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.
|
News Focus
|
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. |
|
Analysis
|
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
March 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. |
|
|
LS8 Sidelines
4-Mar-10
national road user charging
With the election not far off, where do the 3 main parties stand on national road user charging? We contacted all three; so far two have replied.
The Department for Transport (for Labour) in a brief reply said, "the Government has no plans for national road user charging".
With a hung parliament a distinct possibility, the view of the Liberal Democrats is more relevant than usual, and their more expansive response included, "UK-wide, the long-term policy of the Liberal Democrats is to move to a revenue-neutral road user pricing scheme on motorways and trunk roads, while scrapping Vehicle Excise Duty completely and reducing fuel duty". Perhaps such an approach offers the best chance of getting more drivers to sign up for voluntary "black-box" schemes which would at least pilot the potential technology and move the discussion on.
The Conservatives have yet to reply.
20-January-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.
More from Sidelines including
Sidelines latest:  RSS 2.0 | Atom 1.0
|
