CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
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From the Global Rail story: "BAM Nuttall will call on BAM Rail from Holland to lay track using the technique employed on the HSL-Zuid, the Dutch high-speed line which is expected to lay track at the rate of one kilometre per day."
What a pity BAM Nuttall were not contracted to build the tram line in Edinburgh. Instead, we had the omni-shambles overseen by Bilfinger Berger (with 'help' from TIE)...
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Plans were announced to maximise the tourist potential of the line by introducing a steam train experience which could benefit the local economy by million of pounds a year.
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http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/transport/borders-rail-steam-train-tourism-plan-1-3515382
So that'll be 'old fashioned' rolling stock with guards' vans??
Now here are some ideas -
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Amtrak is the intercity train service run by The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, connecting more than 500 US destinations and three Canadian provinces.
According to The Make Good in its piece on content marketers that are ahead of the curve, Amtrak has seen a rise in train ticket sales that perhaps goes against the dominance of air travel in the USA.
This is in part thanks to its recent content marketing push. Amtrak has redesigned its blog, including an archive of photography that stretches back over four decades of its existence, upped its social media game and has begun sponsoring trips by writers and photographers in order to create engaging content for the company.
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https://econsultancy.com/blog/65338-a-look-inside-amtrak-s-excellent-content-marketing-strategy
Do people really believe that people take a train vs. a plane because they read a nice-looking blog? I seriously doubt that is the decision-making logic.
Well, if you have years of plane adverts telling you how fast and modern the plane is, its got to be countered somehow. Personal experiences of the speed door to door, ability to work and comparative comfort are what will convince people to get out of the plane (or the car on the M8).
I suspect price also plays a significant factor in peoples modal choice. Railways in this country are priced for the privileged few rather than as mass transit.
When a rail journey costs more than the price of a flight people will fly. When a rail journey for two costs more than the cost of driving and paying for parking people will drive.
@acsimpson, forgive me but I believe you have that the wrong way round (at least for the UK; the US is different because of the dustances involved in travelling from one side to the other).
Motoring as an industry and a system has been subsidised for the past 60 years so heavily that it has become cheap enough for the majority of people to own and run their own car. Therefore, their default mode of travel is driving, and other modes such as rail, bus or air are reserved for certain types of journeys only.
Since the 1960s abandonment of the Victorian comprehensive rail network, rail travel has been targeted at long distance travel. Air travel was, until the 1990s primarily a luxury with the exception of holiday charter flights. Changes in the aviation industry, tax breaks, and subsidised aviation fuel (very low tax) made it economical for internal flights to compete with rail on key routes. Budget airlines have made this even cheaper at the point of use.
Luckily I can't see budget flights to Tweedbank being viable: primarily an infrastructure issue. Driving currently the mode of choice for most, I don't think the bus service is much cop. I believe there will be a decent rail service this time next year though.
@crowriver, Yes I would agree that the total cost for rail may be higher, however how many people look at more than the direct financial hit on their wallet.
My comments on driving being cheaper do make the assumption that you already own a car and were based on experience from driving from Falkirk into Glasgow and paying for 4 or 5 hours parking.
@acsimpson it's a pretty widespread issue. It was marginally cheaper for me to drive Edinburgh to Aberdeen and back by myself than to get the train. Even with a young person rail card. A very broken system.
Rail seems far less expensive if you've not already got a car.
By this I mean you aren't directly comparing the price of the car journey (i.e. petrol miles alone) with the rail ticket. For me I would have to factor in the cost of learning to drive, buying (or leasing) a car and insurance on top of the fuel, not to mention depreciation. If you were to factor these components into your motoring costs they might begin to approach parity.
Still, it could and should be cheaper, especially given the parochial levels of service present on many Scotrail routes i.e. "express" trains running outwith the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor which struggle to get above 50 or 60mph on many sections of the line and are using short, noisy, uncomfortable diesel trains with interiors fitted out for short commuter journeys and not intermediate length inter-city travel.
Bus operators will always be able to undercut trains because they are much less regulated in terms of how they buy/lease their vehicles, from where and to they can run their services and they aren't paying the council road-access charges in direct comparison to the track-access charges operators make to Network Rail.
@kaputnik, you forgot motor vehicle maintenance costs, servicing etc. For example the cost of a new car tyre these days is not to be sneezed at.
As we've discussed on numerous occasions here, the total cost of car ownership is rarely factored into people's considerations when pricing travel options. Folk have already committed to paying all that, so they just focus on the mileage cost for each trip.
Like you, I'm not a car owner and I find the train reasonable value for medium to long distance travel if you book in advance. Don't just turn up on the day and expect good value for money however!
@kaputnik aye, sure, but I was using my wife's car ;)
Yes I agree that there are a lot of extra costs associated with motoring. If you don't need a car then the train will always win by a substantial margin. Unless you do a substantial annual mileage then a lot of costs in motoring are fixed (eg servicing, depreciation) and so don't factor in my decision to save money (and often time) by driving. Consumables like tyres are also expensive at the time of purchase but a per mile wear cost on them isn't fairly negligible.
There is also a preference element. I would rather be daydreaming on a train than stuck in traffic so on long journeys where the connections to and from the station aren't an issue I will happily pay more to travel in comfort. Of course for other journeys I will be even happier to pay nothing and take the bike.
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A Transport Scotland spokesman said: “The steam train experience announced by the First Minister will run outwith the peak commuting period to minimise the impact on regular services.”
David Spaven, author of Waverley Route – the Life, Death and Rebirth of the Borders Railway, said: “Reducing the ScotRail train frequency to hourly in the middle of the day on Saturdays to accommodate tourist charter trains is not ideal, but the hourly ScotRail trains can be lengthened to cater for the extra demand.
“It’s very unfortunate the railway promoters and the political establishment ignored rail campaigners when they were pointing out these infrastructure constraints on tourist potential more than ten years ago. They were warned, but chose to ignore well-informed advice.”
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http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/steam-trains-will-disrupt-journeys-on-borders-line-1-3517630
I can imagine Waverley - Borders steam excursions will be every bit as popular and successful as the Jacobite which runs from Fort William to Mallaig. And not just with American and Japanese tourists. I'll be having a shot too.
The inability to run a scheduled service above a frequency of once an hour is just silly. I believe it's all down to the constraints of the passing loops on the line, which is largely single track south of Midlothian. The amount of double track was severely curtailed years back in the planning stages, despite the best efforts of the campaigners to point out the short-sightedness of doing this (and doing it in a way which wasn't easily amenable to doubling at a later stage).
I suppose though if it was enough to squeeze a new railway out of Holyrood, get it built and running (eventually) and prove it to be successful then perhaps we will just have to suck up the initial inconvenience, stupidity and costliness of expanding it at a later date.
Having spent a week in the vicinity of Aviemore with a train-obsessed one year old, which resulted in lots of train watching, it quickly became apparant how much of a constraint a single track line is.
Every train was running late, usually by at least five minutes. A late running northbound train will force the southbound train to be equally late. And it's presumably very hard to recover from that situation meaning late trains for the rest of the day.
Thanks goodness for the Scotrail app (and a mobile network not equal to Vodafone).
Some of the new bridges look like they've only capacity for one track :( Perhaps that doesn't matter - just needs more passing places?
Incidentally it is worth going to see all the changes around Heriot - a couple of new roads completely changing layouts.
I'm confused about this.
Papers are reporting/implying that SG is talking about regular/frequent steam hauled trains - like the Jacobite.
But someone I know who knows a bit about this says -
"I very much doubt there will be a regular steam service each weekend. And the charters will probably mostly come from England"
I was hoping for some 'old stock' with decent guard/bike space.
I think the plan is for 'unrefurbished 158s - limited cycle accommodation and poor matching of seats to windows.'
Neither of which sound great for a medium distance commuter route or a tourist one!
I think http://www.campaignforbordersrail.org will (at least) be trying to get refurbished 158s that c/should have better accommodation for the route.
I wonder if all the franchise bidders have been paying attention.
it quickly became apparant how much of a constraint a single track line is.
Not just running late, last second platform changes are a nightmare at Aviemore and quite common apparently. Trying to drag a heavy walking pack with very weary legs, a loaded bike or worse a buggy over the footbridge when the train just turns up on the other platform is a real pita.
Some of the new bridges look like they've only capacity for one track
You're quite correct. Cowbraehill Birdge near Falahill is one of the worst offenders. A farm access track built as a concrete box over the railway and which would require to be demolished and rebuilt at cost and disruption to double the track in future.
i Every train was running late, usually by at least five minutes. A late running northbound train will force the southbound train to be equally late. And it's presumably very hard to recover from that situation meaning late trains for the rest of the day.
I'm a bit suspicious of Scotrail's late running announcements. I often catch a morning train to Glasgow via Shotts. Every time in the past two years, a tannoy announcement has told me it is running six minutes late (never five or seven, always six). It usually arrives three minutes late.
Cowbraehill Birdge near Falahill is one of the worst offenders. A farm access track built as a concrete box over the railway
Cycled over it a couple of weeks ago. Difficult to see why they did that. They had to provide a second opening for the river anyway.
If steam engines do run, where would they be running uphill? Are there any stretches where they will be doing the late cut off thing? And are there any bridges that might give a good view?
"If steam engines do run, where would they be running uphill?"
Thought it was all downhill to Edinburgh...
At least one report talked about 'possibility of a turntable'.
Presume initial trains (perhaps for some years!) would have to run tender first towards Edinburgh, so maybe more photogenic on southward slopes?
By email (my bold) -
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The Campaign for Borders Rail has been pushing for the new railway not to make the Airdrie-Bathgate mistakes on walking / cycling access. There have been a number of successes, notably:
· getting the maximum wait at the A7 pedestrian crossing from bus to rail stations at Gala reduced from 90 seconds to 30 seconds
· extra bike racks at all the new stations
· a direct path from Newtongrange station to the National Mining Museum.
The overall picture remains unclear, as station etc works are still progressing, but we know of at least one case where a promised more direct link does not appear to be materialising – at the south end of Gorebridge station.
CBR is up to it eyes with various campaign priorities (rolling stock suitability, ideas for the opening celebrations, auditing the lack of passive provision for double track, seeking to commission a study of extension south from Tweedbank, etc) and isn’t in a position to do a comprehensive audit on walking / cycling access.
But is this an exercise which cycling activists might take on? We’re thinking in essence of an audit of how well the seven stations connect to safe cycle and walking routes around them and identification of any obvious gaps where new links, crossings etc should be provided.
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A SENIOR sports official has expressed disappointment that the trains which will operate on the Borders Railway from September next year will only have storage space for two bicycles.
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Oh, great.
So much for plans to go for a nice cycle in the Borders using the train, then. Oh well, Craigies, the Apple Pie Bakery & other cafes we can cycle to from Edinburgh get to keep our custom.
And yes, "we" should do something about a cycle links audit. I was thinking they should ask Spokes, but it isn't really Edinburgh.
Spokes is the Lothians Cycle Campaign, so it ought to cover the sections in Midlothian at least...
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