From Monday to Thursday of this week I was at a training course, which was held out of the office. This particular course was held at a hotel five minutes' walk from a station that was on the same line between Edinburgh and Livingston, two stops from home, so I thought it would be ideal to get the train in and thus not mess around with traffic.
So on Monday I went to the station to try this. I had arranged to arrive just in time for the last-but-two train that would get me there on time. This proved to be flawed, as before getting the train I needed a ticket. (Scotrail do have a SmartCard travel system, which is better. But that only works if you already have the card!) So I queued and got the ticket, and was just in time to get that same train, which was several minutes late.
The journey was okay, but not really something I'd recommend - by the time the train reached Livingston it was standing room only. Fortunately, I was only going two stops, so it was only briefly uncomfortable. But then it was a short walk to the hotel, which was good.
Coming home, I unfortunately got back to the station just in time to see a train pulling away, which meant a rather cold wait for fifteen minutes for the next one. Then it was, once again, standing room only, but then I was home. And that was fine.
My conclusion was that using the train was okay - it was a bit more expensive that using the car, it was quite a bit more uncomfortable, but the actual journey was considerably quicker, so provided I timed it right it would be pretty good.
So far, so good.
On Tuesday I got to the station only to discover that there was a broken down train on the line one stop past my actual destination, meaning that all trains were cancelled until it was fixed. When would that be? There was no indication.
So I got the car in.
On Wednesday, I didn't even bother with the train, and instead just used the car, and the same was true of Thursday also. The experiment had ended.
My conclusion from all of this is that I was largely disappointed by the trains. Given one of the easiest and most convenient journeys, it proved to be a fairly poor sustitute - more expensive per day (or even for a five-day week with a weekly pass - which I couldn't get as I didn't have a photocard), considerably less comfortable due to there being one two few coaches... and then plagued by a key unreliability.
It was that last that really caused problems - when I got to the station on Tuesday I couldn't know whether the train was cancelled for fifteen minutes, an hour, or several hours. The boards said to ask station staff... but there aren't any at that station. So while a broken down train really isn't something you can legislate for or realistically avoid, it wasn't handled particularly well. And since my analysis of the pros and cons was already borderline by that point, this tipped it over the edge.
And yet, that shouldn't have been the case. As I said, this was the easiest and most convenient journey in the system, and it involved a single person travelling. For both logistical and environmental reason, the Powers That Be should be trying really hard to get that journey off the roads - if every lone traveller from Livinston-ish to Edinburgh-ish switches from a car to the train, the corresponding reduction in car use would make a massive difference to the system as a whole. That's something that really needs to be facilitated.
So how could it be made better? Unfortunately, that's where I hit a blank. I think there are three obvious changes: firstly, the comparison of the costs really should favour the train over the car, and should do so based on the patterns of travel that people actually use. (That is, there should be an option of a 5-day ticket, for people who only need it for the working week.) Secondly, they could really do with finding a way to make those season tickets more easily accessed. As I said, I couldn't get a weekly ticket as I first needed a photocard - either that requirement needs to be done away with or it should be easy to get the required card. And thirdly, on that specific route they need to be adding one more coach to the average train (which appears to be an issue throughout the system). Basically, if you have people being required to stand, you have a problem.
One other thing, specifically about the SmartCard. Having looked into it, it is indeed an improvement over the standard approach of tickets and ticket machines. However, they've managed to implement it in a considerably worse manner than London's Oyster Card (which itself is less good than most equivalents on the continent... but I digress*). In London the card is loaded with money and then the system applies charges as you use it, based on how you use it (so if you use the Underground, it detects where you get on and get off, and charges you accordingly. Also, it detects if your daily usage means a day ticket would be cheaper, and caps itself accordingly, and so on). The SmartCard system, by contrast, has you load tickets onto the card, which means (a) you need to know your exact journey and (b) you need to buy the tickets four hours before you travel - if you suddenly need to go from A to B you're stuck.
* The reason that most of the systems on the continent are better is that the providers of public transport are all joined up. So the same card can be used on the bus, trains, trams, and so on. London has made some steps towards this, but the system is far from complete; the Scotrail system only covers the trains and Glasgow subway. So if you need a bus to get you to the station, it's just a hassle.
(Of course the best solution would get rid of the cards entirely and do everything with a mobile phone app. First set up an account to sort out payment, then you scan your phone at the start and at the end (or even better, log in/out with Bluetooth), and the app will automatically be charged for the appropriate journeys - with all the discounts for daily tickets applied automatically. That way there's no requirement for a special extra card, since pretty much everyone already has a phone, there's no need to work through an arcane system to find the optimum ticket, since the app sorts that after the fact, and there's a minimum of fuss all around. Of course, that requires a public transport system that is optimised to get people using it, rather than one that is set up to generate profit. But we can dream...)
#2: "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide", by Matthew S. Gast
#3: "Version Control with Git", by Jon Loeliger & Matthew McCullogh
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