The BBC is one of this country’s greatest inventions, one of our biggest sources of soft power and one of many people‘s (mine included) sources of pleasure. Her political opponents caused a bunch of problems that make all of these less true. She personally has the power to fix them. Just do that.
How on earth do you lead an organisation of 20,000 people with 16 transport modes and a £7 billion budget?
I really recommend this episode of my podcast with Claire Mann, Chief Operating Officer of Transport for London.
It's very personal and very authentic and very human.
Does the Govt's communication *have* to be so clunky?
I'm lucky enough to subscribe to Keir Starmer's Substack.
The world economy's torn apart by the war in Iran, he's having to fend off unreasonable demands from Trump, it's going to have all kinds of long-term impacts and... it's on the NHS.
Strong agree on both fronts.
"So far this century, a new tramway has opened in France every six months."
What can we learn from France about building new tram networks and integrating them with new housing?
Read our guest blog by @freewheeling.info:
bettertransport.org.uk/blog/towns-a...
I was thinking this morning how both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would have been delighted to see a Westward-looking, centre-right party defeat a pro-Russian autocrat in a former Eastern Bloc country.
Belgium has some of the most beautiful big stations in the world.
And Bruxelles Midi!
Exactly this situation happened to us last week at Gare du Nord and - do you know what? - Eurostar waited.
I can be as critical of train firms as anyone when they do things wrong, but aviation seems to me to be significantly less customer-focused than most rail companies.
Mini Switzerland is a source of pride because we’ve been able, through this project, to role-model a different way of working.
This post is about how we’ve worked as a volunteer team and what lessons this can offer for the wider public transport sector.
www.freewheeling.info/blog/lessons...
I met my wife through an Oxford University STP. First week of uni, and someone else at the table didn’t want to finish theirs. He asked if anyone else wanted it. I called down that I did. Those were the first words she heard me say. Later that week we got together. 27 years on we are still together.
Quite! Could someone please stop them!
The point about a continuous pipeline so that knowledge is maintained (and unit cost reduced) is so important.
My most popular post last year was about how HS2 would have been delivered, had we been Swiss.🇨🇭 This point is right at the heart of it.
It would've been better, cheaper and open now.
If it’s such a ‘gold mine’ why did the 14 year period of the last Conservative government, throughout which it pursued a policy of issuing licenses and maximising oil and gas production, end up being defined by austerity and the worst wage growth since the Napoleonic era?
Tuesday will mark the first anniversary of the social media post that kicked off Mini Switzerland. 🇨🇭
Less than a year on, it's a funded project.
There are lessons for the wider transport sector from how we made it happen.
www.freewheeling.info/blog/lessons...
Another for this list is one I’ve been personally championing and am extremely pleased to see: Mini Switzerland.🇨🇭This is £6 million for a rural rail + bus transport integration demonstrator in the Hope Valley. The idea is to learn how to achieve Swiss-style fully integrated transport.
One of those "Brexit benefits" that "Nige" hardly ever mentions anymore: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Group of seven people standing on a tram platform in an urban area with modern buildings and trees in the background, dressed for cool weather.
📢In this guest blog from transport expert @freewheeling.info, he explains what happened when a group of transport and housing aficionados took British policymakers to France to see first hand the country's fast growing tram network.
Read it here 👉 bettertransport.org.uk/blog/towns-a...
Brilliant! Will DM you and we’ll set it up. Looking forward to it!
Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:
I enjoyed this. A point often made to me about Manchester’s enthusiasm for trams is once they’re there they’re quite hard to cut.
Also took years covering devo to realise, with some bafflement, a mayor can’t just get on with building trams because it still needs repeated sign off in Whitehall
@chriscurtis94.bsky.social (Chris Curtis MP) was one of the political stakeholders on the France visit that @createstreets.bsky.social, @bettertransport.bsky.social and I organised, and which I wrote up here.
www.freewheeling.info/trams-and-to...
It won’t surprise you to know that I disagree. Could I twist your arm to come back onto the podcast for 30 mins at some point in the next few months? Would be great fun to both try to persuade each other on this one…
@freewheeling.info: "There's absolutely no reason why this can't be done quickly and once it's proved in the Hope Valley, there's no reason why it can't be done in all rural areas"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
@stellacreasy.bsky.social, genuine question: why do most Labour MPs (and the entire Labour Government!) give free exclusive media content to this platform? Why do they force journalists and the public onto X, where they get force fed right wing views and Elon Musk? Genuinely- why?
Hey drivers, one way to save on expensive fuel is to drive slower. Another is to use public transportation or ride a bike. Any of those will lead to fewer people killed.
This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.
Inter-City advert from 1977: Look what you gain when you travel by train
Look what you gain when you travel by train - advert from 1977
- More time with your family or friends
- Faster travel
- Air-conditioned comfort on most trains
- A hot meal, a drink or a snack on most trains
- Friendly service
- No traffic to worry about
- A wide range of destinations
Exactly so! I grew up here in the 90s and it’s now better in virtually every way. The one way it’s not is affordability. This is a genuine and serious problem- but a totally different one from the confections of the racist right.
I think it’s because we feel that the lack of trust in politics is a crisis that makes it harder to achieve everything else that needs to happen - and she’s exacerbating it. And that marginalisation of the climate crisis is a disaster that the Greens should be a bulwark against - and she’s not.
