But that wouldn't help get more trains through London Bridge or allow
12-car trains at station (sorry for being a bit London-centric, but it is where I live - I understand Leeds is worse).Even where they haven't been, the railways are hemmed in.
OK, so one train can take up to a 1000 cars off the road network, next!...
Hmm, you seem to forget that Trams are urban railways... Duh!
Rubbish, it just needs a will to do it, after all many a house or entire street was knocked down to accommodate ring roads, by-passes or link roads in the past...
An unusual twist of history from the mid 1950's British Railways started to post losses which grew every year. Beaching was brought into the railways as a reaction to this with the aim of returning the railways to profitability. He was a very successful chairman of II and it was hoped he could work is magic on the railways. He achieved some success but never squared the circle.
Chris
The Conservative government did not stop these schemes but abolish the metropolitan counties as they would never vote Conservative and had 'loony lefties in charge'. This made it much more difficult to fund the PTAs. Then bus de-regulation and privatisation which perversely resulted in the competition authorities banning inter available tickets between operators. Strangely London was excluded from this due to the chaos it would have caused I imagine. As much as it grates the Conservative government of Thatcher actually was a stable time for the railways and they started to thrive again. Before the Major years and New Labour ruined it all.
Chris
The scale and the detail of running a government department is beyond the capability of one person to know every tiny detail. As a lot of the ministers are unfamiliar with what their department does when they start they have to rely on the years of experience of the civil servants to aid them. For DfT its not just railways they look after and there's all the regional and international responsibilities as well. Which is why it always seems unjust that CEOs of large companies get such large remuneration packages when they rely on people much lower down to work things out. I was talking about the day to day business of the department much of which does not require legislation like awarding franchises. Major legislation would also be scrutinised by the transport select committee which the late Gwent Dunwoody chaired and held ministers to account very well.
You are joking, the railways were *never* funded properly under Thatcher (she sacked the one minister or transport who actually did want to properly fund the rail network), any funding for modernisation/maintenance/improvement projects had to be found from it's existing budget - IOW a rob Peter to pay Paul existence, this then caused either passenger complaints or indusial relations problems. A classic example of this, which still causes problems to this day was the ECML electrification, basically it had to be done on the cheap, one way the engineers achieved this was by extending the distance between OHLE masts to the maximum they *thought* they could get away with, the up-shot of this is the regular occurrence of locomotive pantographs becoming tangled with the catenary on windy days.
Indeed, but then Major was so strapped for cash he had to raise money some how to 'bribe' the tax payer somehow - it's just a pity that so many of his cronies were on the make with fat brown envelopes meaning that he was going to loose the next election regardless. Labours mistake was that after either of their two landslide victories or the Railtrack debacle they copped out of re-nationalising it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
LOL, that is NOT what I intended to say (flipping MS spiel chucker) but what an appropriate typo! :~)
FFS, we are talking here of major policy/legislation, not what colour paper clips to buy or the width of the standard yellow parking restriction line for use on the highway...
wrote
That's the exact point and whilst an integrated public transport system might not cover every eventuality it can cover most.
Instead of driving from Barton upon Humber to Hull every day I could actually do most of the journey free of charge by bus (now I've got my free bus pas) but the ten minute walk and this end and the twenty minute walk at the other end would triple the journey time by car. It's also a bit difficult/dangerous to carry the shop till tray on a bus and for the walking part of the journey.
John.
wrote
About the same as having cars sitting around idle for most of the time.
John.
"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote
And that Ernest Marples, the then Minister for Transport, was a director of a road haulage concern.
John.
"Arthur Figgis" wrote
He may have disposed of his interests, but to whom? Also it's highly unlike that someone with a substantial interest in road transport (whether through road building or haulage) would divest himself of his friends in the industry or his industry allegiances.
John.
"Arthur Figgis" wrote
It depends whether a railway might be a cheaper option. I don't see why it needs to cost more to build a railway that a road to be honest - apart from our ludicrous demands for much higher standards of Health & Safety and disabled access for railways which often makes the costs of a railway untenable.
John.
On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:47:40 +0100, "John Turner" said in :
And that's before you've considered the environmental cost of all the parking spaces at both ends necessary to support private car travel. 8% of my house floorspace is a garage. Luckily I am smart enough to us it for something better :-)
Guy
Beeching was given a brief by the Tory government. All he did was enact it, as that was his job. As the brief made no provision for suggesting alternatives the result was inevitable - he just took the can for doing the government's dirty work, he had no leeway.
Cheers Richard
"Sorry Sir Ernest Marples, due to conflicts of interest, terms of reference and a general wish not to end my days being seen as both the fail-guy for this administration and (due to my other interests - namely Tarmac) a criminal I can not take up this appointment. Good-day Sir."
'nough said....
Beeching was tasked with cutting the losses made by BR and/or to make BR profitable. One thing he did was to identify all the loss-making lines (largely, but not exclusively, btranch lines). His recommendation was that they be closed and what money was available invested in the main trunk routes. Unfortunately, he - and others- seemed to fail to realise that the commuter getting off the branch train at the junction probably had a through ticket to a main line destination - once his branch line closed he stayed in his car and drove to work, thus reducing the profitability of the main line service. Rationalisation of the main lines saw, for example, the Somerset and Dorset, the Waverley, Exeter - Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock, Manchester - Derby via Matlock and Bakewell all closed and other main lines singled (Salisbury to Exeter). Whatever faults Beeching may have had, he only recommended a course of action which the Governments, both Labour and Conservative, subsequently acted upon.
David Costigan
His wife...
Also it's highly unlike
Not directly related, but one of the contradictions we have is that if a politician has no experience of their field, we complain they can't know what they are doing. But if they do have direct experience, we complain they must be corrupt because of their past and no doubt future links to the industry!
Most people around here use their garages to store worthless junk, and leave their $30,000 car outside.
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