Friday Reads – 19 October 2018

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27 comments

  1. The last link, on the airship Italia’s demise on the return from its North Pole quest, has amazing graphics, and is worth viewing for that alone. Add to that this little known saga and explorer Roald Amundsen’s involvement, makes it a strongly recommended read.

  2. Extraordinarily interesting, not just for the story but also the logistics and politics. (And as LBM remarks, the graphics)

  3. The headline: “Free French buses in Dunkirk” was horribly confusing, since “La France Libre” wasn’t started until after “Dunkirk” … Oh well, never mind.

  4. @Greg T 🙁 It’s a pity that the Dunkirk initiative is spoilt by the rotten service levels after 19.00 hours – every ten minutes on five core routes until then, but thereafter only 3 or 4 trips with the last at around 21.00 in each case, much as in the rest of France. It’s difficult to believe that French towns and cities just shut up shop when, err, the shops shut – personal observation suggests otherwise.

  5. @ Graham H – I’ve long been perplexed by the often dire bus service frequencies, network design and operating hour on french bus networks. I can understand a minimal approach in rural areas or small towns but the 2100 cut off and negligible Sunday services seems common across France, even in the areas bordering Paris. Transport needs don’t vanish at some arbitrary time in the day.

  6. @WW – and indeed, these strange operating hours apply equally to some of the latest tramway networks, which makes one wonder what the business case looked like. [I have often wondered what any business case looks like in French public transport – when I was advising Eiffage on bidding to build and maintain the LGV Atlantique, we inquired “innocently” what data SNCF could give us about their current maintenance programme – none whatsoever, other than frequency of inspection – such data did not exist – allegedly).

  7. What was the “London Transit Authority” which apparently existed about 1964? That Forbes article is a bit iffy if you ask me.

  8. @Nameless – no such thing – ever. In 1964, LT was the London Transport Executive, the GLC didn’t yet exist, and we don’t use normally the word “transit” in the UK (except in relation to such things as the transit of Venus). So you are probably right to think “iffiness”!

  9. The Forbes article was doubtless written in a hurry by someone with insufficient technical understanding, and various details got mangled in mid-Atlantic (192 bits anyone?). It also needs to be read wearing some fairly hefty pop-up protection in your browser. But the underlying message (probably better explained elsewhere) about London’s pioneering role in all three of magnetic strip tickets, RFiD use and use of contactless bank cards for travel is an interesting one. Though perhaps also slightly over-hyped – there were many other players who contributed too.

  10. I think they meant the London transit authority not the London Transit Authority – subtle difference. It isn’t even called the London Transit Authority in London, Ontario.

  11. The journalist almost certainly just saw the initials LT and assumed, as an American, this meant London Transit. Americans rarely use ‘transport’ in this context with ‘transportation’ as the other alternative (even though I always think this refers to one-way tickets to Botany Bay).

  12. I thought that it was the LT Board in 1964. Memory a bit tired but wasn’t the order:
    LPTB
    LTE (BTC)
    LTB
    LTE (GLC)
    LRT
    TFL

  13. @Nameless – I sit corrected – there was indeed a brief “Board” interval, although I’m told that senior staff at Broadway never stopped referring to the Executive. (Nor did the DTp registry service – when, in 1984, we renationalised LT, I asked the registry to open some new files to handle the resulting paperwork, the Chief Registrar of files* – you may imagine the sort of person, and you would be right – solemnly informed me that it would not be necessary and that we could continue using the files on the LT Executive opened in 1948, producing some as evidence. I told her otherwise. There was a shortlived temptation to fall in with the Registrar and write a letter beginning “My Dear Ashfield, I am writing to inform you of some changes to the status of your organisation in recent decades “, which I resisted.)

    *FYA, Registrars had been uppity ever since the days of the formidable Dame Evelyn Sharp – the first female Perm Sec – who had once been confronted with a file reference comprising 5 obliques and 12 digits. She personally went and sorted out a new filing system which became set in stone and which spread to DoT when amalgamated with the former MHLG. Reformers were beaten off with cries of “this has been personally authorised by the Permanent Secretary. “

  14. Can anyone give dates for the changes? I worked for LT from 1962 until 1967. During that time there was a change which I would like to identify. It is rather irrelevant but I submitted a suggestion to the scheme that might pay for good suggestions asking for a change to the lettering on the excellent shortbread biscuits sold in the various canteens. I received no payout!

  15. Jim J……BTC wound up approx 1962 – successor organisation was London Transport Board. London Transport Board was transferred to GLC in 1970 and became London Transport Executive.

  16. @130 – The Transport Act dissolving the BTC was passed on 1 August 1962, and the BTC’s assets and liabilities were vested in – variously – BRB, LTB, BWB, THC, and BTDB on 1 January 1963. Jim J would have noticed the change, therefore, on that 1 January. [The choice of vesting day as other than the beginning of the financial year is unusual and smacks of political urgency]. The BTC itself lingered on until 1 January 1964 when various Orders under s80 of the 1962 Act expired.

    @Jim J – biscuits and the like were key LT activities apparently – a friend of mine recalls being able to order the LT Christmas Pudding from the Central Food Factory* in Croydon, with different puddings available according to one’s grade, he qualified for a pudding with a pastry roundel (not denoting the availability of LT services or fares…). The most senior grades were also entitled to silver foil wrapped chocolate biscuits displaying the LT Wyvern as we discovered during the negotiations for renationalisation in 1984, with lower grades having the roundel or so we were told+. The SoS was not pleased to hear about that. Later, I told this to an accountant friend of mine who audited the books of Fox’s Biscuits and he, in turn, remarked on it to Fox’s CEO. The CEO is reported as saying “Blimey! We can’t afford to do that for ourselves!”

    * I was later to encounter traces of central food factories in Estonia and Former Yugoslavia, surviving from commie days…
    +For the avoidance of doubt, BRB Board Members were supplied with the best quality of (coincidentally) Fox’s biscuits, but only at Board meetings, although somehow, my clerks always seemed to overorder for them and felt the subsequent need to prevent the biscuits going stale.

  17. Graham H
    Could we please have further details, of the other change-overs of/at the “top levels” of management, as determined by our political “masters”?
    E.G. The change from LPTB to LTE (BTC) was obviously politically driven by the then Labour government’s decision to Nationalise in 1948.
    I note your comment on and smacks of political urgency 01/01/1963 regarding LTE (BTC -> LTB …. ( ?? )
    What drove the others & what were the organisational structures?
    I also assume that LTE (GLC)-> LRT was the re-nationalisation that you’ve referrred to in the past?

    Last thought: Was the Central Food Factory anything to do with the Fat Controller?

  18. The Forbes article was written in New Zealand, not the US – see the “here in Wellington” reference to Snapper smart cards. But “transit” not being an NZ term, I suspect the word may have been inserted editorially.

    And I remember noticing the “Executive* legal lettering on buses changing to “Board” in 1963. That change must have kept people busy for a while…

  19. @GregT – before 1948, LPTB was a strange animal – a Reithian public corporation but not quite a nationalised industry – rather like the BBC and BOAC . The BTC was set up primarily to act as an integrative body and also as a holding organisation for its various executive arms. It failed in its primary purpose – apart from a draft Shropshire scheme (and possibly one in W Yorks) – it never tackled the integration issue; and as a holding company, all it did was to conceal the movement of cash and borrowing between the modes. The Treasury preferred. rightly, to get a direct grip on such things. Giving LTE to the GLC was difficult to avoid politically – the GLC wanted it and it was about to become a thorn in the side of the central government as the bus network began to lose money – after all, the PTEs controlled their own services, why not the the GLC?

    My comment on the timing of the abolition of the BTC was based on the serious dislike of the Treasury to have any sort of change involving cash on any date other than 6 April – mainly because of the complications for the national accounts – in the case of the BTC, there was an election looming, of uncertain timing, and I would imagine that the government wanted to get it out of the way in case it was blocked by the purdah rules. The 1984 change was, however, deliberately obscured as Ridley wanted to play a game of bluff with Livingstone in case Livingstone attempted to wreck the joint with poison pills, and so left the date open until the last minute. I have previously explained the disastrous consequences of such a strategy.

    Renationalising it in 1984 was inevitable – having abolished the GLC, where else could it go? Ridley would have preferred to abolish it by setting up a bus franchising body (LBL) and selling off the tube, but he could find no basis on which the tube could be sold as a continuing commercial operation and even he saw the difficulties in doing so.

    As far as I could tell, the changes in status between 1948 and 1984 had only indirect consequences for LT’s senior management: chairmen were sometimes changed, board members were changed, but officials stayed put. Renationalisation, however, certainly changed the senior management. The new /old chairman – Keith Bright – undertook a purge of the corporate centre, especially the finance function, who had deliberately and openly attempted to block the renationalisation. The Board member for Finance and his Chief Accountant lasted only a matter of hours after the take over. Unfortunately, others got swept away later as the new LRT holding company shrank. The major loss was, of course, the planning function, with David Bayliss having to take cover elsewhere, but other corporate functions disappeared also – Chiswick works, for example, and – nearly – Acton works, too. I imagine the central food factory went then, but its going was invisible in Whitehall.

    There were consequences in Whitehall, too. The then DTp UnderSecretary in charge of London matters – June Bridgeman – had her career truncated as she had got across No 10 by suggesting that LT became LRTA. The idea of an authority was so much anathema to No 10 that the luckless Bridgeperson was summoned to No 10 at 2 hours notice and sat down to rewrite the draft White Paper on renationalisation removing all references to authority, planning and corporate control.

  20. @GH

    “My comment on the timing of the abolition of the BTC was based on the serious dislike of the Treasury to have any sort of change involving cash on any date other than 6 April”

    Wasn’t the BTC also created in 1st January? (1948) – Twenty five years to the day after the Grouping. Starnge to realise that some franchises have now lasted nearly that long………..

  21. @Timbeau – yes, indeed, although, again, there was a distinct air of rush (for whatever reason) in 1948, with BRB running railways in N Ireland for a few months. Also, the Big Four won’t have had their own accounting years aligned to the financial year but presumably to 1/1/23. (GW?), so no apportioning of accounts was needed, at least for the major BTC components.

  22. Graham H
    Closing / getting rid of Acton Works would have been an utter disaster – how were they supposed to manage without such a facility?
    [ Some of us think that getting rid of Chiswick & Aldenham was a mistake, too, but is “Another story”, yes? ]

    removing all references to authority, planning and corporate control. So, the trashing of all high-level coordination & the resulting silo mentalities that have developed since then was a deliberate act of policy?
    What was the supposed benefit of doing so?

  23. The lost world of LT canteens and the Croydon catering centre are the subject of one of the films in Volume Ten of the BFI’s British Transport Films series, “London on the Move”. The accompanying booklet says: “Emphasis is placed on how good service and a friendly , efficient canteen contributes (sic) to both the driver’s well-being and his (sic) service to the general public.”

  24. @Graham H: biscuits and the like were key LT activities apparently

    C Northcote Parkinson, via New Civil Engineer, explains why.

    It would be interesting to look at the minutes of the Assembly transport committee and compare how much questioning Crossrail has received over issues like whether bicycles will be carried with how much questioning over, say, the choice of signalling system. Or at how much attention organisations like Transport Focus give to minutiae of ticketing and signage versus service frequency and operating hours.

  25. @IanJ – Parkinsonian indeed. Needless to say, ministers are prime exponents of the point. Heseltine, for example, when appointed to DoE first time round, discovered that the department made some enormous numbers of photocopies (10m?) annually and that THIS HAD TO BE STOPPED. So each division was given a financial photocopying budget and a corresponding number of tokens (printed in different denominations). A colleague in Housing, who had little use for copying, concluded that he could run his division at a profit by selling on his surplus tokens. And there were Hancockish moments when I overheard one messenger saying to another “I found a fifty on the floor yesterday”.

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