Mind the gaps (not just the gender gap)
Earlier today someone flagged up an event taking place next Monday by which female travellers on the Berlin public transport system will pay 21% less than men (€5.50 rather than the usual €7.00) to...
Category: Transport
How effective will the ULEZ be?
This April a new low-emission zone, the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), will take effect in central London. This will mean that drivers or owners will have to pay a charge to drive a...
Time to ban the “smart motorway” death traps
An all-party group of MPs has said that the roll-out of so-called smart motorways, in particular the “all lane running” (ALR) arrangement in which the hard shoulder is permanently converted into a driving lane...
Will there ever be a London-Hull motorway?
This morning on a truck drivers’ group on Facebook, I saw a link to a report on the Hull Daily Mail website (not linked to the national Daily Mail) which claimed that the proposal...
A bridge to Ireland?
In an interview with the Sunday Times, which is paywalled, Boris Johnson, the former British foreign secretary recently notorious for his derogatory remarks about Muslim women, attacked the prime minister’s plans for Brexit, boasting...
About those free rides …
Some friends of mine have been sharing a Labour election video on Facebook. The 15-second video claims that the next Labour government will make bus travel free for under-25s in England before telling people,...
Things that don’t mean optional
Earlier last week (before the story about the multiple rapist John Worboys being released from prison) the news was dominated by two stories, one about health and one about transport. The first was that...
HS2: worst of all possible worlds
The juggernaut of HS2, the new high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham and, we are told, eventually beyond, ploughs on. Today the government awarded the contracts to various major construction companies to build...
On Corbyn, trains and renationalisation
Earlier today I heard Owen Jones, the Labour-supporting Guardian columnist and author of Chavs and The Establishment, on Radio 4’s Today programme defending Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to “re-nationalise” the railways if he became prime...
The electronics ban: malice or stupidity? Protectionism or security?
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that ‘large’ electronic items such as tablets and laptops were to be banned from US-bound flights on some airlines, all based in the Arab world or Turkey, from airports...
Time for a rethink on third rail?
Last Thursday a major (for this country) storm brought strong winds and rain, bringing down trees and power cables across coastal areas and central and eastern England and Scotland. Virtually all the major railway...
How to make sure wheelchair users can ride the bus
‘Wheelchair v buggy’: Disabled man wins Supreme Court case — BBC News Today the Supreme Court gave its ruling on whether FirstBus, a major provider of bus services throughout the UK, discriminated against a...
Heathrow: No free ride for Zac Goldsmith
Today the government announced its preferred option for airport expansion in the south-east of England, and as had been expected, that was a third runway at Heathrow in west London. The other main option...
Jeremy Corbyn, ‘Islamists’ and women-only carriages
Earlier this week Jeremy Corbyn (right) gave his support to considering reintroducing women-only carriages on trains, which were found in the UK until the 1970s and still in a number of other countries, particularly...
Time to bring the air industry down to earth
Yesterday a story started circulating on social media in which an American female Muslim chaplain named Tahera Ahmad, who was travelling on a United Airlines flight (run by a partner, Shuttle America), asked for...
High Speed 2: London to Nottingham, the long way round
Earlier this week it was announced that the route for the proposed high-speed rail line from London to Manchester and Leeds, known as High Speed 2, had been released. The line is already projected...
Final Overground section opens; BBC mourns ‘loss’
Tomrrow (Sunday) the last section of the London ‘Overground’ (a mostly overground but partly underground group of railway services which run mostly just outside central London) is opening; this is a line from Clapham...
On free transport passes and invisible disabilities
Epileptic Jess McGee, 19 Ordered Off Bus After Driver Calls Her Illness A ‘Pisstake’ The other day my new Asperger’s job consultant in Kingston asked me if I had a Freedom Pass (a free...
HS2 will destroy beauty, not deliver it
Where are the new airports and railways we so desperately need? | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer This article by Will Hutton appeared in today’s Observer, arguing in favour of...
Crossrail
Earlier today I went to an exhibition for Crossrail, the project to build a railway line under London from east to west, to match the existing north-south route. The project was begun in 1989...