Sidelines

new street

That the £600 million redevelopment of Birmingham New Street is cosmetic rather than capable of addressing growth in demand for train travel has been the elephant in the room for some time. The July 21 2008 report by the Transport Select Committee articulates this further.

New Street isn't currently the disgraceful passenger experience that some seem to imagine. Its subterranean platforms are certainly atypical of British stations, but finding your train or changing there is quick and straightforward, the crowds are impressive but no more so than at London mainline stations.

Lengthen the platforms (part of the plans) by all means, but why not hold off from the disruption and expense of changing the rest until we find out if the station is set to become even more of a train bottleneck than it is now.
22.07.08 @ 10:14 AM CST [link]

electrification

The February 2007 edition of Modern Railways put the typical cost of electrification of rail route at £400,000 per single-track kilometre. Electrifying major parts of the current diesel network would not be cheap, but would offer more than an environmental (and potentially cost-per-km) gain. As more of the network is developed for electric trains, so routing and timetabling options increase. Electrification would offer evidence of a strategic approach to the railways, but not one with huge inherent risk like new high-speed lines, which some argue would do little to discourage internal air journeys anyway.
14.06.08 @ 11:52 AM CST [link]

this bus isn't good enough

The lightweight Enviro 300 single-decker bus built by Alexander Dennis of Falkirk isn't a good enough experience to get people out of their cars. It's becoming commonplace where buses are run by First and Stagecoach-Bluebird; operating even quite long routes such as Aberdeen to Inverurie. Lightweight it certainly feels: a combination of biscuit-tin metal and huge expanses of glass. This leads to its primary drawbacks: it's always cold: no double-glazing or internal panelling behind the thin metal mean the passenger is barely separated from the outside and the walls are just too cold. The engine is whiney and loud, presumably because it's isolated only by lightweight materials. Finally, they've packed too many seats in: it would be harder to find a bus with less leg-room, and the seats aren't well upholstered. Many motorists considering a switch for the daily grind would be reeling at these hardships on a Monday morning.
02.05.08 @ 11:28 AM CST [link]

info at bus stops

Bus stop timetable information can be viewed as a spectrum. At one end is accurate real-time information, backed up with full timetables. At the other end is, well, a post saying "Bus Stop" at the top. While we get excited about the former, let's not forget there are all too many urban bus-stops that correspond to the latter. A complex question, but we need a cost-benefit analysis of providing expensive resources at well used stops against basic resources at less used stops. Somewhere along the spectrum is an interesting provision such as solar powered illuminated timetables at stops in Camden.
12.04.08 @ 12:36 PM CST [link]

talk it up

With all the focus on Network Rail's improvements to the West Coast main line, which should, by January 2009, reduce the journey time from Oxenholme (Lake District) to London to 2 hours 34 minutes, a big commitment has just been made by Network Rail for the East Coast main line. They will be spending £225 million upgrading track parallel to the East Coast main line between Peterborough and Doncaster, allowing freight to come off the main line on that section, currently a bottleneck where the track goes down from 4 to 2 lines. A look at the network map shows what a great idea this is. However the work is not scheduled until 2014. This plan needs talking up: it would be great to see work begin as soon as possible after resources are freed up from the west coast.
01.03.08 @ 02:17 PM CST [link]

high-speed rail

The excitement generated by the St Pancras opening has caused a new wave of chatter about building more high-speed rail. However John Grimshaw questions the purpose if it simply causes people to travel further, while a letter in transporttimes questions the received wisdom that high-speed rail would kill demand for internal flights. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, with good air-service on TGV served routes such as Paris to Lyon or ES high speed rail routes like Milan to Rome.
31.01.08 @ 09:49 PM CST [link]

matthew parris

Matthew Parris's vile Times article What's smug and deserves to be decapitated? is at least being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission, which has no legal powers however. Cyclist killed or seriously injured numbers, unlike those for car users, climbed in the first quartile of 2007 compared with that of 2006, continuing a trend of the last couple of years. Which makes it a good time for this joke: what's the difference between the Times and the Sun? About 50p.
10.01.08 @ 08:01 PM CST [link]