I enjoyed reading your piece Jess. But I did wonder how much of what you describe about transport is more village vs city than north vs south? Studham in Bedfordshire (I'd never previously heard of it either) features on Country Living's 'UK's 48 'poshest' villages to live in': https://www.countryliving.com/uk/homes-interiors/property/a42472447/poshest-villages-uk/ And it's about 35 miles from London's Leicester Square (which I've arbitrarily chosen as a destination). According to Google Maps the quickest you can expect to make the journey on public transport is 1 hour 43 minutes. And that involves 2 buses, 1 train, and 1 tube. If you're returning to Studham you'd need to leave Leicester Square by 3:23pm, otherwise you're struck for the night. I'd be surprised if there are many teenagers (or indeed adults) making that journey regularly.
I think there's an element of village vs city to it, but there's a North/South element in there too which makes it more acute - even where it breaks down, you can do more of your journey more frequently by public transport. For your example, you'd probably go to Luton from St Pancras (six trains an hour until 1ish, then hourly through the night), safe in the knowledge you'd be able to get an Uber the last few miles. Not pure public transport, but viable.
I don't know that you're even getting from Leeds to Bradford after midnight, are you? Let alone from Leeds into the Yorkshire villages without taking a taxi the whole way.
Can confirm that I found it easier to negotiate getting a tree into the back of an Uber in London two weeks ago, than getting one to take me to the train station from my parents’ house
Thank you so much! Yes this is such a good point villages in the South - it’s definitely not just a northern issue, and I’m sure in a lot of ways my childhood was probably more similar to someone growing up in Dorset/ Cornwall etc than perhaps someone living in Leeds. I’m also very conscious of not wanting to speak for anybody else- when I’m sure my circumstances were more unusual! I guess my point in writing this was to question the idea of cost efficiency in infrastructure investment (and therefore access to opportunities)- where there’s an assumption that most efficient = most concentrated population. One stat I cut for concision was that close to 1/5 people in the UK live in rural areas - and in one way it makes sense to not invest in these areas as fewer people live there (especially as you mention with the ‘poshest’ villages that this isn’t necessarily a marker of need). But what I would say is that it’s an active choice for the government to invest less in the North, and this is then compounded by a lack of investment in rural areas - so the rural North js doubly affected. As a result,there’s not only an inequality there, but one that I think is often overlooked because quite a lot of TV (or definitely TV when I was younger) still massively showed inner cities as the centre of deprivation and anywhere outside of that as affluent- which I don’t think is that often the case any more. Sorry if this is a long rambling answer ~ I’m actually writing a post for my own Substack talking about this a bit more because it’s such a complex issue!
Arlen, I cannot resist telling you about a news report in the May 2025 edition of Buses, which came through my letterbox a few days ago headed ‘West Yorks night bus success’ about First West Yorkshire’s bus route 72, which runs a very successful hourly overnight service between (yes, you have guessed it) Bradford and Leeds, carrying over 4,000 passengers a month.
Visit my favourite website, bustimes.org, to learn more about the route and even see where the buses are on a map and in real time. It may even go near Jess’s old home. I agree with you about Uber. I want to see little Uber ‘buggy’ buses in my part of suburban Nottingham (Beeston) and I suspect they have the potential to serve rural areas just as well, but that’s another story for another day.🐰
I enjoyed reading your piece Jess. But I did wonder how much of what you describe about transport is more village vs city than north vs south? Studham in Bedfordshire (I'd never previously heard of it either) features on Country Living's 'UK's 48 'poshest' villages to live in': https://www.countryliving.com/uk/homes-interiors/property/a42472447/poshest-villages-uk/ And it's about 35 miles from London's Leicester Square (which I've arbitrarily chosen as a destination). According to Google Maps the quickest you can expect to make the journey on public transport is 1 hour 43 minutes. And that involves 2 buses, 1 train, and 1 tube. If you're returning to Studham you'd need to leave Leicester Square by 3:23pm, otherwise you're struck for the night. I'd be surprised if there are many teenagers (or indeed adults) making that journey regularly.
I think there's an element of village vs city to it, but there's a North/South element in there too which makes it more acute - even where it breaks down, you can do more of your journey more frequently by public transport. For your example, you'd probably go to Luton from St Pancras (six trains an hour until 1ish, then hourly through the night), safe in the knowledge you'd be able to get an Uber the last few miles. Not pure public transport, but viable.
I don't know that you're even getting from Leeds to Bradford after midnight, are you? Let alone from Leeds into the Yorkshire villages without taking a taxi the whole way.
Can confirm that I found it easier to negotiate getting a tree into the back of an Uber in London two weeks ago, than getting one to take me to the train station from my parents’ house
Thank you so much! Yes this is such a good point villages in the South - it’s definitely not just a northern issue, and I’m sure in a lot of ways my childhood was probably more similar to someone growing up in Dorset/ Cornwall etc than perhaps someone living in Leeds. I’m also very conscious of not wanting to speak for anybody else- when I’m sure my circumstances were more unusual! I guess my point in writing this was to question the idea of cost efficiency in infrastructure investment (and therefore access to opportunities)- where there’s an assumption that most efficient = most concentrated population. One stat I cut for concision was that close to 1/5 people in the UK live in rural areas - and in one way it makes sense to not invest in these areas as fewer people live there (especially as you mention with the ‘poshest’ villages that this isn’t necessarily a marker of need). But what I would say is that it’s an active choice for the government to invest less in the North, and this is then compounded by a lack of investment in rural areas - so the rural North js doubly affected. As a result,there’s not only an inequality there, but one that I think is often overlooked because quite a lot of TV (or definitely TV when I was younger) still massively showed inner cities as the centre of deprivation and anywhere outside of that as affluent- which I don’t think is that often the case any more. Sorry if this is a long rambling answer ~ I’m actually writing a post for my own Substack talking about this a bit more because it’s such a complex issue!
Arlen, I cannot resist telling you about a news report in the May 2025 edition of Buses, which came through my letterbox a few days ago headed ‘West Yorks night bus success’ about First West Yorkshire’s bus route 72, which runs a very successful hourly overnight service between (yes, you have guessed it) Bradford and Leeds, carrying over 4,000 passengers a month.
Visit my favourite website, bustimes.org, to learn more about the route and even see where the buses are on a map and in real time. It may even go near Jess’s old home. I agree with you about Uber. I want to see little Uber ‘buggy’ buses in my part of suburban Nottingham (Beeston) and I suspect they have the potential to serve rural areas just as well, but that’s another story for another day.🐰
This is so exciting! There’s hope for the teens of West Yorkshire yet!!
Here is a link to the online 72 live bus map. It looks like a string of pearls. https://bustimes.org/services/72-leeds-thornbury-bramley-breadford#map Regards Robert 🐰
An occasion where I am thrilled to be corrected and to be made aware of a public transport success story!
There's always a bit of a need for the Field of Dreams approach to transport in cases like this - if you build it, they will come!
How I love ‘the field of dreams’ ‘build it and they will come’ analogy. Keep up the good work 🐰