Trains

a How often do you travel by train?

b Define the word commuter. Use a dictionary to help you.

Commuting to work

Many people in Britain live a long way from their work. They often travel by train from the suburbs into the town centre to work. These people are commuters. Some people travel more than 200 miles every day and spend up to two hours going to work and two hours going home. Train tickets may appear to be expensive (£2500 a year for an annual season ticket from Brighton to London), but this form of transport is a fast and environmentally friendly alternative to using a car.

On some trains, there are study clubs which offer language lessons to commuters on their way to and from work.

The organisation of the railway system in Britain has changed recently. For many years the railway was run by a public company, British Rail. In 1994, this company was split into two parts: Rail track, which owns the track and the stations, and several private companies, which operate the trains.

Some people are worried about the change. They believe that private companies will only run one or two trains a day to small country villages or that they will close village stations.

Train spotting

Train spotters are fans of trains. You can see train spotters at many train stations. They stand at the end of the platform and spend hours writing down the numbers of the trains. Serious train spotters travel thousands of miles by train trying to collect the number of trains in Britain.

Travelling by boat

The English Channel has kept out invaders for a thousand years. Nowadays, Britain wants to welcome tourists, but the crossing makes travelling between Britain and the rest of Europe inconvenient and time-consuming. Despite that, about 18.1 million people visit Britain every year. Half of these people come to England by ferry or hovercraft.

The English Channel is one of the busiest stretches of water in the world and Dover, on the south coast of England, is the busiest passenger terminal in Europe. In August, the most popular month for visitors, there arc 50 ferry and 14 hovercraft crossings between Dover and Calais every day. There are many routes across the Channel, but the fastest trip is the 35-minute hovercraft crossing between Dover and Calais.

Three hours from Paris or Brussels to London

The ferry and hovercraft companies are worried about competition from the Channel Tunnel, or the "Chunnel" as it is commonly known.

The Chunnel was officially opened on 6 May 1994. It took ten years to build and cost £9.8 billion (more than double the original estimate). All of the money came from private companies.

There are two ways of travelling through the tunnel. Lorry and car drivers take their vehicles onto special trains. They stay inside their lorries and cars for the 20-minute journey through the tunnel. Foot passengers sit in a normal train compartment.

Direct trains already run from London to Paris and Brussels. The journey between London and the English coast is relatively slow in comparison to the journey between the French coast and Brussels and Paris. There have been considerable delays in planning the high-speed rail track in England and it is not due to open until 2002 at the earliest.

Travelling by plane

London has four airports: Heathrow in the west Gatwick in the south, Stansted in the north and the City Airport in the City of London. Heathrow Airport is the busiest international airport in the world with more than 1000 planes taking off and landing every day; Gatwick is the second busiest. Nearly 70 million passengers use London's airports every year. The airports are vital not only for the success of London's financial business in the City, but also for tourism in Britain. London's links with the rest of the world are good, so many people go to London to catch long-distance flights to other parts of the globe.

People going to other parts of Britain do not always have to fly to London. Important cities with their own airports include Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Edinburgh. Belfast, Aberdeen and Newcastle.

IX. Match a word from the box on the left with one from the box on the right to form compound nouns. For example: ticket collector.

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