Travel
People hae, for whatever reason, been mentioning transport in the UK in the past month. It made me remember that, during the period before my dad became the Mayor, he would regularly come up to Birmingham to attend the official transport conference, after which, we'd meet for a meal and, over the course of the meal, dad would slowly fill me in on the interesting things he'd seen and heard. Given that knowledge, I'd like to share it, especially because it's rare to actually hear anything from the people who make the decisions. In no particular order, here are some random facts about UK travel. Please remember, the information is from before the oil peak and subsequent economic crisis.
- There is no such thing as integrated transport: all the transportation methods are in competition with each other and there are no government policies to change that in the near future.
- The government approves flying as a method of long-distance travel in the UK. This is why there are no plans to upgrade rail transport (this info is known to be obsolete)
- Virgin trains managed to get a special train from London to Glasgow in just under 4 hours in a special test run that saw the tracks fully cleared on the route in the dead of night. 4 hours is known to be a critical time under which more people will take the train instead of flying.
- There were three graphs made for total rail usage ranging from optimistic to pessimistic usage figures. The first actual data point was well above the optimistic curve.
- Transport planners are not saying if the UK will enter gridlock, they are saying when.
- Most transport models put gridlock happening somewhere in 2010-2011.
- The official government date for UK gridlock was 2014 and was then moved to 2017. This prediction takes the 2010 model and adds current work on road and rail to the predictions.
- Gridlock models includes the railways. Yes, they go into gridlock too when the time comes.
- Network Rail is waking up to the fact that its job is not only to maintain the railway, but to build them. It's becoming more confident and assertive in the scope of its plans.
- The West Coast refurbishment may have run over time and over budget, but it meant that the UK rail people acquired a lot of skill and are now the best in the world at maintaining and building railways while they are in use only. Other countries are more highly regarded in other fields of maintenance and building.
- Network Rail started projecting new High Speed rail lines, including HS-2 which would go from London to Birmingham and then on to Manchester. Alongside this, the East Coast could be upgraded on the sly to near-HS standard without telling the government. Any decision on HS-2 would require a change in the political landscape away from a flying only policy. When HS-1 opened, there was a sudden shift in public opinion and interest in HS-2 deepened, but that's as far as it went. (known to be obsolete, the Tories are even talking of HS-2 now)
- London boroughs spent transport money on a railway chord in Nuneaton to reduce freight load on the North London Line.
- Freight is doing a lot better on the railways. Well enough that EWS bought out the West Coast running rights at night. This may have contributed to why there are no night trains between London and Birmingham.
- Mentioning the North London line, apparently its one of the few paths connecting most of the main lines out of north London and the fighting over running rights is something fierce.
- Privatisation of the railways has been successful at refunding the railways. This is a fact. Whether or not it could have been done better or more easily another way though is still a hotly debated thing.
- Privatisation of the railways has created the rail lobby. This has resulted in better treatment by the government of the railways, particularly against the road lobby.