Category: IELTS Speaking

IELTS Cue Card # USED PUBLIC TRANSPORT

We all need to travel everyday to work, to school or college, to meet people or to visit different places. During earlier times, people usually commuted by public modes of transportation partly because only a few owned their personal vehicles and partly due to the fact that these were considered more comfortable and safe. However, in this day and age, not only has the proportion of privately owned vehicles increased enormously, but also there is a common belief that public buses or trains are over- crowded, uncomfortable and unsafe. Certainly, our government is taking all the necessary steps to ensure that the maximum number of people start using public vehicles in order to make our cities pollution free. Let’s consider a cue card asking us to talk about a time when we used public transport.

Describe a visit that you made using public transport. You should say –

• what was the visit?
• when did you make?
• with whom did you make the visit?

also, explain, how was your visit?

Sample Answer One

It’s been a long time since I’ve not been using public modes of transportation on daily basis, except at times when we decide to travel by long distance trains on our holiday trips sometimes .However, there was a time, when I regularly commuted in a “Mumbai local train”, from my home to college every day. Our house was located in a suburb called “Bandra” and my junior college was in town ,”Grant Road” to be precise. The local train took around 45 minutes to cover this distance.
I used to get the monthly pass made for the first class compartment as it was much less crowded than the regular one. I really preferred travelling in the local train as it was the fastest means to cover the distance from home to college. At the same time, it was bang on time, comfortable and safe too. There were separate ladies compartments which were always less crowded than the men’s compartments. Most importantly, it gave me a unique insight into the life in Mumbai- a megacity which is home to people from different regions of this country.
Each day I would see many new faces while travelling. There were people from all walks of life- from students to fisher women and from tourists to local office goers. Sometimes, I would read a newspaper or a book while at others I just gazed out of the window. I even made a few friends in the train, who were regular commuters like me.
Unfortunately, if I ever think of travelling in the local these days, my cousins in Mumbai would call me insane. This infamous local train has the ability to make people shudder merely on the mention of its name. These days, the local trains are extremely overcrowded, the doors never close and passengers are constantly hanging out of them. Luckily, I have all the good memories of my unique travel experience, though I never tried doing that again after finishing my college and moving out of Mumbai. (335 Words)

Sample Answer Two

Being a solo traveler, public transport is the only medium that I confide in the most. It is the safest and one gets to interact with the local people on the bus. I remember visiting Shravanbelagola a few months back and it was on my journey to the place that I extensively used the public transport. Not knowing the places and the language, public transportation really did helped.
It was the time when people all over the country came to the place for the festival of Jains and so the government had also made the arrangements in that manner. I visited the place and on interacting with the locals got to know about the places near by and visited them using the public transport.
It was an amazing experience travelling to the place and although public transport did not made it seem simpler, but sure it made me feel more comfortable and safer. Also, using the public transport never made me feel as if it was a solo trip. I always felt surrounded by people.