Transport

[Paul]

OK, after the trip to Reading I have been asking myself the following question.
Why is it this country does not have a clean, reliable and easy to use public transport system?
Delays, breakdowns, difficult to understand timetables and route maps etc to name a few problems, all of which I suffered at the weekend LOL
I don't know how the people who live in the London are put up with it but I really don't know what the tourists who visit our capital must think. The London tube map seems to have been designed by a child with a crayola pack and the bus and train timetables require translators to make sense.
Or is it just me?

[Bex]

Originally Posted by Paul

OK, after the trip to Reading I have been asking myself the following question.
Why is it this country does not have a clean, reliable and easy to use public transport system?
Delays, breakdowns, difficult to understand timetables and route maps etc to name a few problems, all of which I suffered at the weekend LOL
I don't know how the people who live in the London are put up with it but I really don't know what the tourists who visit our capital must think. The London tube map seems to have been designed by a child with a crayola pack and the bus and train timetables require translators to make sense.
Or is it just me?

first off...the underground maps arent that difficult....but then i have been using the underground regularly over the last five years so i kinda got used to it, apparently the french one is ten times more difficult

i will take you out in london and give u a underground map tutorial :p

as for delays...on the way to reading all three of my trains were delayed...i got to woking and was told i would have to get a bus to reading, but decided to go to guildford as planned and get a bus from there, low and behold there wass train to reading.... do they have a clue what they are doing? NO
they also kept changing platforms...why oh why can't they sort themselves out..... it's funny i always have a problem when i am travelling relatively short journeys, whenever i have travelled to wales, or from leeds to reading, or from leeds to surrey i have never had any problems.......apart from trees falling on the track and being diverted

my question is really...the government lecture us about not using cars so much and using public transport.....well the public transport down south is ridiculous so what do they expect us to do?? and they keep putting up the bleeding fares

<rant over>

[peachey]

you look at anywhere in Europe that has a decent transport system

andthey all have one common factor - they have been a dictatorship in the past - eg Italy, Germany etc

that meant they could sidestep the issue of 'design by committee'
and fat cats creaming off profits etc

get it done or get shot


there - I've said it

[Paul]

The tube map itself isn't the hard part of the equation, its the finding the correct platform that can be a nightmare especially when you get 20 tourists in front of you who don't understand they are at the wrong turnstile and that is why the ticket won't let them through. I hardly use the mass transport systems in this country but I got home ok, it just annoys me that we want to encourage tourism and the use of rail, tube and bus but we can't seem to make it reliable or simple to use for others.

[Chris T]

Woah, now this could be a big topic ... this country's rail woes began about 50 years ago with a shift towards road transport which was perceived as the flexible, modern way forward. Governments of all colours have favoured road development, choosing to fund the railways almost as an 'overflow' system carrying traffic that physically can't fit on the roads. Investment has been insufficient to keep pace with technological advances, the need to get to more places and faster, and, worst of all, simple maintenance and renewal of the infrastructure.

The Hatfield crash is now often quoted as the point in time when things went horribly, horribly wrong - speed restrictions and the like - and is now seen as the beginning point of a period of turmoil on the railways now forecast to last another 10 years (you often hear predictions of when punctuality will return to 'pre-Hatfield' levels). However Hatfield, in which a fatigued piece of track snapped, allowing a GNER train to de-rail, simply brought into focus the dangerous state the railways were being allowed to fall into.

And while there has been more apparent progress towards improvement this time, there is still a strong suspicion that once again, the Government's resolve fades as the news drops off the front pages. After the Ladbroke Grove disaster, John Prescott pledged to spend whatever it took to install Advanced Train Protection across the network, before perfomring a quiet u-turn when confronted with the cost and opting for a cheaper alternative (which, even if fitted, would not have prevented the Ladbroke Grove collision because the train passed the red signal at too high a speed). Similarly, pledges of cash for major upgrades have faded away, with Network Rail being 'encouraged' to lop £2bn off its new budget request, and news now that it may get a further £1.3bn cut. NR has indicated that it is maintenance on lesser-used lines that will be put off if this is the case. Truly, what goes around, comes around...

(As for the London Underground map, see here for a geek's treasury of information and history: http://clives.members.easyspace.com/tube/tube.html )

[Bex]

towny yes i see your point, i.e. that there is a problem with funding, however the train companies need to realise that IF they develop their systems to be more reliable and IF they make them cleaner, THEN more people will use them THERFORE they will earn back in profit the money they have put into making it a better serivice.....

what does wind me up though is the bleeding government insisting on us using cars less and then not giving us a reliable alternative...so the governement should get their ass' into gear and stop piling money into futile things and sort themselves out

[Chris T]

The problem is, the train operating companies are on a hiding to nothing. When privatisation happened, they moved in on a network that was already in a dodgy state. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

Arguably privatisation has made things worse - the network has lost British Rail's famous 'safety culture', but by bringing all maintenance work back in-house Network Rail has hopefully now begun to address that. There wil be no more competitive tendering for maintenance work, so no more management pressure on the workforce to cut corners and meet time/cost/bonus targets.

I agree there is more to reliability than the network itself and it's certainly true that the TOCs have caused mayhem by sacking large numbers of drivers - they claimed the service was 'overstaffed' but the end result has been frequent cancellations due to 'driver shortages'. Also, companies like Connex made no friends by persisting in using dirty, ancient rolling stock on some routes. They have now paid the price for their incompetence and have lost their franchise.

The whole private railways model is a difficult one. The railway is part of Britain's transport infrastructure and as such it shouldn't be necessary to judge its success by whether it makes a profit. I like the model used in the quasi-renationalisation of Railtrack - Network Rail is a 'company limited by guarantee', State-funded and not-for-profit.

[Bex]

ok towny i see your point.......but surely they should be aiming to get people to use their service......with the introduction of the thingy bobby u have to pay to go in and out of london via road, they should hve seen a gold mine opening up...

yes the railways were already shocking, but it just seems a case of passing the buck around........we deserve to have a decent private transport service..especailly because we live in a country with one of the highest taxes on cars and fuel......

what do they want us all to do bicycle everywhere? yes it is healthier to the envirnonment but it is bleeding dangerous

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by peachey

you look at anywhere in Europe that has a decent transport system

andthey all have one common factor - they have been a dictatorship in the past - eg Italy, Germany etc

that meant they could sidestep the issue of 'design by committee'
and fat cats creaming off profits etc

get it done or get shot


there - I've said it

Sad but not quite true true. Take the Skandinavian countries.....
But yes, dictatorships do seem to get things done.

[Chris T]

We do indeed deserve a better transport service, and they should be doing more to get us to use it. Sadly I see little chance of the current Government delivering anything on this. Labour has proven expert at squeezing taxes ever higher without many people noticing, but absolutely useless at spending money more efficiently. Therefore all the cash they raise gets poured into the bottomless pits at the Department of Health and the Department of Education, with little left over for anything else.

[Bex]

Originally Posted by towny

We do indeed deserve a better transport service, and they should be doing more to get us to use it. Sadly I see little chance of the current Government delivering anything on this. Labour has proven expert at squeezing taxes ever higher without many people noticing, but absolutely useless at spending money more efficiently. Therefore all the cash they raise gets poured into the bottomless pits at the Department of Health and the Department of Education, with little left over for anything else.

thats a joke, the government doing begger all to help us
as for them putting money into heath and schools........looking at the hospital my nan is currently in that is a bleeding joke.......they have hardly any nurses on duty...and get this, she is seriously seriously ill, but a doctor signed release papers so she could go home over the weekend IF she was better, just in case they couldnt find a doctor to release her

but sorry that was off topic.........kinda

[Paul]

Not really off topic just shows a key failling in this country, the lack of funds for important areas of public services.
But back on topic and away from politics please LOL You would think with the ammount of money raised from taxes on fuel etc that we would be able to get from a to b without too many problems

[Chris T]

Originally Posted by bexy

but sorry that was off topic.........kinda

Not really, the Government's inability to spend its cash pile more efficiently means your nan gets a rotten hospital experience and it also means there is no spare cash to improve the rail network. It's all tied together, and the trail leads straight to the door of number 10.

[Bex]

Originally Posted by Paul

Not really off topic just shows a key failling in this country, the lack of funds for important areas of public services.
But back on topic and away from politics please LOL You would think with the ammount of money raised from taxes on fuel etc that we would be able to get from a to b without too many problems

away from politics yet you talk about taxes?

(and amount has one m :p..says she the typo queen)

i think politics in necessarily linked to transport but maybe thats just me

[Bex]

Originally Posted by towny

Not really, the Government's inability to spend its cash pile more efficiently means your nan gets a rotten hospital experience and it also means there is no spare cash to improve the rail network. It's all tied together, and the trail leads straight to the door of number 10.

yeah well i never liked him at number ten, i think he is a smarmy git