News
July 2009 saw the government respond to the latest Regional Funding Allocation
advice on major transport schemes submitted by each of the 8 Regional Assemblies in February 2009.
The RFA process
engages the regions in prioritising their major local transport schemes
(costing at least £5 million)
(including certain Highways Agency schemes). The submissions confirmed commitment
to many big road schemes, such as dualling the A453 between the M1 and Nottingham, the Shrewsbury
North West Relief Road and the
Norwich Northern Distributor Road. The government's responses
stressed that medium to longer term proposals would need to be subject to economic circumstances and would need
to take into account the DaSTS report published by the Department for Transport in late 2008.
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News Focus
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Winter 2010: what does the recession mean for traffic levels and roadbuilding? Petrol prices are still well down on 18 months ago, but the annual RAC Report on Motoring anticipated an average motorist driving 400 fewer miles in 2009 than in 2008. In the recession's early throes, the Chancellor pledged in November 2008 to bring forward £3 billion of spending planned for 2010/11 to the current financial year, some of it to "increase capacity in the motorway network". Such an increase encompasses more options than it used to.
LS8 namechecks a few big road schemes, focuses on the new(ish) 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 summer 2009. How is the
case for police on bikes proving so compelling? |
Features
February 2010: over 14 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
20-Jan-10
airport links
The Bow Group, a right-wing "Think" tank, is calling for any north-south high-speed rail line to have direct links to major airports, and mentions Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester.
What is wrong with Birmingham airport's current high-speed rail link? With Virgin Pendolinos and Voyagers stopping there frequently en-route to Birmingham and Euston, things couldn't be too much quicker.
All in all, travel to Birmingham airport by rail is a very un-British experience; good rail links on quality trains, then straight onto the fully automated monorail which takes you the 600 metres to the terminal. Somehow one would expect the monorail, which opened in 2003, to break down a lot. In fact, frequent users of the airport will testify, it's incredibly reliable.
The monorail runs on the track created for the maglev system which when it opened in 1984 was the world's first commercial maglev.
1-January-10 big ideas, small ideas
The high-speed rail train rumbles on with a report delivered by High Speed 2 (not being published yet) to Lord Adonis yesterday; he will be making proposals on the back of it by the end of March 2010. While any decision taken will probably be retaken (and retaken, and...) after a General Election, Lord Adonis is proving a more can-do Transport Minister than any of his Labour predecessors. Lord Adonis has also taken an interest in overhauling old carriages and moving them to parts of the country where they are needed as a stop-gap. There are certainly some inexplicably short trains on our networks. What is Arriva doing running 2 carriage trains on a morning service from Manchester to Pembroke? As this train approaches Cardiff through places like Cwmbran and Pontypool with probably quite low car-ownership, capacity is uncomfortably exposed. Can margins really be that tight?
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