AN OUTSIDE VIEW

"It's about capacity", advocates of HS2 keep saying. If that is the main reason, surely the solution is to build a new conventional-speed railway on roughly the proposed alignment? This would in practice amount to the reinstatement of the Great Central line, preceded by the upgrading and electrification of the Chiltern route.

Brighton Station ticket queue , originally uploaded by seadipper . Buying a train ticket can be a trouble. You can get them on the internet, and some train operators have excellent web sites. An example is sj.se, which lets you print out your ticket and reserve a seat, showing a plan of the train so that you can pick a genuine window seat if you want. In some places, including parts of Denmark, the ticket machines are on the trains, which is the best place of all. In the 1980s British Rail introduced a simple ticket machine called the Quickfare. These sold, for cash, a limited range of tickets with a couple of button presses, the whole operation taking about 15 seconds. But they were replace about five years ago by the machines in the top picture, which To buy a ticket with the new machines takes a dozen or more button presses and about two minutes for the transaction. It is obvious that people have trouble with them. You can see them with puzzled looks on their faces, with t...

Rare British train ticket from the internet , originally uploaded by Des Johnson . For the best part of 150 years, train tickets all over the world looked like this. Known as Edmondson card tickets, all the information was clear, and passengers and staff could take it in at a glance. In Britain, these were superseded by the present credit-card style of ticket about thirty years ago, when new computerised ticket-issuing machines were introduced. At first, they were printed with dot-matrix printers which were blurred and indistinct, and this often led to disputes as passengers ended up with the wrong tickets. Nowadays, the printing on the tickets is better but the information is still not presented in a user-friendly way. This makes unnecessary difficulties for both passengers and staff. There is no excuse because there is plenty of room on the tickets to put on the information in a way that makes it possible to take in at a glance.

Vatican City / Stato della Città del Vaticano / Cidade do Vaticano , originally uploaded by LisbonVisitor... . Reaching Catholics for Christ is a website that is not what it appears at first sight to be, but actually aims to "disprove" the teachings of the Catholic Church. The giveaway is the text on the front page "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Romans 4 : 5. It is interesting that this style of protestant usually quotes the King James translation. But of more interest is that they promote a literal interpretation of scripture, but then stop short of interpreting chapter 6 of St John's gospel literally. Here is the (Douai-Rheims) text... 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers did eat manna in the desert: and are dead. 50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven: that if any man eat of it, he may not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. 52 I...

China’s Ministry of Railways is conducting a review of the country’s ambitious high-speed rail proposals after an influential state-backed think-tank raised questions about the affordability and practicality of the planned network. In a report submitted by the China Academy of Science to the State Council, experts urged a rethink of the emphasis on massive infrastructure investment, particularly the bullet train expansion programme. One of the concerns expressed in the report is the unsustainable level of debt that has propelled rail building projects across the country, particularly since the government launched its stimulus package in late 2008 to combat the effects of the global economic crisis. The report found that the acceleration of infrastructure investment triggered by the stimulus package had caused a lack of integration between transport services across the country, leaving highways, subways, train stations and airports not properly connected. Article in FT here

UK government policies are best understood as a manifestation of the beast named ANARCHO-CAPITALISM (A-C). Its prophets are Ayn Rand, and its high priests are Murray Rothbard, Bruce L. Benson. The economic theory comes from the Austrian School via Chicago, and it is founded on the fallacious theory of property rights put forward by John Locke. This leads them, paradoxically, into the same trap that Marxists fall into - that land and natural resources is a form of capital or nothing other than capital. That particular error makes it impossible to analyse contemporary economic and social problems. A-C was the guiding principle behind Thatcherism, probably having entered the political bloodstream via academics at St Andrew's University. Early UK advocates included Keith Joseph. The principles of A-C underly the utterances of such as John Redwood. In a diluted form it was and remains a strong influence on both Labour and the LibDems. With Marxism discredited, ...

There are rumblings about getting rid of the City of London Corporation. The City of London certainly makes no sense in administrative and planning terms as a separate entity. A new borough of Central London should be created, taking in the City of London, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Islington, Camden and parts of Kensington and Chelsea, and Southwark. The boundary would be almost the same as the congestion zone, which would be logical for a local authority. Map of London Congestion Charge zone This is primarily about the planning and organisation of public services by rational administrative units so that they can do their job efficiently and democratically. From time to time, boundaries need to be reviewed to take account of changes in patterns of settlement, demographics and land use. The last time this was done in London was almost fifty years ago when the present London boroughs and the Greater London Council were set up. At that time the City of London remained uncha...

The Wrexham and Shropshire service closed last week, despite having the highest satisfaction rating (99%) of all train operating companies. The service had been operated with push-pull mark 3 coaches powered by class 67 diesel locomotives. The reasons for the failure of this venture will no doubt be argued over but the main factor seems to be that the alternative routes were quicker and there was little scope for competition. The territory on the Welsh borders north of Wolverhampton is thinly populated and was never going to generate much traffic. I would not be surprised to see the stock redeployed very soon on a service between London and Birmingham. There are substantial towns along this route, including High Wycombe, Banbury and Leamington Spa. The prospects for business are altogether better. Moor Street station has recently been refurbished and well located so long as one does not want to change trains to travel on from New Street.