A few years ago, the train companies urged us to “Let the train take the strain”.  Then, after a few years of declining service levels, the slogan was dropped.

Much more recently, short-distance bus journeys are the new growth area as many people find using a car for short journeys is just too expensive. Fuel prices at are record levels and show no signs of dropping. For that quick trip to the shops, the bus has become an attractive option.

For the politically minded, this is something of a success story. Bus passes and green incentives did little to sway people away from the car. But, add crippling fuel and tax hikes, aggressive parking regulations and a bit of an economic downturn and we have created what the cognoscenti refer to as a modal shift.

For many of our brethren in Europe, this will come as little surprise. In cities such as Amsterdam, Stockholm and much of Germany, the tram and the bus form an important part of their integrated transport systems.

The sad part of our story is that the bus operators are probably not set up to take advantage of the shift or to give the level of service that will retain the new passengers beyond the short term.  Schedules are still poor, timekeeping erratic and, perhaps most worrying, the standards of behavior of many bus passengers can be simply appalling. 

There is no doubt that we are seeing changes in traditional car usage.  The future for city dwellers is almost certainly electric and new technologies will develop and move us away from our hydrocarbon reliance.  But none of this is going to happen for a while and car owners are faced with harsh cost realities now.

The bus and the train make sense.  The big question is are they ready to take the strain or are we simply creating a new set of problems for ourselves.