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18Alex18

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  3. National Express Coaches

    in Reading & Leeds Festivals

    Posted

    I'm travelling down to Leeds on friday morning (for the day). I want to try to avoid the extortionate on-site drinks prices by getting a few drinks down me early on that I can just "top up" on site.

    I assume drinking on National Express Coaches is prohibited but how strict are they? Are you searched before you get on? Is there anyone other than the driver patrolling the coach?

    I can imagine on any other day - if I whipped out a can of lager and started drinking it that someone might report it to the driver - but on a coach of festival-goers the situation is likely to be different.

    If I was to have, say, a 2 litre bottle of coke that happened to contain another unnamed substance would there likely be any issues?

  6. Driving to Glastonbury.

    in Chat

    Posted

    4 of us went in a Ford Fiesta - it was a bit of a squeeze but not ridiculous. We got 3 rucksacks, 2 tents, 4 sleeping bags and a trolley in the boot. Then another rucksack in the middle between the 2 backseat passengers. You can throw soft things (pillows, sleeping bags) into the back to line the passengers seats. If anything, pillows add to the their comfort. Then we had a crate of beer in the passenger side footwell and that left room for any additional bags/stuff between the legs of the passengers in the back.

  10. £50 for car parking tickets in future

    in Chat

    Posted

    Also, I'm just watching the news and they're talking about the fact that East Midlands Airport is charging £1 to drop someone off.

    I don't understand why GFL don't try and implement a drop off charge if they wish to reduce and discourage car use.

    Drop offs are the worst of all the methods of getting to the festival.

    I know some people who got taken from Leicester to Glastonbury on wednesday last year and picked up on monday. That's 4 journeys to get them to the festival. If anything - the festival should encourage you to bring your own car and park it rather than get dropped off.

  15. £50 for car parking tickets in future

    in Chat

    Posted

    Using AA running costs, the Birmingham round trip by car isn't £40, it's £77. And more than that if your car cost more than £12k, or if you do less than 15k miles per year.

    The argument still holds - that it really should be cheaper than it is by coach, but the comparison should be done on real numbers, not wilfully optimistic ones that ignore the industry figures for running a vehicle.

  17. £50 for car parking tickets in future

    in Chat

    Posted

    People who say that people who are driving instead of using public transport are ruining the planet are deluded - the people who are instigating this are the companies who charge the prices.

    I don't think I'd ever go and not take my car, because it's just so much more convenient.

    Using fair trade as an example, people are willing to pay a little bit extra to feel like they've helped the planet. Note; "a little bit extra"

    I'm sure if the cost of public transport was 10%-20% more than driving people may be able to justify it to themselves. As most people have said, it costs between £10-£30 per person to take a car. Maybe if the coach was £25-35 then people would be able to justify it.

    Until the coach companies are bothered about the environment then I'm not going to be. It's their responsibility just as much as mine - except they have much more flexibility than me. I'm sure they can lower their prices by £10-£20 comfortably, but for me, another £20 is a lot of money.

    This may be me being short-sighted, but say a coach is going from Birmingham - that's about 2 hours. I've no idea what the capacity of a coach is so I'll be prudent and say 40 (4 across each row and 10 rows). It costs me £40 in fuel to get to Birmingham and back so let's say it costs a coach 3 times that - £120 - divided by 40 that's £3 a passenger for fuel. Next let's pay the driver. Let's say it takes him 6 hours there and back both ends. So 12 hours. Let's say that every passenger pays him £7 out of their own pocket directly to the driver... 7x40=£280 - that's over £20 an hour and everyone's currently paid £10 each. Now let's say the coach company pockets £20 profit per passenger, to fund new coaches, maintenance and salaries. That's 20x40=£800. That's £800 gross profit per coach.

    Now every passenger has paid £30 return, the coach driver has made £280 and he can do another journey on thursday. The bus company has made £800. Let's say they can put on 50 buses to glastonbury - 50x800= £40,000 profit for a weekend of work. They do that again for reading, for leeds, for download, for t in the park etc etc etc.

    I may have overlooked a few things, a few figures, but that's just a basic overview of it - someone may correct me.

    And another thing; why does it cost me about £9 to go one way, two stops into Birmingham when anyone who lives in London can go anywhere they want in London for about £1?

  20. £50 for car parking tickets in future

    in Chat

    Posted

    We took 4 people in a Fiesta. I think once you put 4 people in a Fiesta, the remaining space isn't much more than you'd be allowed on a coach anyway - we could've taken the same amount of stuff on a coach, we only had the amount that we could each carry in one trip.

    And the idea about paying £10 for each empty seat in a car?...

    Should 2 people in a 2 seat convertible pay less than 4 people in a small 5-seater hatchback? Really?

    The system at the minute is fine as I see in terms of the cost - it costs us about £50 in fuel plus a £15 car parking ticket to get there and back, so £65. I think that's entirely reasonable.

    To try to charge us £200 for the privilege of being told how much stuff we can take, doubling our journey time, sharing our journey with dozens of other people and taking away our ability to come and leave as we wish is ludicrous.

    Until the cost of taking a coach is cheaper than going in the car then it doesn't matter what they try. If they increased the parking cost by £35 it would still be cheaper for most people to take the car. There's only so much you can charge someone to park their car for 5 days. Eventually, the price has to come down for the coach rather than go up for the drivers.

  21. I love sausages flag

    in Chat

    Posted

    Definitely wasn't there this year as it lurked around the Pyramid 90% of the time last year, so unless the carrier has suddenly developed a love for more niche music in the past 12 months then I'm sure it wasn't there.

  22. Crush

    in Chat

    Posted

    I'd never been to the late-night ares before. We went down after Gorillaz at about 12 to have an explore and see what it was like. It was so busy we didn't have time to assess anything - we couldn't really stop to look at anything - you had to know where you wanted to go and head straight for there - were herded around all the late night areas within about 15 minutes and back out onto the railway track.

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