The poor state of public transport

This morning I travelled to London for the Jury Team launch event - more of that later - and was presented with the following travel choices in order to get to Westminster by 10.00am:

If I took the direct train from Swindon, the cost would have been OVER £200 for two of us, as it was peak time travel - the alternative was to drive to Oxford (about 30 miles), park in the park and ride, travel into the town centre and pick up the Oxford-London express coach - total cost for two about £40....the trade off however was one of time. While the train takes about an hour, the car/coach option takes around 3 hours.

The point of this story? We deserve better - public transport should be fast, frequent, safe, convenient, comfortable and most of all, accessible/affordable. I hadn't considered it much until I was approached about the Trans Wilts rail campaign, but perhaps if more of our politicians got out of their chauffeur driven cars and travelled on public transport (at their own expense!) maybe the rest of us would enjoy better travel options.