If there's one thing which marks me as different from other people in my profession and stage of life, it is that I don't drive. This means I can spend more money on enjoying my life rather than burning more fuel while wasting cash on a thing that will be obsolete in 20 years when all the petrol runs out. I wear expensive clothes, I eat game and play golf. I am 33 years old and I refuse to get a driving licence, but this is becoming increasingly difficult. You see, Belgium is a federalised country, and its three main regions don't like to co-operate with each other. Living in Leuven, Flanders, and working in Brussels, the Capital Region, means I have to change public transport companies in order to get to my place of work each day.
I get a Flemish bus to Tervuren on the outskirts of Brussels each day, and then I change to the number 44 tram to Montgomery metro station, where I go three stops to Maalbeek and walk. On a good day when they all coincide, this takes 45 minutes to an hour. Problem is this is rare. The timetable for the number 44 tram is a great piece of fiction. The greatest piece of fiction, in the words of Edmund Blackadder, since vows of fidelity were included in the French marriage ceremony. They may as well write the football results, or the weather forecast for the coming season. At least there'd be some truth in it.
My Flemish bus is about 5 minutes late each day, because it speeds up on the main highway and arrives on time or even early in Tervuren. Then I walk across the road to the Brussels tram. Then everything goes wrong. I look each day at the timetable to see if it is the same one and I wait for it to leave at 18 past. But it doesn't. The driver reads his paper, smokes, or chats to the other drivers behind him in the queue for the next departures after his. Then he sees the passengers getting impatient and he departs. The one after the 18 past is the 32 past, but he's left at 25 past. So is he the late 18 past or the early 32 past?
Should I buy a car? Where on earth would I park it in Brussels? How much does it cost to run a car per year? And then the driving tuition costs a fortune here. The nanny state demands that each individual takes 20 hours of driving tuition before even considering taking a test.
Advantages:
Go anywhere you want
Go shopping less often because you can fill your car up with as much as possible
Avoid the mp3 players of the neanderthals who sit in the back of buses playing their noise
Leave work when you want
Go out in Brussels until after midnight
Take all the costs off your taxes
Disadvantages:
No more excuses to not visit those eccentric acquaintances in the country who keep inviting you for coffee and naked backgammon
Transport bills quadruple
The urge to run over cyclists or annoying pedestrians would eventually be fulfilled
You can't read or prepare your day ahead while driving
You can't talk on the phone or finish off your appearance while driving, although Brussels drivers don't necessarily adhere to this rule
You can't flirt with other passengers unless you carpool - and then you have to hope your passenger is not a 40-year-old bloke in dungarees with sweat patches under the arms
Or should I stick with the public transport?
Advantages:
You can prepare the day ahead without one hand on the steering wheel
You can look in the shop windows without worrying about causing damage to the car in front
You can get away with admiring passers-by without steering your car into a rubbish collector
Your only fiscal worry is whether the ticket machine works
You don't need to negotiate your tram into a tiny parking space
Disadvantages:
You need to stand in the right place the bus pulls up or you're last on - Belgians have no concept of justice when it comes to who was there first
You need to drag your wheeliebag on and off each time you change
You have to make sure you are holding on as soon as possible or you can find yourself lying on top of the person behind - Brussels public transport drivers love their pedals
You are forced to listen to the incoherent nonsense of the passengers around you
You can't do anything about the baboons with earphones who think everyone else should have an interest in their music
You meet the same people each day for years and they STILL don't say hello to you
So all-in-all, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages each time. This implies that whatever you do, you're never going to be satisfied.
2 comments:
Well well well, - public transport.
You've been out of this part of the world long enough not to have to suffer the torture we call the daily commute.
I have no choice in the matter, a disability prevents me from using a car, and London has a £8 congestion charge that prices most people out of using a private vehicle anyway.
Trains are now so expensive, you have to re mortgage the house to use them - and they are stinky, smelly affairs that are either ultra-modern cattle trucks or cramped bone shakers that are about 10 years overdue their retirement.
The entire railway network is disjointed, with multiple companies running the thing - who's main priority is maximizing profits.
It can cost upwards of £20 a day to get a return travel card in peak time from my town, to London - and a yearly season ticket is going to cost me £2005 upon renewal.
The tube network is no better, with no less than 3 parties running it. You have the companies that run maintain the railways and repair the trains, and then you have Transport for London that actually runs the service. Reports of overrunning engineering works, derailments, signal failures or staff walkouts are almost daily.
Finally, we have our buses - outside London they are ludicrously expensive. Inside london, they are cheap - but driven by wannabe Michael Schumachers.
Things are getting better, with high speed railways opening all over the country (notably in my hometown, which gets the new domestic rail link from Dover to London, along with the international service that used to go to Ashford, later this year).
But by and large, our trains are delayed, uncomfortable, and run at the minimum possible expense to the shareholder possible.
Belgium, by contrast, has a lovely, cheap, and well maintained railway network that is on time, and makes sense to even a foreign visitor.
Germany is of course, the perfect example of how a railway and transport network should be run, but we can only dream of that here!
Well Sibod, I think I have rather little to complain about - now I feel like my rant on public transport fades into utter significance behind the devastation that is the UK transport network...
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