Ah, Northern Snail. Your trains are slow, noisy and usually filthy. This morning, I was jammed into one of your three-carriage rush-hour trains, in a corner of the doorway (no seats to be had), making Uncomfortable Proximity Friends with the Yeti Beard Guy (ever seen that Friends episode? Yeah, he was like that).

I happened to be reading your brand new magazine, Northern. It makes your company look glossy and friendly, when in fact all I have experienced is grumpy staff, dirty trains and grumpy customers (due to the previous two).

Yeti neighbour from Friends

I don’t want to have to wait for the Transpennine Express trains just to get a train that is clean, comfortable, well-insulated from noise and fresh-smelling. There’s always a diesel smell on your trains and the engine noise is normally coupled with disturbing rattles and bumps as they make their journeys – slowly, judging by the way other companies’ trains whip past (making the windows rattle and the doors suck outwards). It’s not the best way to start my morning.

And then there’s the bus company. You’ve decided to withdraw the Sunday service completely through my (not tiny) village. And you’ve put the prices up despite making the Mon-Sat service every half hour instead of every twenty minutes.

At least I’m sitting on a nice clean seat as I endure the company of screeching teenage girls, or try to fend off the legendary “Six ‘o’ Clock Nutters Club”, who, as their name suggests, begin appearing on the buses from 6pm onwards. For some reason, these people always want to talk to me. No, I am not interested in your grandson being locked up for drug dealing. He might be a nice boy to you, but to me he’s probably a potential mugger.

All of the above means I am usually in a foul mood by the time I reach Armpit City. When I am trying to continue a course which is getting steadily less friendly with my love of food and sleep, being told that more and more of the work will be group-based is not good news.

Hey, universities: some of your students commute and cannot simply hop out of bed to meet people and practice working with equipment. When I’m paying you so much, how about a little consideration for the fact that my commute works out to about 40 minutes and costs a fortune?

In the meantime, all I want for Yuletide is a comfortable, affordable public transport service. Which I can sit down on. Please?

{/rant}

[image credit: Northern Rail Class 142 Pacer, by Ian Britton, via FreeFoto.com.]

Technorati Tags: buses, public-transport, student-life, trains