If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected].
- Slow death and rebirth of Battersea Power Station (Mike Horne Metadyne)
- Vision Zero data shows decrease in pedestrian deaths (Governing)
- True costs of driving (The Atlantic)
- How Napping Commuters Know when it’s their stop (NY Magazine)
- Drone second responders (LA Times)
- LA transit art posters (LA Metro)
- Japanese railway staff point to safety (99% Invisible)
The True Costs of Driving article is interesting. Americans account for the costs of the road system in a different way from the UK, but, typically, issues like street lighting, ambulance responses and traffic policing are omitted, with the ‘costs’ of the road system limited to the capital highway investment programme and the revenue highway maintenance budgets. In the UK, it is typically said that the revenue from motoring taxes exceeds the cost of the road system but this is only achieved if you take the limited costs equation, mentioned above and if you include general taxes such as VAT (on fuel and vehicles) as well as specific motoring taxes such as VED and fuel duty. The Treasury’s highways fund – which has recently been expanded to cover some local roads funding as well, is in surplus because it doesn’t include any spending apart from Highways England roads and even then does not include police and emergency services.
I’m intrigued by the napping article. Many years ago I used to commute from Brentwood into Liverpool St. When I started commuting, I wondered “how on earth can these people nap” on the way home and yet wake up at the right time for their stop.
Within a few weeks I was firmly in the after-work nap club. My theory (with zero proof) was that I was woken by the swaying motion over the Gidea Park points (back then, the pattern was that my train ran along the fast lines from Stratford to Gidea Park then switched over to the slow lines – it was always a noticeable sway as we crossed). Showing my age, these were slam door trains – there were no announcements so I could not have been subliminally hearing any next station call.
@Island dweller -these habits can become expensive – late one evening, leaving Waterloo, a minor Labour minister of the day burst into the coach:
– “is this the 23.48 (or whatever) to Guildford?
– No, it’s the 23.45
-Does it stop at Guildford?
-Yes
– Are you sure it’s not the 23.48?
– No, it’s not
– Are you quite sure?
– Yes
Junior minister subsides and falls asleep. Train passes Guildford with minor minister still asleep,reaches Farncombe and minister awakes:
– “Is this Guildford?”
– (Reply from new party who had not heard the inital exchanges on boarding;the rest of having been implicitly called incompetent, remained stum) – No
Minister returns to sleep. At Godalming, we passed the last northbound service of the day (Minister asleep). At Milford we left the train (Minister asleep). Cab fare at night from POMO – I should think around £120
@Graham H: Reminds me of a former colleague who fell asleep on the last train to Hastings. He was planning to get off at Orpington… He watched the sun rise on the beach!
That’s the difference between a light after-work nap and a deep drink-induced coma. You don’t expect me to admit to the time I ended up at Southend at 1.30 in the morning do you? Goodness me, I felt like sin.
Another pal (south west London commuter) once woke up in the sidings. The one remaining brain cell left in his head told him to stay put for the night and not jump out – third rail and all that.
A colleague once missed his working stop and ended up in Portsmouth. He chose the holiday inn as cheaper than the taxi.
A former colleague used to tell a story of falling asleep on Thameslink and waking up more than once to find the train travelling in the opposite direction to last time, he having missed his stop each time.
A friend trying to get home from London to Reading following an after work shindig, woke up to find himself in Scotland after apparently selecting the wrong terminus altogether and then falling into a deep sleep. He explained later he was convinced he was at Paddington, while the train he boarded at Kings Cross (in the open station HST era) looked exactly the same as he was used to with its pointy yellow end at the bufferstop. That’s another tangible benefit of privatisation I suppose, different branding and livery alerting an individual to their mistake in such a scenario!
I find the theory that individuals wake up briefly at each station en route quite compelling. I know in my many years of Reading – London commuting, what made the Waterloo route via Staines so tiring was not the journey time but the sheer number of stops involved. I could never get a decent kip as my subconscious detected the braking on approach to each station. Eventually I found that by purchasing my ‘any permitted’ season from Basingstoke (exactly the same price as from Reading) I could travel between Reading West and Waterloo via the SW mainline and that could reward me with a good 40 to 50 minute slumber each way on the main line leg, arriving nicely refreshed. Today, with the ubiquitous smartphone, people can set alarms easily to wake them up before their scheduled arrival time, and I think some tracking apps can set a location specific alarm to adjust for any late running while getting as many zzzzs as possible.
There are some very subtle cues sometimes …
If staggering home from Liverpool St as the Chingford line crosses the Stratford-Tottie Hale one, there is a distinct note-change on the short viaduct, even on cwr.
Only ever failed me once!
I love the Paddington vs KX story. Imagine ending up in Scotland. 🙂
Thankfully I find it next to impossible to sleep on trains and completely impossible on the tube therefore drink induced “comas” don’t cause perpetual travel twixt Brixton and WW Central.
I still cannot fathom how, on German Unification Night, I navigated from a bar in central Munchen to the “we close the doors at midnight” Youth Hostel I was staying at, having drunk immense quantities of beer with some German soldiers. I have only been to Munchen once so how I did this, and got a very drunk friend also back to base, must be due to mystical navigational powers or sheer good luck. We made it with one minute to go before the gates were locked. I still have a couple of memory “pictures” of this escapade in my head but it still makes me chuckle as to how we caught two U Bahn trains and found the hostel.
@WW: Your beer compass obviously works well! I have only once been in a similar situation myself…
After ten days of being out on site and working mostly nights, I then had to go to Brighton for a company get together. On the way home very late, I kept nodding off on the train and would continually wake myself up with “I must get off at London Bridge”, as the train was going to Bedford there would have been no return journey before morning. I managed it, but only just. The journey after that was easier, I simply asked the bus driver to make sure I got off at the right stop. Thankfully he did and I didn’t end up in the Peckham bus garage…
Mike Horne’s article about Battersea Power Station dates from last autumn. Is there any reason for highlighting it now?
@Andrew S
I thought it was interesting and still valid.
I struggle to sleep on the tube, and rarely get more than a few winks on a train, but there is something about the gentle purr of a night bus that I find incredibly soporific. Three times I’ve been brusquely awakened by the driver and booted off the 341 at the end of it’s route. And IKEA Edmonton is a terrible place to find yourself at 3am on a Sunday morning. The meatballs are still hours away and the nearest civilisation in the form of Tottenham High Rd isn’t much closer, nor much more appealing at that hour.
I also found the Battersea Power Station article interesting. Before I moved to London, and probably when I was about 17 – 18, I knew I would be staying in London for a few days, I wrote to the Superintendent of the power station asking if it would be possible to visit it.
The result was a 2+ hour tour with an engineer that covered every aspect of the working station from top to bottom – from looking at the coal burning in one of the boilers, standing next to one of the vibrating turbines in the massive turbine hall, to a very high-up view with a great view over London (I suspect from somewhere at roof level) where I was shown where the power station supplied the heating for flats son the other side of the river. The station was still fully operational then, as this was before A closed. A very memorable visit and certain to be very non H&S in today’s climate 🙂
Later, just before the station closed, I lived in Battersea for a short while, almost opposite the station. with the smoking chimneys in view (and the occasional whiff of cremating carcases from the Dogs Home).
I have mixed feelings about the future of the station. To me, it was always an iconic building that, together with the nearby blue gasholder, stood out as a London landmark and something that I thought should remain.
Now, after having been left to rot and disintegrate after all these years, I am not so sure. Whilst the shell remains, the chimneys are just copies and the spacious setting that it was in will have disappeared, covered in blocks of flats. To me, the final result will never be “Battersea Power Station”, rather a semi fake copy. Such is progress!
Just read “The True Cost of Driving”, it leaves out one important issue, which really should have been included: The health disbenefits of drving. Not a word on the costs to human health that driving everywhere has.
It would be interesting to know as well, if the revenue from Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty in the U.K. covers the cost of maintaining the roads?
I thought the Battersea article was very good, and is a rather ageless discussion of the ills of the listing system. All too often listing a building seems to guarantee that it will be left to fall into disrepair because it is too expensive to do remedial work within the constraints of the listing. And he is quite right- Battersea was important for what it was (a power station), not what it looked like…
On the cost of driving, it would be interesting to see what the subsidy per trip for driving is compared to that for the railways. Similarly, if we make the desire for the traveller to pay their ‘fair share’ is applied to driving, what that would do to travel costs…
My most annoying falling asleep on the train was similar to the Thameslink one mentioned above. Catch train at Kings Cross Thameslink (as was) to St Albans. Wake at Kings Cross Thameslink travelling south…
I recall, back in the 50s, catching the last DC train from Euston after a few drinks. The guard came along the train (not too heavily loaded) asking us all where we wanted to get off. I don’t know how efficient he was as I awoke at Harrow and Wealdstone, my destination. Perhaps I subconsciously did not want to trouble him. On a few other occasions I could have done with such a helping hand!
@ Jim Jordan
There used to be a guard who did that when working late evening departures from Victoria to Ramsgate. It saved an expensive taxi for Bromley South and Medway towns passengers.
@James Bunting: One of my colleagues lives on the LTS line, she says that in the Christmas season people pin badges on, saying: “Wake me for “…