Reconnections’ Miscellany: Good & bad transport language – June 2022

This month on Reconnections’ Miscellany:

Bacronym Retronyms

• BUS – Bi-level Underground Substitute
• ESCALATOR – Electric Stair Case (Ascending/Lowering) Allowing Travellers Onward Routing
• OMNIBUS – Overland Metropolitan New Innovative Bi-level Underground Substitute
• DRIVERS – Defect-Responsive Independently-Verifying Equipment-Resetting System
• SUV – Socially Unacceptable Vehicles

Avoid using Anti-Public Transport Language

• Instead of saying ‘My way or the highway’, say ‘My way is the railway’.
• Instead of saying ‘Throw someone under the bus’ (metaphorically), say ‘Throw someone under the SUV’.
• Instead of saying ‘Put the pedal to the metal’, say ‘Turn this bus into a BRT’.
• Instead of saying ‘Take the high road’, say ‘Take the elevated railway’.

Seven Requirements for a Good Public Transport Network

From Jarrett Walker’s book Human Transit:

1. It takes me where I want to go (coverage).
2. It takes me when I want to go (span).
3. It’s a good use of my time (frequency).
4. It’s a good use of my money (cost).
5. It respects me (cleanliness and safety).
6. I can trust it (reliability).
7. It gives me the freedom to change my plans (frequency again).

Law of Stretched Systems (short form)

As technology improves, our expectations and demands of it increase accordingly.

The Mechanics of Government

• Barnett formula – Treasury funding formula that allocates public expenditure to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales automatically in a set proportion when spending levels for public services change in England.
• Cap and Collar – A process to reduce premiums required in bad times, in return for excess profits made in good. Many rail franchises receive government support as a result of this.
• CMA – Competition and Markets Authority, a government department. CMA is obsessed with competition in (a) public transport and (b) banking. The CMA has opined in the past that it is wrong for bus companies to coordinate their timetables and provide inter-available fares.
• Elsie Dee – The Lord Chancellor’s Department (LCD) nickname.
• gilts – Gilt-edged securities are bonds issued by UK and some Commonwealth governments. The term originally referred to debt securities issued by the Bank of England, whose paper certificates had a gilt (gilded) edge.
• hereditament, railway – property primarily used for railway, Underground, DRL, Overground etc purposes, pay no property rates, under the Railways (Valuation for Rating) Act, 1930.
• purdah – The pre-election period of 6 weeks in the UK before an election date whereby major decisions on policy are postponed. Purdah does not have actual legal force, rather is considered a ‘self-denying ordinance’. From the Persian word meaning curtain.
• PSO – Public Service Obligation grant from the government to make up funding shortfall on many railway lines. In other words, a subsidy – the funding that dare not speak its name!
• SOAF – Statement of Agreed Facts, prepared jointly with the other participants in a public inquiry to de-clutter the public enquiry process by allowing the Inspector to focus upon the contested issues.
• SPAD – Special Advisor to a government minister, who sometimes has to monitor the minister so that they do not pass a sentence at danger. Statutory Instrument, that is, a form of Parliamentary legislation.
• Wednesbury Tests – Tests of legal reasonableness to determine a successful judicial review:

1. the decision by a public body must be procedurally correct.
2. the decision must be based on all the relevant evidence and not take into account any irrelevant evidence.
3. the decision must reach a reasonable decision that any reasonable person would reach on the evidence.

• Welsby Dictum – John Welsby’s saying that governments re-announce programmes at least once a year, and twice in a good year.

Industry & Academic Sector Grouping Names

• FIRE Financial, Insurance, Real Estate
• ICE – Information, Communications, Entertainment
• GLAM – Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums
• MICE – Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions
• STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths
• STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths

Voting is like public transport – a theory

Voting isn’t marriage. It’s public transport. You’re not waiting for “the one”. You’re getting on a bus or a train. And if there isn’t one going exactly to your destination, you don’t stay home and sulk. You take the one that’s going closest to where you want to be.

Please provide additional examples and suggestions for any of these entries in the comments.

Previously on Reconnections’ Miscellany:

• Infrastructure Translator – March 2022
• Codes for living – August 2021
• Transport laws – July 2021
• The Sequel – May 2021
• Original – March 2021

Correct at the time of writing.

Check before you travel.

All connections matter.

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