Where Worlds Collide

Boing Boing has a story about rural Russians are making homebrew railcars to run on abandoned tracks, powered by motorbike engines.

I wonder if Patrick Crozier would approve?

The endless saga of the flaws of Virgin Train’s “Operation Princess” has taken yet another turn.

The traditional drama of the foundering hot-air balloon has been given a new twist by Virgin Rail, with staff on a grotesquely overloaded train asking for volunteers to get off.

At least 20 disgruntled passengers agreed to leave at the next station when Virgin warned that the alternative was to cancel the journey for everyone.

With the replacement of 7 coach trains with 4 coach Voyagers this is becoming an all-too frequent occurrence.

It may be this gross overcrowding was the result of cancellation of a preceding train, in which case moving to an airline-style compulsory reservation system isn’t going to help.

If Virgin Trains wants to retain it’s credibility, it needs more capacity on these services, which means longer trains. The sort of crush loads you get on short-distance commuter runs isn’t acceptable on long-distance services. I wonder how many passengers on that train will take the car next time?

A new body is to investigate rail accidents.

The Bill takes the investigation of rail accidents away from the Health and Safety Executive and fulfils key recommendations of Lord Cullen’s inquiry into the 1999 Paddington disaster.

The Railways and Transport Safety Bill will set up a new, independent Railway Accident Investigation Branch, putting rail on a par with the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, and the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

While it’s good riddance to the HSE, I can’t see what was wrong with the old-fashioned Railway Inspectorate.

Independent Argument quotes from the Lord Mayor’s banquet speech given at London’s Guildhall on Monday

Here in London, our status as a world financial and legal centre depends not on the domestic economy but on the goodwill of our international businesses. And that brings me to the question of transport. It is dire, and so bad that we are approaching the time when the financial pre-eminence of the City may become imperilled.

Crossrail and Thameslink 2000 are stalled; the East London line is mired in arguments. Much of the infrastructure of public transport is crumbling.

I take the Tube every day of my working life. Virtually every day I am delayed. Journey times are up to twice what they were two or three years ago. Millions of London’s workers are inconvenienced. What a waste of time, what a waste of productive time, what a way to treat people.

What we are seeing here is the consequences of failures to invest 10-15 years ago. Michael Portillo’s decision to cancel Crossrail (the Paddington-Liverpool St underground line taking main-line trains east-west across London) has cost London dear. And then everything stood still for years for the ridiculous ideology-driven privo-fragment-isation of the railways.

If all the money spend on accountants and lawyers during privofragmentisation had instead been invested in new trains and new tracks, London wouldn’t be in half the mess it’s in now.