Friday Reads – 27 November 2020

1. This weeks BBC World Service, People Fixing The World episode Riding the solar railway, is about solar powered trains, train in Byron Bay,Australia with rooftop pv panels, Riding Sunbeams solar farms and Indian Railways plans for solar, there is also a 3 min vid on the website.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04d42vf

2. Or, in other phrasing: SF integrated fares – same as every single major European city has now …..
   OTOH, I vaguely remember when zonal fares were proposed for London & we were told “That it couldn’t possibly work HERE!” – usually by various vested interests, of course.

3. Even after the GLC forced LT to adopt fares zones and integrated ticketing in 1983, LT continued to oppose extensions There was a further battle over one-day travel cards, with LT insisting that you had to have a Photocards with them otherwise fraud would be out of control. And even after the Capitalcard – adding on BR services, LT insisted on keeping on with the LT only travel card for some years. All with the misplaced fear that they would end up out of pocket as a consequence of fares integration.

4. GT: “integrated fares – same as every single major European city has now”, except (of course…) the UK, where integrated fares are sadly unknown – including in London, which has an integrated payment system but not integrated fares, with separate fare structures for bus/tram (flat fare) and rail (zonal).

5. My memory of the LT Card/Capitalcard situation is that LT retained the LT Card because BR wanted the Capitalcard to be priced too high; fares integration would have meant those who only used the Underground would be out of pocket

6. I agree with Betterbee that London fares are not fully integrated. But I would point to the difference between fares for a journey including National Rail, and those for other (tube) journeys. Buses can be considered to charge tube fares but with a very low cap (equal to the fare for the shortest tube journey).

7. I have read that Dutch disabled people (those who do not cycle) find the Dutch urban streetscape intimidating, and hence don’t go out much less than they might. It might be interesting to know whether they find the British urban streetscape more or less intimidating, though that is not relevant to the point I wish to make.

   Whilst the Dutch are now realising that their streetscape would benefit from being more friendly to the disabled, what I’m pretty sure they won’t want to do at all costs is encourage bicycle users into cars. I think they would realise that would be a terrible response. Hopefully we too can see that disabled provision and encouraging cycling shouldn’t be an either/or situation. And I really don’t think that joining forces with the bike-haters is right way to go about promoting disabled rights.

   At least the Dutch have devised a proportionate and effective method to slow down bicycles in the vicinity of places where pedestrians are likely to cross the cycle route – bike-specific speedbumps. If you build a sequence of carefully spaced and specifically profiled speed bumps, bicycles are strongly encouraged to slow down and are unlikely to crash. It is also mildly useful that bike-specific speedbumps are discouraging of motor traffic, (as well as vice versa). Excellent for zebra crossings, island bus stops, and protecting a variety of other road hazards. They render most light-controlled crossings of cycle lanes quite unnecessary. It is something we could usefully learn from them. But we have spent the last 30-odd years failing to learn from other countries’ bicycle infrastructure, so I’m not very hopeful we will.

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