The Dutch have transport sussed.
Last weekend, I was lucky enough to spend some time in Amsterdam, and if I could sum up the trip in one word, it would be: easy.
Mainly because even though it’s more than three times the size of Dundee, getting around the city is a scoosh.
You have your pick of modes of travel – bicycles and boats, yes, but also buses that run into the night and a buttery-smooth metro system with trains every 5-10 minutes to wherever you need to be.
There’s even a free – free! – ferry service to get across the central IJ River all throughout the day and night. Can you imagine such a thing in Scotland?
I can’t, because unlike here, in Amsterdam stuff just works.
It was like another world. One where public transport is functional, and people are polite and public toilets are clean, sealed cubicles instead of glorified horse stalls (we need to get on that).
And don’t even get me started on our journey from the airport to our accommodation.
Half the battle of travel is getting to airport
Instead of the daylight robbery of airport parking (fiver for a ten-minute drop-off slot at Edinburgh Airport, by the way) the clever Europeans have had the novel idea of putting a train station IN the airport.
We simply got off the plane and got on a train. No pre-booked transfers or dodgy taxis, no terrible trek round the outside of the terminal to find the right bus stance.
Just hop on the northern line and away you go. Simple. Easy.
And all that ease made me realise how much of a hassle travel really is here in Scotland, particularly in Tayside.
To get to an international airport from Dundee, you’re at least a two-hour journey.
Getting a train would be fine, only then you need to also get a tram or bus to the airports themselves.
Getting the direct bus would be fine if they didn’t routinely break down. Driving would be fine if you didn’t have to take out a mortgage to park nearby.
And as if getting there wasn’t hard enough, getting there at weird hours of the day is a gauntlet.
It takes longer to get from Dundee to the front doors of Edinburgh Airport than it does for us to fly to the Netherlands, land, go through passport control, get the train and check into our accommodation.
So lesson one, from Amsterdam to Scotland? Just put a train station in the bloody airport.
Why did Dundee Airport take a nosedive?
But the most frustrating thing about living in Dundee and carting yourself and all your luggage off to Edinburgh or Glasgow in the middle of the night is that you find yourself passing an airport right there on Riverside.
Granted, Dundee Airport isn’t going to fly you very far. It’s too wee for big planes, I get that.
But it could get you to Paris maybe, or Barcelona, or Oslo. It could even get you to Amsterdam. I know it could, because it did.
Back in 2015, when I moved to Dundee, MP Chris Law was finalising the setup of direct flights from Dundee Airport to Amsterdam.
As a young student who was keen to travel but didn’t have a whole lot of cash to spare, the prospect of a direct flight from my city to a European hub was a big draw.
And that Flybe service was hugely popular, until it was axed within a year over ‘radar issues’.
And at the time, Chris Law said he was “disappointed” and working “at a lot of levels” to reinstate the Dundee Airport flights. But that never happened. And I’m wondering why?
Can it not be done? Is it a case of money, or logistics, or just Covid putting the kibosh on travel aspirations for a while there? Was it a folding Flybe or a failing model which caused the plan to nosedive?
Time to get Dundee on the up, Chris
Whatever the reason, now Dundee Airport only has flights to two destinations – Heathrow and Sumburgh.
This seems like a waste of what could be a really great local resource, not only for tourism for for business travel too.
So now that he’s been re-elected in Dundee, I’d like to see Chris Law turning his attention back to Dundee Airport and the potential to expand its offering.
Imagine walking down the waterfront on a Saturday morning and hopping on a plane to the Dam for the day?
It’s not so crazy. The Dutch could do it.
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