The New Bus for London (Routemaster)

Ah yes, excellent. More buses. Keep the peasants off the streets.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Alpine Flurry wrote:

Frank wrote:On the line I use, they were replacing 20-25 year old Class 150's, so it was hardly a needless update (for us, anyway)

Many northern lines are still utilizing trains that age or older. Why are they not allowed brand new trains? Why must they suffer the castaways of the south, while the south always seems to receive everything new first?

You do realise that train companies are all privately operated now right? If you're not getting new trains, it's because your local train company doesn't want the expense...

Re-nationalise all the train companies and give us German-grade cheap and super-efficient publicly-owned transportation. It's worth every penny, even during hard times like these.

The trains in this country are ridiculous. Thatcher I'm not going to see her new film because of this.

So, has anyone seen any of these on the road? I pass the 38 route every day but have yet to see one, even though supposedly there are at least 8 of them doing the rounds.

Mockmaster wrote:So, has anyone seen any of these on the road? I pass the 38 route every day but have yet to see one, even though supposedly there are at least 8 of them doing the rounds.

Yes, I took a ride on one the other day. It was very cool - retained the old Routemaster look and feel, but also very nicely updated.

I notice the bendy buses have gone (along with their one off ticket machine - thought I'd gone mad when I couldn't find any), so they're halfway there.

Is it wrong that I find the 70s design of the Glasgow subway better than the proposed plans? the subway is known for that character. Taking that away with modern facilities would be like painting the London buses green. Modernise things yes, but keep the colours and character that it's famous for.

Anyways, you can repaint it whatever colour you like. It'll still smell like the 70s.

rinks wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Alpine Flurry wrote:

Frank wrote:On the line I use, they were replacing 20-25 year old Class 150's, so it was hardly a needless update (for us, anyway)

Many northern lines are still utilizing trains that age or older. Why are they not allowed brand new trains? Why must they suffer the castaways of the south, while the south always seems to receive everything new first?

You do realise that train companies are all privately operated now right? If you're not getting new trains, it's because your local train company doesn't want the expense...

The government still spends vast amounts of public money on transport projects. And do you know how badly skewed it is?

TRANSPORT SPENDING PER HEAD
London - £2,731
South-east of England - £792
East Midlands - £311
West Midlands - £269
Yorkshire and Humberside - £201
North-west of England - £134
Eastern England - £43
South-west of England - £19
North-east of England - £5

...analysis by IPPR North shows almost half of major transport projects involving public funding benefit only London and the south-east, accounting for 84% of planned spending.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16235349

How can that obscene disparity possibly be justified?

I'm a northerner and yes, I too find it difficult to understand why so much is spent on the south in comparison - but I bet if you compared statistics on population and population density of the areas listed above and ranked them alongside the transport spending figures, you'd have a fairly exact correlation. Hence how this issue can be justified.

Also, the people with the power to change this all work in London, and those that don't live there, have to travel there.

It Goes to explain the disparity somewhat, but it's still out of proportion to population or population density (a quick wiki of north east and north west confirmed this). I can understand that London is the capital, and the main economic city but I just resent how London centric our country appears to be.
The north east in particular has been royally strawberry floated over during the last 50 years

How about with regards to density? (I'm on my phone so tricky to do for myself)

I suspect as the north east is geographically far larger the funding could be proportional.

Slartibartfast wrote:How about with regards to density? (I'm on my phone so tricky to do for myself)

I suspect as the north east is geographically far larger the funding could be proportional.

London's 17 times more dense and has 3 times as many people living there.
Even if you multiply the two figures together it still doesn't reach 546 times! (which is the expenditure gap on public transport from these figures)
Greater London's GVA per capita (a measure of value of goods produced) is higher, but only two times higher than that of the north east.

I'm no economics expert, and these figures were obtained from Wikipedia.
But it seems to me there's a very disproportionate gap on transport expenditure.
As I said, London is our capital and is very important economically. But even accounting for that, the gap seems ridiculous.

translink are still using buses from 1985.

i saw one of these today, good old Ulster bus.

Turboman wrote:

Slartibartfast wrote:How about with regards to density? (I'm on my phone so tricky to do for myself)

I suspect as the north east is geographically far larger the funding could be proportional.

London's 17 times more dense and has 3 times as many people living there.
Even if you multiply the two figures together it still doesn't reach 546 times! (which is the expenditure gap on public transport from these figures)
Greater London's GVA per capita (a measure of value of goods produced) is higher, but only two times higher than that of the north east.

I'm no economics expert, and these figures were obtained from Wikipedia.
But it seems to me there's a very disproportionate gap on transport expenditure.
As I said, London is our capital and is very important economically. But even accounting for that, the gap seems ridiculous.

Intriguing.

The only observations I do still have is that London's transport system is needed as everybody driving a car wouldn't be viable, plus the tourism and transient population (especially at the very centre and most expensive part) is far greater than the North East. Finally, I would imagine the public transport within London pulls in a huge sum of money each year, and I'm not sure how that reflects in the figures.

Slartibartfast wrote:

Turboman wrote:

Slartibartfast wrote:How about with regards to density? (I'm on my phone so tricky to do for myself)

I suspect as the north east is geographically far larger the funding could be proportional.

London's 17 times more dense and has 3 times as many people living there.
Even if you multiply the two figures together it still doesn't reach 546 times! (which is the expenditure gap on public transport from these figures)
Greater London's GVA per capita (a measure of value of goods produced) is higher, but only two times higher than that of the north east.

I'm no economics expert, and these figures were obtained from Wikipedia.
But it seems to me there's a very disproportionate gap on transport expenditure.
As I said, London is our capital and is very important economically. But even accounting for that, the gap seems ridiculous.

Intriguing.

The only observations I do still have is that London's transport system is needed as everybody driving a car wouldn't be viable, plus the tourism and transient population (especially at the very centre and most expensive part) is far greater than the North East. Finally, I would imagine the public transport within London pulls in a huge sum of money each year, and I'm not sure how that reflects in the figures.

Some good points.
I'm not sure it does, though as I said I wouldn't really know what would be the best measure of money generated (GVA was just the measurement that came up on wiki).
Would like to speak to someone in government about this, im sure there's reasons for it (along the points you raise with regards to tourism, logistics etc). Might give my mp a shout

If London didn’t have the transport funding it has right now, it’ll be completely strawberry floated as a place to commute. There is literally no more room for cars and they are STILL raising the prices of public transport. So inefficient with the money.

Inefficient? I think they do rather well all things considered!

Yeah, TfL are pretty damn good it has to be said. They're generally very well run in my experience and have some really clever collision (road traffic accident) recording and monitoring systems for schemes they've implemented. They're so much more intelligent than a lot of Local Authorities who aren't data led and just "do fings coz that's what we've always dun".