BBC: Is this the new age of the train?

On 27 Jun, 17:05, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:

>
> It cost me £11.90 on turn-up-and-go tickets to Birmingham and back
> today. That's for over 3 hours on a train. Although I'd have been even
> more pleased if the trains were quicker and it had been just 2 hours
> worth.
>

Birmingham to Nottingham, 3 hours, nearly 12 quid. It's only a spit
uip the road, you must really like trains.

In message
<105769e8-0db5-4814-abfd-99a35e220a21@t54g2000hsg..com>, at
15:17:07 on Fri, 27 Jun 2008, NM <nik.morgan@mac.com> remarked:
>> It cost me £11.90 on turn-up-and-go tickets to Birmingham and back
>> today. That's for over 3 hours on a train. Although I'd have been even
>> more pleased if the trains were quicker and it had been just 2 hours
>> worth.
>
>Birmingham to Nottingham, 3 hours, nearly 12 quid. It's only a spit
>uip the road, you must really like trains.

I normally drive to the airport at Birmingham, but my destination
yesterday was in the city centre which is both busy and difficult to
park near.

It was also to a not-for-profit who will pay £12 train fare, but not the
£42 (plus parking) I'd charge them at 40p/mile. With petrol now running
at about 15p/mile, even that underestimate of the total cost of motoring
is more than the train fare for the 104 mile round trip.
--
Roland Perry

On 28 Jun, 08:24, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:

>
> It was also to a not-for-profit who will pay £12 train fare, but not the
> £42 (plus parking) I'd charge them at 40p/mile. With petrol now running
> at about 15p/mile, even that underestimate of the total cost of motoring
> is more than the train fare for the 104 mile round trip.
> --
> Roland Perry

So it's fifty miles (according to you) I note you would find 2 hours
more acceptable than 3, I think 3 hours is totally unacceptable, so
much so that I would use other transport, 50mins by truck, faster by
car/bike.

NM

On 28 Jun, 09:14, David Hansen <SENDdavidNOhS...@spidacom.co.uk>
wrote:

>
> I have no move to make. You may wish to brush up on the issues of
> taxation and spending before making another comment.
>


Nevertheless you are incorrect, the 'tax disc' is a permit to use the
roads, cyclists use the rooads and extra facilities provided for them
without any additional taxation falling on them for this usage, this
is the inequality I would like to see addressed. Tax and insurance for
cycles should be mandatory also some type of competence test.

Dutch manage it with their bromfiets.

In message
<6b75c7c0-ff68-4a42-9d72-2cdff2a24dfe@e53g2000hsa..com>, at
04:53:46 on Sat, 28 Jun 2008, NM <nik.morgan@mac.com> remarked:
>On 28 Jun, 08:24, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> It was also to a not-for-profit who will pay £12 train fare, but not the
>> £42 (plus parking) I'd charge them at 40p/mile. With petrol now running
>> at about 15p/mile, even that underestimate of the total cost of motoring
>> is more than the train fare for the 104 mile round trip.
>
>So it's fifty miles (according to you)

According to Google Maps, actually. I'm sure there are other maps that
will confirm it.

>I note you would find 2 hours more acceptable than 3, I think 3 hours
>is totally unacceptable, so much so that I would use other transport,
>50mins by truck, faster by car/bike.

You can't beat an hour by road largely because the first ten miles
in/out of Nottingham takes 30 minutes at almost any time of day (I've
done it at variously between 5am and midnight).

So 1.5hrs there and 1.5hrs back by train isn't that much slower than 1
hr there and 1 hr back by car.

But Birmingham airport is both closer by road, and further by train,
(than the City Centre) hence a different decision usually.
--
Roland Perry

"nik.morgan" <nik.morgan@> wrote

> You didn't make clear the journey was 3 hours return, but to maintain
parity
> you must include the time, station to door, each end and accrued waiting
time
> for the train.

and deduct the time you could spend doing something useful on the train
(working, reading, sleeping), that you couldn't do if you were driving.

Peter

In message <0001HW.C48BF34C008E497CF02845B0@free.teranews.com >, at
13:55:24 on Sat, 28 Jun 2008, nik. morgan <nik.morgan@>
remarked:
>I go to Nottingham to deliver at the ffruit and veg market by the football
>stadium (I assume that's in the middle bit),

I know where you mean, and that's not far from where I live. It's very
much on the south edge of the City though, but so is the railway
station.

> I have not found the traffic holding me up for half an hour,. 10
>minutes ish from the motorway.

That's simply not possible. I drive to and from East Midlands airport
quite frequently (it's about five minutes west of the M1) and half an
hour is a very good time. For the bit M1 to Nottingham:

7 miles of 60mph road (let's assume we are stuck behind a lorry
doing 56mph, rather than the 40mph that they should be adhering
to): 7.5 minutes

1.8 miles at 40mph past Clifton: 3 minutes

2.3 miles at 30mph through West Bridgford: 4.5 minutes

Plus five major junctions (a minute each?)

= 20 minutes.

Having said that, the airport bus I took on Thursday managed it in 25
minutes, because it had a clear run.

>You didn't make clear the journey was 3 hours return, but to maintain parity
>you must include the time, station to door, each end and accrued waiting time
>for the train.

The train journey itself is an hour and 20 minutes, and with the local
tails could well be 1.45 each way.
--
Roland Perry

Tony Polson wrote:
> On 28 Jun, 13:00, NM <nik.mor...@mac.com> wrote:
>> On 28 Jun, 09:14, David Hansen <SENDdavidNOhS...@spidacom.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I have no move to make. You may wish to brush up on the issues of
>>> taxation and spending before making another comment.
>> Nevertheless you are incorrect, the 'tax disc' is a permit to use the
>> roads, cyclists use the rooads and extra facilities provided for them
>> without any additional taxation falling on them for this usage, this
>> is the inequality I would like to see addressed. Tax and insurance for
>> cycles should be mandatory also some type of competence test.
>>
>> Dutch manage it with their bromfiets.
>
>
> Absolutely.

A 'bromfiets' is in fact a moped, is it not?

>
> I would also like to see a penalty points system applied to cyclists
> with three points for a minor offence, and greater numbers of points
> for more serious offences, leading to loss of licence after 12 points,
> as with other road users. The cycle should also carry licence plates
> so offences can be reported to the police and the offenders brought to
> justice.
>

And the administration costs of all this would be ...?

> ...

> As long as cyclists pay nothing to use public rights of way, and a
> small but extremely antisocial element among cyclists are allowed to
> make life very unpleasant for other users of those rights of way,
> there will be great resentment towards cyclists.

Maybe you would like to licence pedestrians too? The above
also applies to them.

> If their act can be
> cleaned up by the measures I and others have suggested, cycling can
> shed its antisocial image and be seen as the environmentally sound
> alternative to using fossil-fuelled road vehicles that it undoubtedly
> is.

Why not simply arrest and charge the people found to be
engaging in the anti-social measures? That might be
achievable even outside cloud-cuckoo-land.

Charlie

Neil Williams wrote:

>
> I certainly did do cycling proficiency as a kid, and it wasn't
> permitted to cycle to school unless you'd done it. Is that still
> around?
>

There's a lot of cycle training for kids going on
in the streets around us at the moment - some new
scheme with a fancy name which I can't bring to mind.

The problems people here take a delight in moaning
about are nothing to do with knowledge and training,
but all to do with simple courtesy and common sense.

Charlie

In message <e1cd64tisedp6clak3vu0hg64i7k97ghir@>, at 22:44:04 on
Sat, 28 Jun 2008, Tony Polson <docnews2011@> remarked:
>>Walk-up train tickets of the Saver Return variety (yeah, off-peak, but
>>that fits most leisure travel) are cheaper than the petrol for a
>>medium family car for one person on most journeys.
>
>Who's talking about leisure travel? Roland Perry was talking about
>taking the train to visit a client.
>
>My own (more and more infrequent) rail journeys are also taken to meet
>clients. You cannot expect to do that on Saver tickets, except
>perhaps very occasionally.

In this case I was able to schedule the short meeting in Birmingham for
11.30, which gave me ample time to get there on the first off-peak train
of the day, and also get home again by mid afternoon.

My other client in Birmingham has longer meetings, however, and I fear
that off-peak tickets will no longer be possible, after the recent
timing changes. But as his office is about a hundred yards from New St
station, it does seem silly not to arrive by train.
--
Roland Perry