Hi all -

Went to Amsterdam at the weekend; thought I'd share some of my public
transport experiences.

1) First Capital Connect London Bridge - LGW, afternoon
shoulder-of-peak. Full-ish, on time, fast. While the ex-TL route in
full-on peak time is horrible, it's one of my favourite services the
rest of the time.

2) BA to Schiphol. An hour late arriving. Surly service, no apology for
delays. I wish through tickets on the E* and Thalys didn't cost
£300...

3) Nedrail to Centraal. Ticket machines still rubbish; we tried six
different cards on the machine at the airport that claimed to take
international credit cards before finding one that it would deign to
accept. Train fast, double-deck, clean.

4) Trams are good. Having ticket machines onboard is a brilliant idea
and I wish TfL would add them to the bendybuses. Overall (and
uncontroversially), Amsterdam's public transport system is one of the
best I've ever used. Haven't tried the underground, though.

5) Nedrail back to Schiphol. More "pick a card, any card" fun at the
machines. Grimmest gripper ever - even surlier than the BA staff. I'd
hate to imagine how he'd have acted if we'd given up on the infinite
card shuffle and boarded ticketless...

6) BA to LGW. See 2).

7) FGW to Reading. Why is the North Downs Line so goddamn *slow*?
Still, at least the train was on-time, clean, comfortable, etc. No sign
of gripper.

8) FGW to Oxford. Why aren't there any fast trains in the evening? Slow
train was 15 minutes late (well, actually it was cancelled at Reading
due to a failed unit and restarted with a new one) and took 45 mins.
This is irritating, given that the fast trains take about 20.

Overall, not a bad PT experience on either side of the Channel - and as
usual, the weakest link was the plane. The card experience was
frustrating, though: do UK ticket machines treat foreign cards as
ineptly as the Dutch machines do?

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org