adma
Superstar
Privatizing the railways doesn't seem to have made things any better.
Or to go on a different public-transport tangent, here's my pre-vs-post-Thatcher spin:
Four decades ago, going with my grandparents to London, going to Windsor meant a Green Line coach leisurely, picturesquely puttering from Victoria Station via Putney, Kingston, Hampton Court, Sunbury, Staines. (And it was still possible to do that route when I returned in '86, right as/before the bus-privatization mania started.)
Today, Green Line to Windsor means express coach via the M4 and Slough *yawn*. And I checked--the old routing does not exist anymore, not as an alternate "legacy option", not even as something that can be assembled out of present-day networks.
Efficiency and all, I can't help getting that whiff of dumbed-downness about the present state of affairs.