On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 20:33:07 +0000 (UTC), "Brimstone"
wrote:

If you sig is accurate with regard to where you live then on those occasions
when I've visited MK by PT I've always found it perfectly adequate.

It is adequate only if...

1) You travel during the day. The evening services are much more
limited, though better than they used to be. When I first moved here,
there were *no* buses after about 9pm, except on one route, and
services were hourly at best. Now, some routes are half-hourly and
have later finishes (my last bus back from the centre is now an
entirely reasonable 2325), but the reliability and punctuality is
****-poor, mainly due to the Council's specification of zero-time
turnarounds on tendered services to cut costs.

2) You wish to make a simple return journey to Central Milton Keynes
from wherever you are located (or from Central Milton Keynes to
somewhere else). Employment, OTOH, is somewhat distributed and
doesn't necessarily fit this pattern.

3) You want to do another journey, and you have unlimited time.
Bletchley to Newport Pagnell by car is possible in well under half an
hour. By bus it's exactly an hour. This is on the good side, as it
doesn't involve changing, and there is no co-ordination of routes so
connections are often poor.

Of course, there are the trains, but these are only any good if you're
travelling between the centre, Bletchley and Wolverton.

Also bear in mind that my experience of the taxi service is that it is
expensive and inconvenient. (Milton Keynes is not the sort of place,
by its design, where you can walk to a main road and hail a cab, and
when you phone it's anyone's guess as to what "5 minutes" means).

If you want to get out of MK for any reason, it gets worse. Off the
route of the United Counties X5, the VT99 Rail Link to Luton and the
West Coast Main Line, regional public transport is as good as
non-existent, and where it does exist it is infrequent and usually
does not operate in the evening.

I didn't initially buy a car on moving to MK, as I wanted to see if
I'd be happy using a combination of PT and bike for most journeys, as
I broadly was in Manchester (mainly because of its more extensive rail
network - buses alone are too slow for big city transport, and the
North West has a very dense local rail network compared with much of
the country). I wasn't, and soon splashed out.

I *do* use the buses for what they're good at - daytime journeys to
and from the centre. That's about all.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.