Friday Reads – 19 August 2022

On By In Crossrail, Friday Reads, Pollution, Safety, TfL

• TfL could be nationalised (RailTech)

• Secrets of the Elizabeth Line: video (GeoffMarshall)

• These maps help you see & noise pollution in your city (FastCompany)

• Vancouver, St Louis saw increased safety, decreased crime after installing fare gates (CBC)

• When cities treated cars as dangerous intruders (MITPress)

• Mobile furnaces & exhaust pipes are making heat waves so much worse (Streetsblog)

• Rhine low water levels forces much lighter loads, cancels ferry (DeutscheWelle)

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4 comments

  1. “UK government bail-outs for Transport for London could soon come to an abrupt end, with the entire integrated transit network taken into public ownership.”….Hmmmmm, I thought London Transport was taken into public ownership in 1933. The only changes since then is which bunch of [Edit] (aka politicians) has been in charge.

  2. “TfL could be nationalised”

    In short, yes

    And the government don’t need to change the legislation.

    “Intervention in local government – House of Commons Library

    Intervention: the legal position

    The legal power for the Government to intervene in the running of a local authority is broad and flexible, permitting the takeover of any local functions by the Secretary of State or appointees. Intervention takes place under section 15 (6) of the Local Government Act 1999.

    Each intervention begins with a formal direction notice. Typically powers are returned to the local authority after a period of years, although they may not all be returned at once. Some interventions have been preceded by reports based on ‘best value’ inspections, though this is not a legal requirement for an intervention to take place.

    Formal Government interventions in the running of local authorities are rare, and to date they have occurred in response to high-profile service failure or scandals, not disaster management. The circumstances of each intervention have been quite different. For instance, the Government intervened in Rotherham MBC in the light of a report on child sexual exploitation in the borough by Dame Louise Casey. An earlier intervention in Hackney was focused on social services, education and waste management.”

    https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/intervention-in-local-government/

    Don’t shoot the messenger!

  3. Any “intervention” now would be pure political ( To quote John Bull ) “willy-waving” on the port of our present so called government, as a means of feeding red meat to it’s voters in the shires.
    Its practical utility would be zero & we could then look forward ( or back ) to the grim days of the late 1970’s as regards standards & safety for Transport in London..
    Whether serious intervention would require a new Act of Parliament is another possibility, but that cannot happen until one or other, erm, “candidate” becomes PM …..

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