Girl, I feel your pain! This is my number one pet peeve about the UK. I used to commute 30-ish miles to work, and it never took less than an hour. Driving, if there were any road works on the tiny little roads between my town and the city I worked in, long delays. Traffic was usually OK until I got to the outskirts of the city, but from there it would be gridlock and there was only one route from the outskirts to the centre, which meant EVERYONE was on the same road. On the train, there were delays 90% of the time, meaning I often had more than two hours between arriving at the station and arriving home. The issues were constant, unceasing, and the worst thing is that absolutely no one cares. The train companies don't give a damn about whether people actually arrive at their destinations, because the government will keep subsidising them regardless of how poor their service records are. They don't make any effort to improve their systems or to anticipate solutions to problems that they could easily anticipate BECAUSE THEY HAPPEN ALL THE TIME!! I work from home now and my stress levels are astronomically reduced.
This is the downside of living in a country where traditions can be centuries old. Sometimes that's charming, but it also discourages innovation or incentive to make changes to things that "have always been done this way".
