You can rant in my comments anytime! :D

On the flip side, I once got stung in Poland for a silly mistake, and had to pay the fine. The trams/buses all use the standard system for validating tickets, put it in the little machine and it prints the time/date. But the old trams print that number on the bottom, the new trams on the top. Dumbo here managed to re-use an old ticket in the machine on a newer tram, and didn’t notice the fact that there was already a time printed on the bottom side. Stupid mistake perhaps, but despite the fact that I was clearly a clueless foreigner, despite the fact that I had half a dozen correctly used tickets in my pocket, and another bundle of fresh, unused ones in the other, and despite the fact that I had to borrow money off a friend in order to pay the fine, the ticket inspector frankly couldn’t care less. If I hadn’t been traveling with someone with a bit of money on their person, I’d have lost my documents, and probably spent the next day or two running around town, filling out forms to get them back.

But I agree, getting people to use public transport shouldn’t be as hard as they make it. It will never have the convenience attached to it that private transport has, being able to go when you want, where you want, with as many detours as you want, and being able to carry more people/things with you. But then it could be a damn site easier and more convenient than it currently is. Particularly in the UK, public transport really isn’t any cheaper than private for many journeys, even when only factoring in yourself and no passengers, and that’s despite the fact that the your might miss a connection, might arrive much later than planned, might have to stand up for some of the journey because there are no seats. And that’s assuming of course you don’t have to buy a whole new ticket for one leg of your journey, because a delay made you miss a bus that doesn’t accept a delayed train as an excuse, because the transport system in general is about as well integrated as a cat strapped to a dog!

Boah! Excuse the rant ;-)

I’ve always enjoyed the public transportation I’ve used in the UK, but then again, I’ve really only visited London. We went to Liverpool (by bus from London), but we walked almost everywhere we wanted to go in Liverpool, despite the bus system. I do agree about the price though! I went for the first time (as a paying adult, anyway) in 2002 and when my husband and I went back last March, I was astounded at how expense the Tube is. I just didn’t remember it from before. That is one thing I cannot figure out about mass transit: If you want everyone to use it, it must be affordable for everyone!

Sadly that isn’t always an option – in the UK I often find that traveling via public transport has very little advantage over private transport. It is unreliable, inconvenient (in that the network coverage is usually pretty poor, and badly integrated), and downright expensive, particularly if you factor more than one person in. That’s one thing I’ve always appreciated about the public transport in Germany, in being able to travel with more than one person on one ticket, though it still bugs me that I often have to watch 5 IC/ICEs go past because they’re not covered by the Landesticket!