A weekly round-up of London’s rail transport news…
The short-lived experiment with rubber tires on railways
London Underground
Colour-blind man’s ‘dream’ comes true as he gets job driving Tube trains Standard
South African-made Trellidor gates – rated as the most secure in the world by a UK standards body – are being installed at London Underground stations. Business Insider
Is this London’s Most Pointlessly Excessive Station Announcement? Diamond Geezer
Elizabeth line / Crossrail
MPs have said they are “increasingly alarmed at the continual shortcomings” of Crossrail and the DfT as its nearly £3bn overspend and substantial delays still “may not be enough.” RTM
Mainline / Overground
Rugby fans from the West country set to travel to Twickenham for Saturday’s clash between Bath and Bristol can get the train to Paddington, despite engineering works. Wiltshire Times
Passenger numbers up on Virgin trains between Glasgow and London BBC News
Direct seaside train from Woolwich line returns in July Murky Depths
First pictures: Caledonian Sleeper trains reveal first look inside new rail fleet The Herald
Travelling using Pay as you go with Contactless and Oyster arrived at Hertford North, Bayford and Cuffley stations on the Great Northern line ianVisits
A Brexit supporter has admitted staging a protest which disrupted services out of St Pancras on the day the UK was due to leave the EU. BBC News
Calls to scrap first class train carriages after man escorted off by police with standard ticket Metro
Miscellaneous
TfL scraps Brunei tourism adverts amid outcry over new anti-LGBT laws CityAM
Man arrested after Muslim woman’s hijab ‘ripped off’ on London Tube platform Independent
Transport for London has started looking into the adoption of technology that would help to prevent suicides on its rail networks. Metro Report
The French/British artist Laure Prouvost has been commissioned by Art on the Underground to create a major new artwork. Art Lyst
And finally, Woman caught performing sex act on tube claimed she was ‘itching a rash’ Mirror
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Image above is from Dec 2013: The short-lived experiment with rubber tires on railways
On Sunday Politics East episode 24/3/2019 which is on the BBC iPlayer, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-47670606 (article has link to episode) there is a report and interview with James Palmer,Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough,on a £4 billion scheme to introduce trackless trams in Cambridge City which will use tunnels under the narrow streets of the city centre and roads further out,this will probably use the Chinese CRRC ART trackless tram which I prefer to call a trambus as it`s a cross between a bus and a tram,battery powered with fast charging at the last stops,semi self driving very long bendy bus,modular 2-5 car with 200-500 passengers capacity using a body from a tram,rubber wheels on roads instead of steel wheels on rails and sensors GPS,LIDAR ect to follow dotted white lines on the roads in Zhuzhou City,China.
Prof Peter Newman Curtin University,Australia,the Lead Author for IPCC 5th Assessment Report on Transport 2011-2014 and previous Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull said had taught him everything he knows about cities and trains,has written an excellent article Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail https://theconversation.com/why-trackless-trams-are-ready-to-replace-light-rail-103690 comparing BRT (Bus Rapid Transit),LRT (Light Rail Transit) trams and ART ( Autonomous Rail Transit) trackless trams,he has claimed that the ART can be 10% the cost of LRT,because it does`t need expensive overhead cables and rails and can be installed in a weekend and the ride quality is better than a bus and as good as a tram.Expert critics of the ART simply argue it`s too new and unproven but if Londoners had that attitude they would of never of opened the worlds first underground railway in 1863.There are plans to introduce ART in several cities in Oz,probably because of the publicity of the idea by Peter Newman who has written articles and been interviewed on Australian radio,clips Trams without tracks,poles or wires Science Show 14 Jul 2018 and Trams,bots and solar roads Future Tense 2 Dec 2018 which you can listen to on the ABC RN website and Nights with Steve Price 4 Oct 2018 Omny.fm also online.
Former London Mayor Boris Johnson stupidly cancelled in 2008 the Cross River Tramway between Camden and Peckham because it cost £1.3 billion and Mayor Sadiq Khan has stupidly refused to revive the Cross River Tramway in 2016, when the Glasgow Tramway which went over budget has started making a profit after only two years,ART being much cheaper than LRT and shovel ready could there for return a profit quicker than the Glasgow Tramway and offset reduced profits from fewer passengers on the tube and delays to Crossrail.ART is better than BRT and offers the benefits of LRT but at a cheaper price and the trambuses can overtake broken down vehicles and be diverted due to roadworks unlike trams.
I hope that the Cambridge trackless tramway goes ahead as the publicity may lead to the London Mayor and TfL considering the ART for reviving the Cross River Tramway and for new tramways.
It will be nice if IanVisits writes an article about trackless trams like The short-lived experiment with rubber tires on railways,linked from the photo at the top of the page.
Harrumph! As long as you both tell your computers to spell tyres correctly. Please.
The UK no longer has any control over the use of the English language. Did you understand the meaning of the word “tires” ? Well then, that’s alright then. In motor racing they are called spherical attenuators (!).