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Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Wed 15 Jan, 2020 12.16
by WillPS
I'm pretty sure the TVM determines how the ticket will be printed.

There was a time when East Midlands Trains' awful collection-only terminals printed in the old style while the normal 'Buy or Collect' TVMs would print in the new style.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Wed 29 Jan, 2020 13.15
by JAS84
Just been announced, Northern has lost it's franchise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-51298820

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Fri 08 May, 2020 17.41
by scottishtv
You can now sit on a bus without worrying about social distancing, if you want... on Zoom.

EDIT: Also, some from TfL.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Fri 04 Jun, 2021 20.55
by tillyoshea
Here in Newcastle, there are still load of buses advertising Little Mix: The Search as starting on 26 September.

They must be getting on for a year old now, we’re certainly closer to 26 Sep 2021 than it is to when the series finished.

I’m sure the BBC is delighted with this odd bit of pandemic distribution reminding everyone of a series that went… so well.

Image

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Sat 05 Jun, 2021 19.32
by Jonwo
I wonder when South Western Railways will introduce the Class 701 into service? I assume it'll be the Autumn as I believe they're still testing them.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Mon 07 Jun, 2021 04.32
by Beep
I'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned Great British Railways (GBR). The public facing brand for railways from 2022 apparently.

They produced a very nice document about it, mentioning twice that their typeface will be 'Rail Alphabet 2' which is a modernisation of Rail Alphabet used by BR from 1967. Obviously it probably won't improve services but I do find it interesting they want to consolidate all brands into one.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... r-rail.pdf

I know the rebrand has been mentioned in the high street rebrand thread but my question here is how, if at all, do we think it will improve services.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Mon 07 Jun, 2021 06.09
by Jonwo
Replacing the franchise system with a concession model is long overdue. It's been successful on various TFL services for years and I'm surprised no one thought of replicating it earlier.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Mon 07 Jun, 2021 22.46
by Martin Phillp
I suspect the GBR model is just another way of ensuring that the private sector stays in the rail sector with taxpayers money going towards the railway groups profits, while the public see the double arrow logo and same branding on every train and some government intervention on fares and timetabling, although some of these 'concessions' will be allowed as now to price some long distance fares as now.

The London Overground, DLR, London Trams and TfL Rail models are strictly controlled by Transport for London on everything from timetabling to branding. To the average commuter, they wouldn't know that First operate the London Trams concession or Arriva Rail London runs the London Overground one. TfL is also the customer facing organisation, so they don't have to directly deal with the concessionaire.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Thu 10 Jun, 2021 18.39
by cwathen
I'm of the view that public transport is better off in public hands and operated on the basis of public need rather than ability to turn a profit. That said, now that the railways are privatised I don't see that spending vast sums of money renationalising them would be a good thing either. Also, I don't agree that per-se public ownership delivers a better service (after all, there wasn't one stand up comedian worth their salt pre-mid 90's who didn't have a British Rail routine which was funny through being largely true).

If we are moving to any sort of halfway house system (or indeed the switch to non-corporate brands and management contracts which has been very prominent over the past 5 or so years) then I think it needs to be clear exactly how it will make things better.

Even with a fully corporate branded, fully franchised TOC, they have very little say over what service they provide or what rolling stock they use to provide it since the franchise spec determines that for them. However customer-facing a TOC is, we still very much have a government-visioned railway.

How would changing that improve things? I don't personally believe that mass electrification and HST replacement were at all the most pressing things to do as has happened across GWR & others, but 'Investment' only ever seems to mean big sexy infrastructure projects like that which the people delivering them can advance their career on so that's what we've done. The flagship investment project on SWR seems to be all about replacing 455s with yet more Aventras. Why? There's nothing wrong with 455s (they even had new traction equipment not so long ago) and they're predominantly carrying people for short journeys where expectations for on-train experience are unlikely to go far beyond getting a seat. But they needed a flagship 'new train' project to show how much better things have got so that's where the investment has gone.

Suits wanting to climb the ladder exist as much in the public sector as the private. Even with a fully re-nationalised railway, we would still be very likely to spend all the money on pet projects so that people can shave 10 minutes off a journey between two major cities or that service frequency can increase from 3tph to 4 or that perfectly adequate trains can be replaced for spurious reasons. All the while there are huge swathes of the country with an appallingly bad rail service or indeed none at all. But this never get the attention because it's not much of a photo op. If we are going to move back to any form of public ownership, this needs to change, and I don't see that happening. In which case we might as well leave things as they are.

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Thu 10 Jun, 2021 23.21
by Pete
There's a couple of reasons for a lot of the rolling stock replacement.

The HSTs, in their original form, are now illegal to run due to their lack of accessibility. If you look at the ScotRail Inter7City project its been massively delayed due to the non standard state of the Mark 3 coaches, and the unions are starting to turn against the Class 43s due to their lacklustre crashworthiness following Stonehaven.

In addition, right now, there is incredibly cheap credit so its often better value to buy new trains than to lease refurbed old ones from the ROSCOs. This has the added advantage of new trains:
1 - being fully accessible
2 - helping to reduce the complexity of fleets
3 - they often come with maintenance contracts from the supplier which works out, if not cheaper, at least more predictable in terms of cashflow. Yes we lost the 800s for two weeks, but it'll have cost Hitatchi more money than just the repairs.

One of the things in the GBR document, alongside the removal of ironing board seats (not admitting, of course, this was due to DfT / treasury penny pinching. see also no sockets on Thameslink that then had to be added in afterwards) is a call to simplify the fleets nationally. If you think how many things are delayed due to driver training on new trains you can see the logic...

Re: Public Transport in your particular part of the region

Posted: Thu 10 Jun, 2021 23.37
by Jonwo
The 455s are 38 years old so it makes sense to replace them with newer trains, there is only so much refurbishment you can do and as we saw with the Class 483 on the Island Line, eventually it is cheaper to buy new trains compared to keep repairing the stock.