The Underscore Archives

On 11/02/07, Peter Church <peter.church at church-consultancy.co.uk> wrote:
> Tim, You need to look at the whole problem not the crap that this
> Government spins you on big bad cars!

I'm not swallowing any Government spin, but I do admit that as a
city-dweller with good bus and train routes I might not have the same
perspective as yourself.

> We have a rail service run by a separate minister that is so over
> crowded it cannot cope _today_ and is contemplating up-ing its fares so
> that it makes it more "economical" to travel at different times of the
> day because, surprise surprise its only full for a few hours a day when
> we go to work! while the rest of the time it lays empty.

Alison Forster, MD of FGW, took the rap and publically apologised (she
doesn't want to lose her franchise, after all) for the service since
the December 10th timetable change, but it seems that (whatever Tom
Harris says [1]) the railways are being micromanaged from Whitehall by
civil servants, not experienced rail staff [2].

> We had the
> Bristol locals handing in fake tickets  in protest at the service they
> suffer at the hands of Great Western.

I know - I suffer FGW every working day. It's gone from "you know
it'll be bad" to "you don't know what you're going to get" since the
fare strike. Don't forget that Cornish branch lines' rolling stock was
transferred to Bristol to help with shortage. Peter was robbed in
order to pay Paul.

> Meanwhile the minister for roads says we have too many bad people
> sitting in cars so we need to push them onto trains and buses!

Given the current overcrowding, it is quite dumb. It's possibly more
of an answer than building more roads, which only ever create more
traffic. Once a nice, new road (the Avon Ring Road) is built to
relieve strain on a particular place (Bristol, say), the numpties in
planning decide to allow new development along the new route, causing
it to have its own source of traffic and negating its benefit.

> The real issue here is that the family and life in general has
> geographically exploded over a massive scale and now its too late to do
> anything about it.
> I alone have close family in:
> Cornwall,
> Birmingham,
> Essex,
> North hants,
> London,
> Wales.

Excellent point. I have family in Surrey, Hampshire, Cornwall,
Derbyshire, Wiltshire and Somerset. Our forebears were sold a great
promise of liberating car travel without limits, only for us to
discover that there are, in fact, limits. Even Milton Keynes, the most
car-oriented city in the UK, has had to start charging for parking in
the centre. If they'd invested in light rail/trams up front (as,
apparently, do new developments in Belgium & Holland), they wouldn't
have the problems they have now.

> I Work a 200 mile round trip away because its the nearest Job I have
> found that pays any thing close to a decent salary. and I live in the
> middle of the country side. ( already reduce my car emissions by only
> visiting my office once a week)

Your choice. I wouldn't do it, personally, unless the money was stellar.

> Going to London...
> Putting 2 adults and 2 Children on a train to London for an open ended
> return journey from my house to the door of their gran would cost about
> £420 and we would have the added issue of carrying child booster seats
> for the cabs as well as our luggage and kids...

I know - kids make it more complicated. We had to take a car seat for
our daughter when we flew to Edinburgh, so that she could safely
travel in our friends' car.

> Taxi to and from Home Bath Spa Station £80 (no bus route)
> Return Tickets to London £300 (£150 each way for my family)
> Travel card once we are in London  £30
> Taxi from the Tube Station to granny £10 (No bus route)

There's always megatrain.com for a cheaper train ticket :) £5 one-way
Bath to London...

> Time to travel about 4 hours
>
> Alternatively getting in my car would works out at
> £60 of fuel (return)
> £2 insurance (£2 X 365 = annual premium)
> 52p car tax...

And possibly unquantifiable wear & tear and depreciation, don't
forget. Plus the journey time could vary wildly if/when accidents or
roadworks happen.

> My Car is paid for and we do the journey door to door in 2 hours 30
> minutes...
> I do that journey at least once a month...
> That's just one Journey broken down for you!
>
> If road pricing goes into force the first people off the road will be
> the ones that cannot afford the cost of a week in spain just to go to
> London for 2 days..

But it's only the cost of a week in Spain because you've applied some
self-imposed restrictions (taxi vs getting a friend to give you a
lift, open train return ticket vs an Apex or megatrain one).

> The car will never be able to go away. But if they wanted to cut the
> usage overnight a pre-budget announcement that working from home levied
> just 5% tax and NI I bet the roads would clear almost over night...

I know - and for people living in the country it's fair enough. Bath
and Bristol, though, are clogged to the gills with cars, and anything
that makes people think twice before jumping in the car to grab some
shopping instead of getting the bus or walking has to be a good thing.

> Forcing the introduction of E85 fuel would be one of the best answers as
> it would start to remove all the older chug buckets off the road as they
> would become uneconomical to convert...

I hadn't heard of E85, but it seems that it would reduce Carbon
emissions too [3].

> They don't have a _JOINED_UP_SOLUTION so they must not be allowed to
> solve the bit that suits them best (i.e raising TAX just to wizz up the
> wall and destroy our right to privacy, and a freedom to travel)

ID cards by the back door? Except (according to Douglas Alexander -
not that I believe him necessarily) the speeding, tracking & privacy
parts of the petition were outright falsehoods.

> Reducing C02 emissions... Now to Tonie's light bulb approach...
> [lots of stuff about servers consuming electricity].

Firstly, until you've got some figures for how much energy the
Government's servers consume, you don't know jack. Secondly, I can't
stand it when people say "I'm not changing *my* lifestyle until *they*
do".

Tim

[1] http://theyworkforyou.com/whall/?gid=2007-01-24a.474.0
[2] http://firstgreatwestern.blogspot.com/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85