📘 Part 3: Public transport

This episode's vocabulary

Convenient (adj.) - suitable for your purposes and needs and causing the least difficulty.

Convenience (noun) - the state of being convenient.

Emission (noun) - the act of sending out gas, heat, light, etc..

Substantial (adj.) - large in size, value, or importance.

Cleanliness (noun) - the state of being clean, or the act of keeping things clean.

Inefficient (adj.) - not organized, skilled, or able to work in a satisfactory way.

Conducive (adj.) - providing the right conditions for something good to happen or exist.

Congestion (noun) - a situation in which there is too much traffic and movement is difficult/

Host (of something) (noun) - a large number of something.

Futuristic (adj.) - strange and very modern, or intended or seeming to come from some imagined time in the future.

Questions and Answers

M: What are the advantages and disadvantages of private transport?

R: It seems like the most obvious plus points are things like convenience, since you can usually order things like taxis right to your door, and directness, you just point it in the direction that you want to go and you get to where you need to be, unlike with public transport, where you might have a bit of a walk even after you get to the general area. I suppose, when it comes to downsides, clearly, cost is a factor, because greater position will need more resources, and you have to pay for them. Another negative aspect could be the environmental cost. I mean, if we just focus on cars, for example, then having lots of them will produce more emissions than just having a single bus, for example. So that could be a problem too.

M: Who likes to travel more, older people or younger people?

R: Well, in my country, older people get a bus pass so they can use public transport for free, or at least at a heavily discounted price. So I suppose they tend to get around a lot more, and then more generally, when you think about it, older people tend to have more money saved up so they could spend it on things like travel or things associated with travel, while younger people tend not to have such substantial reserves.

M: What do you think needs to be improved in public transport?

R: Oh, a million things. The maintenance and cleanliness could always be better. Just because you see lots of litter or damage. And then it never seems to be very well run or it's inefficient and wasteful. So better funding and a culture that is conducive to those things being addressed would go a long way to fixing them.

M: Are there fewer people using private cars because of improved public transport?

R: I mean, it's not that obvious, one way or the other. To be honest. That's not exactly something you see being reported in the news, and you don't usually go out of your way to find out about it. At a guess, I would say that while it makes sense that this is happening, there seem to be ever more cars on the road, but that's just a feeling based on experience, and it's not a fact, it's just an opinion.

M: Do you think offering free public transport will solve traffic problems in the city?

R: It might solve the problems of traffic congestion in some cases. However, some people, they're almost married to their cars. And the other thing is, if you give something, if you give people something for free, they tend to treat it with a lot less respect, which has happened with bus passes in my country. So I don't know if it will solve these problems, and even if it did, it might create a whole host of new problems.

M: How will transport change in the future?

R: Ooh, actually, I answered a market research survey about this recently, and so, apparently, lots of new technologies are in the pipeline involving drones and remotely operated vehicles. So instead of getting a bus, people would be shuttled to and from wherever they get picked up and dropped off by small helicopters and things. That's something they're looking at.

M: What? Small helicopters?

R: Yeah, it was in a market research survey I did. It looked pretty cool. I imagine there are various costs to this, but it sounds cool. It sounds very futuristic.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your answers.

R: Thank you, Maria, for your authentic reactions!