Liz Dobson: Ticket to ride is also a licence to irritate

Photo / Brett Phibbs

A study from the UK this week suggested taking public transport makes people happier, but that report didn't make our online fans happy.

We posted the story from the Independent on nzherald.co.nz and our Facebook page and the response was immediate.

Comments ranged from (my favourite) "I'm reading this as the bus I am on is stalled in a traffic snarl up. The person behind me has a constant wet and snotty cough", to "I get the bus to work and home every day ... it's not perfect but 99 per cent of the time I am heaps happier on public transport."

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I used London's underground train system when living there and the only time I was happy was when I managed to get a seat - next to someone who wasn't drunk or didn't smell.

When I was a freelance motoring writer I'd have to use Auckland's public transport system to pick up the test cars from such places as Highbrook (good luck with that), Mt Wellington (pedestrian unfriendly) and Wiri (are we there yet?). But as a freelancer I had a day to waste waiting on trains and buses.

These days my teenage kids use the increasingly improved bus service from our central Auckland home to school, and I pick a bus over a taxi ride to get from the NZ Herald's CBD office to get test cars from Grey Lynn-based car companies or dealerships.

I even recently bused home, and enjoyed watching the sun setting over the Waitakere Ranges rather than watching the brake lights of the cars in front of me.

But faced with a day-to-day commute on a bus I'd quickly become one of those people: "Young man, turn down your music"; "hey, cough into your arm, not into the back of my head"; "school girl, give your seat up for that elderly person".

So luckily for bus patrons I'm given new cars to test and an inner-city carpark provided by work.