You are currently browsing the TransportMatters weblog archives for March, 2008.
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- 02/11/2009: The woes of a freelance journalist
- 27/10/2009: Roadworks
- 26/10/2009: In mortal danger
- 23/10/2009: Losing my memory, honesty and dishonesty
- 18/10/2009: Oldham loop
- 12/10/2009: Heathrow’s third runway
- 08/10/2009: The Times
- 08/10/2009: Written during David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Conference
- 07/10/2009: Theresa Villiers
- 02/10/2009: O2 Winners
Archive for March 2008
speed cameras
31/03/2008 by admin.
As one with three points on my licence, I was strangely heartened to see a traffic warden and a community support officer setting up a mobile speed camera in a 30 mph section of Todmorden Road in Littleborough this afternoon.
It is just a shame that they weren’t there at 10pm last night when a pair of tossers were doing 80mph past the same spot!!!!
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Velodrome
31/03/2008 by admin.
About a year ago, I interviewed Seb Coe…a genuinely nice man who surprised me by remembering an interview I did with him during the Commonwealth Games.
He was in Manchester, with the connivance of the North West Development Agency to tell the north west what benefits the region was going to get from the Olympics. A rather emasculated version of the piece I wrote can be found at http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1006/1006855_olympic_snub_to_cycling_venue.html
Frankly, I found the whole excercise patronising and I was disappointed that only Graham Stringer seemed to agree.
Now, we are celebrating a fantastically successful World Track Cycling Championships at the Velodrome. My old newspaper splashed on itg, and rightly so. But once again, it bottled the big question….
Why can’t we have the cycling here in 2012????
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New rail scandal…..
30/03/2008 by admin.
Virgin and Network Rail are at odds again on the West Coast Main Line. See my story by clicking on the train on the TransportMatters home page.
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More Local Transport Bill
27/03/2008 by admin.
It got better….
Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab) on tory Greg Knight whjo went on and on and on and “admirably performed the role of the parliamentary equivalent of a speed hump”!!!!!!
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Local Transport Bill second reading
26/03/2008 by admin.
Cheadle MP Mark Hunter: “Theresa Villiers shows all the strategic understanding of Olive from On the Buses”……priceless!!!
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Driving tired
26/03/2008 by admin.
Acting star Joseph Fiennes is the voice of a new Government campaignto remind motorists of the dangers of driving when tired. One in five of all crashes on major roads are caused by tired drivers but research shows many motorists are ignoring the simplest sign - the common yawn - that it’s time for a break.
Its a scary busines and it has happened to me just once - about 10 years ago. We were on holiday in Cornwall, I hadn’t been sleeping well, and we had been hiking all week.
It was a sunny day and we had had a rather large lunch in a pub where I had drunk just ONE pint. I began to feel drowsy as we drove along a dual carriageway but tried to shrug it off. I was overtaking an old woman in a Micra when suddenly Mrs S cried out in alarm. I realised that I was drifting towards the terrified old woman.
It must have lasted less than a second but the realisation was terrifying. And, of course, I have been reminded of the incident more than once over the last decade!
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Car sharing
20/03/2008 by admin.
| The UK’s first motorway car share lane was opened today by Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, giving drivers a new opportunity to cut both their journey times and carbon footprints. |
| The 1.7-mile lane, built by the Highways Agency, links the southbound M606 near Bradford to the eastbound M62 towards Leeds. It is open to cars and taxis with two or more occupants, as well as buses and coaches, and bypasses the notoriously congested section where the two motorways merge.The DfT claims the new lane will save road users an average of six to eight minutes per journey - 30-40 minutes per week for regular commuters.Ruth Kelly said: “This new lane offers motorists the opportunity to reduce both their journey times and their carbon footprints. Currently, four out of five vehicles using this busy junction have only one occupant. I hope this new lane will encourage people to share their journeys, which will ease congestion, cut journey times and improve local air quality.”
A few years ago, I popped across the Pennines to look at the first non-motorway car sharing lane, again in Leeds. After deliberatly driving down it on my own to see what wouyld happen (I got a stern ticking off fr5om a bobby at the end) I actually counted the number of people in the cars. A few days later I counted the number of people in the cars on an ordinary road, the A6 into Manchester. Guess what…….. There was no difference!!!! I’m with Stephen Norris on this. Having escaped the dreadful human beings on public transport , why on earth would I want them in my new car????? |
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The curse of e-mail…
19/03/2008 by admin.
Twice its happened in the couple of days - e-mails sent to hundreds of people, one to a business networking event, the other to a charity do at Cloud 23. But the sender has put the addresses in cc instead of bc.
Ooo, you think, look at all those contacts….and then they emails start clogging up your inbox from people who are replying to all.
Then it gets nasty from people sick of getting all those e-mails!!!
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Lake District musings
16/03/2008 by admin.
Took my caravan to the Lake District where it will stay on the Camping and Caravanning Club’s Windermere site for the next two months. Here is what we discovered:
- The unlovely and usually by-passed village of Staveley is, in fact, quite a place. Seek out Wilf’s Cafe, booming and full of posh people.
- The River Kent here is fast flowing and a match for some of the better known rivers.
- It will be possible to walk from the door to a host of lesser-known fells and avoid the evils of Lake District car parks. I wonder, though, if the Kentmere Round is a realistic possibility from the wrong side if Staveley?
- The club’s claim to have wi-fi on site is overblown. The signal is only available in the vicinity of the warden’s office and they charged me £6 for 24-hours. That is as much as the outrageous BT Openzone at airports and makes my plans to work from the caravan up there pretty difficult.
- Mobiles don’t work very here, either!
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Airports
11/03/2008 by admin.
So its going to cost 20 per cent more to fly to and from Heathrow and Gatwick. After the scandal of BAA’s tinkering with the third runway research, they should be made to charge 20 per cent less…
….or even 100 per cent more and then the airlines can look to Manchester.
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