News
2010 is seeing increasing effort from local authorities towards their latest Local Transport Plans (these will be the third iteration). LTP3 must be in place by April 2011.
LTP3 marks the end of the 5 year plan cycle. Authorities are expected to produce a plan with a strategy element, and complementary implementation plans. Within this requirement is complete flexibility of timing. The Department for Transport will no longer formally assess LTP3: gone, then, are 2 of the major events of previous iterations: the deadline for handing a Provisional LTP3 to the DfT for assessment, and the feedback day, when all authorities simultaneously received their ratings.
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News Focus
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Summer 2010: how will the economic downturn affect traffic levels and roadbuilding? The scale of debt is such that even some of the innovative "managed motorway" schemes, primed for fast-forwarding in the early days of recession as part of fiscal stimulus measures, face deferral.
LS8 still finds a few big road schemes to namecheck, focuses on the current planning framework for roads and discusses the finance. |
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Analysis
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Policing on bikes made further advances
at force, district, station and PCSO level over 2009, and the the
case for police on bikes is proving equally compelling in 2010. |
Features
It's over 15 years since
the first Reclaim the Streets party (and that's our parasol in
a bucket of sand stopping the records melting in Pershore Road,
Birmingham).
The movement baffled the media, broadening to take in striking dockers, went global, then turned on capitalism itself. Its end as a victim of its own success was probably inevitable, but we ask a few questions anyway. With lots of flyers you won't find anywhere else. |
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LS8 Sidelines
21-Jul-10
Ticket Vending Machine Usability
Passenger Focus has just published a piece of research running to 60 pages on rail ticket machines called "Ticket Vending Machine Usability".
The research doesn't cover the Fastticket machines, where one can pick up tickets purchased on the Internet. Anyone using these machines for long will sooner or later find tickets already in the pickup tray left there by the previous punter. The tray is large and low down, tickets land in awkward positions and a return journey with changes and reservations can run to a bewildering number of tickets.
While it is printing the tickets, the machine says, "Printing x of y tickets, where y is the total to be printed. However, at the end, it just says, "Please take all your tickets". Why, at this crucial point in the transaction, can't it say, "Please take all 7 of your tickets", so that the user can do a quick count and look again if necessary?
8-July-10 Intercity 125s
A decision on replacing the Intercity 125s still in service on the East Coast Mainline and on some First Great Western routes has been put back to October. Re-engineering rather than replacement looks like a real contender. The 125 has proved an iconic and reliable train since it first ran in 1976. If you're not sure if you're on a 125, it's the one where you still open the door by opening the window and leaning out, which seems rather quaint nowadays. The design still looks modern, the carriages feel spacious and it remains the fastest diesel train in passenger service in the world. The proposed replacements are claimed to be better on acceleration and fuel and to have more seats. All of these are likely to come at a cost though.
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