If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected].
- Cooling the Tube (Ian Visits)
- Dissatisfied Southeastern passengers that bid for the railway franchise (BBC iPlayer)
- Paddington’s roof walkway (1LondonBlog)
- The twisting and turning tale of Britain’s tilting trains (Smart Rail World)
- Stockholm night delivery study (State Smart Transportation Initiative)
- Uber, Lyft adding 15% traffic to San Francisco (SFist)
- Elon Musk doesn’t understand urban geometry (Strong Towns)
The Uber/Lyft findings are something that is unsurprising to us, but there are still far too many people who believe the promotional hype of their backers.
Which ties in to Elon Musk’s invisible problem ( of geometry ) …
There’s the famous picture of the same number of people in a bus, on bikes & in cars & the update, showing autonomous vehicles & Uber … all occupying the same road space.
The “trainline” programme shows the hypocrisy of other governments taking profits from our railways, whereas our government is supposedly not allowed to do so … a figure of billions of pounds a year subsidising foreign railway companies was quoted.
A triumph of dogma over practicality?
The Swedish study on night time freight deliveries largely echoes work done in similar circumstances in London – albeit that the London Lorry Control Scheme does not ban night time deliveries but just manages the routes the vehicles use. However, what neither the study in Stockholm nor the one in London have addressed is that the biggest impediment to night time deliveries comes from businesses., Most businesses do not want and/or cannot afford to staff up at night time to receive deliveries and ideas such as drop boxes are stem,ied most frequently black of available space. These issues particularly affect small and medium sized businesses, many of whom would just go bust if forced to take deliveries at night. Big supermarkets are staffed 24 hours a day and don’t suffer the same problem but have a different issue to address. Large supermarkets rely on carefully timed deliveries coming 5 or 6 times a day. They don’t have stock rooms and almost all stock is held on the shelves. So they could take a first delivery before 6am but would need to stick to the current schedule for the rest of the day.
The distribution sector really does like night time deliveries because they can use their resources better, but perhaps a better approach would be to look for deliveries 2 or 3 hours later in the day. Currently the peak hour for deliveries is between 8 and 9am, which coincides with the morning traffic peak. For the distribution sector this is currently fine because they can despatch from the depot between 7 and 8am on a ‘job and finish’ basis, which encourages drivers to work smartly. Despatching after 9am would decouple these two peaks and provide considerable traffic benefits without putting businesses to the wall.
The reference to APT being withdrawn in 1981 may well be correct, but they came back into service and were still operating in 1984 when I travelled from Glasgow to London with the first part of the journey to Carlisle in the cab. It was a fascinating experience and even I felt a little queesy, The fix for the sickness was learned on APT……don’t fully correct the centrifugal force with tilt. Let the passengers feel that they are going round a curve, but not too much!
Re: Greg – that “hypocrisy” is a subjective opinion. One could easily argue that enabling UK public sector ownership would be hypocritical. But more to the point, you appear to suggest that you would like the British state to take profits from the rail industry. Is that actually what you meant? And if that’s not what you meant, then franchise competitions would be difficult to run since one bidder would not have to meet shareholders’ investment return expectations. If what you actually want is an end to franchising, then say it!
Balthazar
In tend to agree with Wolmar’s frequent question:
“What is franchising for?”
Leaving aside any moral judgement, it is still very obvious that other countries’ state-owned railway systems [ DB / SNCF / NS etc ] are allowed to run British trains & take profit home, but the British taxpayer, through our government is not allowed to do so. And, although our railways are, very largely, controlled & directed by the DfT, from behind the arras, without “us” getting any of the putative profits, other national governments can so extract value.
Alternative solutions?
{ But in a. n. other thread, or at another time, please! ]
@Greg:
but the British taxpayer, through our government is not allowed to do so.
That sentence is unfinished, you need to add: “by the government”, onto the end.
@ Greg – and yet UK based groups run trains in Germany and elsewhere. They also own bus businesses or run under contract elsewhere. While not the same as a state business there is a two way street whereby UK firms operate transport services elsewhere and make money which flows back to the UK (albeit shareholders not govt coffers). Arguments about how “level” or not the playing field may be in each European country are for another time so let’s just acknowledge there are inconsistencies as touched on before. It will, of course, be interesting to see how all of this functions in a post Brexit world (again for another time, another place!)
Re: Greg – I don’t think it’s possible to agree with a question, but I think I can hazard a guess as to which *answer* you agree with. Of course, Wolmar carefully formulates his question to suit his point of view by encouraging a certain response; his prerogative but not conducive to debate. The exact corollary question is “What is *franchising* for?” and the answer is obvious: “To obtain the perceived advantages of innovation, alternative thinking and cost control to be obtained from periodic competition for the right to operate a part of the railway”. Much the same answer as applies in principle to TfL concessions, provincial light rail, French municipal transport operations, German regional rail, etc, etc – just with different degrees of freedom/control laid down by the concessioning authority.
Balthazar & WW
And, also not-mentioned much is the micromanagement by DfT of both the franchises & the stock they are “allowed” to use, even if they don’t actually want it (!)
Re: Greg – are you referring to recent franchise awards or something else?
Balthazar
The Hitachi units for higher-speed long-distance services, erm, classes 800 etc.
See Roger Ford Snip! on that subject.
IIRC the franchisees were told: “This is what you are getting, whether you like them, want them, or not”
RE: Greg – you are referring to a contract signed in February 2009 so I think you meant to say “something else”. Meanwhile *today* First/MTR have announced their response to the London suburbs’ needs arising from a rather more recent franchising competition.
Balthazar
The First/MTR new trains for South Western, you mean?
Looks quite good – we will await details, I expect