I liked Edinburgh as a university in a way that I'd never enjoyed King's College London. I realised after I came to Edinburgh that perhaps it was a mistake to have gone to a college which was bang in the centre of a vast city. It had a bad effect on the social life of the students because a lot of them were commuting from outer London.
It's typical for people living in nonurban areas to drive 100 miles to go to work, to the grocery store or to the doctor.
I don't miss London much. I find it crowded, vast and difficult to get around. Cabs are incredibly expensive.
I was at Arsenal as an 11-year-old. I really enjoyed it but I was at school and my dad used to drive me there after work. Sometimes we were in traffic for two hours. They wanted to keep me but I wasn't getting home until nearly 11 P. M. I loved it there but it wasn't right, so I came to West Ham and haven't looked back.
I come from a rural state. People drive 50, 100 miles to and from work every single day. That is true all over America.
I'm a New Yorker, and I rarely get to work at home.
Transportation is the center of the world! It is the glue of our daily lives. When it goes well, we don't see it. When it goes wrong, it negatively colors our day, makes us feel angry and impotent, curtails our possibilities.
Anyone driving through London after the school term ends will notice immediately how much easier it is to get around. The school run contributes massively to congestion.
I'm highly distractable, and I have too many things on my mind very often. When I'm driving in the city, it drives me so crazy - the city traffic and the parking - I just take cabs everywhere.
Most of the time, I get around perfectly well on my bike and public transportation, even in spite of the Bay Area's almost comically shambolic system.
When I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2002, I decided I wanted to leave my car at home and create an experiment with my own life. I'd only be able to find creative solutions to transportation if I felt the pain of trying to get to downtown at 10 o'clock at night.
I don't know anybody else who lives 1,000 miles away from their job and gets to commute back and forth. The owner said, 'You can live in your beloved Swifton, but don't you dare miss a game.' I had a few close calls, but I didn't miss any.
I worry about ridiculous things, you know, how does a guy who drives a snowplough get to work in the morning. ... That can keep me awake for days.
Hours wasted in traffic represent not only lost wages but enormous amounts of economic activity that might have happened. Congestion indirectly increases consumer prices, makes travel times unreliable for commuters and truckers, and precludes many people from accessing jobs in urban hubs.
I grew up in L.A., and it's one of those cities designed around cars instead of the people that live there. I spent hours every day stuck in traffic, having the experience of looking around and seeing one person in every car.
When I was young, my parents bought a house in Vasai, but because it was inconvenient for us all to travel, they sent my sister and I to live with our nana-nani at Dadar.
Cars are all jammed up all along the road and a light turns red and someone honks. In every one of those cars there is a story or a hundred stories. For every light on in al of those huge city buildings there is a story. No one knows what I am about to face and no one knows my story and neither do I right then.
Long commutes and traffic jams once associated with older, established cities such as London, New York or Tokyo are spreading throughout the world's emerging economies.
When I see people who have to fly to a city every day with a laptop and stuff, that's why - I don't think I could manage that.
I had a bike as a kid, and when I worked in Manhattan - I had a 10-speed - I rode from downtown to 68th and Madison for my day job. I knew about fighting traffic, but nothing about racing.
I know people's problems: the problems of those who work hard, who must slave away. The couples who have two incomes but who can nevertheless barely cover their rent. The people who get stuck in traffic on their way to work. The people who have to wait in vain for a train to come just as they are supposed to be picking up their children from daycare. I can say with a clear conscience to those people: I understand your problems. And I will do all I can to decrease them.