Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
Investment in public transport should have been done years ago, before trying to price commuters out of their vehicles......and as most public transport is currently privately owned, you can't expect the companies to want to do anything other than make a profit...which in the current economic climate and with the price of fuel, road fund and insurance is highly unlikely.
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Hit the nail on the head there, Margaret. Private transport companies are, obviously, concerned about profit and nothing else. However, transport isn't just a profit-making exercise in the way that other private companies are. It's a service to the community and a way to help safeguard the environment. The government should be subsidising public transport to improve it and make it more user-friendly, instead, as Jambutty says, of wasting billions and billions of pounds on overseas military adventures, nuclear weapons, a massive proliferation of bureaucracy, propping up the EU, unworkable computer systems in the NHS and all manner of madcap projects.
What we end up with instead is the worst of both worlds - the highest fuel taxes in Europe and one of the poorest public transport systems.