When the buses were (nearly) free: Revisiting South Yorkshire’s ‘grand design’ for transport
Front cover of D Scott Hellewell’s account of South Yorkshire’s Transport, picture courtesy of Transport Store It may not be available on Kindle anytime soon, but ‘South Yorkshire’s Transport 1974-1995’ by D Scott Hellewell is full of fascinating material about the story of the radical years of South Yorkshire’s ‘Grand Design’ for Transport in the […]
Very big thinking about very fast trains – an LSE Cities event on High Speed with Sir Terry Farrell
HS2 is on its way. Though the by now familiar arguments will no doubt continue to rage about whether high speed is a ‘good thing’ or not (environmentally, economically and in terms of value for money), this fascinating LSE event mostly parked the ‘in principle’, and HS2 specific arguments, in order to think big thoughts […]
Meanwhile in Sweden…
IKEA is among the companies supporting Sweden’s ambition to double the market share of public transport Interesting developments in Sweden where a package of reforms to the way public transport is run has been tied to a doubling of public transport’s market share. An ambitious goal by any standards. The plan (as I understand it) […]
The Competition Commission reverts to type
The Competition Commission is conducting a two year inquiry into the local bus market I don’t know about you, but I prefer my fudge to come from Devon and contain clotted cream rather than come in the form of thousands of pages from the Competition Commission’s (CC) dithering economists. Of course no doubt I would […]
Building the case for bus – one fact at a time
We need to assemble the case for bus – piece by piece Facts and evidence doesn’t always win the day (otherwise we would be living in a very different world!) but if you want to win a public policy debate having a combat ready armoury of evidence at your disposal is important. And important becomes […]
Bus services – a tale of three Englands?
Is England split in three now as far as bus services are concerned? London – enjoying one of the best bus services on the planet. The Metropolitan and large urban areas – where the bus remains a player and so far cuts in supported services have been minimised. And then the rest – where for some […]
The end of bus deregulation red in tooth and claw?
Bus wars could be consigned to history The Competition Commission is a black box that sucks masses of data and information in but what’s going to come out of it you don’t know until the lid suddenly opens. Or half opens in the case of the interim report. And the interim report is paradoxically both […]
What future for BSOG?
DfT have been sending out some clear messages recently that although the funding level for BSOG may be fixed – the way that it’s paid, and what it’s paid for – is not. Public money is a precious commodity these days and although the ‘could have been worse’ reductions in BSOG indicate that the bus […]
20 things I learned from our big city cycling conference in Sheffield
After all the hard work that we put into it (along with conference organisers, Waterfront and key partners CTC and Sustrans) I couldn’t have been happier with the way our big city cycling conference in Sheffield went. More than 80 delegates (a good cross section of local transport authority and cycling organisations) turned out for […]
The bus as media cause celebre
The humble bus has recently become a media darling – will it last? In the media’s chart of zeitgeist cuts, buses were in with a bullet this month following CBT’s launch of the Save Our Buses campaign. Indeed bus cuts were number two on the BBC website for a while. In times past buses only made the […]