RoyII

It has been effectively for the last three weeks anyway. My Rover was over heating big time - on the A3, the temperature gauge was going off the scale, and the sounds of the engine were increased by the cacophony of the cooling fans working flat out. The garage diagnosed a blown head gasket, so for the last three quarters of a month, I have been at the tender mercies of public transport.

As experiences go, it has proved to be pretty uninspiring - it was quickly apparent just how rubbish the Rail and Bus systems are when you have to travel from Zone Four and beyond. It takes over double the drive time on the South West Trains service to go from New Malden to my workplace in Leatherhead, and even going short distances by rail to locales such as Kingston and Norbiton are subject to complications, as the frequent delays and cancellations make a relatively straight forward journey become, to use a technical term, a royal pain in the butt.

If the powers that be are in any way serious about getting people out of their cars and back on public transport, then some joined up thinking is required to make the public transport links outside of London Zone Three more effective. The evidence of such co-ordination between central government and the local authorities is pretty scant, so the only hope for me is that my car is repaired real soon.