Recent content by 35B

But what is the actual demand in the area? When I lived there 25 years ago, the roads were congested but that was made up of lots of short journeys that didn’t obviously relate to the railway network.

From memory, at least part of that was that the workers in question lived within walking distance* and were expected to do so, not use the train. * - an interpretation of "walking distance" that would not meet widespread favour now!

I hate to say it, but the expenditure would almost certainly be throwing good money after bad - the fundamental issue here is that the demand that sustained the railway has cratered since the ferries moved to Cairnryan. Unless the cost of change was offset by land sales and/or removal of...

What would be interesting would be to know what the peak and minimum loads are - averages often conceal more than they reveal.

How busy is "busy". On the other thread, the caption to a linked photo said that 30 passengers on a 2 car Sprinter (capacity 150) was "good news".

I'm not sure - the words "had to" are doing a lot of heavy lifting, when what was actually involved was criminal.

Only because they had to falsify it to conceal what was actually happening at shift change

Not just that, but frequently charity shops don't know the value of what they have - I've picked up some real bargains because they've not known the value of what they've had

It's the bit I've highlighted that is simply wrong. There may be other reasons why TUPE doesn't apply, but the application is irrespective of notification timeline. In cases like these, where a public body is letting the work on a contract basis, that risk can be handled through the contract...

I'm not sure what "unspecified liabilities and costs" you're referring to. The essence of TUPE is really simple - staff transfer without ever going near a redundancy process, retaining their continuity of service and contractual terms. The employer taking over the activity has to assume that...

I recognise that as a statement of potential fact. It is also the worst possible reason to buy something, and guarantees that the economics of that factory will decline as it gets used to winning orders not on quality but on the basis of industrial policy. As for standardisation, it's an...

We did. But as someone who only did that very occasionally, not that much - the greater loss was and still is the wait for door release after arriving at a station. That, with defensive driving practice, has swallowed some of the capacity that should have been released by the improved ability...

Fair point, well made

I agree with you about City Transport's duties here, but the reasons why the drivers have struggled are not reasons why TUPE does not apply. If the work goes from company A to company B (short term) and then to company C, it merely means that there are potentially two TUPE transfers involved...

Because the 800 family is no longer standardised (the 810 is a new design which is why it's so poor), and standardisation based on mediocrity is a poor policy. Entrenching Hitachi's monopoly in this type of train is bad policy, and will result in higher costs and worse performance. Given the...