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st_owly
Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
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 Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:43 am
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I am relatively lucky to live in a city which has one of the best public transportation systems in the UK. The local buses are a plc owned by the city council (not a private company) and the 3 councils which border Edinburgh. They reinvest the profits back into the service not lining shareholders' pockets. A single ticket is currently £1.40 for any route, any distance (there are no returns) and a day ticket is £3.50 and allows unlimited travel across the network for a day. There's a pretty comprehensive night bus service as well. If you buy a monthly pass it's even cheaper. We also have a mainline railway station with fairly frequent trains to most of the rest of Scotland, and the East Coast Main Line (and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line) to London.
Contrast that to the village where I grew up. There, we got 3 buses a week to the nearest town only. (15 minutes by car) Living there without a car is impossible and it's part of the reason I was so desperate to leave when I went to university. No wonder anything I did in my teenage years started with "Mum take me to the station please." Even after having lived in Edinburgh for almost 4 years, I am still in awe of the buses here, and all my friends who come to visit from elsewhere in the country are always amazed as well as buses from the town where I went to school to Newcastle are around £6 for a return.
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Gina Szanboti
Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11355
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Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:00 pm
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| merr wrote: |
| Zac wrote: | | They didn't, though - this OVA has an entirely new cast. None of the actors from the TV show are reprising their roles. |
It looks like a couple of them were involved with the old ADV dubs of the other Kenshin OVAs though, which were done up in Austin at the now defunct Monster Island. |
Did they at least learn how to pronounce Sanosuke's name for this dub?
| Quote: | | Especially because the rest of him stays unwrapped. |
From reading the comments, I think that should be "wrapped"?
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Echo_City
Joined: 03 Apr 2011
Posts: 1236
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Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:29 am
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| st_owly wrote: | | I am relatively lucky to live in a city which has one of the best public transportation systems in the UK. The local buses are a plc owned by the city council (not a private company) and the 3 councils which border Edinburgh. They reinvest the profits back into the service not lining shareholders' pockets. A single ticket is currently £1.40 for any route, any distance (there are no returns) and a day ticket is £3.50 and allows unlimited travel across the network for a day. There's a pretty comprehensive night bus service as well. If you buy a monthly pass it's even cheaper. We also have a mainline railway station with fairly frequent trains to most of the rest of Scotland, and the East Coast Main Line (and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line) to London. |
Is there really a profit; are taxpayer dollars used to subsidize this transit venture? Living in the US, I have yet to encounter a public transit system that was close enough to use without a car, got me to where I needed to go faster than a car would, ran reliably and wasn't massively subsidized by tax dollars. Having ridden many an urban/suburban bus here in America, I'd gladly pay the high cost of owning a car to avoid that; the idea of a public transit bus that people want to ride is foreign to me (ha ha). Intercity trains are laughably non-existent: Amtrak is a fail on its own, and a technologically backward disgrace compared to the trains of Japan & Europe. Sarcastic thanks to the US government for that, and sarcastic props to corporations like GM for helping to drive the knife into the once-respectable passenger rail system that the US once had.
Of course, as has already been stated in this, public transit in Europe cannot be fairly compared to that of North America due to the distances involved. As the lackluster movie EuroTrip explained, relative to America, Europe is like a mall and cities/countries can be walked to with ease, like stores therein.
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st_owly
Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 3:06 am
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Old article, but still relevant. Lothian Buses' profits continue to rise
We have a rare example of a virtuous circle. The service is so good (most buses are even 15 minutes or better in the day time, every 10 minutes or better at peak times) that lots of people use it, so it makes a profit and keeps getting better. Not a single penny comes from subsidies. I've lived in Edinburgh for close to 4 years, I can't drive and I manage absolutely fine, as do most of my friends. On the rare occasions I do need a car (like moving house etc) I have a friend who has one.
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Mohawk52
Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
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Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:17 am
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| Echo_City wrote: | | ...and sarcastic props to corporations like GM for helping to drive the knife into the once-respectable passenger rail system that the US once had. |
No you can thank The Wright Bros., American Airlines, and TWA. 
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