Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected].
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- • Map of London’s defunct tram network (CityMetric)
- • Manchester’s hilarious attempt at reinventing London’s Oyster (Medium)
- • A modern atmospheric railway prototype (Railway Technology)
- • Address twins (Paul Plowman)
- • Historic Plaque stickers (99% Invisible)
- • Best pre-flight safety videos (Transport Designed)
- • If you want German trains, go to Switzerland (Deutsche Welle)
- • America’s Train Stations: An Architectural Explainer (CityLab)
- • Napoli’s spectacular new rail station (Global Rail News)
The Manchester article is hilarious!
SH(LR). I disagree. It is mighty sad that someone can invent a “smart” card system that seems to have as many arcane rules as the current National Rail ticketing system. That said, rather than ‘smart’, I would use a different word that would lower the tone of this site. London is truly fortunate, helped that it doesn’t ‘benefit’ from bus deregulation
Not really a contribution to the transport debate, but I think the comment about the North London line BBC news film & its “fruity voiced” reporter is unfair. I have just looked the 3 or 4 min film & it got all the points relevant in 1982 across clearly. As you say, even mentioning the possibility of a ring route around London & I detected no rail fact inaccuracies which you usually find in BBC/ITV rail news reports these days. And there is nothing wrong with the poor young reporters voice. Well written, clearly pronounced. Bill Kerr Elliot must be in an old folks home now. He will be hurt by the criticism. I recommend seeing the film.
Strand underpass – used entirely by cars now??? What about the north/eastbound 521 Bus from Waterloo to London Bridge? Admittedly deeply unfashionable since its bendy-bus heyday, but heavily used along High Holborn in the peak hours.
At the start of the afternoon peak now, the first westbound 521 clears about half-a-dozen ghost services off the Holborn Viaduct ‘next bus’ indicator. When the eagerly-anticipated late-night Thameslink services reach Maidstone, will I be able to rely on the 521 to deliver me to City Thameslink station in time for the 22:59? (the last train out of City Thameslink).
@100&30: As a software architect/business analyst, it is truly hilarious!
We can only hope that in due course Manchester will get a system worthy of being called a system… I also hope they manage to find a better name!
SH(LR) I am sure the representatives of your profession implemented exactly what was asked for. Perhaps that person should have challenged the specifier along the lines of “are you sure that’s wise, Mr Mainwaring?”.
London got its zonal fare system when Ken Livingstone instructed London Transport to cut the fares – remember “Fares Fair”? The managers in LT asked if they could use this as an opportunity to simplify the fares. KL said “yes” and the rest is history. I still remember someone whose fare from south London to Golders Green better than halved though this process.
@CentTrente
With my software engineer/business analyst hat on, specs are challenged all the time. But s/he who pays the piper calls the tune. Switching quickly to my Manchester hat, and having tried to figure out their various pass and mode combination passes and Rangers over the decades, methinks TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) wanted exactly what they ended up with, notwithstanding any protestations.
It takes a particular kind of organisational genius to come up with a contrived brand name that matches the initials of your organisation (GMT), then change the name of the organisation just as the card is being introduced.
Ian
I would agree with you if that were true, but before it was called TfGM it was called GMPTE, not GMT.
It was GMT before the contract/planning part became GMPTE in 1986. The operating part became GM Buses, and then GM Buses North and GM Buses South in 1993, and sold to First and Stagecoach in 1996. Note it was SELNEC before it became GMT in 1981. And that’s without the authority (elected members side), which was SELNEC PTA (1969-1974), the subsumed by the GMCC (1974-1986), the GMPTA (1986-2008), then GMITA (2008-2011), then subsumed in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (since 2011), and possibly now under the mayor. So with that history, is the fondness for bizarre mechanism (as in the linked article, but you may also wish to study the System 1 integrated fares system) any surprise?
As that Manchester Smartcard article has materialised here I’ll add a few comments.
In the very early days of LT looking at smartcards there were regular reminders that Greater Manchester was going to beat everyone in the UK to the world of “smart travel” with an all encompassing smartcard that not only covered multi modal travel but would act as a general services card for local authorities and access card for schools. You can’t fault the scale of ambition but nothing of any substance ever appeared to support all the fine words spoken in conferences. In the end the scheme foundered.
As already said the very fractured nature of transport provision in Greater Manchester post bus deregulation and rail franchising did not help matters. The PTE then concentrated on expanding Metrolink as best as it could. The financing of Metrolink means it acts effectively as a private operator seeking to pull in as much unique (and not pooled) revenue as possible. Gtr Manchester has one of the silliest (IMO) ticket product structures but the PTE / ITA (integrated transport authority) are seemingly powerless to improve it. It remains to be seen whether Burnham, as Mayor, can force through some changes and get the various large commercial entities to behave.
It is worth remembering that TfL has enormous financial might, large revenues, an ability to borrow and decades of experience. It is also very influential in its own right despite the issues it has had with, for example, getting TOCs to participate in Oyster PAYG ticketing. However it is noteworthy that when it came to contactless ticketing being extended to rail there was a short period of “non co-operation” but then the TOCS capitulated (at least in public) and agreed to participate. One wonders how vigorous the conversations were behind closed doors on that particular subject.
London also has the benefit of being broadly in charge of its ticketing structure and fares. TfL thus had a “guiding mind” on fares matters and policy changes were brought in under the first Mayor to facilitate smart ticketing. Later Mayors have sought to exploit the smartcard ticketing system to raise revenues, fine tune products and reduce operating costs. I doubt Greater Manchester, even with a Mayor, has any prospect of achieving the same sort of benefits. The crucial test will be whether regulation of bus services in achieved in GM and if First Group / Stagecoach decide to co-operate or if they throw “hizzy fits” and close down their businesses. Similar concerns will apply as to how National Rail services fit into a smart regime and what Transport for the North has to say about it all. There is a lot to play for in Manchester but they are years behind where TfL have got to and have little or no “volume” experience with a smartcard system so face a steep learning curve and potentially a long period of product and system changes to give the public something that works in an attractive way.
@WW As always, you’re insights are fascinating.
My own experience traveling about in Manc is that I choose which of the three separate transport networks I’m going to use on a given day – bus (not much if at all cheaper than the others), local train services (with city centre tram travel freebie), or tram. It’s much pricier to travel intermodally there, something London overcame in the early 1980s! And I don’t see the new Manchester smart card, whose name I cannot even bring myself to type, improving on this at all. With no foresight, the card merely digitises the existing fare scheme, becoming little more than an electronic change card.
I don’t know if it is still the case, but certainly at one stage in Manchester, PTE staff got free travel on the bus and rail networks, but not on Metrolink i.e. the one bit owned and controlled by the PTE!
Metrolink is also the significant extra in the multi-modal fares, with bus + rail variations being reasonably comparable with offers in other PTE areas. Bus + tram or bus + rail day tickets cost £1.20 and £1.40 more than the bus only version – but all three modes is a £3.30 premium on the base bus ticket. Who is it who is being greedy?
Not sure why there is so much fuss about the Manchester smart tickets.
Basically the main ongoing problem seems to be that there is no PAYG function, everything else is just one-off administrative issues. So they shouldn’t claim that it is Manchester’s Oyster, since it isn’t really meant to be.
@ LBM – as no one is in “control” of fares and ticketing in Gtr Manchester it is little wonder there is no great logic to the “structure” of fares. Don’t forget there will be point to point and, no doubt, operator specific deals on the rail network alongside anything vaguely zonal or multi modal. If Andy Burnham makes any demonstrable and positive progress on GM fares and ticketing he will have done well. I doubt he will though given too much revenue is at stake for the bus companies and he has no control over Northern Rail (Arriva).
@ Man of Kent – I am not sure you can necessarily blame “greed” in respect of Metrolink. They are in the same position that TfL is in for Crossrail in that there are huge loans to pay back via the revenue stream. The fact that much of Metrolink’s financing has had to be local and hypothecated to revenue says a lot for how we approach integrated public transport in this country. Negligible interest from central government even when Labour was in power (the infamous Darling “no” to Metrolink moment). Don’t be shocked to see some subtle and not so subtle moves to shovel as many people on to Crossrail / the Tube / DLR rather than buses in London to try to max out the revenue stream for LU so those Crossrail loans can be paid back.
@ John – I doubt anyone in London cares one jot what’s going on in Manchester. The problem is that a lot of people have used Oyster and view it as a panacea to all transport fare and ticketing issues elsewhere in the country. That is what sits behind the mocking article linked to above. I inwardly groan every time I see someone, especially politicians, go “we need an Oyster system in x”. No no no. You might like something like Oyster but if you don’t fix the regulatory structure, accountabilities, funding and get talking to rail and bus companies then nothing remotely like Oyster will materialise anywhere. The technology is the easy bit. The commercial objectives and alignment of other issues like data ownership/protection/exploitation, revenue accounting and apportionment and who owns/run the system are much bigger issues of crucial commercial concern to private transport companies.
The structure and finances of “public” (cough) transport mitigate against multi modal, integrated smartcard systems. Heck if the DfT can’t get smartcards to work on National Rail where it is the ultimate paymaster what hope have you got trying to herd the likes of Stagecoach, First Group, Blazefield, Arriva and Go Ahead to get single fare scales and ticket products and charing caps across their competing bus routes? None.
@WW
I wasn’t necessarily accusing Metrolink of being greedy. I understand entirely the principle of discounting against your own product, on the expectation that it might be a smaller slice but from a bigger cake. What I am struggling to understand in Manchester is that the multi-modal premium is greater than the sum of the tram premium and the train premium.
The one place that has managed to establish a multi-operator capped pay-as-you-go scheme is Nottingham’s Robin Hood card. But the bus operators cannot usually do this on their own, as they will have the competition authorities on their case. Bring in a transport authority, and it is generally OK, though the Competition & Market Authority sounded a warning in a five page open letter sent to transport authorities on 29 February 2016. There doesn’t appear to be anything more recent that covers provisions made in the Bus Services Act.
@Jim Elson to which North London Line BBC news article are you referring, and which comment?
@WW “You might like something like Oyster but if you don’t fix the regulatory structure, accountabilities, funding and get talking to rail and bus companies then nothing remotely like Oyster will materialise anywhere.”
I get the impression that that is exactly what people want when asking for an Oyster like system. Why has Oyster worked so well? Because it is a single point of contact for all transport modes across the capital, with a simple, well publicised fare structure. That this was easy in London is the result of its special treatment when it comes to public transport acts.
For the rest of the country, that special treatment is a highly desireable position to be in – with public transport being specified by a local public body, being run for the benefit of the public, not the benefit of shareholders. The minutiae of getting to that position is not part of that vision, and deriding people for wanting that vision is not entirely helpful.
The laughable status of the ‘My Get Me There’ card shows that the rest of the country is a long way from realising the dream that Londeners now take for granted.
I may be naïve, but I think that the original fares reduction, that triggered the London zonal system (which made travel cards easy to implement and later enabled Oyster) was one of the key factors in making London as successful as it is today. Certainly there was a hit on revenue, but passenger numbers increased very rapidly – so much so that I suspect that the revenue “hit” was reversed pretty quickly. I can’t be sure as I wasn’t close to revenue issues at the time, but by 1985 LU was having to find ways to increase it’s fleet size which it had been reducing in 1982!
The first comment on the manchetser article says that “this piece doesn’t address why: namely, that London has one transport operator and Manchester (at least) six.”
On the contrary, Oyster works despite having to rely on co-operation between rather more than six operators : Anglia, C2C, Chiltern, Great Western, London Midland, South Eastern, South Western, Thameslink Southern Great Northern, TfL, and the Thames Clippers.
Timbeau…….Whilst there’s all these different operators in London they are all accountable to one of two “quite powerful” masters – DfT and TfL. So those not under direct control can have the requirement built into their concession/franchise/management contract, or they can be “leant on”. In Manchester, the bus operators, at least are not accountable to anyone as far as I can tell. TfGM genuinely do rely on cooperation. I imagine that, in time, the rail operators might we brought into the fold with less difficulty (nearly typed “more easily”) than with the buses – oh the joys of deregulation.
Re Muzer’s query about the post that led me to mention the excellent BBC 1980’s North London line 3 minute news report.
The post, with the link to the NNL film, must have been in the Friday Reads September 8 comments, since I cannot find it anywhere on the site now.
The poster praised the BBC film, which interviewed the BR area manager, a NNL campaigner, & commuters, & had great shots of the line including Broad street terminus in operation. But it derided the reporter, which I felt unfair. If anyone in charge can make the post to which I referred reappear it would be helpful. Otherwise it would be best to remove my 17 September post as it is nonsensical without being able to see the original post, as Muzer very politely implied.
@Jim Elson & Muzer – I believe that this BBC Archive clip is the one in mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWFvEO6I8fQ
@ Man of Kent – I suspect Nottingham works for a couple of reasons. The City Council retains a majority stake in Nottingham City Transport which is one of the best bus companies in the country. Trent Barton are also reasonably innovative and are part of the operating consortium that run the tram network on behalf of the relevant local authorities. Therefore there is a reasonable amount of political pressure that can be brought to bear. There are also additional funding mechanisms like a workplace parking levy which no doubt help in paying for the tram network investment. I would guess, but don’t know, that management of the road network is aligned with giving buses and trams priority. In other words there is a reasonably virtuous set of circumstances and no City institution shareholder pressure on any of the operating companies.
@ Anonymike – I was not deriding what people want. If there is any derision it needs to be directed at politicians for failing to restructure legal frameworks and being willing to deal with “competition” issues when it is clear there are wider benefits to be gained. I don’t expect the public to understand all the nuances and influences – they just want easy to use, affordable, safe and reliable services. I *do* expect politicians to invest a bit of brain power to understand why “we want an Oyster system” may not be the right answer for the area(s) they represent.
@ 100&30 – You are correct that the three stage process of “GLC Fares Fair”, the Bromley Council Law Lords case and then “Just the Ticket” revolutionised the approach to ticketing. It was the post Bromley judgement reappraisal by the GLC that allowed fares to be trimmed again but launched the Travelcard product as we broadly understand it today (BR services were excluded for reasons explained here before). The advantage that was present at that time was a large amount of surplus capacity especially after the savage post Bromley cuts. As you observe the public took to the “bargain” that was the Travelcard back then with a big bonus of “free” bus travel given the pricing was really set on the basis of being cheaper than 5 peak day returns on the tube. Coupled with the Lawson boom in the mid 80s patronage did surge on the LT network. This then led to the repeated demands from LT for more and sustained investment – especially in the tube network – which the government generally brushed aside with the occasional bit on 1 year funding largesse which is no good to anyone. And then we got to Nov 1987 and we all know what happened then at Kings Cross. In 1985 we got the more expensive Capitalcard product which gave people the choice of buying zonal BR availability alongside what Travelcard gave. Eventually the products were unified as Travelcard.
It remains to be seen how TfL will approach Travelcard in the future as it seeks to exploit technology which is inimical to the basic concept of an unlimited zonally based ride at will product. I know we have “caps” which replicate the Travelcard price but I do wonder quite where we are headed strategically. I can well imagine there are “brains on sticks” inside TfL dreaming of very sophisticated pricing models that will bring in lots more money (if only those naughty politicians would let them).
@130: Whilst there’s all these different operators in London they are all accountable to one of two “quite powerful” masters – DfT and TfL
And yet in Japan, a plethora of private competing transport companies, with a complicated mass of point-to-point fares, years ago created a system of interoperable pay-as-you-go smartcards without much political coordination at all – simply because they realised that it was in their own long term commercial interests to cooperate. Smartcard ticketing saves them money just as it has saved TfL a lot of money (ticketing costs roughly halved?).
Compare with ITSO, where the British government has spent hundreds of millions with very little to show for it, partly because the TOCs can’t see the bigger picture (just as they resisted Oyster which has made them a lot of money), because the Competition Commission actively works against cooperation between different operators, and because the DfT is focused on outputs (smartcards for the sake of smartcards) not outcomes (reduced transaction costs).
I can solve the mystery of the North London Line issue.
Last Friday when you clicked on the City Metric London tram story, at the bottom of the page there was a “related articles” link to a NLL story. It is the same video as mentioned above but with additional copy…
http://www.citymetric.com/transport/bbc-archive-newsclip-shows-north-london-line-1981-when-bad-people-wanted-turn-it-road-3191
The related articles link has since been changed because newer related articles exist.