When I work on weekdays, I take the bus home in the evening. That’s how I refer to it, anyway – ‘taking the bus home’. There are no bus routes that directly connect the areas of town where I work and where I live. What I actually do these evenings is walk for 20 minutes, catch the U6C for maybe 5 minutes, then walk another 20. The bus covers roughly a third of my way home, but it’s the best option for public transportation I have – if I took the recommended public transport route that required less walking, I’d have to pay for two buses and it would only save me 15 minutes compared to if I just walked the whole way. Though I’m happy to take the bus when I have the option, it’s far less useful than it could be if the network had more full coverage of Southampton and if the buses were more frequent. Our bus network needs to become a public service that aims to make public transportation an appealing option, by making it affordable, frequent enough to be convenient, and accessible across the whole of Southampton. We’ll only see a significant decrease in personal car use if the alternatives are strong enough – we have to offer more than just a third of the way there.
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