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Why do folk always obsess over the number of coaches? It’s completely irrelevant. Modern coaches can be anywhere between 20m to 26m. Surely overall or usable length is much more important metric.

How is the Goverment ‘demonising’ electric bikes? Most licensed cycle hire schemes these days are electric (eg Lime or Dott or Voi etc etc) The problem in (most of) the UK is that the cycling infrastructure is utterly terrible and not fit for purpose. That needs the investment first. It’s no...

According to para 22 of the ruling they were no longer seeking a quashing order but only declaratory relief. Which basically means nothing happens apart from the statement and a lot of wasted time, energy and money. And it still could end up in the Supreme Court as it was Goverment ministers who...

No doubt it’ll go to the UK Supreme Court for a final judgement, but once again it’s another council wasting huge amounts of tax payers money (both directly and indirectly) to achieve nothing because the nimby residents have voted them in. And yet folk on this forum continue to wonder why...

Not only this but the ECML was on the cusp of 140mph operation (with the Selby by-pass designed for even higher speed running), while the WCML topped out at 110mph but most of it was significantly slower. I’m not sure how the 330 mile Capital to Capital train in approximately four hours isn’t a...

I imagine your ticket on an Avanti train would be significantly (vastly?!) cheaper than what the vast majority of folk end up paying!!

Totally agree with that!

The vast vast majority of folk in the UK will certainly be completely oblivious to the situation, and therein lies the situation where it could be exploited (I will reemphasise the point that I don’t believe it is currently happening, the ownership structure is all too new). Simply saying it...

That is the point. CrossCountry are a private company, they are not owned by the UK Government. They are owned by Arriva and their primary stakeholder is their owner. They are contracted by DfT to provide certain services on certain routes in the UK much like TfW are contracted to do so in...

The problem with this argument is it doesn’t take into account that we are now in the days where the Government are now in direct ownership and management of the railway. In Wales users can (and will) complain directly to their Plaid* (and other MSs) over issues with their railway services. The...

This is the problem. People are conflating the name with the ownership. As I’ve already said the name of a company doesn’t matter one jot. Ownership of a company does matter if that company is accountable to politicians (which TfW is, Welsh Water isn’t) and there is a democratic deficit between...

Welsh Water isn’t owned or managed by the Welsh Government, it is completely independent and in fact has an interesting ownership structure that potentially could/should be looked at by other utilities/‘public sector’ providers such as TfW. Neither do I. But that’s not to say that one route...

Unfortunately this completely misses the point. There is a democratic deficit and while this didn’t matter in the era of rail franchises run by private companies, in the era of direct government ownership and management, this change in structure will eventually enter the public consciousness.

The name doesn’t matter one jot and is completely irrelevant. What does matter is that TfW is entirely owned by and reports to the Welsh Government. It only has a contract with the UK Government to provide services in England. Therefore it is easy to see (or imagine) a scenario where it chooses...

One word: Safety. The current road is a death trap. From a Gloucestershire Live (sorry!) report in 2019: https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/shocking-number-casualties-claimed-one-1578822 And these are just the really serious accidents with deaths or major life...

The District Councils wanted none of it.

Pushing for cancellation was all the Buckinghamshire District Councils (and councillors), and StopHS2 ever wanted. The clue is in the name. They were never interested in meeting the rail industry and creating reasonable mitigations. They just wanted to blow the whole project apart but all they...

The reality is, unlike in say France or Japan where local politicians would pursue having a local station, Buckinghamshire CC never seriously pursued this option. In fact as soon as it became a possibility, all the Buckinghamshire District Councils and Stop HS2 made it politically impossible for...

Except it isn’t, it’s a regional service between towns and cities, which don’t stop everywhere. The Gloucester service (for example) skips Cam and Dursley despite increasing demand and huge numbers of new houses being built for folk commuting to both Gloucester and Bristol areas. Oldfield Park...

Why would you stop regional services here when it’s clearly a metro station? The (future) Henbury line stations need a regular turn up a go level of service (and this is likely as Brabazon and Henbury are developed both as housing developments and their nearby stations), while longer distance...