Summary
It is 175 years since the word "commuter" was used for the first time. (The word does not in fact describe a traveller, it describes a transaction: regular travellers on the railroad into Manhattan were given the opportunity to "commute" their individual tickets into a season pass. Ever since, commuters have been both travellers and revenue stream.) Today our great cities inhale and exhale millions of commuters, who start their journey in the darkness of winter mornings in the suburbs, resurface blearily in the heart of the city and return to long tucked-in children in darkness. It wasn't meant to be like this. Matthew Sweet looks at our imagined world of fantasy journeys and asks if driverless cars, monorails, or high speed transport systems might deliver them in the future.
Producer Mark Rickards.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. Hi I'm Riana Dylan and this is seriously. When I left my house this morning, I was in a bit of a rush. I ran out of the door, |
| 0:59.2 | walked the 15 minutes to the train station and waited on the platform. |
| 1:04.0 | No delays, which was a huge relief. |
| 1:07.6 | Just 13 minutes later, I was heading out of London Bridge Station |
| 1:11.6 | weaving my way down the pavement. Another 10 minutes and I |
| 1:15.4 | arrived here at the studio, my destination. I'd successfully completed my commute. |
| 1:22.0 | We've been commuting in large numbers since the early part of the century. |
| 1:27.0 | Never since then, trains have been just as late and overcrowded as they are now. |
| 1:31.0 | But what nobody has considered seriously before is the toll commuting |
| 1:35.6 | takes on our lives as a whole. In today's seriously interesting story, Matthew Sweet takes |
| 1:41.9 | us to the heart of the journey from home to office, and we step into |
| 1:46.9 | the archives of our cities as they swallow up our mornings and evenings. |
| 1:52.4 | Welcome to Commuterville. |
... |
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