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?