Friday Reads – 28 June 2019

On By In Buses, Cycles, Friday Reads, Pedestrians

• Manchester to begin its own bus franchise (LGC)

• 1876: Building a Channel Tunnel (TheEngineer)

• Pedestrians pushing back in car-choked Brussels (CityLab)

• Bus driver learns Punjabi from passengers (CBC)

• Portland congestion drop ignored by media & Big Road (CityObservatory)

• Are we seeing progress toward Vision Zero? (StreetsBlog)

• Cycling with noodle barrier increases safety (SFGate)

• Overcrowd game shows difficulty of building good rail stations (Verge)

Whilst you wait for the next installment, check out our most popular articles:

• Inside TfL’s Lost Property Office (Guardian)

• London’s Top Models (Londonist)

And some of our other sections:

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9 comments

  1. The Manchester franchising experiment ( I hope it goes ahead ) looks to be the first sensible step in reversing the disastrous mistake of deregulation back in the 1980’s.

    “Overcrowd” seems to be using classic 1938 tube stock!

  2. City Observatory is right to castigate the INRIX method of calculating congestion as biased in favour of sprawling, low-density cities and against compact, high-density cities. But it is wrong and misleading for another reason, too. It entirely ignores the overall modal share of car traffic. So a city where only 20% of all trips are made by car has a far smaller congestion problem than a city where 50% of all trips are made by car even if the speed amelioration is the same in both. The INRIX tables may have effectively gained publicity for the company, but its figures are not a serious or meaningful measure of anything much.

  4. The noodle idea looks great for safety in multi-lane moving traffic but defeats the object of being on two wheels for weaving between vehicles in traffic queues. Could catch on on the right routes though.

  5. I just ride my bike on the right hand side of the lane… But then I was raised with the mind set that you have to demand your road space as a cyclist.

  6. Perhaps a side Blaze light would achieve much of benefit of a noodle without anything physically overhanging.

  7. I agree with Manchester wanting to bring in franchising for its buses.

    Mr Burnham is also calling for the same subsidies for northern bus fares as those applied in London. A single bus journey in Greater Manchester currently costs £4, but is capped at £1.50 in London.

    Not sure I quite understand his point here, as TfL receives no external subsidies now surely? If London buses are subsidised, it’s from profits made elsewhere in the TfL network, i.e. from within London itself.

  8. @MikeyC I wondered about that comment too. An argument I’ve seen made elsewhere is that London in effect receives a hidden subsidy through the billions of pounds of capital grants received up until now to fund maintainance and modernisation of the tube. This allows tube profits to be maintained through continued good service and then those profits be used to subsidise fares on the bus network.

    I believe that Manchester Metrolink receives part funding for initial builds like the Trafford Park line but no ongoing capital support for maintainance and modernisation of existing lines. Certainly none of the rail profits in the region revert to GM.

    Is this a fair description of the funding advantage that London has?

  9. Toby Chopra
    Whatever “funding advantage” London may have had in the past, it certainly does not do so at present.
    IMHO this is down to petty party politics, rather than any actual stategic decision, but it remains the case that London has had (as far as I can see) all of its “subsidies” removed.

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