Casually announced on the news at 10

There is less congestion in Turkey where the climate's drier.

 

Chipsaway and some floral seat covers'll sort that out.
Good suggestion BTW.

 

Sorry but bus usage in London has risen from under 4 million people a
day to over 6 million in 4 years. I call that a resounding success story
and it demonstrates that if you get the price and quality right then
lots of people will use the service.

I accept London is the exception as it is not deregulated like the rest
of the country and has more funding that elsewhere.

Many rail services are very popular despite all the nonsense that the UK
rail system has been put through for the last 10 years.

There are also some pockets of good bus operation - Oxford, Brighton,
Cambridge, Edinburgh - where deregulation has brought about good service
levels in spite of competition.

Well Mr Tuppy doesn't like public transport and we've had this debate
before.

Well the TGV and Grand Lignes network from Paris is fine as are some
suburban networks. However cross country trains in France are a joke and
the French railway timetable appears to be a state secret.

There is little recognition of the benefits of regular clockface (same
mins past the hour every day) timetables and there is, of course, huge
state subsidy helping to keep thousands of inefficient railway workers
employed. Like all systems there are good and bad points.

The bus system where you live is diabolically bad - I have yet to
discover what local buses run in your area other than the stupendously
infrequent RATP bus that wanders past the end of your street. The
Parisian bus network is pretty poor when compared to that in London
although I'll grant you that RATP have recognised it needs improvement.
Once you get to the outer suburbs then you end up with this strange
local syndicated network which doesn't seem very good to me. There is a
very heavy reliance on the rail network to get people about rather than
them using buses.

I think you need to understand what efficiency means - the London public
transport network is hugely efficient in terms of the numbers it shifts
for the infrastructure it runs on. It could be much better than it is
but that needs a lot of money for investment as well as changes as to
how it is run. I would accept it could be much more reliable with more
trains running on time but the RER is not exactly exempt from late
running trains or cancellations or strikes.

Many French cities benefit from tram networks and the regional /
national government commitment to provide them. We have some parallels
in the UK but the policy is not as consistent or well supported here and
we insist on the private sector operating the system which creates huge
risk premiums in the system costs. The French appear to have a more
sensible view that the public sector takes such risk.

Not really - the Metro and RATP are fine but then you've had 40 years to
get the Central Paris network right. It could still be better but at
least you're getting regular funding for expansion. It looks like we
might just be getting the same for London but I won't hold my breath as
a lot can change between now and any of the schemes seeing the light of
day.

I think far too many people believe the newspaper headlines and assume
that every journey is a nightmare - it simply is not the case. I also
have not yet noticed the news headlines which have announced that car
and lorry drivers no longer encounter traffic jams, roadworks or
accidents that could delay their own journeys.

 

The D3 is a godsend.

Stop 3 is at the door of Banjax, and stop 38 is at the end of the
close.

It's a pity it takes such a convoluted journey to get between the two.

http://www.salad.dodger.dsl.pipex.com/d3bus.jpg

Damned good value for a quid, mind.

--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GLXR1500SEVRRSP/CBR1100XXX/KH500A8/TS250C
|_\_____/_| .....73063...../..17090.../..3180./.19406
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 YTC#4 PM#5
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 two#11 WG*
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17 IbB#4
'^'

 

Which I as a norvern taxpayer[1] find a bit annoying.

[1] When they finally pin me down and rifle my pockets

 

Now now, don't forget the south east is in dire straits subsidising the
Scots. They need all the taxes you can offer.

 

I found it so hard riding past the people out with begging bowls last time
I was going through Buckinghamshire.

 

tallbloke says...

I've moved my pitch back into Bedfordshire now.

 

<packs rice and woolly jumper to throw out of Jet2 flight over Pip's>

 

tallbloke says...

Oi! I want fresh rice, not that shit that you scooped off a junction in
Hove yesterday

 

Champ says...

Bike shop innit

 

The petrol will preserve it. Just discard the red and yellow grains, It's
not basmati.

 

I used to work for an ISP called "foobar."

A gag along the same lines, I suspect.

 

Cab secured a place in history by writing:

And losing money on a scale that would frighten even British operators.

 

Oops, my mistake, I was talking about the country as a whole. You and I
have already had this discussion about the state of London Transport.

 

On the M42 they've been doing plenty of roadworks to prepare for this and
have built extra parking places every few hundred meters for people to pull
into.

Of course that relies on drivers having the intelligence and opportunity to
get to them.

--
Alex

YZF 600

"I laugh in the face of danger"

"Then I hide until it goes away"

www.upce.org.uk
www.drzoidberg.co.uk

 

Edinburgh now has a problem with buses clogging up the roads, especially
notable on Princes street.

--
Martin:
"For a minute there, you bored me to death."
VTR1000 Firestorm
TDR250 http://ukrm.net/BIKES/Yamaha/tdr250.html
martin dot smith nine zero three at ntlworld dot com

 

**** 'em. What does it matter if a few porridge-wogs are late getting
to the off-licence to pick up their McEwans Extra?

 

London public transport is good, and the Bus drivers even admit to the
existance of other traffic now and dont try to battle against the
trucks.

Its not that I don't like it, I use it a couple of times a month. I
need to get to the railway station from my house. (1) I live 100m from
a major bus route. That route takes me to the bus station. I then walk
600m to the railway station. Lots of people from my end of town
commute to the Smoke by rail every day. They all drive to the station
as there isnt a bus route that connects.
Apparantly we are going to have a new railway station soon. Great we
thought, Bedford Parkway, southwest of the town serving all the
commuters coming in from the direction of MK.
Not to be, a new station alright, but on the Bedford to Bletchley
line, one of the most underused rail lines in the country. They are
going to build a new station on this line that nobody uses, about 200m
from where it crosses the mainline, but its not going to be joined up.
The powers that be seem to think that people will use it to get into
town. Who? I dont know. It will be fairly near a housing estate that
is well served by the major bus route on a 15 min service.
As I said, Public Transport _outside London_ just isnt joined up
enough to make it a viable alternative to cars.

(1) Not to get a train, heaven forfend! No, to pick up SWMBO's car
when she's had too much after work at White City.

--
ColonelTupperware,
spouting bollocks on Usenet since 1997
Usenet FAQ at
http://www.its.caltech.edu/its/services/internetapps/news/news2.shtml
UPCE FAQ at http://upce.org.uk/ UKRM FAQ at http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

 

They're doing that on the M5 too - although I didn't realise that's
what they are until you said it.