Search results

A common misconception for many people is that railways should function and operate exactly the same regardless of the country they are located in. This is not true however as politics and geography play a huge part in the differences between systems worldwide. For example, the Netherlands is...

Throughout my regular travels from Poole to Southampton and back, one thing I have gained knowledge of is the pattern in which mobile data cuts out (FYI my provider is Tesco). The biggest gap with no coverage whatsoever for me is between the tunnel just west of Hinton Admiral and a point just...

Over recent weeks, I have noticed that many forum users (including myself on one occasion) have used abbreviations and acronyms in posts without explaining what it stands for as per the forum rules. While this usually gets rectified, it adds unnecessary information for long-standing users, while...

The concept of a park and ride generally involves driving your car to a purpose-built large car park and catching a dedicated bus from there. I wonder however if there are many locations that aren’t classed as park and ride sites, but people park their car up at and catch a bus from anyway...

One of the main decision-fatigue inducing situations for a lot of people is working out where to go for hot food, especially if they are short on time. In this day and age, the eating out market seems to be saturated with the following: Table service restaurants, where a waiter takes your order...

The southern part of Hampshire is a densely populated area of the country which mostly relies on the motorways (namely the M27) and local road network for residents to get around, often causing congestion at peak times. We should be looking at ways in which we can shift local traffic from road...

Entire recasts of operators’ networks seem to be less common now than they were a decade or so ago, and I believe this is down to the fact that the travelling public are less willing to accept change. Habits develop over time and after five or so years of consistency, passengers become used to...

With the recent discussion on Mid-Cheshire services upon reopening of the Middlewich Line, I was wondering how it might be possible to fit more trains on the stretch from Northwich to Manchester. Then the thought struck me, why not extend the Manchester Airport spur westwards to meet the...

I’m a regular bus user, but one thing I very seldom do is use it to travel less than three stops. Usually this is because the walk is quicker than waiting at the bus stop, but also because I feel bad about wasting the driver’s time just to travel to the next stop, especially if I’m the only...

Now that Morebus have very kindly taken on Yellow Buses’ routes following their collapse, I have some ideas for a total recast of services within Bournemouth & Poole to integrate the two networks together and remove number duplication. My ideas: Service 1: Poole - Bournemouth - Christchurch...

There’s the age old question of what age is best to let a child leave the house alone, and as this is a transport forum I thought it would be interesting to find out what people think is the best age to allow/encourage children to start using public transport independently. By independently, I...

I must have been living under a rock for the past 2 years as I have only just discovered that Southern have heavily cut back their East Croydon - Milton Keynes service, now only a mere shuttle between Clapham Junction and Watford Junction with a handful of extensions per day to Selhurst and...

How many examples are there of journeys between two bus stops which have a direct service between them, but are much quicker to walk at the moment the bus departs? One such example is the eastbound route 18 in Southampton City Centre, which does a big loop over itself that for the Park Walk and...

Most modern tramways within the UK have various street-running sections, although these will mostly be reserved for trams only or trams/buses/commercial vehicles etc. There are also to a lesser extent, stretches of street-running tramway which also have privately owned vehicles running along...

Platform edge doors are very pie-in-the-sky in terms of widespread coverage at every single British railway station, but here’s something that is probably more realistic and will bring much greater benefits: How about a long-term rolling programme to get every single station fitted with ticket...

I will be travelling up to Manchester from Southampton this coming Sunday to celebrate my sister’s graduation, and returning on the Tuesday. For the outbound journey on 10th July, we have decided to do it as a part coach/part train trip due to it being cheaper than getting the train the whole...

I mentioned on the Fantasy Tunnelling Thread a suggestion to build a new railway through the Sussex Coast conurbation between Ford/Littlehampton and Brighton to separate fast and stopping trains. With such a plan, super-fast trains could run from Brighton to Portsmouth and Southampton while...

Just been reading an excellent article on Roger French’s Bus and Train User site which explains how a village in Oxfordshire with historically poor bus provision has now been equipped with an hourly service throughout the day and into the small hours thanks to funding from a top French chef...

By a dedicated town/city bus service, I mean one which does not leave the boundary of a particular settlement. Yeovil, despite being a town with a population of 46,000*, now only has two such routes - the 51 between Abbey Manor Park and Lyde Road via the town centre, and the 11 which serves the...

Generally, most heavy railways operating a passenger service will be owned or operated by the state in some way, but the setup varies by country. In the UK, privately operated trains* operate on publicly owned infrastructure. In the US, it’s the other way round with the state owned passenger...