Sorry, but the buses in Reading are no better than the buses up here, to wit: shit.
I'm happy that they've found a way of living that means they don't need a car, but their experience is absolutely unrepresentative of the not-London mass transit situation. People around here (a very ordinary small town in England albeit on the coast) who don't have cars find themselves either considerably disadvantaged (good luck taking a job with irregular hours, because if you finish at midnight or later, getting home is going to be an ordeal) and/or flinging themselves on the mercy of their car-owning friends and family.
For example: my office (that I don't go to any more, because WFH :D) is 30 miles away, which is 40 minutes by car. By public transport? Two hours, five minutes. And I live literally 5 minutes walk (about a third of a mile) from a (very minor) railway station.
There's a saying: in England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time.
The thing with cars is this: they give you agency. You get to go where you want, when you want. This is very powerful. Public transport, as much as I'm a huge proponent of it, is best suited to solving the commuting problem - as evidenced by its obvious success in London (and, to be fair, NYC, and other giant cities). But it's inherently travelling at the pleasure of someone else, and that's a very conditional freedom.
I'm happy that they've found a way of living that means they don't need a car, but their experience is absolutely unrepresentative of the not-London mass transit situation. People around here (a very ordinary small town in England albeit on the coast) who don't have cars find themselves either considerably disadvantaged (good luck taking a job with irregular hours, because if you finish at midnight or later, getting home is going to be an ordeal) and/or flinging themselves on the mercy of their car-owning friends and family.
For example: my office (that I don't go to any more, because WFH :D) is 30 miles away, which is 40 minutes by car. By public transport? Two hours, five minutes. And I live literally 5 minutes walk (about a third of a mile) from a (very minor) railway station.
There's a saying: in England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time.
The thing with cars is this: they give you agency. You get to go where you want, when you want. This is very powerful. Public transport, as much as I'm a huge proponent of it, is best suited to solving the commuting problem - as evidenced by its obvious success in London (and, to be fair, NYC, and other giant cities). But it's inherently travelling at the pleasure of someone else, and that's a very conditional freedom.