Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads:
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- • Choo Choo Chat on Crossrail with John Bull (GeoffMarshall)
- • Green number plates to boost electric cars sales (Guardian)
- • France’s TGV expansion takes new direction (CityLab)
- • UPS moving to electric delivery trucks (FastCompany)
- • Boston’s T subway network is falling apart (BostonGlobe)
- • NYC World Trade Center Subway station reopens 17 Years after 9/11 (InterestingEngineering)
- • Portland mulls closing 4 light-rail stations (ProgressiveRailroading)
- • National Links: Universal Basic Mobility (TheOverheadWire)
- • How Uber is making traffic even worse (Axios)
- • Sears was the Amazon of its era – here are its buildings (99%Invisible)
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The research on Uber is quite incomplete as it fails to address the longer term issues of car ownership. We know from clearly demonstrated evidence that in London, joining a car club results in people giving up car ownership. This is because they know they will have access to a car when they need it but without the costs and hassle of ownership. Every extra car club car on the roads results in about 10 cars being given up by previous owners. And those members use public transport, walk and cycle more than they used to and use cars less. But, at the same time, they would say that if they didn’t use the car club car then they would have used public transport, or walked or cycled. Uber availability has a similar impact. But instead of looking to see whether car ownership has gone down (good for reducing congestion) New York has just looked at the immediate journey mode choice. So instead if seeing what, over time, is likely to be a net benefit for the city they have concluded the opposite. Moreover, Uber (and indeed all taxi) journeys still constitute a trivial proportion of the total travel market – a huge percentage increase on very small is still very small. A classic case of using partial evidence to seek to prove the answer you want to see.
Green number plates are a good idea in principle, but we already seem to find it impossible to stop people buying and using improper number plates (for display purposes only, honest) so that improper green number plates are likely just to add to the mix.
The Boston “T” article had me wondering: “How on earth did they let it get into that state?” – but then I remembered that, currently trains are not running through Ayr station, because bits of the associated hotel are likely to fall on to passengers heads …..
See here for some details
Re. the French TGV article, there’s yet another case of geographical illiteracy. Marseille to Nice is not “further west” than Montpellier to Perpignan.
@ Greg – it is very easy for rail networks to end up in a decayed state. All you have to do is not have enough money and be very good at patch and mend and dealing with emergencies. LT was a world expert on this and I suspect TfL will be relearning old lessons again in a few years time. The cuts to maintenance budgets that are ongoing plus the reduced spend on capex is simply storing up problems for the future. It’s all dull, boring stuff that politicians can’t come along and “open” hence why it gets no focus. The same applies to properly maintained pavements and roads – how many billions of pounds of backlog is there now in the UK? No shortage of money for bypasses though.
In many respects the USA is in an even worse state than we are given they have even less emphasis on “transit” than we do. Oh and they have *even* worse politics than we manage to have.
@WW/Greg T – the point about running down a railway system is that over a very – very – long distance, you can run it down without anything sudden happening. Sure the trains get slower and less frequent. You can even get to a Talyllyn pre-1951 state of affairs, and still the trains run. Maybe modern technology provides a cleaner break between run and don’t run but the general point remains – alas. It suits politicians’ short term horizons…
On running down, I’m sure Arriva are cutting back on cleaning on London Overground. The floors of the 317s have recently been allowed to get horribly dirty, and grime and scuff marks are not being cleaned off the low level interior bodywork as regularly. Let’s hope that it’s not a case of rot slowly setting in. These little things make a big difference.
The lack of love for the 317s may have something to do with the soon* to arrive 710s.
[*how soon is soon is another matter entirely]
Re AnonEMouse
About 1/3 of the 317 replacement 710s have already been built.
Driver training will now be the biggest issue once all the approval boxes have been ticked. (All focus on the Goblin problem)
Regarding the Goblin problem …
This came up at the latest TfL board meeting where one of the members had the nous to raise the issue. The response was along the lines that everything will be OK soon, TfL had been assured that the software upgrade would be ready in November and all is well with the world. This seemed to be accepted by the board members.
The response was somewhat surreal given that this was the same board meeting where the Mayor and board members expressed their deep disappointment, disbelief and unhappiness about Crossrail being delayed (despite repeated assurances that it would be on time) and a determination not to rely on such bland assurances in future.
@ NickBxn – I think there is growing evidence that Arriva are finding the current LO contract rather financially tough. I haven’t seen what you’ve noted as I’ve not used West Anglia in weeks. However the number of fleet related failures, even with 378s, is not encouraging. There are still fleet defects on West Anglia causing short formations in the peak and the 172s don’t need mentioning again. I just get a horrible sense that things are so tight financially that corners are being cut and despite all the rhetoric about “tough performance regime” a subtle decision has been taken that more money can be saved by cutting costs and incurring whatever marginal payment adjustment might ensue. Any contractor with a brain works out very quickly, usually before contract signature, where more money can be saved by reducing future activity and living with whatever performance regime consequences there may be.
The ticket office issue is a TfL request so I won’t lay that at Arriva’s door. They are just responding to what their client has asked for.
@ PoP – Like you I am surprised at the TfL Board’s apparent bland acceptance of “it’ll be alright on the night” with the GOBLIN. I’m no rolling stock expert but I’ve read enough consistent comment here and elsewhere to know that a *lot* has to be done to get the 710s into service and there simply isn’t the time left between now and November or December (depending on which TfL / Mayoral statement you read) for the trains to be in service.
They really need to be asking some *very* pointed questions about what is or, more pertinently, is not going on with these new trains and who is bearing the cost risk associated with the many and varied delays. Even if the risks are borne outside of TfL they should really be seeking assurance that this is the case so there are no budgetary shocks for TfL. And the public also need to know this as well.
With apologies, I mis-reported / alleged. I meant to refer to the 378’s getting into a grubby state. It’s been noticeable on both the North and East London Line-based stock. It was impressive how well Lorol scrubbed up their inherited stock from Silverlink, and then maintained the Capitalstars after their introduction. It definitely went steeply downhill over the summer. I wouldn’t normally complain about dirty trains here, but suggest that the much improved cleanliness of vehicles in the last 20 years has been a significant contributing factor, alongside better information systems, ticketing, etc. in gaining increased passenger numbers. Anyone who lets this go does so at their peril.
@NickBxn: See also the NYC great cleanup, to get the Metro there back on track.
@WW: Perhaps it’s just way too easy to walk away from a contract? There seems to be a need for much bigger penalties in the initial years if the contractor walks away. If the contractor refuses, then obviously they can not be certain their bid was realistic…
The cynic in me says, they’ll all run a mile… Which says the system is broken, very broken….
Re Nick BXN,
The 378s are getting a complete refresh at Ilford (first unit back in service last week) including an external respray so they look like the 710s.
Hence fewer units available during this process so less cleaning time and also less point in cleaning just before a refresh.
The first units done will have still have some temporary yellow vinyl on the front till the paperwork gets sorted for the black fronts and which point the vinyl will be removed.
Expect 378 availability to be bad till at least Easter.
New livery spotted here, no less:
ooh-er…
https://twitter.com/drjrhurst/status/1035246184623992833
Thank you for informed/reliable information. It’s good to know about the refresh (the arm rests were getting threadbare too).
@NickBXN: Plenty of whingeing about the new livery on that Twitter post, most of which seems to boil down to: “It’s different, so I don’t like it!”… 😉
Noticed the armrests too.
Why aren’t they something sturdier like soft ‘rubber’ instead of matching moquette?
Has anyone seen any more details on the planned TGV expansion mentioned in the CityLab article? It talks about 5 new high-speed links over the next decade at a cost of 13.4m euro, which seems cheap compared to HS2, but the article doesn’t give any real details of the planned work.
@QUINLET
Why would joining a car club mean that those people would drive less?
Surely the people who join such clubs are people who didn’t use their cars much anyway, e.g. just for a Sunday excursion, and as a result swap owning a car for the car club. I have an elderly car which I use once a week or less. I could swap this for car club membership, but it wouldn’t affect my mileage at all as I only use my car for specific journeys where public transport isn’t convenient, e.g. where I have a lot to carry.
@MikeyC. This is my anecdotal experience, but it seems to match the pattern.
If you have a car you tend to use it. The car is to hand – so you drive it to the supermarket etc etc, just because it’s easy and ‘free’. (It’s not free of course, but it’s mostly sunk cost)
Our car failed the MOT (and was way beyond economic sense to repair) so that forced us to do the cold hard sums of what replacing it would cost. Not replacing it and using a car club was massively cheaper.
In the first couple of years (this was 9 years ago) we did use the car club quite regularly. But slowly the combination of seeing the actual cost (an email with a bill for every journey makes the costs so much more visible, even though the costs are actually far less than what our own car was costing us) plus the realisation that you can get virtually anything delivered has meant we hardly use the car club at all now.
We do occasional hire a car for use out of London but never within London.
That’s my anecdotal experience, and from surveys I’ve seen, this is the pattern repeated for others. That’s why overall car use decreases.
By the way – and at a complete tangent – the car club vehicle parked on the street nearest to me has just been replaced with a fully electric vehicle. But there is no charge point. I’m struggling to see how this will play out.
@NGH
Is the yellow only covering up black?! I thought they were trying to copy the new stock – and that the yellow bit would be orange? Dare I ask what the point of imitating the new order is if they’re making a significant difference…
@MikeyC, Island Dweller
There are detailed surveys carried out annually by car plus covering car club membership. These give the information I have cited. The answer is that once you have a car sitting outside your front door many people use this for journeys that, in other circumstances, would not be expedient. They do this because it is convenient and because the marginal cost is very low. Other surveys have shown that some drivers act as if the marginal cost of a car journey is nil if they don’t have to put any fuel in on that journey. Of course everybody varies and averages represent no one person, but overall figures, in my opinion, represent a better basis to make policy than anecdotes.
Quinlet, Islanddweller’s anecdote seems to back up the facts you stated initially, and intuitively both make sense. I’m not convinced by your arguments about Uber etc. Car club cars (and private cars) spend most of their moving time doing useful journeys (a car club car’s utilisation is significantly higher). An Uber car may spend more time doing useful journeys, but in between those journeys it’s not parked, it’s generally travelling (to the next fare, or cruising / waiting for one) which generates traffic. (And the more journeys that happen, the more Uber cars are on the road. The New York article is talking about the increase in traffic as a result, and while the proportion of total journeys may be small, the change in car-based road journeys is quite high, which again drives the level of traffic higher.
@anonymike: An Uber car may spend more time doing useful journeys, but in between those journeys it’s not parked, it’s generally travelling (to the next fare, or cruising / waiting for one) which generates traffic.
And, worse, it will generally be cruising around the parts of the city where the most people are, since that is where the most fares will be, which will also tend to be the most congested parts. The same problem applies with traditional taxis as well of course (but not so much old-style booked mini-cabs). Whereas car club cars will tend to be located more in residential areas which are on average less congested anyway. So even if the effect of Uber on traffic levels overall might be relatively small, the effect on congestion may be greater.
Re Ben ,
A mix of black and orange, not completely identical to the 710 branding…