ELT wins an award

The East London Transit is widely mocked for its name and the insistence that it's not a bus, even though it stops at bus stops, charges bus fares, is shown as a bus on maps and in journey planners as a bus, runs over the route of a bus that hasn't run since it was introduced, and - above all - uses the same vehicles as a bus. Writing "transit" on the side of a bus doesn't stop it being a bus, writing "Rolls Royce" on a Datsun Cherry would achieve the same - nothing except a laugh.

It was going to be  a tram, and at one point monorail plans were if not drawn up, given the artist's impression treatment.

Anyway, to crown it all it's now won an award, partly because it serves Barking Town Centre, from where buses were excluded in the early 1990s.

So that's divert buses away from a town centre and 15 or so years later undo your work, but calling a spade a material extraction device, and get an award for it. Hmm.

Parking charges will stop people using their cars! D'Uh.

In today's Evening Standard (London) there's an article about councils putting up charges for parking to help meet the shortfall in revenue that the current swingeing cuts will cause. One vox pop contributor says: "driving costs more and more, and it'll put most of us off doing it." It isn't really clear whether she thinks this is a bad thing, though the general tenor of the article is anti, but yes, if you put the price of something up, usage will typically fall - it's called elasticity. If car use falls, car ownership will fall too, public transport ridership will tend to increase and so will cycling. This will ease the environmental problems caused by cars, as well as meaning they'll take up less space between them. Basic.

What we want from our transport and communication system(s) is the reduction of the problem of people not being near the resource they need to access. People should have a big fat broadband pipe in their home, with an easy to use terminal connected to it. Amongst the services they should be able to easily access from this is the use of an appropriate vehicle to move things and people to a certain place by a certain time. More private cars is not the solution.

Countdown out - part 2

My useless bus information post reminded me of my adventures earlier in the month, trying to get to the National Theatre. Here is the text of my complaint:

"From:
Sent: 12 December 2010 20:42
To: 'enquire@tfl.gov.uk'
Subject: Jubilee Line Sunday 12/10/10

I’m writing to complain about the train information at West Ham (Jubilee line platform) today. I arrived there at about 1.30pm, and for the next 15-20 minutes the display was showing that a train would arrive in 3 minutes, the 2, then 3 again, then 2, and so on. I understand that you had problems with the trains – that’s not what I am complaining about. If you had advised us to use another route that would have been fair enough, but instead you caused us all to wait there in the belief that there was a train coming shortly.

Surely your information systems on this new line can actually tell us with a reasonable degree of accuracy when a train is actually coming?

Countdown out

Because of the recent bad weather, I have been catching the bus home from Barking station more often recently. A few weeks ago I noticed that 'countdown' displays had been installed - not new hardware, but that's not the point. On the last two occasions the display was giving out the useless information that it had no information about buses. Hmm. Tonight, I noticed that some standard transport tortured prose was in use: Words to the effect of "full information is not available."

More to the point, no information was available, whether full, partial or sketchy. I'm sure that the bad weather is causing problems, but if they don't know when the bus is coming, can't they just say so?

Tannoy oy oy oy oy

I can remember the days when there was no train information on many barking & Gospel Oak line platforms. I can also remember having an argument with Silverlink a few years back, over whether there were any speakers installed at Harringay Green Lanes. After flatly contradicting me (a daily user of the station), they finally said they had been delivered to the site. Fat lot of good if they're not up-and-running.

Well now we have an embarasse de richesse at HGL, with two speakers systems up and running, producing a nice out-of-synch duet between the voices as they announce differently worded versions of the same information. Maybe I could forgive a few days overlap of the systems (better to have double announcements than none), but this silliness has been going on for weeks now.

Gospel Joke Line

Wooden spoon to TfL for introducing a temporary timetable (not corresponding to the new National Rail Timetable) for this week, and another one for next week, without bothering to tell anyone, even on TfL's Overground we page, and then the new one the week after that. Thanks to the ever vigilant Barking and Gospel Oak Line Users Group for publishing links to them on their website http://www.barking-gospeloak.org.uk/

Hi tech minicab company - "changing minicab booking forever"

http://www.minicabcompany.com/

This is the website of the minicab company that is using the hi tech solution I have been referring to: I have relented and posted this on the ground that if people use thisand it is good, it will encourage others and therefore lead to a more efficient overall minicab system.

You can book by phone (voice call), SMS, and on the web.

Minicabs and tech

http://www.iamdespatch.com

Looking around for the software that is behind the web based taxi firm mentioned in my last posting, I came across this company, offering a package based on smart phones in vehicles and a cloud computing based system for clients (passengers) and operators. A well thought out system.

Minicabs

I've been updating my records of minicab firms and I list below ones that have IG11 postcodes. I have not checked the information, neither can I personally vouch for / recommend any of them.

I got some of this information from several on line directories, all doing the same thing, but rivals to each other and presumably holding the information separately. None of them had all the information shown here. That's a bad start.

Then we have to consider that for the 10 companies (or company names - some seem to share a postal address) show below there are 17 phone numbers. This isn't competition, it's just poor overall service caused by confusion and poor information. Many other companies show when you search on line for cab companies in Barking / IG11, because they all want you to book with them, of course. One company (not listed) even has multiple web addresses, with different place names in, and claims to have the biggest fleet of minicabs in Barking, or whatever area you have typed in! If they are a portal for other minicab firms, then perhaps this claim is supportable on that ground, if it is not true in the strict sense.

I wrote over a year ago (http://stibasa.blogspot.com/2009/12/transport-software.html) about software (Mentor Intellifleet) that  intelligently manages taxi fleets logistically. (This is not an advert - other suitable software may be available). Surely there is a need to reduce the number of phone numbers for taxi firms (more customer friendly) for starters, and them to arrange dispatch of a suitable vehicle that is near the pick-up and available in time to complete the journey by the target destination arrival time, or pick up the traveller soonest for asap dynamic bookings. I am not saying that scaling up operations like this is easy, but it's possibly something TfL could have a go at.Cabwise seems to be a start - http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/gettingaround/taxisandminicabs/taxis/default.aspx

TAXI/MINICAB FIRMS IN IG11

A-to-B Minicabs             020 8594 5536, 020 8594 9290
Best Way Cars                020 8594 8844, 020 8507 3303, 020 8593 4414    
Essex Minicabs                020 8591 9000
Gateway Cars                  020 8591 7000, 020 8591 4444
Hawk Cars                      020 3371 1551
I'M Cars Ltd                    020 8594 4996
Ripple Cars                      020 8594 2553, 020 8594 2045
S.A.M Cars                     020 8594 9394, 020 8594 9395
Thatched House Car Hire 020 8594 4444, 020 8591 2721
Westbury Cars                 020 8594 2045

New cycling magazine - ish

http://www.cyclelifestyle.co.uk/

This new magazine available on-line and on paper seems to aim itself at a readership new to cycling - those who have taken it up since it became "fashionable" in recent years. I'm not scoffing at it  - just trying to describe my first impressions of it, from a quick skim. Issue 4 is out already. The earlier issues seem to be available as a pdf but not in the format that emulates a paper magazine on screen.

Havering College - Cycle Maintenance Apprenticeship

http://www.havering-college.ac.uk/college-calendar-dates/college-news/news.aspx?p=109625

Havering college has launched a cycle maintenance apprenticeship. I have edited this post thanks to a comment from the college - thanks  - that an apprentice can be any age, though the government subsidy decreases with age.

Passenger focussed train announcements

When my train was cancelled one morning this week, I had some twenty minutes in Barking station. c2c trains were badly affected by the bad weather and were pretty much all running late. The computerised announcer was steadfastly announcing the problem like this:

"We're sorry that the 0853 train to Fenchurch Street is delayed by approximately 17 minutes. c2c apologises for this delay and the inconvenience it may cause you." Announcements like this were practically back to back - trains are frequent at that time in the morning and one train was running 25 miniutes late. If this was announced every 2 minutes we would have heard the announcement a dozen times.


Every so often, the human announcer would override the computerised voice and give people the information they actually wanted where the next train to Fenchurch Street (and to West Ham and Limehouse) was platformed.


This is not some Luddite claim that humans are better at announcing trains than computers - it is about the relevance of the information. What people want to know is when the next train to their destination will arrive and on what platform, not how late it is, or what the driver wants for Christmas.

This may not apply to those travelling away from London, as several destinations are served and delay information may well help people, but for those going into London, the auto information was useless and its presentation irritating. It would have been better to turn it off.

Double our voice

You may have seen the articles about this campaign in London Cyclist or on the London Cycling Campaign  website.

Although cycling has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, there is still much campaigning to be done, and membership groups like LCC and CTC can be a powerful voice for cyclists, both directly, and in the support they offer to local campaigners. They also of course offer membership benefits, such as free insurance.

So, in your travels, so try to recruit new members for these groups. If the B&D LCC branch were to grow, perhaps we could become more viable, and do more things to encourage cycling / attract new members