Thursday 23rd November 2023 The new arrivals concourse with passageways to the airport terminal marked with an arrow. After three years of intensive work it’s very welcome to see the £250 million upgrade to Gatwick Airport’s railway station finally finished and opened for passengers on Tuesday. The new arrivals concourse can be seen above the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 19th October 2023 In last Thursday's blog about the upcoming demise of the Day Travelcard in London I added the caveat to my analysis of how the new regime come January would impact passengers, TfL and Train Operating Companies (TOCs) that I "may have got all my assumptions wrong including what Apportionment Factors are... Continue Reading →
Thursday 12th October 2023 This blog is a collaboration with my friend Geoff Marshall and his highly respected and much watched YouTube channel. We teamed up last week to test out what will happen in January when time runs out for London’s popular one-day Travelcard. Click here to see Geoff’s video setting out our findings... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 3rd October 2023 Transport Focus has just published its interim report on this year’s ongoing research into bus passenger satisfaction while the report by the University of the West of England commissioned by the DfT into DRT schemes funded by the Rural Mobility Fund is also now available. I’ve had a read of both... Continue Reading →
Saturday 8th July 2023 The delusional Rail Delivery Group reckon it'll be better than ever. Moving staff from somewhere everyone knows where to find them (ie something called a 'ticket office') to "out of ticket offices and onto station platforms and concourses to support better, face-to-face interactions" is not only plain daft, it's illogical. New... Continue Reading →
Thursday 6th July 2023 Marsh Barton is not the most exciting new station to open on the network in recent years. Located just under two-and-a-half miles due south of central Exeter, not far from Exeter St Thomas station on the main line west towards Plymouth, the station was officially opened on Monday by Secretary of... Continue Reading →
Sunday 11th June 2023 After my Exmoor Coaster bus ride last Monday, described in yesterday’s blog, I turned my attention to East Devon for three more interesting bus journeys on Tuesday. First up was new route X30 introduced on 3rd April thanks to Devon County Council’s Bus Service Improvement Plan funded by the DfT. Operated... Continue Reading →
Sunday 4th June 2023 I’ve been out DRT riding again. This time in High Wycombe. Carousel’s PickMeUp, introduced last September as a three year scheme with £736,000 from the DfT’s Rural Mobility Fund and Section 106 funding, is being hailed as a DRT that’s working well and "going from strength to strength". A series of... Continue Reading →
Thursday 9th February 2023 Tuesday's newspapers gave a strong sense of déjà-vu with reports of yet another impending bus cuts cliff edge as post Covid funding for bus services comes to an end on 31st March with registrations for any service withdrawals/amendments from that date due within the next week. We’ve been here twice before,... Continue Reading →
Saturday 7th January 2023 Listening to Mark Harper, Secretary of State for Transport and Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT doing the media rounds during this week’s strikes brought home the dysfunctional state of Britain’s railways. There seems no hope of an early resolution to the current industrial disputes while a state of paralysis... Continue Reading →
Sunday 25th September 2022 Weekend rail travel is booming. Fortunately for the rail industry the post pandemic reduction in five day week commuting has been offset by huge growth in leisure travel especially at weekends. In my experience trains at the weekends are now the busiest of the week. I recall Sir Peter Hendy opining... Continue Reading →
Saturday 27th August 2022 Yesterday afternoon saw the second outing of an interloper’s new weekly appearance competing on the West Coast Main Line. The rail tour company Locomotive Services Ltd (trading as InterCity) has started running a southbound journey between Crewe and Euston followed by a return back to Manchester leaving London in the busy... Continue Reading →
Saturday 13th August 2022 Let’s take stock. The battle for TfL is ominously sliding towards a possible nuclear option of bankruptcy and Government "taking back control"…… Rail strikes are continuing with more trains in the sidings than on the tracks today with ASLEF drivers’ turn to stop work and RMT and TSSA members out again... Continue Reading →
Thursday 14th July 2022 There have now been 11 deadlines for Government funding support for TfL since the pandemic began in late March 2020. That’s an average of one deadline every 78 days. Or one very two and a half months. Bearing in mind the first funding settlement lasted for six and a half months... Continue Reading →
Sunday 3rd July 2022 Speculation is growing of an imminent announcement of a £2 cap on all bus fares throughout England to apply for six months from October as part of Government plans to help with the cost of living. Such a plan has already been announced by West Yorkshire Combined Authority Mayor Tracey Brabin... Continue Reading →
Saturday 25th June 2022 Extract from Grant Shapps' letter of 23rd June to Sadiq Khan. Dear Grant and Sadiq I was intrigued to be quoted in Thursday’s letter (from you Grant to you Sadiq) so wondered if I could help by acting as a bit of an ‘honest broker’ between the two of you as... Continue Reading →
Thursday 23rd June 2022 Last Saturday Minister of State for Transport Wendy Morton announced “a further £15 million in funding to develop nine Restoring Your Railway schemes across England to reopen disused railway lines, services and stations, including some that were axed in the 1950s and 60s – with one station taken out of use... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 15th March 2022 I’ve been ‘off the road’ for operational reasons since last Monday (otherwise known as testing positive for Covid) which has given me an opportunity to reflect on the rail industry’s policy on ticket refunds. It’s all very simple if you’re a Marks & Spencer customer. Famous for its no quibble policy,... Continue Reading →
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Looking south I was in Cambridge briefly over the weekend so took the opportunity to take a look at the interim safety measures now installed between the public footpath/bridleway and the northbound guided busway on the one-and-a-quarter mile stretch between Addenbrooke's Hospital and Cambridge railway station. It had... Continue Reading →
Saturday 19th February 2022 I'd planned to use this blog to write about the fourth funding settlement agreed between DfT and TfL yesterday including the controversial stuff like Travelcards ending. But I guessed a settlement wouldn't be agreed. And instead there'd be a further extension from last night's midnight expiry of the already twice extended... Continue Reading →
Saturday 22nd January 2022 One of the proposals London Mayor Sadiq Khan has put forward to help shore up TfL’s finances in ongoing funding negotiations with Government to replace the current arrangements ending on 4th February is the end of the Travelcard. If this goes ahead it will confirm without doubt the wheels have well... Continue Reading →
Sunday 2nd January 2022 What on earth is going on at Southern Rail? There we all were making alternative arrangements for travel between Christmas and New Year while Network Rail carried out resignalling work closing all lines between East Croydon and Victoria for nine days .... .... when on Thursday it was announced these arrangements... Continue Reading →
Sunday 28th November 2021 Life is tough at the top, they say, and it’s never more true for bus company managers wrestling with continuing pandemic pressures of running a bus company. Not enough passengers; not enough bus drivers; not enough financial support; no certainty of future Government funding; poor reimbursement for concessionary travel on the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 20th May 2021 It's definitely not a return to British Railways, Grant Shapps was at pains to point out on this morning's media circuit. This is going to be very different. It's "simplification" not "re-nationalisation". Because it's called Great British Railways. Not British Railways. But it'll bring back control of tracks and operations together.... Continue Reading →
Friday 4th December 2020 I've had a look in a bit more detail at the fifteen ideas for Restoring Your Railways recently awarded up to £50,000 each to investigate whether they have a realistic business case. I can only offer a ‘back of the envelope' view but I reckon I won't be far out, especially... Continue Reading →
Saturday 21st November 2020 One big upside of this week’s so called Government ‘reset’ after Dom's Downing Street departure was Monday's welcome return of the Morgan-v-Hancock...Jenrick...Sharma...(et al) head-to-head on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. No-one does a Cabinet grilling quite like Piers Morgan and it's proving a ratings beating TV fest, but all the while the... Continue Reading →
Monday 5th October 2020 Transport Secretary Grant Shapps rolled out the usual sound bites when launching the Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements (replacing Emergency Measures Agreements) on the breakfast media round a couple of weeks ago. This is what he said on BBC Radio 4's flagship Today programme: "Today we've ended the franchise system after a... Continue Reading →
Friday 11th September 2020 The last time Oxfordshire funded a bus service was July 2016. That month the County Council scrapped its circa £4 million annual bus subsidy budget abandoning 118 tendered bus contracts to the fate of the commercial market - and turned 34 years of deregulation on its head. Deregulation, you my recall,... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 The Government’s Restoring Your Railway Fund is a £500 million pot to “kickstart the restoration of lines closed more than 50 years ago”. It’s had a few launches. Boris Johnson promoted the commitment during the election campaign last November on a visit to Fleetwood then at the end of January Grant... Continue Reading →
Monday 3rd February 2020 - updated Wednesday 5th February 2020 First the good news. Rail passengers using Gatwick Airport will be pleased to see work finally get underway from May 2020 on the project to increase the station's capacity. Although an extra platform (7) was added in 2014 to reduce track congestion, particularly Gatwick Express... Continue Reading →
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