"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 10:38:50 -0000, "David B"
wrote:

A London city bus, OTOH, may well have people on their way to work or
to an important appointment. Not only that, but if your journey is
only 10 minutes long, you're not going to put 20 minutes' slack into
it, while those travelling for 6 hours probably won't think twice
about leaving an hour spare.


IMHO if you need to be somewhere at a certain time, moreso if you have an
appointment or interview, you simply have to add extra slack to guarantee
arriving on time. I think this applies whether you use public transport or
your own car, the difference being that if you use your own vehicle, you
can't blame someone else for not providing a service if there is a traffic
jam due to an accident or breakdown. If people generally left earlier, their
journeys would be less stressed and they would be more relaxed and lets face
it, in the example I spoke about we are talking about waiting 5 - 10 minutes
longer than they would have otherwise been, time which could be lost in a
traffic jam anyway. In fact if I recall, because there were buses behind me,
which thankfully overtook to help me out, I made up all of the lost time
anyway - didn't get any thanks of course. I could understand people being
angry at a 20 minute+ delay, but 5 - 10 minutes is IMHO pathetic.

Whilst a lot of my coach passengers use it because of its low cost compared
with the train and are only going as far as London, a lot are going to
airports or have connections for coaches going further west and north from
London and so in a sense their journeys are time sensitive. It is true the
train is faster but there is no guarantee of a seat and no real sense of
security particularly late at night although it is true most coach
passengers probably don't have a car.