On Trains & Buses

Mobile ticketing has been with us for a little while now with Scottish Citylink and National Express offering the option to text tickets to any GSM-enabled phone. Arriva seems to be taking things a step further with GPRS and allowing the opportunity for users to download an application onto their phone that is then used to buy a range of tickets. Following registration, it is the phone that does the work and has the required payment details. It’s all secured with a PIN and nothing is stored on Arriva’s servers. However, you do need a compatible phone and cheapskates like me with old bricks (I have my old Motorola from 2000 in mind here) or even recently acquired inexpensive bog-standard phones (like my Nokia 1661) are outside the loop for this means of buying day, weekly and monthly tickets. You’d think that every smartphone would be part of the offer too but that’s not so. In a way, it’s understandable that iPhone users are not served with Apple’s iron grasp of its App Store but Blackberry users are still waiting too. What this implementation illustrates is the need for a more standard computing environment for mobile phones because their platforms are even more diverse than the desktop PC world that gives me the machine on which I am writing these words. Arriva’s idea is a good one but it’s partly stymied by diversity in technology but that’s not the fault of any transport company.

Two nights ago, the A34 was reduced to gridlock after a digger was left in the northbound lane by Bollington Lane. To be fair, it was guarded by temporary traffic lights but that in itself was the cause of havoc. Not only did they back up traffic by themselves but they must have caused trouble with the permanent lights at Monk’s Heath as well as those around where the Alderley Edge bypass is to join the A34. That roundabout should be complete by December 17th though the bypass exit from it will not be operational until 2011. However, both sets of temporary lights stopped everyone in their tracks those few evenings ago with their reduction of passage to one way progress. Thankfully, Birse Civils learned their lessons and the Bollington Lane lights were gone within 24 hours though it might have been better for them to have realised the potential effects beforehand. My guess is that they will not be seen again until after the completion of the roundabout though I do wonder if they have gone to the A537 instead because the 27 (Knutsford-Macclesfield) was heavily delayed tonight. As if all this weren’t there apparently have been another set of temporary lights in Alderley Edge and their acting up has caused its own troubles. All in all, motorists might need to consider avoiding the A34 at rush hour for the next year if these experiences are any sign of what lies ahead. Buses don’t have that luxury so public transport users will have to make do and put the bus tracker to good use.

It seems that rail engineering projects aren’t being stymied by the downturn that seems to be the case in Éire as much as it is in other places. Today saw the announcement of further efforts towards putting the DART Underground in place for Dublin. It should be remembered that the original above ground DART was constructed in the middle of another recession in the early 1980’s so it looks as if history is set to repeat itself. Naturally anyone living above where the tunnels are to be going will be concerned but tunnel construction has happened in Ireland (and Dublin too) before without any above ground consequences so that should give a little reassurance. That there are forward thinking projects like this in progress in a country in public sector borrowing reduction should be some cause for optimism for the future, especially when there’s always the temptation to scale back these very things in the short-term.

The U.K. still retains a more expansionary approach with all of the excitement surrounding HS2. However, that will won’t be in place for a good while so enhancing what we already have might be a better idea. Thankfully, Manchester’s rail congestion is coming to notice and there’s London’s Crossrail and other such schemes in the offing too. With all of this and what is happening in the Middle East (Dubai) and with high-speed rail in the U.S.A., you have to say that railways are seeing something of a renaissance at the moment. Hindsight nearly always is 20-20 vision but it now very much appears that a transport strategy based around private motorised transport only was going to get us so far and we now have the congestion to prove it. Add the threat of global warming (has it been overplayed even if it’s real?) and the need to cut down on carbon footprints and it seems that we live in an interesting age when the benefits of public transport are there for all to see. Let’s hope that it stays that way.

The railway lines going up and down the east coast of Ireland have been having their share of problems in recent months. For one thing, Dublin-Belfast services were disrupted by the collapse of a viaduct near Malahide in north Dublin. Mercifully, no train was going over it at the time but the inconvenience for passengers cannot have helped the sustainability of the Enterprise service or local commuter services. Thankfully, that is behind everyone now and the hope is that any lessons to be learnt are heeded and that the economic downturn doesn’t slow down investment in the Irish rail network too much.

However, no sooner has one problem been sorted but another has surfaced. In fact, it turns out to have echoes of a one that had an impact on journeys between down the Wicklow coast earlier this year with the DART on other trains being unable to operate between Bray and Greystones because of line stability problems. Apparently, the cause of the latest round of disruption is all the rain that we have been getting in recent weeks and the result is a landslip south of Wicklow that was struck by a train running light at the time and instability south of Arklow. For passengers, travel between Wicklow and either Gorey or Enniscorthy will be by rail replacement buses until the end of the month (2009-11-30) with trains running the rest of the way. In a way, sorting the problem in a matter of weeks doesn’t sound so bad but that’s coming from someone who had to contend with a non-existant summer weekend train service for a few years because of the West Coast Mainline upgrade here in the U.K. Even so, let’s hope that nothing else afflicts east coast train services in Ireland for the forseeable future.

Until yesterday, I was under the impression that the Sunday service on the Mid Cheshire railway line between Stockport and Chester consisted only of three trains running each way. There is some vague memory of a timetable of that shape lodge in the back my brain but it’s two-hourly these days and proved to be good enough to lure me as far as Chester yesterday. There may have been a delay to my outbound journey of the order of 35 minutes because of a delay to the train from Southport but I was far from incensed. The extra time was used to potter around Stockport’s nicer parts (around Stockport Village where its markets are held) and the sun stayed out to shorten the journey around by Knutsford and Northwich. Chester was under cloudy skies when I arrived but the clouds had dissipated by the time that I came to leave the pleasant spot.

A subsequent shamble around the web has revealed active community involvement in the line with there being websites for the associated community rail partnership and local users group. It makes you wonder if any service improvements are a result of the added involvement and the enhanced Sunday service then would make sense. My web wandering also took by the website of the community rail partnership for the Manchester-Crewe line and there would seem to have been improvements there too.

This vein of thought is beginning to make me wonder if a community rail partnership for the Manchester-Macclesfield-Stoke line is in order with Northern only running three services each way of a Sunday and none of these going northbound earlier than the first Virgin service starting from London. Unlike others, we might have been spoilt with what we have and I am getting to wonder if we are paying for any complacency and if we could be made to pay even more. There is the East Cheshire Lines Rail User Group but could it be more active? Where I am going with this is that is a question that only we can answer and it might be time for all of us to give it a bit of added oomph, particularly after the reduction in CrossCountry services and the disruption that we suffered for far too long during the West Coast Mainline upgrade.