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Archive for category Transport

More trains, better trains, better-owned trains, not faster trains

Nov 13

Posted by James in Holyrood, Transport | 9 Comments

The Scottish Government’s me-too announcement of another high-speed plan for the Edinburgh to Glasgow link may sound promising, but it’s really a total red herring. Getting up to 140mph on a roughly 50 mile journey is not exactly efficient, the cost will be enormous, and it wouldn’t be operational for at least twelve years. What’s more, the opportunities to make a clearer difference elsewhere in Scotland’s slowly-recovering rail network are plentiful. Ministers should be considering reopening the Buchan line, for example, or getting moving on Aberdeen Crossrail. Reopening the Edinburgh South Sub to passenger travel is still an extraordinarily cheap option, neglected since 1999.

The Glasgow-Edinburgh route is one of the lines I use most, and, all other things being equal, shaving some time off the journey would obviously not be an intrinsically bad thing: however, it’d be an awful lot more use for me if Scotrail put on a few trains after the current 11.30pm closedown. Even just two more would make a difference: say a 12.30am and a 2.30am. I was at a gig in Glasgow on Sunday night and a whole crowd had to leave before the encores, which is absurd.

Glasgow’s got much better music year-round, but conversely Edinburgh has five weeks in the summer when it should be a magnet for Glaswegian fans of the performing arts. A special Festival-only train back at a minute past midnight and a half-past midnight one on Friday and Saturday nights simply isn’t good enough. Plenty of Fringe events don’t even start until midnight.

The same applies to other routes, too. More trains at a wider range of times. Better trains (power, wifi). Those are the less sexy things that could cheaply improve our network. There’ll be no ribbon to cut, no sense of oneupmanship with Westminster.

If the SNP want something more impressive like that, it’s time to do what 75% of the public want (a number which is enough to get them to change policy on NATO, after all, and I suspect most people use the railways more than they use Trident), do what even some Tories have told me in private should be done: bring the system permanently back into public ownership when they have the chance to do so in 2014.

The alternative is for SNP Ministers to renew the existing franchise in the referendum year. Do they really want to tell the Scottish people that they wish to retain every last mistake of Westminster?

What if Scottish Ministers were as ambitious as the Welsh?

May 9

Posted by James in Environment, Transport, Wales | 10 Comments

When the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament were set up, there was a substantial gap in their powers in Scotland’s favour. The Welsh administration couldn’t pass primary legislation before last March’s referendum, and even the Assembly name was second-tier, akin to the second-tier devolution Scotland voted for in 1979.

And yet there are issues where this notionally weaker body has forged ahead of the Scottish Government. In 2000 a Lab/Lib Dem coalition banned GM crops, but two years later a Scottish Executive of the same colour ignored a vote at Lib Dem conference and went ahead with plantings.

Today sees the now Labour-only Welsh Government take another step ahead of Scotland with what looks potentially like a massive switch in transport policy in favour of walking and cycling, just as Scottish Ministers plan to head in the opposite direction by spending billions on duplicate road capacity.

As a supporter of independence I’d like to see Scottish Ministers flexing every muscle they have to improve this country using the powers devolved already: that’s the best way to demonstrate the need for the full powers of an independent nation. So why are Welsh Ministers better at doing that than Scottish ones?

To fly Ryanair is to dance with the devil

Apr 12

Posted by Jeff in Transport | 22 Comments

On the face of it, the news today that Ryanair are cutting air links from Edinburgh is bad news. Less holiday destinations for Scots and less business opportunities from afar.

However, digging a little deeper into the story, and one sees that there is little to be sad about. Ryanair trying to grind BAA down to keep its low cost deal for flights out of Edinburgh. Yes, the budget airline provides high footfall but is it worth the price? Shouldn’t BAA strive for quality not quantity?

We all know that Ryanair prices are suspiciously cheap, the feeling you get on their website is not unlike browsing around Primark, but we batter down our consciences in favour of taking advantage of that £5 flight here or £9 flight there, thinking that you’re beating the system. That had certainly always been my experience until a couple of weeks ago when I finally learned exactly how Ryanair could keep some flight prices so low.

The issue started with a boarding pass which had to be printed 4 hours before take-off or a £60 fine would be levied (it used to be 2 hours before take-off and a £40 fine but I guess Michael O’Leary saw some money to be made in making changes). It transpired that I missed the 4 hours by 56 measly seconds but, sure enough, Ryanair’s robust internal procedures meant there was no way around avoiding the £60 charge. Wallop, less kronor for me to spend on my holidays. Bummer.

Now, thankfully, I can absorb such hits into my monthly budgets relatively easily as (1) I have a good job and (2) I’m generally a total skinflint. However, I wasn’t the only one at the desk where such charges had to be paid.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the hulking Polish chap beside me, crying his eyes out at a charge that he had to pay with money that he clearly couldn’t afford. I sneaked a peak and it was a £360 bill he was faced with, for what I do not know. The oddly affable chap behind the Ryanair desk said, quietly (and suitably sadly) that this was nothing, we should have seen the family that was here the day before and another one the day before that. I can do the Maths, 2 parents and 3 kids with no boarding passes adds up to £300 out of the holiday budget. Is that really a way to run a business?

So even if these routes did go ahead at Edinburgh, I’d hope to be resolute in my decision from a fortnight ago to boycott them. It’s no more scratchcards, no more sleep-deprived pilots, no more queuing like animals to get on the flight, no more blaring self-congratulatory tannoy bulletins, no more landing 50 miles from the City I’m looking to visit and no more air attendants with a sadness deep in the eyes. Ryanair has joined the likes of Tesco and Amazon on my ‘I will not buy there no matter how cheap it is’ because, as tempting as the deals are with this airline, I will no longer be able to shake away the image of a tall Polish guy or a distraught family paying over the odds to subsidise my ticket.

Edinburgh could do with more international air links, and I hope BAA holds firm to attract quality airlines to provide new destinations for Scotland’s Capital, but I’ll be hoping the livery of any such planes won’t be daubed in garish blue and yellow and be part of a morally dubious business model.

Give Scottish cyclists a break, place assumption of guilt on drivers

Mar 6

Posted by Jeff in Transport | 25 Comments

I have to admit that I am one of those annoyingly cocky cyclists. I gamble on gaps between taxis, pay scant attention to red lights and often ‘forget’ to wear safety equipment in order to avoid ‘helmet hair’ at work. I’ve cycled since I was young, I tell myself, getting into accidents is for other people. The process is as much entertainment and fashion as it is a means to getting from A to B. For example, I wouldn’t be seen dead in one of those humptious yellow vests.

The ugly truth of course is that I’m more likely to soon be dead when cycling without one of those vests.

I wonder if the Edinburgh cyclist who died in Edinburgh this week thought similarly to how I do, or the other 15 cyclists who have died on the Capital’s streets since 2000. Not that complacency is the main reason for cyclists getting into accidents, it is cars, but there is precious little being done to make the roads safer for those on two wheels when up against numerous, too many, people on four wheels. The Greens, of course, are leading the arguments and are quite rightly calling for a cycle safety summit.

Perhaps Scotland should take a lead on this issue within the UK by taking a leaf out of The Netherlands’ book by implementing the following:

“Cyclists in the Netherlands are well protected as the law assumes the stronger participant (i.e. the car driver) is guilty until proved innocent (i.e. is the guilty party in all accidents involving weaker traffic unless evidence of the opposite is provided). Furthermore, drivers know to expect a high volume of cyclist traffic. Due to these issues the number of car-bike collisions with serious consequences is not alarmingly high in the Netherlands”

For a Government that is often so keen to get a jump on Westminster in bringing in legislation and making Scotland a noticeably better place to live than down south, I would have thought that this was right up their cycle path.

I don’t know why lycra-clad cyclists are a target for so many drivers, metaphorically and physically. This was recently taken to extremes in Bristol when a bus driver used his vehicle as a weapon to purposefully take a cyclist out on the road (the incredible BBC video is here). That is an extreme example but if cyclists were less of a target and more of a risk to ending up in prison or having to pay a large fine if you hit one of them with your, regardless whose fault you believed it was, we would most likely see less people dying on our streets and more people dusting off their mountain bikes and enjoying the satisfaction and occasional thrill that is cycling through your home town or city.

Cyclists need to do their bit too of course, paying attention to red lights, knowing their Highway Code and having a second look at that garishly yellow high visibility jacket, but the Scottish Government can, and should, take a lead. It once considered taxing cyclists but they should go the other way and protect them by placing an assumption of guilt on the driver in any car-on-bike accident on Scotland’s roads.

After all, if it saves one life…

The additional Forth Bridge is the SNP’s biggest mistake

Feb 25

Posted by James in Holyrood, Transport | 29 Comments

For some years now I’ve been making the case that the proposed additional Forth Road Bridge would be unaffordable, unsustainable, unnecessary and unpopular. The existing bridge has been undergoing a dehumidification programme, and today the signs are they’ll find that’s working.

As the Scotsman puts it, this would “call into question the need for a new bridge costing as much as £1.6 billion“. Bear in mind that even if the final dehumidification results show serious deterioration, the bridge could still be recabled for a maximum of £122m (I believe that’s at 2008 prices but I could be wrong). Simple prudence.

Every party at Holyrood apart from the Greens lined up to give Fifers what they think Fifers want: yet another shiny new bridge. No-one at Holyrood apart from the Greens was prepared to say let’s wait and see, let’s not sign contracts for a bridge which has been variously estimated by Ministers to cost £1.6bn to £4.2bn until we know if it’s really necessary.

Despite the clear warnings from transport experts, the four-party consensus refused to listen, and now contracts have been signed to squander vast sums just as the public finances are being squeezed by Tory and SNP cuts (as per the Sun’s endorsement of the SNP because they were ”tackling the economic crisis head-on by cutting public spending faster than anywhere else in the UK“).

Even now, just as it looks as though we’re about to see confirmation that even recabling won’t be necessary for the existing bridge, the other parties are still not ready to see sense. Some are still gung-ho: certainly the Nats and one would imagine the Tories too. The Lib Dems are wringing their hands – see Gordon Mackenzie quoted in today’s Scotsman – but won’t say no. Malcolm Chisholm admitted on Twitter that “We almost certainly made the wrong decision on new Forth Bridge but it is too late now unfortunately“, adding “Woudl we could  spend the billion plus new Forth Bridge money on new socially rented homes” (sic). Amongst non-Green MSPs and former MSPs, only Lord Foulkes also comes out with any credit, having told the Public Audit Committee last year it would prove a waste of money, although abstaining on the final vote was hardly a courageous stand.

Again, quoting the Scotsman’s editorial, “The cost of the misplaced rush to give priority for the bridge has been substantial.” Yes, true. The cost of cancellation would now be large, but nowhere near as large as the cost of proceeding to build this monument to political short-termism and idiocy. On a guess that cancellation would cost £200m – it should cost nothing but the work done if the contracts had been sensibly written, but that seems implausible – we’d still save upwards of £1.4bn: a massive slice of Scottish capital budgets.

If no sense is seen, it’s simply going to be extra road capacity which, as we know, generates extra traffic. And the years and years of disruption it’ll cause to traffic has already begun as I found out when driving over the existing bridge last week, for the first time in a very long time. Ironically, the congestion costs around repair were always accounted for very generously while the congestion cost of a new bridge was apparently never calculated. Ministers are about to find out that not calculating it isn’t equal to not experiencing it.

In December 2008 my view was that this utterly preposterous vanity project was the most likely way for the SNP to be ejected from office. Now, of course, losing a referendum is top of that list. But this bridge still isn’t far behind, and it’s closing, too. They may even interact with each other. In two years’ time we’ll be mired in a construction phase that’s unlikely to be going smoothly, just as Ministers are asking people to trust their judgement in a referendum. If even one other opposition party found a spine they’d be calling for a public inquiry into what Ministers knew when, and what advice they were given. Tragically, on this issue, Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems are exactly as inept as the SNP. And so Scotland may well be stuck with the most expensive white elephant since the Darien Project.