Yearly Archives: 2024

Out now: Issue 305 of Passenger Transport

Issue 305 of Passenger Transport is published on January 26. Contents include:    LEAD STORY Labour – ‘No more tinkering on the edges’With a general election drawing closer, shadow transport minister Simon Lightwood addressed bus and coach operators in London last week  NEWS West Midlands probes bus ‘municipalisation’West Midlands Combined Authority examines options to acquire local bus operators alongside its…

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Friday Reads – 28 January

• German union calls longest train strike in Deutsche Bahn’s history (Reuters) • Zurich 2040 plan approved to expand public transport network significantly (Urban Transport) • The Southern Heights Light Railway (Jago Hazzard) • Thank You For Your Feedback: The Problem with the Transport Community Feedback Process (Vice) • We Need to Address Noise Pollution in Cities: Video (Tim Chin…

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Bus Partnership Fund pause disappoints CPT

Scottish Government pledged £500m – but has spent only £26.9m  As recently as last October, Scotland’s minister for transport, Fiona Hyslop, told Passenger Transport that the Bus Partnership Fund was “a key area of investment”   Formally launched in November 2020, Scotland’s Bus Partnership Fund was hailed as a “landmark long-term capital investment of over £500m for bus priority measures”.…

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Labour – ‘No more tinkering on the edges’

With a general election drawing closer, shadow transport minister Simon Lightwood addressed bus and coach operators in London last week  Simon Lightwood at last week’s CPT Conference   An incoming Labour government would use simplified and extended franchising powers to grow public transport, and provide the sector with greater certainty. That was the message from shadow local transport minister Simon…

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Walking and public transport are allies

  Walking is good for our mind and body, our environment and public transport. Hana Sutch of Go Jauntly wants to make it easy  Hana Sutch set up Go Jauntly in 2018   I’ll be honest, before the pandemic I had zero interest in walking for fun. But then, apart from model railways and Netflix, walking was all we could…

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Lothian – municipal and entrepreneurial

  Edinburgh is a city where every kind of person uses the bus and where everyone owns their local bus company, Lothian Buses  An initial fleet of 50 new Volvo BZL electric double deck buses will enter service in the spring   It’s good to be in the warmth of the great value Lothian Buses cafe at their Shandwick Place…

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Birkenhead’s Baffling Buses

Two Chummy Corporations? Both Wallasey and Birkenhead Corporations ran tram systems but they never met! Wallasey trams got no further south than Seacombe whilst Birkenhead trams terminated at Woodside. In between lay the vast expanse of The Great Float and Birkenhead Docks. In a precious blog, fbb showed a Wallasey bus crossing the Wallasey Road swing bridge … ..; presumably…

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Birkemhead’s Beautiful Bridges (4)

That’s Part Four For Four Bridges A superb picture of Duke Street Swing bridge in 1925, some years before it begat the bascule beauty we behold today, reminds us that the local nickname “Four Bridges” does NOT refer to the grouping of four (or five) reviewed in previous blogs. And whilst musing on Duke Street Bridge, fbb wonders how an…

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The Great British Rail Sale – will it tempt people back to rail?

This week a second ‘Great British Rail Sale’ launched, offering half-price tickets for many journeys. This is welcome news for passengers. Our research shows that value for money is passengers’ top priority, alongside reliability and punctuality. The sale not only gives regular passengers a chance to save some money, but just as importantly provides the opportunity to entice some people…

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Birkemhead’s Beautiful Bridges (3)

 Continuation blog : What went wrong? Simple!  At 2100 yesterday, as fbb was finishing yesterday’s outpouring of his creative spirit (well, writing a blog!), it all vanished, never to be seen again. This has happened several times before and it is a combination of fbb’s uncontrolled finger prodding and the Blogger software which backs things up automatically. Somehow, when selecting…

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