Re: Office half full or office half empty?
As much as I enjoy the freedom and flexibility that being a car owner gives me when it comes to my travel plans, I'm also firmly in the camp that believes we damn well MUST do more to encourage use of public transport, partly because private motoring in its current form isn't sustainable, but also because reducing traffic levels on the roads benefits those who HAVE to drive. In parts of the country where the road network is running close to capacity, it doesn't take much of a change in traffic volumes to make the difference between a journey being a pleasant free flowing drive with a highly predictable ETA, and a journey that's a tedious collection of traffic jams interspersed with the occasional period where you manage to get out of 2nd gear, and where any hope of calculating an ETA went out the window within the first half mile.
So if it takes more than just bulk-buy discounting of season tickets to accelerate the uptake of public transport use, then given how critical public transport is to the nation I really don't see much of a problem in going further and subsidizing ticket prices. As I said above, the more people you can take off the roads, the better it is for those who need to be there, so by directly reducing the costs of public transport, you'd be indirectly reducing the costs of private motoring by giving drivers smoother, more efficient journeys.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
