I normally spend 30-50 minutes travelling to work and about the same time going home. That's about 60-100 minutes per day.

> Is there something wrong with your public transport system?

There's actually a bus stop almost outside my front door, and Edinburgh has a reasonable bus service. However if I was to take the bus to the train station, then take the train and be picked up the other end it would take me about 90 min, which is longer.

An hour a day is only 30 min journey time and I suspect many people in the UK spend longer than that travelling to work. I certainly have in the past.

Most US communities, besides a few metro areas, are planned and built with regard to the automobile as the sole form of transporation. If there is any public transport system at all, it usually consists of buses which are often late, infrequent (30 minutes to an hour wait between buses for smaller communities), and travel very slowly on average (since they often make frequent stops to pick up passengers).

Why isn't public transportation better than it is a lot of places? I'd attribute it to lack of funding by local governments due to politicians who don't consider public transport to be important at all (most of them would be embarrassed to ever be seen riding in a bus rather than a mercedes or something). It is considered transportation for the lower classes (who should be embarrassed they aren't wealthy!), and thus isn't reevaluated or improved at all.

I default to America as that's where I live. I don't think much of our public transport. Sure where I live they probably don't need more than just the buses we have but I had never seen a passenger train (just cargo, as far as I know) until I went abroad. The ease of getting around was amazing and I could totally see not owning a car there. I'm sure there is just as good public transport here but it doesn't seem to be the way we are built.

Anywhere that has hour long traffic daily should probably be big enough to have better public transport so I'll give you that...

Yes