Public and Commercial Transport

[van ordinaire]

Well we've got the new trains on GWR routes to the West Country now & - they're not an improvement! Sunday week I discovered they have heating, last w/e I realised it's temporary/transitory/ineffective/unreliable/difficult to operate - take your pick, the average Tube train has more comfortable seats, they have ltd catering (not that I'm bothered because it's prohibitively expensive - imho) whoever decided to replace the "Express Café" - no, really (that's buffet car to us) with a trolley service had obviously never travelled on that route: during the season the train manager can't get from one end of the train to the other, so 2 people with a catering trolley don't stand a chance, it's cash only, due, they keep saying, to a technical fault, i.e inherited from the old (i.e. former intercity) stock - as it's been like that for 15, maybe 18, months. Curiously the West-bound trains (at least in the evening) still have a restaurant car - but who travels with that much cash on them, or isn't that beset with the same technical issues?
The new timetable is better though, at least for me, it's almost as though there was an integrated transport policy. Can't speak for coming up on Sundays though - there haven't been any trains between Plymouth & Exeter since before Christmas!

[mickthemaverick]

You are not the only one with complaints about railway catering:

[NewcastleFalcon]

Buses: Government unveils £50m plan to create first all-electric bus town

The DfT said that the winning town would be used as a model by government as it aims to ensure all buses are fully electric by 2025.

So which town is it going to be? Trumpton? (Camberwick Green or Chigley won't qualify because they are villages of course). Don't think Newcastle will be in the running unless they stop all the diesel buses from the surrounding area, at the outskirts of the city, and herd everyone onto the metro/ or electric buses for the last 5 miles. Yes it would have been much more straightforward if we had kept the trams and trolley buses.

Maybe someone can find out how much an electric bus costs.....I think we could be surprised at how few £50Million buys outright although the government input is always a bit of leverage to "make things happen" and electric buses should be economically viable in their own right , when compared to their diesel equivalent.


Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

This paragraph from a London news story might help Neil

The new buses will run between Willesden in northwest London and Russell Square from next month, with the silent buses costing ‎€350,000 ($665,832) each to build.

[NewcastleFalcon]

This paragraph from a London news story might help Neil

The new buses will run between Willesden in northwest London and Russell Square from next month, with the silent buses costing ‎€350,000 ($665,832) each to build.

Supplied By BYD, not necessarily all the way from China, they have assembly plants in France and Hungary.
There is plenty competition in the electric bus market, but BYD anecdotally from reports of contracts won, are aggressively targeting market share.

BYD lands major e-bus order in Netherlands, Colombia

REgards Neil

[Paul-R]

Why on earth would an article in the London News quote prices in EUR and USD and NOT in GBP? Bizarre.

[Gibbo2286]

Why on earth would an article in the London News quote prices in EUR and USD and NOT in GBP? Bizarre.

The story came from here Paul. https://www.themanufacturer.com

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well yesterday was HS2 day, and some bus announcement day. Passed by without comment from the FCF faithful including me.

Certainly not exactly in my back yard and no direct relevance to the public transport round here, but I do come from the point of view of that building a new railway between the great cities of England in the 21st Century should be a reasonable thing to do.

After all the Victorians built the railways at the average rate of 270 miles a year EVERY year for 64 years! That included having to build a few viaducts on the way.

We do seem to make a complete meal of any "large project" in the 21st Century, and all of them take absolutely ages to complete and costs always run completely out of control. We are talking about over 20 years before any HS2 benefits reach "The North".

REgards Neil

[GiveMeABreak]

It will have absolutely no benefit to us in the west - I think a fraction of the sort of money that will cost could be better spent on getting a basic rail system from south to north Wales and road improvements. There has been 3 sets of 'temporary' traffic lights within a mile on one of the main country roads here for 15 years, with single file traffic whilst waiting for the bank to be reinforced. They have only now started work on it - a complete joke.

[Gibbo2286]

Pointed out by a poster on the Birmingham forum this morning, the cost of HS2 in total (if the current figures are to be believes) is equivalent to less than one year of the current annual spending on the NHS.

[bobins]

The figures for the cost of HS2 as a percentage of GDP are a fraction of what the Victorians spent on railway building when compared to %/ GDP back then.

[van ordinaire]

The Victorians were building a whole rail network (albeit piecemeal) whereas HS2 merely duplicates an existing line, which already provides a better than average service to the places it'll serve. However - it is a vanity project beyond even Johnson's wildest dreams &, as such, was guaranteed to get the go ahead.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Time to roll the sleeves up and get on with it, and get on with it quicker....who will save HS2......the Chinese of course....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51512831

regards Neil

[white exec]

Might that also include the signalling system, 5G enabled no doubt?

[Gibbo2286]

The Chinese won't have the constraints of environmentalists, archaeology etc to contend with, they would send our Greenies to some distant work farm together with their newts and bats.