i think chewkw has some kind of issue with strikers

I think chewkw just has issues...

Strikers should be put to hard Labour ... :lol:

I think chewkw just has issues...

http://cdn1.hark.com/images/000/323/942/323942/original.jpg

"Travel freely"? ROFL.

What's the average traffic speed now in London (where this money will be spent)? About 17mph? Less during rush hour.
You think more cars will speed that up?

Yesterday I drove 126 miles in my car (auto gear is brilliant for you skeptics it's like saying F1 should use manual gear LOL!) and I managed to drive to areas inaccessible to normal traffic. Try visiting Holy Island with your trains ... :roll:

Maggots crawl slowly in London regardless of what trains you have. Fact! In fact cities all over the world are full of maggots crawling slowly like zombies heading to their doom. Fact.

Yes, travel freely ... you either pay in the restricted zones or simply don't enter it, but at least you have the freedom to choose unlike those strikers demanding your life or dictating their terms to you.

:lol:

Reliability is key with public transport.

I don't care how long a journey takes, I'll plan it out so I arrive on time. However if one train or bus is late or a no show in all that planning is moot.

edit: I say spend it on improved driving test and standards.

+1 I vote you for Minister of Moving Things.

I'll vote.......

Roads..

I know but this week I'm commuting by car cos' I'm bored with Rail and I've just bought a convertable.

I reserve the right to change my vote based on weather and whim.

Absolutely not. But they do.

NR's infrastructure upgrades are very often paid via third party investment in the network (which NR then gets the benefit of since it forms part of its RAB - which it can then borrow against). I spent 3 years acting for various bodies when third party investment in the railway came up for review by the ORR. it is a hugely clunky mechanism which is massively in NR's favour, which is silly, since it ultimately deters the big money investors from making network improvements.

The fact that Network Rail (a private company) fails to maintain its network to any sort of reasonable standard means that its only really sensible to run heavy rolling stock on the network so that it isn't shaken to death by the substandard infrastructure, leading to HUGE life-cycle maintenance costs for those trains (which are then passed back to passengers and receipents of rail freight etc).

The almost laughable irony is that when you run a heavy train on NR's infrastructure, your track access payments (i.e. the payments the train operating companies pay to NR to use the network) are higher because NR claims that heavier trains mean mean higher maintenance costs for the infrastructure.

What's needed (for rail) is modern and well maintained infrastructure, so that we can catch up with the rest of the world and run lighter, faster, cheaper trains which require less maintenance. Pigs might also fly.

From a wider perspective, what the UK REALLY needs is inter-modal transport. and I mean PROPER inter-modal transport, not a half-arsed effort where First Group et al still fail to recognise muliticketing.

Park and Ride
Regulated bus market (like London)
multi-ticketing schemes - to allow bus/underground/rail/Park and Ride etc all on one ticket
Proper priority systems for public transport, so that it is undeniably quicker than car for town journeys
Ride quality improvements for buses and trams (i.e. better road surfaces, everywhere else in Europe does it, just not us).