This isn't going to be an exercise in nostalgia. I'm not going to advocate bringing back steam engines to Britain's railway lines. But I have to say that during my ever-lengthening lifetime, none of Britain's transport challenges has been met — not one!

This rant was inspired by the consistent late-running of the No 22 bus betwen Cambridge and Saffron Walden, a service run by StageCoach presumably for the old ladies who dwell in the string of villages between these two metropoli. Buses begin to run too late in the morning, and cease too early in the afternoon, to be of any use to commuters, and there is no evening or Sunday service. So the buses creep along the narrow lanes and village streets carrying only a handful of elderly and one or two tourists. No doubt the bus company will soon claim that there is no call for the srvice, and request its withdrawal.

This is despite the fact that the villages are all dormitory communities for Cambridge, London and Saffron Walden, and are lived in a significant number of working people who, if encouraged, could use public transport to access their jobs and leisure activities.

And at Hinxton there is the Human Genome Campus, served by a huge (and soon to be enlarged) underground car park. The Cambridge to London railway line passes within a few hundred yards of the main building, yet there is no station that could deliver staff almost to the door.

Too many cars, already!

Every day, more people are being encouraged to travel by car as an alternative to inefficient, dirty, or non-existent public transport. Yet Britain is already full of cars, 22 million of them, and its arteries are choked, its streets a milling slow-moving sludge of motor vehicles. Every pleasant old building, every terraced house, every view, is seen behind a foreground of stationary, brightly-painted metal, or a constant blur of moving cars and lorries.

Walking down any thoroughfare, anywhere in Britain, is now accompanied by a buffeting from passing traffic that in narrow streets has to weave in and out of the few spaces left between parked cars, in wider avenues still brushes your outside elbow, and in country lanes appears to be playing chicken with you — swerving to avoid you at the very last minute.

I'd been out of the country while British Rail, already reduced to serving only major routes instead of helping relieve pressure on rural roads by maintaining branch lines to smaller communities, was being carved up amongst companies whose only real purpose is making money. So it was an unpleasant surprise to experience, on my return, old, filthy trains with blocked toilets, empty, staffless stations, poor timekeeping, and a chaos of different, garish liveries. It seems that the short-term aim of these companies is to achieve such a nadir that the whole system is abandoned and all the valuable town-centre real estate at present inconveniently occupied by railway track and buildings is liberated for "development".

It's getting worse!

Getting around Britain has felt rather like being in a developing country, and I see no signs of improvement, only worsening.

At Dover Priory station, the introduction to British railways for many a foot passenger just off the ferry from France, the track between the platforms was awash with rubbish, mounds of litter that a daily half hour of attention could easily remove. I felt ashamed.

In Vancouver, Canadians complain bitterly about the public transit system, yet buses run to schedule, the SkyTrain is never as crowded as the London Underground, and you can get from one side of the sprawling city to the other, outside peak hours, for the equivalent of 60p. I believe every complainant should be sent over to Britain for a day to experience real transport hell!

This makes me so mad that I feel like buying a bicycle!