A Bit Of A Surprise We are well used to the multiplicity of manipulations in the big bad world of bus business. Recently we have seen the dramatic expansion of McGills and, on a smaller scale, the purchase of Ensign by First Bus and, perhaps a bit weirder, the take-over of Dartline by GoAhead. Is the breaking news from Baslow…
Subsidies Don’t Last For Ever What has happened over the last few years way out west has to be one of he more impressive developments in the UK bus industry. C ornwall C o-ordination C osts Way back when, the Great Western Railway and the National Bus Company (this is 1929!) merged their interests in the West Country to form the Western National…
How Did We Manage Without It? In 2023 we are blessed with loads of technology at the front of a bus and in the so-called “back office”. Technology is for ever evolving and the humble ticket machine is now a Sophisticated computer and printer all in one. How things have changed for the better? Or maybe for the more expensiver?…
Our annual quiz continues. 2023 seems to have provided sufficient questions for roughly the same number of questions as is usually asked. This year, there are no ‘trick’ questions in the sense that in none of them have we deliberately tried to mislead you. However, some of the questions may require a bit of lateral thinking and looking beyond the…
• London Underground tops 4 million journeys in a single day (IanVisits) • First passenger trains run to City of London using digital signalling (Network Rail) • The Mont-Blanc Express from Switzerland to France (The Guardian) • How Singapore restricted cars on its island: Video (Urban Mobility Explained) • North America’s Sleeper Train Problem: Video (CBC Creator Network) • Dubai…
Tunneling is an important technology for modern civilization, as a tunnel is often the only reasonable way to create a direct path between two points. When the Hoosac tunnel was completed in 1875, it turned a difficult, 20-mile railroad route along “precipitous grades” into a direct 5 mile route, connecting Boston with the Upper Hudson Valley. Large infrastructure projects such…
Successfully Sophisticated? One of the strange things that has spread through today’s rail industry is rip-off fares for trains (sometimes buses or trams) for journeys from City to Airport. Stockholm is no different. A rlanda A irport The airport was opened by King Gustaf Adolph in 1962. Plans for an airport rail link between the central business district of Stockholm…
Highlights Article systematically reviews London Low Traffic Neighbourhood monitoring data. Meta-analysis of pre-post data from 587 count locations from 46 schemes. Substantial falls in motor traffic within LTN schemes, especially in Inner London. By contrast, little average change in motor traffic on LTN boundary roads. LTNs can form part of wider traffic reduction schemes alongside other measures. Abstract This paper…
Lidingobanan It is one of those islands that, according to fbb in his intro blog, makes public transport in Stockholm “interesting”. As you can see, it is linked to Stockholm city by a bridge, but it was not always thus. In 1803 the link was by, literally, a floating bridge consisting of a line of pontoons. This was renewed and…
Two Rails Local Network fbb can manage “karta” (map) and “trafik” (traffic) and can guess that “spar” might be train or rail. But “spar” is the name of a chain of convenience stores … … which fbb always thought was a play on the words for cheap and pine tree! And rail in Swedish is “jarnwag” (iron road, surely) whilst…