On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:39:48 GMT, Tom Haliax wrote in
, seen in uk.railway:
[...]
Two points in reply
1) Public transport staff I meet on my travels are very nearly all fine to
deal with. The ones who are difficult are a very small minority and we can
all have the odd bad day.

Quite. There *are* some complete arseholes working in the transport
industry, I know this from my own experience, but then there are
complete arseholes working everywhere. My problem with the comments in
this thread is that some people seem to be asserting that it is *only*
the transport industry which has arseholes working for it.


2) Trains do have effective monopolies. For example train is the only public
transport to Manchester from my town unless I want to use a succession of
local buses

Um. Straw man, I think. You're making rail a monopoly by specifying a
small usage sector in your argument. If you make the wider argument,
by discussing available transport rather than only public transport, I
should think it's a very different story.

To give a concrete example: rail has the monopoly of public transport
business between Lincoln and Nottingham, because the only public
transport competition is an occasional National Express coach.
However, rail carries only a minority of Lincoln - Nottingham
travellers, because the majority use the car.

--
Ross, Lincoln, UK

We're *not* afraid
http://www.werenotafraid.com