Last Tuesday was a cool day. Earlier this year in good old SF, Valerie worked with a guy named Michael at the St Francis hotel. I got to meet him at a company barbecue at a Giants game, and he was indeed an interesting guy.

Anyway, he was over in Ireland for about a week on holidays with his friend, Jamie (both of them are originally from Boston, but Michael now lives in SF and Jamie in LA). On the final part of their holiday, Valerie and I drove down from Belfast to Dublin to spend the day with them and catch up a little bit.

That’s us at the Molly Malone statue, Michael in the middle and Jamie on the right. We spent most of the day doing touristy things - Trinity College, Dublinia, Temple Bar, St. Stephen’s Green…it was fun as I don’t visit Dublin very often. The weather wasn’t too bad, it rained a bit but was mostly clear. Was definitely colder than Belfast, though. I was freezing all day!

We had dinner together at the Westin hotel, and as Michael is an employee with Westin - we had the whole meal for half price. Unfortunately saving money wouldn’t last long.

At the end of the day, Valerie and I went back to the car park to get my car, expecting a big parking charge of around €25. To be fair, we did eventually pay the €27 fee, but turns out the car garage closed at 7pm (what sort of place is this??) so my car got locked in. Nightmare.

I phoned the number to get help, and was told it would be a €60 callout fee to release the car. We briefly considered staying overnight and picking the car up in the morning, but eventually Valerie and I concluded that we just wanted to go home. 20 minutes the guy said and somebody would come and open the gates.

1 hour later and there’s still nobody, and the directions for where to meet this guy were so vague that I was beginning to worry if I was ever going to see him. Eventually after another half hour he shows up, with the thickest Irish countryside accent I’ve ever heard (like Tom from Father Ted). Still have to pay the car park fee, then pay this swine his €60 tax, and the amount of time spent on the phone cost me another £5 at least. Expensive night, but worth the effort.

It all got a bit much for Val, she barfed just outside Newry.

I realise that this is my first post for close to three weeks, and my first post since arriving back in the motherland, so welcome home to me. I’ve started back at university, moved back up to Belfast and have settled into student life once again. In some ways it’s nice to be left the work environment, on the other hand it’s not so nice to have no income and be in final year with a ton of work to do. Anyway, that’s by the by.

Let me get to the issue in hand here. I’m in favour of public transport and I embrace it where possible. Being without a car in San Francisco for an entire year was liberating, as the cost of fuel, insurance, tax and upkeep puts a fair dent in your expense sheet. I was also rather spoiled in SF with their excellent public transport network of buses, metro, trollies and cable cars. For most destinations there were several ways of getting from A to B.

Back home here in Northern Ireland, our public transport provider - Translink - haven’t quite thought out their pricing strategy yet. You’re grand if you take the train. To take the train from Jordanstown to City Hospital just hop on at the J’town stop and tranfer at Central Station. Easy.

Then someone please explain why the policy for the buses isn’t the same? If I take the UniLink bus from Jordanstown to Queen’s University, I’m still about a 15 minute walk from home, so it makes sense to transfer to the Metro bus service which stops literally right outside my front door. But no, if I need to do that Translink will fleece me another $1.70 or something just for that short little journey. Of course, I could walk but when it’s raining heavily and I’m tired it’s not the preferable option. Like I said before, I’m going from A to B and Translink can do that for me, just not in one trip. I don’t transferring, really I don’t, but why should I have to pay because their crappy bus system doesn’t take me where I need to go in one route.

And finally, the “just buy a day pass” argument doesn’t work because a) day passes aren’t valid on Unilink, and b) even if they were I don’t see the need for a day pass as I’m not making many commutes, just one.

I’ve explained this to several people who all fail to see my point (although most are not public transport users, so their opinion is therefore superfluous). Am I on my own on this?