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The fundamental problem with incremental improvements to the WCML is that the big one, without which all the others have limited value, is the crazily expensive London tunnel and terminus. Like the Birmingham -Coventry cut off proposed in the article, on it's own it doesn't do anything for...

That seems incredibly cheap given basic stations are costing £40m or more now.

The timescales United want don't work with the time needed to relocate the freight terminal. If it closes this year for the preparatory works, I guess some traffic could move to the Merseyside terminals, maybe some to Yorkshire, but how many trains would those sites be able to accommodate? Is...

The driver shouldn't be driving the double decker under the low bridge, that much is clear. But it is inevitable that humans will make mistakes, and this is a mistake many have made. It is entirely predictable that it will happen again, and if it happens enough times eventually it is likely...

Like Cross Country's fares, this is all a bit back to front - the Network Railcard encourages travel in the part of the country where rail is already most competitive. Going back to the first post, just picking a couple of dates Harrogate-Lydney seems to be about twice the price of...

Investment in the A14 is all well and good but Cambridge has major traffic problems. Public transport links between Huntingdon and Cambridge are pretty awful despite all the money spent on the busway. The "B" takes 1.5 hours, far too slow to achieve any significant modal share. The T1 is much...

I don't see diverting buses away from Barton Road (which doesn't even have the low bridge) being a goer. Going via the M60 or the lifting bridge looks like it'd add up to 10 minutes to the journey between the Trafford Centre and Eccles, and would be prone to delays due to frequent congestion on...

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but the Bee Network's second new route started today. Route 631, like the 632 (Wigan-Chorley) runs along the main road between Wigan and Standish, and then does a couple of loops around Standish. The only part of the route not served by other buses appears...

Theoretically the project is for trains all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but there has never been enough money to build the whole thing. And they only finished environmental reviews for the southern section last year, 11 years after the first contracts were signed to build the...

The fastest way to get from Chatteris to Cambridge or Peterborough by public transport would be to change to the train at Ely or March. Obviously that doesn't fit with the UK approach to integration (or lack of it), but the connections in this area seem particularly bad. The "Zip" buses from...

Usage of the 26/31 (have these merged at some point, I can't find any 31?) does seem very low, but with the rail line, and the alternative option of the park and ride, combined with South Cambridgeshire generally being a wealthy area where few people lack access to a car, what market is there...

If the Nottingham trains are going to stop somewhere south of Kettering is Wixams really the best place? Outside of the peak arrival/departure times on summer weekends and school holidays I really doubt it. But then if EMR don't call with the current service pattern it'd be two changes to get...

Peterborough must be one of the largest urban areas with only one station (urban area, not getting into arguments over city boundaries). York, also on the ECML, will be another, though you could count Poppleton, plus Haxby if that ever happens. So in that way a new station would make a lot of...

There doesn't seem to have been any news about the wider development since then either. If the rest doesn't happen the station won't. Though tbh I wouldn't be surprised if they end up building something much scaled down and say there is no money for the station.

I'm a bit curious about the choice of locations for the stations between Cardiff and Newport. Cardiff East seems to be sited at the point with the fewest houses in walking distance. It does serve some industrial and retail units, but they don't look the type to generate much rail traffic. No...

The local services in the North East definitely need to be improved. But Grand Central is not the reason Hartlepool has no service to Darlington or York or wherever. The state-run railway is just not interested in offering such a service. The open access service fills a gap where the DfT falls...

There wasn't anywhere near as much traffic back then. The biggest problem with street running is modern traffic will make the tram slow and unreliable. And journey times barely faster than a bus aren't enough to achieve modal shift nowadays when most people own a car. I wonder if it would be...

High frequency for Castleton-Heywood is somewhat pointless if the trains aren't frequent. Guaranteed connections would be more useful, but if the shuttle, whatever form it takes, interacts with the road network that would be very difficult to achieve, never mind the reliability of the trains. I...

So not just the Curry Mile, you'd close the road all the way down there, through the middle of Fallowfield and Withington, past the Christie etc? I think the basic problem with a street running tram is are there enough benefits over a bus to justify the costs, both financial and in this case...

The unavoidable problem with an Oxford Road tram is it'd be running in traffic a lot of the way, and in that scenario a tram is little more than an extremely expensive bus. Even if you could close the Curry Mile (probably politically impossible) - which would have to be done, the traffic is so...