Silly Surveys - the public transport edition

No doubt you have been subjected to at least one of those dinner time phone calls asking for 5 minutes of your time to complete a survey. My secretary was the recipient of one a while back on the subject of public transport.

Unlike many others it was short and the results were published in the AA magazine.

Spotted the bias yet?

Apparently hardly anybody would consider catching the bus, train or ferry to go to the doctor or to go shopping.

Well Duh!

The reasons why were not reported and judging by my secretaries experience where not asked.

I can give you some idea why public transport sucks for shopping and doctor visits.

First - shopping.

Once upon a time, 20 - 30 years ago, you could shop at a small local supermarket within walking distance of your home. So close that making more than one trip a week was easy. The weight of a weeks worth of milk was no problem as that was delivered to the letterbox by the milkman and his milk boys.

In slightly more rural areas a couple of decades earlier there were such things as meat vans, bread vans etc that stopped at the end of the street.

No more.

Today's hunter gatherer, the modern housewife heads to a supermarket 4-6 times bigger than that small local one (which is now a video store and pizza takeaway) 2 or 3 suburbs away.

Her weekly haul can fill 5 decent sized boxes, judging by what ends up in the kitchen every week here. Two of those boxes hold just milk and chilled/frozen food.

Carry all that on a bus - I think not.

Carry all that from the bus stop home? -yeah right! pmsl

Then there is the doctor.

We are fortunate here that the nearest doctor is quite close by. A quick 5 minute walk up the road.

Right in front of the nearest bus stop in fact.

Up is the important word.

There is a rule of thumb here - you are sick enough to have a day of work and go to the doctor if you feel like collapsing at the top of the hill- that is half way to the bus stop.

People well enough to walk to the doctor don't often have to go to one - funny that.