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Charge is key to £3bn transport revolution
Alan Salter, Manchester Evening News
THE flipside of Greater Manchester’s congestion charge coin has been revealed – a £3bn revolution in the city’s transport network.
If the public and the government agrees, not only will the area become the first outside London to charge motorists for using the roads, it will also see the biggest ever improvement of public transport in the country, increasing rush-hour capacity by a huge 40 per cent.
The planned congestion charge will cost up to £5 a day.
But the bonus will be extra tramlines, including adding the Trafford Centre and Stockport to new Metrolink lines planned to Ashton, East Didsbury, Wythenshawe, the airport, and Oldham and Rochdale.
There will also be a second city centre line because the network will be too big for the current single line to handle. ..
(26 May 2007)
End of the line looms for transport plan
Eddie Barnes, The Scotsman
THE First Minister [Alex Salmond] has given a clear hint he is to ditch plans for a proposed Edinburgh tram system and air link, comparing the spending on both to the ill-fated Scottish Parliament project. ..
Salmond is also preparing to publish details of the £100m that has already been spent on the plans. He claims he and his ministers have been taken aback by how so much money has already been spent to little effect. As a result, the SNP now looks ever more keen to press ahead with its alternative plans, likely to involve an increase in investment in bus travel, and a new ‘spur’ taking passengers from the main Edinburgh-Glasgow rail line to the airport.
The attempt to link the two transport projects with the Scottish Parliament disaster will be seen as a clear bid by the SNP to win over the Edinburgh public if the schemes are cancelled.
The rail link has been priced at £610m, largely because a tunnel needs to be built underneath the railway to connect the rail line to the airport terminal. SNP ministers have described such a tunnel as “bonkers”.
The trams scheme, priced at £500m, is backed by business leaders as the best way to reduce the congestion choking the city. However, the SNP argues that it would be cheaper and better to improve bus services. ..
(27 May 2007)
Energy availability modelling raises crucial transport issues
Press Release, Canterbury University New Zealand
With the prospect of substantial urban sprawl in New Zealand cities and increasing car usage, Dr Andre Dantas (Civil Engineering), Dr Susan Krumdieck (Mechanical Engineering) and mechanical engineering PhD student Shannon Page have developed a software system to measure the impact of potential fuel shortages for a variety of future scenarios.
RECATS, the software model, was an outcome from their report Energy Risk to Activity Systems as a Function of Urban Form. The report, commissioned by Land Transport New Zealand, investigated the impact of little or no fuel availability — RECATS was designed to support decision-making in terms of the impacts of possible fuel shortages.
“We have presented our results and demonstrated the RECATS modelling capability to a range of transport engineers, council employees, and commercial trucking providers. The consistent feedback is that the RECATS could provide a vital tool in long-range planning and community development,” said Dr Dantas. RECATS calculates a risk factor according to a given year, urban form and travel demand.
The prospect of running out of petroleum is a worrying thought. The impact would be far reaching, Dr Dantas said.
(10 May 2007)
The report can be found here, 0.6Mb pdf.
Gridlock choking life out of Melbourne
Jason Dowling, The Age
MELBOURNE’S transport congestion is worse than the Government has let on, with internal documents revealing a train system at bursting point, trams among the slowest in the world and clogged freeways and major arterial roads.
The documents reveal the Department of Infrastructure and VicRoads were warned about the city’s dire commuter problems in July and August last year.
But it was not until a few weeks ago that the Government announced the purchase of 10 new trains — and only last week that the Transport Minister announced additional train services from October. ..
Ms Kosky would not comment on the internal reports but admitted that a rise in train patronage had caught the Government by surprise.
“It has been over 18 per cent in the past two years, which is massive,” she said. “We usually operate on the basis of 3 to 4 per cent increase since we have come to office.”
Ms Kosky said talks had been held with schools about scheduling different class times so students could avoid the peak-hour rush. She said extending classes at the end of the day would mean students still travelled home before the evening peak hour.
“I think there are some other options other than just thinking about extra trains and additional track work which is very expensive,” she said. ..
(27 May 2007)
