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"He announced plans to roll out use of the hard shoulder across the core motorway network on Thursday."

What, next Thursday? That is quick isn't it? Or should that read "On Thursday he announced...." Anyway, I notice some people have been doing this hard shoulder trick for years. The government is so behind in it's thinking.

The cynic in me thinks that this and the motorway widening scheme are just ways to create more tarmac to put more cars on. A shot in the arm for the road building, car making and oil industries. Why not chuck a few billion at public transport to relieve road congestion instead?

John

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Yomper, I expect it is. I really meant public transport as used by people going to work rather than people going camping. You're not that fussed what time you get there, and maybe not even that fussed where you get.

I was looking at train fares to the start of the TGO Challenge yesterday. It seems it's cheaper to get a single than a return. It also seems to be cheaper to get three singles to Lochailort (Taunton - Birmingham, Birm - Wigan, Wigan - Lochailort) rather than one (Taunton - Lochailort). In fact, maddest of all, it's cheaper to get a single from Wigan to Lochailort, than it is to get a single from Glasgow to Lochailort.

To me these fare oddities are a sympton of a system in choas.

We've been beguiled and forced into becoming a car dependent society. Succesive governments have liked the idea of the public buying cars rather than raising taxes to pay for public transport. We pay either way. If you factor in time, stress, ill health and pollution; we pay dearly.

John

John

Car-sharing may be an option for you to get to Scotland !

Put an 'advert' here in the forums

Yomper

Car sharing sounds good in theory but these guys are walking across Scotland. If you leave a car on the west coast how do you get back to it at the end of the trip? Public transport is a shambles in the UK. If you try and plan a trip using public transport the whole process can become a nightmare, and even then you're never sure if the bus or the train will actually turn up on time, if at all. We'd love to put details of the best public transport available for all the walks we publish but we'd need a team of researchers working on it full time!

Arranging buse's, trains etc is really down to the individual, if you published them in the magazine the odds are by the time the mag hits the news stands the time tables will have changed anyway so it would be a pointless exercise

Best to book nearer the time of travel

I use public transport most of the time and only on the rare occassion I have encountered a problem

I've always included the planning and preparation as part of the overall experience of a trip, whether a local trip in Scotland, elswhere in the UK or abroad.

OK most typical trips only involve the return driving route to the walk, drive time and where to park etc. Occasionally involves research into options of public transport, local post buses or logistics of where to leave 2nd car. Sometimes consider incorporating bike or canoe into the equation (remote Scottish routes mainly).

Besides the national and local railway providers, there are regional and local bus providers. It's not difficult to find online links for their timetables if you know the area you want to go to.

If adding email links is too time consuming for researchers or TGO don't want to publish possibly perishable information, maybe someone could start a thread to build an area database.

I think it would be a great idea to include a walk in each issue, where the start/finish (access point) is geared towards someone getting off a train or bus. IE Corrour Station, Rannoch Station, Dalwhinnie etc etc and not forgetting other area's of the UK where it might be possible.

I second that idea John

Not everyone owns a car, me included and I am more or less reliant on public transport to get me to the hills to enjoy walks

So its down to TGO to publish walks that are not car dependent

Cheers

Yomper

To be fair to TGO they have published such articles occasionally in the past.

"if you published them in the magazine the odds are by the time the mag hits the news stands the time tables will have changed anyway so it would be a pointless exercise"....Yomper

But this is just further evidence that the system isn't working. Why do timetables change? If it was a well oiled piece of machinery there would be no need for timetable changes.

Good for you Yomper, not having a car, but I would have thought you'd be better placed than any of us to see how useless public transport is.

How can there be an integrated transport system when the system is owned by hundreds of different companies who are all competing with each other rather than co-operating with each other? Utter madness.