RAIL TRANSPORT – STATION CHAMPIONS REPORT

The following information is taken from the Department for Transport’s website

Station Champions – Chris Green and Sir Peter Hall

Summary

An independent report by the Station Champions, Chris Green and Sir Peter Hall, advising the Government on ways to improve stations, focussing on getting the basic facilities right as well as considering the broader role of stations in the future.

Only two thirds of customers are satisfied with Britain’s stations. This is a mediocre result, and a demanding service industry should be seeking to lift this to at least the Overall Satisfaction level of 80%. The passenger’s first priority is clearly the journey itself; but a smart, modern station is an important adjunct which can make or break the public transport experience. The customer requirement is for easy access through a safe and pleasant station environment. The cause of the dissatisfaction is not face-to-face service – which is highly rated when provided – but the physical station facilities, which are only scored at 50% satisfaction. If stations are to be improved, the solution must lie in finding affordable ways of bringing their facilities and environment up to a consistent modern standard. We recognise that additional funding will be very limited up to 2014 and we propose that the time is used to introduce minimum station standards into every new franchise and exploit all existing funding channels to prioritise the problem stations highlighted. Beyond 2014, we propose a ten year catch-up period for stations to bring them up to the standard of the modern train fleets.

Crown Prosecution Charge Deputy Labour Leader With Driving Offences

 

Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman QC MP

From The Press Association 20 November 2009

The Crown Prosecution Service said that Ms Harman, the Labour deputy leader, will be charged with driving without due care and attention and driving while using a hand-held mobile telephone following the incident last July in Dulwich.

Driving without due care and attention carries a maximum fine of £5,000 and an endorsement of up to nine points on your licence.

Ms Harman has several previous driving convictions.

She was banned from driving for seven days and fined £400 after admitting speeding at 99mph on the M4 near Swindon, Wiltshire, in January 2003. She was said to be taking her son back to Bristol University after the Christmas break.

She was also fined £60 and given three penalty points for exceeding a temporary speed limit in Suffolk in April 2007.

The law banning driving with a mobile phone was introduced in 2003 when Ms Harman was the Solicitor General.

Moscow Road Safety Summit

In my 29 October post  entitled “The War of Traffic” @ http://janetmackinnon.blogspot.com I highlighted the importance of road safety issues, as well as other collateral damage caused by road traffic.

The following information is taken from the BBC website :

“Some of the world’s poorest countries are to receive a cash injection of £1.5m from the UK government to help improve road safety. Road accidents are now a bigger cause of death than malaria in developing countries, with one person dying on the roads every 30 seconds.  The funding will pay for pedestrian crossings and better road markings. It was announced at the first ministerial global road safety summit, which was held in Moscow” this week.

Why David Cameron Needs To Learn A Lesson from Dmitry Medvedev

The Russian President & Prime Minister

Yesterday’s “State of the Nation” address by the Russian President should be noted by David Cameron and the Conservative Party.

In this address, Mr Medvedev stresses the need to transform the Russian economy and to tackle corruption.

Whilst Britain and Russia are very different countries, these challenges also apply equally here.

In short, Britain needs to reduce her dependence on what might be called the speculative economic sectors : namely, key parts of the financial services, property and construction sectors.

The “New Soviet” legacy of not only of the present government but also Conservative-controlled councils whose local “states” have swelled unsustainably  in recent years must also be tackled, along with the monopolistic and anti-competitive practices contributing to the rise of Tescograd.

It should be noted that Mr Medvedev’s colleague, Mr Vladimir Putin – seen in front in the above picture – describes himself as “conservative”, and presided - in his former role as Russian President – over the growth of large monopolistic enterprises.

With regard to corruption, Mr Cameron may well have to consider demoting and jailing  a few British oligarchs, as happened during Mrs Thatcher’s time in office. Mrs Thatcher was, of course, a friend of Mr Gorbachev, as a man she could do business with !

Finally, with regard to the police, I would like them to drive more carefully when not attending an emergency : perhaps a new driving manual is required, along with the 93 page document they have been issued on cycling – a tome of which I’m sure any old Soviet bureaucrat would have been proud.

JUST THE AGE OF STUPID….OR SOMETHING MORE SINISTER ?

Yesterday, I reflected on the great bicycling London Mayor’s rescue of  “The Age of  Stupid” film director from a girl gang, and my own encounter with a real person who was like a character from the film. Incidentally, I sympathise with the damsel in distress, as I was attacked whilst recycling bottles at a curbside station, and my nose broken by a teenage girl cycling on the pavement,  shortly after New Labour were elected in 1997, something I took to  be a bad omen. Nevertheless, despite some horrific bruising, I made a swift physical recovery.

Very sadly the same can’t be said for the 7 female cyclists who have been killed by lorries in London this year, but their deaths  also remind me of why I diverted my own journey the other day. Although I mentioned mud and potholes – the latter contributing to a buckled wheel earlier in the year – on a country lane, the cause of these has little or nothing to do with farm vehicles. No, these ”holes” are a direct result of one of the worst examples of  “planning”  – or, more accurately, the absence of this – that I have come across in my 25 years in the promotion and prevention of development. In brief, there is an enormous vehicle storage depot along the narrow Church Lane, not far from M5 Junction 7, which is growing ever larger as lorry loads of material – quite alot of which falls on to the road, but alas not into the ruts ! – make their way to extend it. This is a classic case of inappropriate development, so classic in fact that I’m wondering whether I should contact “The Age of Stupid” director to ask her to make a film there.

However, does this matter really go beyond stupid planning, I wonder ? In fact, is it people like me who are the stupid ones ? For I’m constantly told by “real” people these days that local and central government is corrupt and this is precisely why we’re in the state we’re in. Until recently, I’ve tended to ascribe bad decision-making in this country’s public sector to stupidity, of systems if not of individuals, but now I too am beginning to wonder if something more sinister is afoot. Indeed so rattled am I, and not just by lorries passing too closely on country lanes, that I’m even considering a change of direction and the prospects of work in tackling corruption, both direct and that enabled by poor regulation and management practices in the public and private sectors. Other environmentalists might want to give more thought to this too….if we’re not to be thought as stupid ourselves !

WHY THE WEST MIDLANDS & OTHER REGIONS NEEDS TO GET ON THEIR BIKES

London Mayor Boris Johnson

I would put the statistical likelihood of a damsel in distress being rescued by a senior West Midlands politician on his bicycle as being about the same as winning £45 million on the Euro Lottery. However, if anyone has other views on this possibility, please feel free to contact me.

The fact is that West Midlands folk like their cars and, as far a I can make out, an executive vehicle automatically confers executive status no matter how lacklustre the individual in question : so whist I’ve encountered few cycling politicians hereabouts, I’ve encountered plenty of lacklustre ones.

The result, unsurprisingly, is a lacklustre region as demonstrated by a recent report for the West Midlands Regional Assembly and Advantage West Midlands (AWM) on the problems of the region’s economy, which boasts the highest unemployment levels in the country. Could the Longbridge debacle have happened any where else I wonder ?

When I suggested to a local politician that his council officers would do well to get on their bikes to arrive at a realistic view of the amount of empty property, derelict sites and, indeed, unutilised planning consents assigned for so-called employment land in their area, I could tell that this didn’t go down well.

I might have added, of course, that some of his colleagues would be doing the region a favour if they followed Norman Tebbit’s advice, and got on their bikes in search of alternative employment. I mention “Stormin” Norman because my reference is to Conservative-controlled local authorities, or the Regressive (some might say “Retarded”) Right.

For “regressive” – even “retarded” – is precisely the description I would give to much economic development and planning policy for the West Midlands Region. In short, I would suggest that the region is 25 years behind London in implementing transport policies to support sustainable regeneration in the Major Urban Areas (MUAs)

Moreover, I seriously question whether most senior decision-makers, whether in the private or public sectors, ever use public transport, let alone their bicycles. Indeed my overwhelming impression is of a region of car-driving executives semi-detached from the real world.

A case in point concerns the release of additional land for employment outside the MUAs as part the Revision of the West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy process. This process, incidentally, has created unprecedented levels of speculative land-banking in the region, which have only been dampened by the present “Great Recession”.

Now when I worked in the corporate property business during the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was widely accepted that those companies who had embarked upon ambitions development schemes, for new headquarter buildings and the like, were amongst the most likely to hit trouble.

In the West Midlands, this lesson was borne out again only yesterday, when Swedish company Eriksson announced the loss of some 700 hundred jobs from its glossy new offices just outside Coventry, which had been developed with the support of AWM, and were used by them as an argument for additional employment land designation in the region during the WMRSS Phase 2 Revision Examination in Public earlier this year.

Even more annoying, this kind of regional policy is dressed up as sustainable ! So I was relieved yesterday to encounter a plain-spoken and un-reconstructed motorist from “The North” as a consequence of separate diversions to our mutual journeys :  his to avoid a traffic jam on the M5, and mine to avoid mud and pot-holes on a country lane.

Frankly, this experience was even better than being rescued by Boris Johnson, for I was able to regale said individual on the opportunities for demand management, whether with regard to roadspace, energy use or land banking, as well as  the economic competitiveness, not to say social and environmental, benefits thereof, as Londoners have long known !