Commuting part II

Apologies for the long delay since the last post, but I've got myself digs in London to avoid the daily commute. It was proving too much for me, taking too much time out of my life.

In all, I estimated that I was spending three and a half hours a day travelling, by the time I added in the waiting time caused by needing to get to the station early enough to ensure I got a seat, and the onward travel to my office from Victoria. None of this was helped by the fact that the rush-hour services are slower then the off-peak trains as they stop more, and the inbound trains seem to wait for several minutes outside Victoria in the mornings waiting for platforms.

Remarkably, I managed to find a room (courtesy of a former Brightonian) in London for less than my monthly season ticket so, even with the additional cost of Underground and bus fares, the arrangement breaks even financially.

All that has, of course, meant less time on the Brighton end of the blog. I will try to catch up in due course!

Commuting...

Well, I've had a month so far of my new daily routine of commuting from Brighton to London in the rush hours.

It's been an interesting but often depressing experience. Until now, I've travelled for work mostly off-peak, when things have seem to have run pretty smoothly. But so far, my regular inbound trains (one of the extended Gatwick Expresses) have been unfailingly late. Sometimes only by 5 minutes, and other times up to 40 minutes. But not one has actually arrived at the stated time: and that is with the slower, peak-time services which all take over an hour from London to Brighton (though I realise they make a few more stops).

Of course, I realise the performance figures refer to trains being on time if they arrive within 10 minutes of the scheduled time, but it seems the figures in the low 90s in percentage terms must be largely determined all those relatively empty trains running off-peak; peak services seem to be much more fragile.

And, is it my bad luck I've had four major incidents - roughly one a week - so far? These include a man who had climbed under a train (5 hour delay), a broken rail (3 hour delay), and the recent problem with Balcombe tunnel (where the lining needed emergency repairs). On that day I didn't even make it into work.

And of course this for well over £3,000 a year. I may rent a room up in town...

The best cities to live in?

Wednesday saw the publication of Mercer's 2010 Quality of Living survey, reported by many news sites as 'the best cities in which to live'.

The annual survey is prepared by Mercer Consulting in New York and ranks cities by a range of criteria, such as access to work, the availability of housing and services, the cost of living, the level of crime, and so on.

The results are very interesting, not to say controversial. Vienna retains the top spot from 2009 as the city with the world’s best quality of living, with Zurich and Geneva following in second and third position, while Vancouver and Auckland remain joint fourth in the rankings. Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Bern and Sydney make the up the remaining top 10.

Read the message boards across the media and there is a hot debate as to how places like Bern and Luxembourg manage to rate more highly than Barcelona or Paris, or why no city from the USA features in the top 30 and - even more controversially - only two Asian cities feature in the top 40. The preponderance of European and German-speaking cities has led to accusations of Eurocentricism, and a preference for the 'clean but dull' over the 'messy but interesting'. In the UK, London is the highest-ranking city at 39, followed by newcomer to the list Aberdeen (53), Birmingham (55), Glasgow (57) and Belfast (63), but many will be surprised at the absence of Edinburgh or Bristol.

The great difficulty of such surveys is that different people would use different criteria for what constitutes 'Quality of Life'. Although Mercer have gone to great lengths to try to be objective (and claim that it is objective), the very choice and weighting of criteria is, of itself, a very subjective business.

Perhaps the Mercer project might equally be entitled 'the best governed cities', since items like public services, crime and public transportation rank so highly. Had 'governance' been chosen in the title, I suspect many commentators would have been less worried. Issues such as the ethnic diversity of the city and the climate are critical factors for many people's quality of life (for good or bad), but the former doesn't feature at all, and the latter is but part of the 'natural environment' criterion. And if you are a soccer fan or a water-sports enthusiast, access to a UEFA league club or the coast might be completely essential.

Of course, the Index is designed to be used by global organisations and governments posting people around the world. Even so, the idea that the average person would prefer to be posted to Bern or Dusseldorf over Paris, New York, Hong Kong or London, will seem to many as a little odd.

And, alas, Brighton doesn't even get a mention...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

After the snow, I suspect every other blog will about the weather this week, either carping on about how a few inches brings everything in the UK to a standstill, or how wonderful it is to have a day off.

I'm firmly with the latter. We've had a good six inches here in West London, falling all in one night, and it's the worst single snowfall for as long as I have lived here. So we can't be expected to gear up for it: the cost of all those snowploughs sitting doing nothing for years on end would be something to grumble about in its own right. And one day off every ten years is hardly a disaster (especially when most of us do loads of unpaid overtime). Clearly, places like hospitals have a torrid time, with ambulances struggling through snow-bound side roads, and wards being short-staffed just as there's a surge of broken bones and twisted ankles from people slipping over, but for the most part we catch up pretty quickly.

Actually, not everything did grind to a standstill, despite what the news media would have you believe: I travelled yesterday morning from Barry in South Wales back to Kensington, and the journey was pretty smooth: OK, my train from Cardiff was cancelled, but another one (from Swansea) turned up around the same time, and made it to London Paddington, taking only five minutes longer than usual. There was no District Line south, but by a combination of the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines I was still home in half an hour. The worst bit was the last few hundreds yards from the Underground station, as the pavements were snowy. But, as you can see from the photo, it did look glorious, and a succession of charmingly eccentric snowmen have been built in the gardens over the last 24 hours.

There were a few surprises in what kept going and what did not: the Heathrow Express was suspended, despite the rest of the Great Western main line working normally, and despite the fact that the Piccadilly Line - with its vulnerable ground-level electric rails - was operating normally through to Heathrow. Apparently, trains cancellations were caused as much by the fact the staff couldn't get to work, as by snow on the line.

Still, things around here seem to be back pretty much to normal, so roll on spring!

Tourist shopping

I've never been one to go on holiday with the express view of shopping. In fact, shopping strikes me as the last thing I'd want to do when I'm abroad, when the prospect of visiting churches or museums, beaches or hill-walking country, or just sitting in a cafe watching the world go by, are the alternatives.

OK, so we've picked up the odd bit of pottery at markets when looking for the local 'colour' - difficult to avoid in North Africa, for example - and when in the USA I did buy a pair of cowboy boots - the sort of thing it's hard to get here, and which are particular to the place we visited. But the thought of going shopping for clothes or other items you can just as easily buy at home I find rather bewildering.

Clearly, however, I'm in a minority, if Oxford Street on Saturday was anything to go by. There seemed to be crowds of Dollar- and Euro-zone tourists on the tubes, buses and on the pavements, all shopping frantically while the pound is in such a miserably sorry state. Primark seemed to be a particularly popular destination judging by the crowds streaming in and out, as the normally very competitive clothes store had a sale on (as if it's possible to discount a £7 pair of jeans? Well, to £4, I suppose. At that rate the contents will soon be cheaper than the carrier bag you carry them out in).

I suspect this could become an interesting phenomenon this year: with no prospect of the pound recovering for some months, it may well be that London's retail sector is buoyed by the influx of visitors spending their hard earned cash here instead, while the locals stay at home. Why, it might even be worth sitting in a cafe in the West End, literally watching the rest of the world go by...

Motorcycles in bus lanes

Great news - London Transport has decided to allow motorcycles in bus lanes for a trial period.

From 5 January 2009, an 18-month trial will allow motorcycles, mopeds, scooters and tricycles - but not those with sidecars - to travel in most red route bus lanes.

The only quibble that I can see is that it excludes borough bus lanes - ie those lanes introduced by individual boroughs. I can see this causing a certain amount of confusion - how are you to know whether you are in a participating bus lane or not? The website has detailed maps showing which lanes are included, but this is hardly helpful out on the road.

Still, as a motorcyclist, I think it's a step forward. As it's a trial, I hope bikers behave responsibly in using this new facility. And let's hope it reduces the number of casualties from accidents.

Cough, splutter

Yuck. Here comes my first cold of the winter. I woke up on Saturday on a week-end away in Brighton, feeling absolutely fine. But by 10.30 had a streaming cold and a sore, sore throat. So, off we went to those nice people at Watts & Co for some medication, leaving some time later with a small hamper full of pharmaceutical goodies.

Apart from feeling hopelessly sorry for myself (ah, a case of man 'flu, I hear you say...), I was pondering where I'd picked it up. I've been out for meals twice this week, and made a visit to the new Westfield Shopping Centre, so could have picked it up there, but I suspect it was more likely to be the packed tube and overground trains I caught on Thursday and Friday.

The sardine-like conditions we're expected to endure, travelling in the capital, really are the perfect place for exchanging germs: warm, stuffy carriages, with lots of close contact. When someone sneezes (without covering their mouth, naturally), you can almost hear the cries of glee from the little bugs as they are propelled on their way to infect a new victim.

Something I don't understand about my fellow travellers in these conditions is why no-one thinks of opening a window, to let some fresh air in and blow a few of the bugs out. So often the windows are all steamed up inside, and it's suffocatingly stuffy, yet every window remains resolutely and firmly shut. I often feel I'm a one-man window opening service: I force my way onto the carriage, and then hear myself say, 'could someone open a window, please?'. Invariably, someone obliges, but I don't know why it didn't occur to them to do it before.

Another of life's unfathomable mysteries, I suppose...