This blog is part of my 38 before 38 series. I write a blog for every single day for the 38 days leading up to my 38th Birthday.
I recently took a trip to the UK. London and Glasgow. We took a train up to Galsgow from London. It is a beautiful trip. If you have the chance, I would recommend taking the train. The grassy hills look fanstastic. We also went for a bus tour of the Highlands. The bus ride was iffy, but the Highlands are really pretty, even in the worst bog weather.
However what was more beautiful was the London transport system.
WTH?
There are two places in the world where I have lived; Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan and the suburbs of Houston, Texas, USA. Both places have abysmal transport infrastructure. I am one of the privileged in the former as I have had access to a car for most of my life. Which made things easier, but given the terrible conditions of the road, it was not by much.
The case of Houston is a lot more egregious. The whole town(yes it has a population of a town where I come from) is just a bunch of disparate spaces connected via highways. Everything is “just 30 minutes away” by car. You have gigantic highways that keep expanding and keep getting jammed anyway.
In this context, when you encounter totally functional metropolitan transport system, you can’t help but be in awe. We traveled the whole of London via bus or train almost exclusively. We visited all the touristy place. We even went to places where the locals don’t go. I was shocked that you can just go from place to place without ever turning the ignition key. The freedom of movement enabled by this infrastructure feels magical.
So yeah, public transport is cool.