Anders Hanson

When I travel to work in the morning I use either First’s 40 service or Stagecoach’s 120.  I like the 40 as it is a double-decker bus and so I can revisit my childhood by rushing upstairs to take the front seats - you get a much better view from up there.  But usually I end up on the 120 as it is quite a bit cheaper than the 40 and it usually arrives at the stop where I get on before the 40.

But what frustrates me every single day is the speed at which it goes.  Today it was crawling along Fulwood Road at about 20mph.  I’d hate to be a car stuck behind it.  This certainly isn’t the first time either.  If it isn’t crawling along at such a slow speed, then it is waiting at various stops along the route.  Once we had to sit and wait at four different stops: one on Flat Street, outside Varsity on West Street, outside the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and outside Notre Dame School.

I assume the reason for this is to keep to the timetable.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for buses running on time.  But when there are 12 buses an hour along this route, I don’t see why it has to stick so rigidly to it’s timings and in the process cause frustration to the people sat on it who just want to get to their destination.  It isn’t as if you have to wait long for the next one.  Of course if there was only one bus every half an hour, (such as the unreliable 86 service, which is the other one I can take to where I work), then it would be a completely different matter.  But for such a frequent service it is ridiculous for it to be so slow.

Over on Liberal Democrat Voice, there is a discussion on the new Lib Dem policy on transport.  Whilst I welcome most of the proposals, the debate within the party is rightly centering on the proposals for road pricing, something which Stephen Tall endorses:

Personally, I’ve never seen the problem (with reasonable safeguards in place). It is one thing to have to carry an ID card simply to prove to the state you exist - that’s bad; but quite another to enjoy the privilege of using a less-congested road system.

I disagree completely.

First, I must lay my cards on the table.  I have never had a principled objection to having an ID card.  I object to the cost of it, both to myself and to the government, as the money could be better spent on more police and technology that would cut down the paperwork.  I also object to the Government claiming it as a wonderful new way of catching terrorists, when it will do nothing of the sort.  But I don’t object to the principle of having one as long as production of it cannot be demanded by a police officer.

But what I do object to is a device in a car I am driving that allows the Government to track everywhere that I go.  That to me is far more intrusive than a bit of plastic in my pocket.  I know all the arguments about how there is technology that allows you to charge correctly whilst also keeping your movements anonymous, but I covered why I don’t accept those explanations on a previous post over a year ago.

To me the simple market-based solution to pricing road use is to scrap road tax and road pricing, but instead use tax on fuel.  I know petrol duty has generated a lot of anger over the years, but if the other charges are scrapped and this is seen to be about putting money in to transport and not just more money in to the coffers of the Treasury then surely people will move behind it.  We can also help people in rural areas where car usage is more a neccessity by reducing the duty charged by petrol stations in certain geographical areas.

My solution will undoubtedly have its flaws, but its a lot fairer, less intrusive and substantially more liberal than road pricing.

It isn’t often that a building still has the capacity to wow you when you step in to it. But I remember how stunned I was a year or two ago when I first saw the inside of the restored St. Pancras Station. The station has now been officially opened by the Queen and next week train services to France and Belgium start using the station properly.

I have always loved this grand Victorian architecture. Last Friday night I travelled up to Halifax and although nothing can probably quite beat St. Pancras Station in its drama, even some of the most ordinary institutions there have some amazing Victorian architecture. It comes from a time when there was huge civic pride and when private companies wanted to show off what they could achieve. It’s a far cry from the dominant attitude now of building things that are cheap in the short-term even if in the long term they become utterly disposable, become more expensive to maintain and just don’t stand the test of time in terms of architecture and design. As Duncan Borrowman points out, it is reassuring though that we can still put these buildings to good use by combining the historic architecture with modern engineering.

The whole logistics of building the new station whilst keeping trains running in to it for most of the time is pretty impressive too. I remember sitting in a meeting whilst I worked at Midland Mainline’s head office when they explained how they would have to close the station for certain weekends and then reopen it just five minutes before the first arrival on a Monday morning. We all looked at the person who told us this with incredulity as we just knew that it would never happen on time and if there was only five minutes slack there would be complete chaos as the train would end up having to terminate at a small station like Kentish Town, at rush hour, when another train was due in straight after it. As far I know everything did work out OK in the end, and for such a huge engineering project it has gone remarkably well.

I do still have a soft spot for the old grimy and run down St. Pancras though, and I feel a slight sadness that it has gone. I spent a year working on board Midland Mainline’s trains between Sheffield and St. Pancras, and not just in their head office, and so St. Pancras became a second home. Even after leaving that job, I felt comfortable and as though I was nearly home as soon as I came through the archway at the front of the old station. I even feel a sense of warmth towards the old Shires Bar. It might have been a tatty bar that reeked of stale smoke and beer, but it felt quite cosy and the bizarre mix of business people, weekend tourists, foreign students and beggars meant it was a great place for people watching. In my time I was at Midland Mainline the Station Manager at St. Pancras had promised a group of us a tour of the bits of the station that you never normally saw, unfortunately she never got around to doing it as it would have been great to have seen it before the restoration as well as now afterwards.

One thing with the new station that I do feel slightly sad about though is how Midland Mainline, the nearest there is to a successor to the company that build St. Pancras in the first place, is now pushed out to four remote platforms in what is basically a modern lean-to at the end of the old station. Perhaps that’s a bit unfair, but that part of the station does feel like an afterthought.

But despite that one downside to the station, it is great to arrive in to London and see such an amazing building there to greet you. Now that the rest of the building is going to be opened, I am looking forward to seeing more of it on my next trip to London.

BBC NEWS: A tour around the new look St. Pancras station

Until the other night I’d never considered that a bus could be somehow sexy. But clearly there is a Stagecoach driver in Sheffield who thinks otherwise.

I boarded the bus at about 11pm and after racing in to town, (I’m convinced he was doing well over the speed limit), he then slowed down to a crawl as he reached West Street. For those who don’t know Sheffield, West Street is the main road for bars and restaurants a bit like Birmingham’s Broad Street or Manchester’s Deansgate. I was wondering why until I realised he was cruising women who were walking along the street. When he saw some that he liked he would slow down even more, pause at the next junction until they caught him up, open the doors of the bus, stare at them, toot his horn and wave. He didn’t seem to attract much interest though, so either his vehicle of choice just isn’t sexy enough or the passengers, who by this time were also staring out at these women, were cramping his style.

Unusual bus journeys are starting to become a habit, as this follows on from my journey home from work the other week, when an out of service First bus decided to stop to pick up passengers, not charge any of them for the ride and then dump them all on the edge of the city centre rather than take them in to the centre of town.

Well, it isn’t strictly true. In reality, National Express who currently run Midland Mainline and Central Trains has not been awarded the new East Midlands franchise, but it feels the same.

It is a sad day for a company that has through most of its life been the most reliable and punctual long-distance operator and has seen massive expansion over the years. I know I am biased as I worked for the company for five years, but I can honestly say that the company genuinely wanted to improve the services along the route and encourage more people to travel by train. Yes, of course it was doing it for profit but I think the route has improved under Midland Mainline’s stewardship, in particular in the years when Brian Burdsall was the MD.

It is rather odd then to see Stagecoach given a franchise for promising to do things that National Express had already done on Midland Mainline. For example:

• Increasing parking spaces. The number of parking spaces on the route have massively increased, and has now reached a point where the car parks remain full but there is little room to expand them further.
• Introduce new services from East Midlands Parkway. Midland Mainline are the ones who have done all the hardwork to develop the design for East Midlands Parkway, but were frustrated along the way by many people external to the company.
• Introduce more trains per hour from Kettering southwards. Midland Mainline doubled the number of trains operating on the route. The only place where that had happened for many years after privatisation.
• Build a new station at Corby. Midland Mainline looked at this but it simply wasn’t financially viable.

I left Midland Mainline frustrated with some of the restrictions on what you could do, and at a time when the company was struggling with punctuality. But I thoroughly enjoyed working there and it is sad to see all the hardwork to build a company and a brand that had a pretty decent reputation (at least as train operators go) only to see it all disappear. I feel real sense of sadness for everyone that works there.

Unfortunately I suspect it will also be the end of the free tea and coffee, which always went down well.

DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT: DfT announces winner of East Midlands franchise

BBC BUSINESS: Stagecoach wins railway franchise