am due to a decided lack of stamina. We’re getting old. However, I still maintain, we need more parties.

At breakfast the next morning we heard about the top-of-the-voice argument that had kept Julia awake for much of the night and had disturbed Eve and John as well. What a joy. Nothing could have kept me awake by bedtime but I counted myself lucky that we had been on the floor above. Eve was continuing the celebrations at her local pub but Ian and I thought that one missed train in a weekend was enough and decided to give lunch a miss, heading back to London after checking out.

The problem with this decision, of course, was that we had originally planned to go to the pub so we arrived back in London at 12.30 and our train back to Sheffield wasn’t due until 16.25. That left us with a dilemma. What do you do in London for almost four hours when you don’t want to spend lots of money and you’re dragging a suitcase? Ian found a website on his iPhone that said we could leave the bag at Left Luggage at St Pancras for £6.50. This seemed a bit steep but better than being encumbered. We balked at the £8 it turned out to be when we finally found the place though but, turning away despondent, Ian noticed a sign for the British Library. What a marvellous idea! And so convenient. And open on a Sunday. We scurried over the road and entered paradise.

I know there is a lot to choose from but the very nicest thing about the place is that you can leave your luggage locked up for nothing. The bags were dumped with relief and we headed for the exhibition, Evolving English. This was a fascinating interactive display. My favourite bits were the wall displaying phrases from speeches (‘the Lady’s not for turning’ turned my stomach briefly) and lists of word origins (we’ve borrowed a lot of words over the years) and the dialect machine. Only one of the two machines were working and lots of people gravitated towards it so I didn’t have long to explore it but it was fascinating to listen to recordings of dialect from all over the country. I was disappointed that they didn’t have the Stoke on Trent dialect of my beloved grandparents. My dad commented once that it was strange in Knutton how an ash tray grew leaves and an ash tree was for putting cigarettes out in.

I could have spent hours in the exhibition but my feet were hurting and I get weary of queuing quickly so we ascended into the Sir John Ritblat Gallery to see the ‘Treasures of the British Library’; displays of the most beautiful books, maps and illuminated manuscripts. When we tired of the subdued lighting, presumably needed to protect the displayed material, we went to the café for yummy cake and coffee. My lemon curd swiss roll was nice but Ian’s coffee & walnut was better. We shared. As with all such places there was a gift shop. I was fairly restrained. Or at least I walked round picking up everything that I wanted and then walked round again and put most of it back again.

I feel we’ve only just begun to explore this marvellous place and envisage many more train-related visits. I have, in fact, planned an ideal visit for our friend Spike. She should arrive in the UK, maybe spend a day tidying Ian’s kitchen then come to Sheffield to go to FFW and sort out cataloguing and ordering my books before we take her to Sheffield station, gateway to St Pancras, the loveliest station in London. On arrival she could stay in the soon to be completed station hotel at night and live in the library during the day. What could be better? I’m guessing the hotel won’t be cheap though.

So, exhausted, we retrieved our bags and adjourned to the John Betjeman pub at St Pancras for an early lunch before sprinting for our train and heading back for Sheffield. We bickered gently about what to listen to on our shared earbuds, beginning with an ELO genius playlist, sliding off into depression with Justin Currie and ending up with jolly songs and Eliza Doolittle.

It just remains for me to thank Eve for a great party, Claire for some useful advice, Nolly for the lift, Julia for the wet wipes, Dave Hicks for the promise of a fanzine cover, the British Library for being wonderful and Ian for coming back despite the lure of Californian wineries. We need more parties!

PS Have a look at the British Library podcasts

A transport of delight - reprise

One of the useful things that the East Coast (and other train) website does is send email alerts when tickets are released for sale. Train tickets are available up to three months before travel and the sooner you book, generally, the cheaper deals you can get. At the moment travel is available up to the end of April including the Royal Wedding Day (hurrah?) 


Last week the tickets to get Sally and me to Eastercon were released but the return ones were not. Given that singles are usually cheaper I had bought the outgoing tickets. Today the return tickets came available and I went to book. Horrors! Only full priced (and first class) singles were available from Birmingham International at £35. An off peak return is £37.80. I was not happy. 


I didn't panic though; I remembered Martin Moneytips advice and split the trip. Birmingham International to New Street turns out to cost £2.30 at my time of travel. Birmingham New Street to Sheffield, seat booked, cost £10.50. Instead of £35 I have paid £12.80, a fairly good saving.

A transport of delight

I was talking about my preferred mode of travel during the lunch break of a course I was delivering last week. It's come up a number of times in recent months, maybe because of the inclement weather. I travel by public transport. 

Many years ago, when I was the environmental management representative for a company implementing ISO 14001 we had an environmental consultant visit us to do a legal compliance audit. I asked him for his car registration to let reception know because we always played car park Tetris - double parking was necessary. 'I came by train,' he said and I vividly remember thinking, how very odd! I am now doing that odd thing myself. I think it is a function of being aware of all the environmental issues. As a consultant I spend an appreciable amount of time keeping up with environmental news and researching environmental impacts. Transport is one of our big ones. Not only does it emit about a quarter of the UK's greenhouse gases, the congestion and pollution caused is choking our cities and making them unpleasant places to be. We cart around large quantities of steel, plastic, glass and polluting liquids to get us from one car park to another and during some parts of our commute we move so slowly and intermittently that we are almost parked then. On Tuesday morning I walked towards work in Sheffield. I stopped to chat briefly to an acquaintance at Hunter's Bar roundabout and was overtaken (very slowly) by a huge Co-op delivery lorry. After completing my conversation I headed up Brocco Bank. I'm not a power walker, in fact my preferred speed is the gentle stroll, but on reaching the top of the hill I had to hang around for a couple of minutes for the lorry to appear in my photo. It's not very effective to travel by powered transport in Sheffield at rush hour.

So, yes, but public transport. Isn't that a bit horrid? I haven't found it to be horrid at all. It's generally very relaxing as long as you reserve a seat when travelling on the more popular trains, and none of the buses I've caught have required me to stand. What it does mean, generally, is that I have to set off earlier and arrive home later than I would by car, although by no means always. The journeys usually take longer but that time can be used. I dislike driving to a venue to present training because it means I have to review the slides the day before rather than on the journey. Similarly, when I have performed an audit I will get most of the report written up on the train on the way home. The time is not wasted as it is when driving; listening to drivel on the radio. If I don't want to work I can read, knit, or just look out of the window. The train journey from Sheffield to Manchester through the Pennines is lovely in the summer and preferable to the impatient idiots overtaking on the Snake Pass at any time of year. The journey to Edinburgh or Glasgow along the East Coast line is also lovely with stunning views at Durham, Alnmouth and Berwick and along the coast up to Eyemouth. I love train travel everywhere but around London, where I tolerate it because the alternative is so much worse. I've had some fascinating conversations (except around London) and when I'm feeling anti-social I plug in my i-Pod.
In order to make sure I get a reserved seat I book my train travel on the internet. I use the East Coast website because it doesn't charge you for using a credit card or for picking the ticket up at the station. And because I'm used to it. Other train companies and the Trainline sell tickets for all journeys. I book as far in advance as I can and doing this means not only can I get a seat but if I can be sure of my travel times I can usually get cheap tickets. The Moneysaving Expert has useful tips on this here. I also keep a lookout for offers. East Coast sent me one around Christmas which had a single to anywhere on their network for £8. I promptly booked two weekends in Scotland. The travel for each weekend cost £16. You certainly couldn't drive for that.

Yes, but if you're not going to a city centre a train is no good you say. I must admit that the integrated transport system that the various governments have said we will have anytime now still doesn't seem to be in place but in the last four years there's only been a couple of places I haven't been able to get to by public transport, both in Yorkshire. Apparently it used to be possible to get to Heckmondwike but the service was discontinued. It's possible to get to the top of the M606 in Bradford but it takes hours. When I drove, though, it took going on for three hours. About the time it would have taken by train and bus. The M1/M62/M606 were pretending to be carparks on the day I went.

It is a good point though. I often need a connection from the station to my final destination. I use two methods here. One is the TrainTaxi website. This lists all the train stations in the UK and the local taxi companies serving that station. Obviously if you are arriving at a large(ish) station like Sheffield you can expect black cabs and the site notes this. For smaller stations it is prudent to call the day before. My only problem with taxis has been because I haven't kept an eye on the calendar and neglected to get in with an early booking on the two days of travel during Eid. Not a mistake I will make again! The wonderful A.B.Cars still got me from Garforth station to the Holiday Inn in time for my presentation and amazingly cheaply and then brought me back the purse I'd dropped in the cab. I never used to use taxis. I thought them an extravagance, but the cost of a taxi on top of the train fare has only once been comparable to the mileage and is often much less, and I pass these savings on to the client.

If money is tight, as it has been these last couple of years, you might still decide to avoid the cost of a taxi. I did this recently on a trip to Tanfield Lea in County Durham. I looked up its location on Googlemaps and realised it was about equidistant from Durham and Newcastle, around 14miles. That looked like an expensive couple of trips in a taxi so I looked on Transport Direct. It turned out that there was a bus that took me to within a couple of hundred yards of my destination and though it took 3/4 of an hour longer the entire journey was pleasant. Not so much going back. Someone threw themselves in front of the train just outside Sheffield. We were waiting an hour whilst the emergency services dealt with it and probably the train driver dealt with the emotional problems he/she must have felt. At least, though, we were warm, in a lighted carriage and could go to the loo. After quarter of an hour there was also complementary hot drinks and those going past Sheffield got sandwiches too. Very much more comfortable than the hours I've spent on various occasions sitting on motorways waiting for debris to be cleared.

The only advantage I see to driving to places for work is that you can take lots of stuff. Indeed, when I had a car I had to occasionally empty out the accumulated stuff and take it back into the office. The ecologists couldn't head off with their newt traps on public transport but with a laptop & a bag of paper I can and I feel that should, not just because of my environmental principles but because it makes my life better.

Synchronicity

Today has been lovely. I’m not sure why early October is often so nice. The day started chill and misty and slowly cleared to a wonderful brisk sunny day. I had a sales meeting near Shipley at midday so I got to sit in the window drinking tea and watching the day emerge from the fog whilst trying to sort out my diary for the next three months. Yesterday I was horribly surprised to find that I was training in Pontypridd the Monday after Novacon and it seemed sensible to sort travel arrangements out and avoid similar nasty shocks. I’m working away from home three or four times a week up to Christmas so I’m going to see a lot of public transport and be eating way too much uninspired hotel food. I remember scoffing when a friend said, many years ago, that it is difficult to live a healthy life when you are always on the road. I should probably track her down and apologise. Even if you are super-organised (and I’m so not) it is difficult to eat well and take any regular exercise, especially when you are up at 5 to get to the venue and not back until after 8. Actually it is difficult to keep up with the washing too.

So, organisation done I smeared on a bit of make-up and scurried down to the bus stop. I’ve given up on the no. 4 for going to the station; it’s just not convenient any more, so I sat on a crowded 83, popular because Stagecoach is 20p cheaper than First. It was packed with students.

Where I live in Sheffield we mark the milestones in the year by student presence or absence. The difference is quite startling. Over the last few years the kids in the shared houses on my street haven’t been much of a nuisance to me but there is a new lot in infused with the energy of youth. They were still partying outside at 5am during Fresher’s week. I’m hoping they will have calmed down a bit by the time the windows are reopened for next summer.

The boys who sat behind me on the bus enveloped me an a miasma of curry&hangover breath. One hadn’t gone to be d until 5, the other had arrived back from an allnighter in Leeds, done a bit of work on his dissertation and was heading back into town to sleep through his lectures. I vaguely remember being able to do that, back in the distant land of youth. I listened in, unashamed. If they were going to share their aroma the least I expected was to be distracted by their conversation. Apparently Sheffield is THE place for Drum and Bass. Something to do with Tuesday Club? No idea. Having recently read King Rat I was not averse to the idea that D&B is a sophisticated and important musical form, but I haven’t pursued it. I lapsed into a malodorous daydream as they displayed their music knowledge to each other. I emerged back into consciousness when one started extolling the virtues of Eric Bibb. Gosh. I saw him a few years ago at the Robin Hood (RIP) near Merry Hill. He was, as the boy stated authoratively, excellent. This segued into praising the Alabama Three (not 3, not from Alabama). Apparently they are also really good but not likely to last much longer due to their age and unhealthy lifestyles. I’d like to have chipped in but I knew it was unlikely that they would welcome a comment from a frumpy woman considerably older than their mothers. The knowledgeable one veered off to impress his friend with his choice of research subject; biomimetics. Brand new idea! All about incorporating natural living material structures and techniques developed in the harsh environment of evolution into engineering solutions. Fascinating! There was a good TED talk on the subject a couple of years ago. As we debussed I caught a glimpse of their fresh faces and marvelled at how connected the world has become. So much information is available so easily that I could understand much of what they were talking about. How the world has changed! Crafts and skills are being lost or downgraded into hobbies but information that in the past would have been too esoteric for the likes of me is now so casually available that I can appreciate it. Sensawunda!

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Even more so when, over the weekend Ian forwarded a piece written by Douglas Coupland, via Boing!Boing! He thought it would reflect my pessimistic worldview. How right he was. These are the comments that prompted him to forward the piece:

1) It's going to get worse

No silver linings and no lemonade. The elevator only goes down. The bright note is that the elevator will, at some point, stop.

And:

6) The middle class is over. It's not coming back

Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day?

That's where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going – to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return. However, this won't stop people from self-identifying as middle-class, and as the years pass we'll be entering a replay of the antebellum South, when people defined themselves by the social status of their ancestors three generations back. Enjoy the new monoclass!

The ones that made a connection with me were these though:

10) In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness

11) Old people won't be quite so clueless

No more “the Google,” because they'll be just that little bit younger.

32) Musical appreciation will shed all age barriers

33) People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s

1980: “We can't go to that restaurant. Karen's vegetarian and it doesn't have anything for her.”

2010: “What restaurant are we going to? I don't know. Karen was supposed to tell me, but she doesn't have a cell, so I can't ask her. I'm sick of her crazy control-freak behaviour. Let's go someplace else and not tell her where.”

38)Knowing everything will become dull

It all started out so graciously: At a dinner for six, a question arises about, say, that Japanese movie you saw in 1997 (Tampopo), or whether or not Joey Bishop is still alive (no). And before long, you know the answer to everything.

What I find so fascinating is how I sort of expected all this technological stuff to be part of a utopia (ecotopia) where we all lived long and fulfilling lives. How come the sensawunda stuff is embedded so deep in dystopian shit. The one that really hit home was this:

5) You'll spend a lot of your time feeling like a dog leashed to a pole outside the grocery store – separation anxiety will become your permanent state

Yes! All the time that my loved ones are away I suffer separation anxiety. I thought this was just a symptom of getting older. I hoped it was.

Going home

There's more to come about Fringe stuff but I'm too tired & grumpy to write it at the moment. We had a quite pleasant trip back to Sheffield, most of the way. It was a glorious day, bright and sunny with just a hint of autumnal chill in the brisk breeze. Through the train windows the whole of the farming community was out harvesting the golden fields of wheat. What happens to all those combine harvesters for the rest of the year? Two to three weeks of flat out work a year and the rest in store? 


It was an idyllic view, if crowded on the train. It was a four coach train, Glasgow to Plymouth. There were people standing from Edinburgh and people sitting on bags but there was still room to turn round. At least one of the toilets was out of operation. The guard kept telling us we could get off our train and get on the Reading train behind if we wanted a seat. And then Leeds. There was a festival in Leeds. There always seems to be a festival there at August bank holiday. It's not really a surprise. At least this year the poor crushed together cattle were not slathered with mud. And the fact that the toilet was broken meant that some people could stand in there as well (you wouldn't want to sit on that slightly awash floor). We managed to get off at Sheffield by starting quarter of an our early so that we could squeeze past all the standees and completely demolish then rebuild the luggage storage because, of course, our bag was buried. Never mind. We, Sally and I, were home. Jack should be getting into Oxford any time now, having waited for a cheap train.


So my question is, on the day most people travel home from Edinburgh and the festival in Leeds breaks up would it not be possible to find an extra couple of carriages and make sure all the toilets work?

Trains

I said don't get me started on trains. It turns out to be unnecessary because David Mitchell has done it for me. I'm always impressed by Mitchell's rants; he is thoughtful, rational and wonderfully, grumpily liberal.
See here and here.

The 3, a sorry tale

I've received replies from South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE), First (the bus operator) and Ian Auckland, the Cabinet Member with responsibility for transport in Sheffield City Council. The answer is, 'sorry, nothing we can do'. It's a commercial decision. I guess that since the Arts College on Psalter Lane has closed the income from the route has fallen. I'm not sure why we continue to think of it as public transport.


When you get a group of older people together in Sheffield they often hark back to the golden age, an age where buses were cheap and deregultion (curse that buggering woman*) had not yet happened. A time when cars were few, congestion was low and herds of ham sandwich coloured buses trundled, belching clouds of particulates, through the narrow canyons of Sheffield's streets. A time when buses were so cheap that only posh and/or stupid people drove their cars into the town centre. A time when it was feasible for the ticket machine to be a mini photocopier. These days, with £1.30 fares to go less than a mile, the ticket could easily be 6 foot long (130 x penny width and a bit for spacing). Oh those happy days!

In these deregulated days there is a fight to run the lucrative routes nut no-one wants to run the necessary but sparsely populated routes. You would think that on the popular routes, with two companies competing, the service would be excellent. There are two reasons why this does not work. One is that the two operators seem to run at the same time, leapfrogging each other through the too narrow roads, causing traffic safety problems and leaving passengers waiting twice as long as necessary. The other reason, of course, is that the popularity of bus services has fallen due to high costs and lack of reliability, which means more cars on the road increasing congestion and reducing reliability still further; a positive feedback loop.

The problem with our current 'public transport' is that some routes pay well and others pay poorly but are necessary to the people living along those routes. In the days of regulated public transport the 'profits' from the lucrative routes subsidised the rest. These days the bus companies   can make their money on one route and let another languish on the grounds that running more regular buses would not be commercially viable.

From an environmental point of view, attracting people onto public transport would both reduce carbon emissions and congestion, resulting in improved journey times for everyone and better local air quality. This is not something that will happen due to market forces. For this to work public transport needs to be provided that is truly public. I'd vote to re-regulate our bus service.

And don't get me started about trains...     

*to quote my Grandad

The saga of the 3, introduction

I'm sort of thinking that this may be a series.


I live in Sheffield. It is a hilly place. A very hilly place. And I live at the top of a hill like the great north face of the Eiger. Well not really but it is steep enough for Ian to refuse to ever attempt to walk up it. Last winter in the ice it was more dangerous than the fastest skeleton bobsleigh run. Yes, I chose to live here. One of the reasons was the 3 and 4. Unlike the 80 family of buses that drop me at Hunter's Bar, the foot of the horrid hill, the 3 and 4 trundle gently along Psalter lane and  end up at the top of my road. When I had to get to work in the ice I slithered up my mildly sloping road and bused into town on the 3 then out to work on the 40. 


The service has never been very frequent. At best the buses were only every half hour, once an hour in the evenings and Sunday, but it has been reliable and, importantly, ends up at the Intersection, near to the rail station, and is therefore great for visitors and for me when I conscientiously travel by public transport for work. 


On Monday, without any obvious notification, the service changed. Sally and her friends waited for an hour in town at the usual bus stop. When the second bus didn't turn up they went to the Intersection to ask and found that the 3 had been cancelled and the 4 had been relocated to Arundel Gate (up a hill). 


My neighbour comments, 'I got caught out on Monday morning (which is apparently when the new service came into effect). I saw no signs on the buses or bus stops to warn us! I was very unimpressed when I nearly missed my 8.20am train on Monday
morning because I didn't know the bus times had changed and had to catch another bus and run at full speed across town to get to the train station. I caught the train by the skin of my teeth - not impressed with First Buses at all!'

I am signed up with Travel South Yorkshire to receive notification of changes to the timetables of the 3 and 4 but I can't find any record of a notification and I didn't see any signs at the bus stops either. 


Having discovered this unannounced* downgrading of our service I looked on the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive website to find where to comment. Apparently their 'job is to encourage you to use public transport'. It's not clear on the website how they do this or how to comment but after trawling around for a good while I found their customer charter. I will be contacting this organisation today to see why my lifeline bus has been cancelled and why I didn't know about it.


*I'm sure it wasn't unannounced. See The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to see how bad changes are usually communicated. Further investigation reveals that there is a link at the bottom of the Travel South Yorkshire page called 'July Bus Service Changes' but how would I know to go looking for it? Especially when I am signed up to be notified of changes to my service.