driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389-1277912...l
This was supposed to be a study to try and persuade people to use public transport. Unfortunately it showed that car travellers were happier and lived longer than their public transport using counter parts. They were also less prone to being depressed. I can certainly say for friends of mine who are forced to use the train to go to work that they find this to be true. PT causes them no end of stress as it can often make them late and they have to rush out of work to catch the correct train. I find the same. Walking or going by car is fine. Taking the bus is stressful, annoying and slower than walking!
Live long and prosper - go by car? :-)
teabelly
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Nice one!
Funny how we never heard about it at the time. I rather suspect that if it had shown that public transport was better for you, it would have been on every billboard...
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The question is if people are taxed out of their cars and get illnesses on PT can we sue the government for making us unhealthy? ;-)
Shame they can't make PT more like a private car and have single person sized cubicles with a separate air supply and your own choice of music. A crowded PT system offers worse conditions than those offered to animals. The minimum space requirements for people seem to be ignored (I think it is roughly a broadsheet newspaper) so I am not surprised people get stressed.
teabelly
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Difficult to disagree, although it does depend on the traffic!
Of course, it also depends on the PT. Travelling by bus, tram and train in Switzerland (where it's all joined up, punctual and even relatively cheap) is very stress-free.
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Drive in three modes :-
Routine commuting leaves me feeling neutral.
Business miles busy roads and schedules - wind me up
All other cases - happy.
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I certainly get less coughs and colds now I drive to work than compared to when I used to travel on crowded buses.
Commuting on public travel can be very stressful because you are not in control and you often don\'t know what\'s going on. \"Has the bus/train been cancelled or is it merely late?\"
Bus companies realise that they have a captive audience and their timetables change 2 or 3 times a year, often to suit their needs and not the customers. I used to dread the schedule changes as it would often remove complete routes and late night runs. Frequency of evening buses went to every hour instead of every half-hour.
Still it didn\'t stop the council spending EU money building a bus lane that is going to cost millions, even though during peak times only only 4 buses will use it every hour (during peak periods that is). So as long as you work in a nice 9 to 5 job (perhaps in a council) you will be fine and unstressed.
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That is something the transport planners can never understand. No matter how cheap or frequent public transport becomes, people drive because they actually like doing it. Most cars are their owners pride and joy, even those rusty old bangers you see on poor estates are cherished by someone.
Giving up motoring would be the last thing car owners want to do.
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I think many transport planners do understand that people do not want to give up motoring. That is why they produce schemes that have no effect other than to to inconvenience private motorists, to force them out of their cars.
And it works in a way. As a retired person I never go into our city centre, and I have not been on a bus for perhaps 30 years and never cared for pedestrian activity. It's remarkable how much shopping etc can be done on the internet. That's not much good for local business, of course. But hey, they can always put taxes up on what's left, and householders.
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