Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
There is the old adage that roads lead to everywhere, but I am hard pressed indeed to source an old adage that refers to railways in the same reasoning.
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Carmarthen to Aberystwyth Reopening?
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There is the old adage that roads lead to everywhere, but I am hard pressed indeed to source an old adage that refers to railways in the same reasoning.
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krus_aragon
Established Member
In my youth, my friends and I decided that if all roads lead to Rome, all railways lead to Crewe.
(For us youngsters growing up on Anglesey, Crewe was some mysterious place that we'd never found on a geographic/road map, but every train from Bangor seemed to go there.)
If there are ever any plans to increase frequencies on the Cambrian Coast, or a Bangor-Porthmadog line is built, I feel there should be limited-stop services between Porthmadog and Machynlleth/Newtown/Brecon/Wrexham/Birmingham in the other hours to the current Pwllheli stoppers but that would of course require infrustructure upgrades at Dovey Junction and (if it doesn't just join up with the Aberystwyth services and run through to Birmingham) between Machynlleth and Newtown/Shrewsbury too.
It is a dilema, do you continue to send lorries through these places or do you take patronage away from bus services by giving motorists faster journeys. If you 'give pepole their towns back' you take those towns away from any fast bus service and feed car culture with yet more 'carrots'. As far as the transport of pepole is concerned, bypasses are counter-productive but there doesn't seem to be anything that can be done about lorries.
I thought there were four class 97s. Away from the Cambrian (which I doubt has been cleared for container traffic), I have often wondered how big the standard lorries are compared to the shipping containers used on Freightliner trains. I believe there are special low wagons for carrying containers on routes that aren't cleared to full W9/W10/W12 standards and wonder whether a special wagon could be developed to allow lorries to be carried on trains on W10/W12 routes.
Llanigraham
On Moderation
There are 4 class 97's, but only 2 are stationed at Shrewsbury.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
Interesting stuff in the current e mail newsletter from my AM Russel George, hes done a road survey in his constituency mainly about "state of roads" etc however there's a couple of questions on the Newtown Bypass. Russel was prominent in campaigning for the bypass to be built citing overwhelming local support however the survey cannot find an overwhelming majority who think its value for money nor for the assertion that it will be an economic magic bullet that its fervent supporters claim.
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Interesting stuff in the current e mail newsletter from my AM Russel George, hes done a road survey in his constituency mainly about "state of roads" etc however there's a couple of questions on the Newtown Bypass. Russel was prominent in campaigning for the bypass to be built citing overwhelming local support however the survey cannot find a majority who think its value for money nor will be an economic magic bullet that ts fervent supporters claim.
Eh? You've got about 35-37% saying they agree it's good value and a further 16-18% saying they strongly agree. That's over 50% by my maths so a majority.
You've got a large number who "don't know" about 28%.
And you've got about 12% who disagree and a further 7% saying they strongly disagree - so less than 20% who don't feel it's good value.
On the second graph, you've got about 45% saying they either agree or strongly agree it will transform the local economy in the long term against about 21% who are saying they disagree or strongly disagree. You've got about 35% of "don't knows" again.
You can't assume "don't know" means they agree with your side - if anything the one thing you could assume (and statisticians would agree with this) is to split the "don't knows" proportionally to the other categories - which would mean you have a much bigger majority for the first and a majority for the second.
I don't know where you get the idea that that the survey cannot find a majority on the first question. That looks to me like about 17-18% who strongly agree that it will be value for money, and a further 36% who simply agree, or 53-54% who agree overall.
That's a majority, and moreover it compares with about 5% who strongly disagree and about 13-14% who simply disagree, a total of about 18-19%.
Edit - time overlap with A0wen.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
The case for the bypass was "sold" on the basis of overwhelming local support this is not what the survey has found at all. As you point out currently a small majority (not an overwhelming one) of 53% think its good value for money even though it hasn't been completed yet for them to see if the £ spent matches their expectation of what the outcomes will be and the percentage drops to the mid 40's for those who think it will benefit the economy.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
Cannot find an overwhelming majority which has been the vehement assertion of the schemes supporters.
No - you're using this survey's results against a different question which the survey didn't ask.
For your assertion to be correct, the question SHOULD have been "Do you support the Newtown Bypass project ?" or similar.
The question being asked in the survey you've quoted is about the value for money and future benefits of the scheme - that's not the same thing.
For example if you asked me would I like a Bentley as my next car, I would say 'yes', but if you asked 'could you afford a Bentley for your next car?' the answer would be 'no'. You can't then say I don't want a Bentley based on the second question.
Teflon Lettuce
Established Member
- Joined
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- 1,750
I don't know about local support, but for much of Mid Wales, the best route out to England is to travel up to Shrewsbury and pick up the A5/ M54... and I, for one, cannot wait for the Newtown bypass to be completed... Newtown is an absolute nightmare to get through, even at off peak timesInteresting stuff in the current e mail newsletter from my AM Russel George, hes done a road survey in his constituency mainly about "state of roads" etc however there's a couple of questions on the Newtown Bypass. Russel was prominent in campaigning for the bypass to be built citing overwhelming local support however the survey cannot find an overwhelming majority who think its value for money nor for the assertion that it will be an economic magic bullet that its fervent supporters claim.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
I'm sure those same questions could be asked in a few years time with different answers once the thing is complete and in use.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
The Welsh Governments own consultation showed traffic levels were expected to grow by 20% in the first two years on the A 483 north of Newtown and a489 south of it so expect to be moaning about the induced traffic slowing down the open road either side of town in future.
There was a programme on BBC a while ago which was about HS2 and should we build it. They interviewed the guy who was the leader of the Stop the M25 campaign decades ago. He was asked, "so do you use the M25 now or do you still wish it had never been built?" He answered that he couldn`t now imagine life without it ! It is so convenient that he had bought a house in a village about a mile off the motorway
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Clearly a resident of somewhere like Chorleywood - where the locals seemed not to notice a huge motorway spanning the valley , whereas the idea of stringing up 25kV or Crossrail 1 brought the nimbies (and especially the Chesham Society) out in droves.
M25 / M40 - SO handy for getting to Waitrose etc. All paid up supporters for "the great car economy" and "roads for Prosperity" which was so prevelent by an ex Grantham reident and her pack.
Yes, the Beeb were just highlighting the hypocrisy of those who protest against major infrastructure projects
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Off topic - but the local MP for Aylesbury - a very anti HS2 man , "happened" to be out of the UK on a lecture tour when the Bill was voted for. Course he has bigger issues now to worry about. To be fair he sponsored Crossrail 1 as a very new MP for the same seat.
Back to Wales - what is (if anything) happening re the M4 widening proposals ?
ruthtom010
Member
- Joined
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Well, the M4 relief road is another scheme where there was a poll:
https://mobile.twitter.com/CBICymru/status/989796060020305920
Gareth Marston
Established Member
Officially the Welsh Government are waiting on the official inquiry report before making any decisions however the First Minister has announced his retirement in the autumn and there have been rumblings given the magnitude of the decsion ( and opposition to it) that it should be the new Fist Ministers call. Given the number of organisations including Labour AM's that have threatened legal action if the project is given the green light there is perhaps not much enthusiasm for a fight with sections of their own party to force it through and new FM can quietly ditch it without losing face is one view.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Gareth Marston
Established Member
The front runner Mark Drakeford is supposedly not anti but also not as keen a supporter as Carwyn. Drakeford is a politician with no real background in Econmic development/ transport or any known views on them! To sum up it if theirs a left wing fence to sit on he will if it's not his thing.......
If it’s the same chap who was interviewed for the documentary about the M25 last year, he was a resident of Ashtead. A place currently notable as the residence of a certain cabinet member with the Transport brief...
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
It's not a question about being blinkered. It's about recognising that there's overwhelming evidence from the UK and from around the world that investing in road networks to reduce congestion rarely succeeds. The problem is that people always adjust their habits in response to whatever investment you put in. Invest in rail and more people will travel by rail (including some swapping from cars). Invest in buses and more people will travel by bus. Invest in roads and more people will travel by car (including some swapping from bus and train).
You might not think that's a problem, but the issue then is that cars are inherently a very low-capacity form of transport. Do the maths... A single carriage road can take one car every few seconds travelling along it before it's completely full up and traffic jams forming. About 1000 to 1500 cars an hour and you will probably have significant congestion at every junction. With most cars having one single person in them, that's 1000 to 1500 people per hour max. Compare that with trains, where some trains around London can have close to 1000 seats on one single train! (Obviously in Wales most local trains are a lot shorter so don't have anything like that many seats). Bluntly, in most urban areas, if you rely on improving roads, it's just not possible to accommodate the demand for road space. No matter how many roads you build, demand just grows to fill the capacity, leaving bad congestion and slow, frustrating, journeys. That's why building more roads to try and fix congestion is almost always a bad idea (and usually, a waste of money).
That tends not to be such a problem for rail because of rail's inherently much higher capacity - which means investing in rail usually isn't self-defeating in the way that investing in roads is.
You mention businesses that depend on an efficient road network. The answer to that is to invest in public transport so that fewer people need to drive, so that those businesses that really need to use roads can do so with less congestion. That's not being blinkered: It's recognising what the ONLY feasible solution to congestion is.
In the case of Carmarthen-Aberystwth (mostly rural but with small urban areas at both ends
), there are good reasons for doubting that a rail-re-opening would be successful or cost-effective. That probably means that if there is a need to improve transport links along that corridor, then investing in buses (perhaps including bus lanes and so on to speed buses up at any congested bits of the journey) is the way to go.And I haven't even mentioned pollution or accessibility etc., which of course just add to those arguments.
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Llanigraham
On Moderation
In the case of Carmarthen-Aberystwth (mostly rural but with small urban areas at both ends
At long last, someone understands the locale!
It's not a question about being blinkered. It's about recognising that there's overwhelming evidence from the UK and from around the world that investing in road networks to reduce congestion rarely succeeds. The problem is that people always adjust their habits in response to whatever investment you put in. Invest in rail and more people will travel by rail (including some swapping from cars). Invest in buses and more people will travel by bus. Invest in roads and more people will travel by car (including some swapping from bus and train).
You might not think that's a problem, but the issue then is that cars are inherently a very low-capacity form of transport. Do the maths... A single carriage road can take one car every few seconds travelling along it before it's completely full up and traffic jams forming. About 1000 to 1500 cars an hour and you will probably have significant congestion at every junction. With most cars having one single person in them, that's 1000 to 1500 people per hour max. Compare that with trains, where some trains around London can have close to 1000 seats on one single train! (Obviously in Wales most local trains are a lot shorter so don't have anything like that many seats). Bluntly, in most urban areas, if you rely on improving roads, it's just not possible to accommodate the demand for road space. No matter how many roads you build, demand just grows to fill the capacity, leaving bad congestion and slow, frustrating, journeys. That's why building more roads to try and fix congestion is almost always a bad idea (and usually, a waste of money).
That tends not to be such a problem for rail because of rail's inherently much higher capacity - which means investing in rail usually isn't self-defeating in the way that investing in roads is.
You mention businesses that depend on an efficient road network. The answer to that is to invest in public transport so that fewer people need to drive, so that those businesses that really need to use roads can do so with less congestion. That's not being blinkered: It's recognising what the ONLY feasible solution to congestion is.
In the case of Carmarthen-Aberystwth (mostly rural but with small urban areas at both ends
And I haven't even mentioned pollution or accessibility etc., which of course just add to those arguments.
Quite, it's why anyone who likes driving should support measures to get people out of their cars.
Even if you have 6 buses an hour carrying 100 people each and 20% of the cars carrying 4 people that's a maximum of about 2,200 people being moved. A railway line with 4tph could do that with ease with 8 coach units, or 6tph with 6 coaches (so a fairly basic two line railway, even with a junction on the line where two lines with 6tph in each direction on each line you might not need to do much to get those trains through the junction on the flat, although it would be getting fairly busy)
However it's worth noting that as soon as you put a junction in place on s road that capacity dropss like a stone or requires a lot of land. Even with signals where the main ahead lanes have 66 seconds of green time every 45 second cycle time (any more than about 60 and the side road would not be able to have very much traffic, in fact with 15 second of green time, the rest being red/amber and a pedestian phase within an all read assuming two lanes on the side road would be about 600 vehicles) with the road widening to two lanes you could just about get the 1,500 vehicles an hour through the junction. Such a junction would be fairly large and would take up a lot of land space. If it was one lane in each direction then it would be about 1/2 the capacity (so circa 1,400 people due to the buses carrying 600 of those people)
You could get a bit more capacity in the junction by having "walk with traffic" pedestian crossing, however that requires quite large pedestrian islands so pedestals can cross each direction of traffic in turn when that traffic is stopped at a red light, so requires more land again.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
This, of course, ignores the fact that bus stops are many in profusion in comparison to railway stations and are far easier to access from the homes of travellers.
Although access to bus stops is often a lot easier is generally true that is not always the case (for instance my house is only about 200m closer to a bus stop than the train station when having walked nearly a mile).
In the above, the only reason the road was able to carry so many people was because of the buses which to 100 people each would have had to be packed out (boardering on unsafe loadings).
In reality u would probably realistically require 12 buses an hour or more to carry 600 people. Most very busy single carriageway roads would normally only have 4 buses an hour and about 1,000 other vehicles putting their capacity at about 1,200 people being moved in the hour.
In theory with more buses you could increase this further, however the problem is that where there's congestion unless their bus priority the buses will be stuck in the same traffic as the cars.
Also it should be borne in mind that subsidised bus routes are prone to being cut, whilst rail services would be much more likely to continue (although it may become a once a day service, which may be next to useless, however it would still be there).
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
There is the fact that many people use a bus from point A to point B or from point A to point C, etc, where the railway station is not near either of those points. Buses score over the railway in this respect.
You are more fortunate than I in that our residence is two miles away from the nearest railway station and the nearest bus stop.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
What these surveys show is that people want to believe in a roads based solutions to the problems of road congestion. That is not the same as there being any hard evidence that they work.....
The general populace are largely unaware of the actual evidence or don't like what it says.
Gareth Marston
Established Member
It's not a question about being blinkered. It's about recognising that there's overwhelming evidence from the UK and from around the world that investing in road networks to reduce congestion rarely succeeds. The problem is that people always adjust their habits in response to whatever investment you put in. Invest in rail and more people will travel by rail (including some swapping from cars). Invest in buses and more people will travel by bus. Invest in roads and more people will travel by car (including some swapping from bus and train).
You might not think that's a problem, but the issue then is that cars are inherently a very low-capacity form of transport. Do the maths... A single carriage road can take one car every few seconds travelling along it before it's completely full up and traffic jams forming. About 1000 to 1500 cars an hour and you will probably have significant congestion at every junction. With most cars having one single person in them, that's 1000 to 1500 people per hour max. Compare that with trains, where some trains around London can have close to 1000 seats on one single train! (Obviously in Wales most local trains are a lot shorter so don't have anything like that many seats). Bluntly, in most urban areas, if you rely on improving roads, it's just not possible to accommodate the demand for road space. No matter how many roads you build, demand just grows to fill the capacity, leaving bad congestion and slow, frustrating, journeys. That's why building more roads to try and fix congestion is almost always a bad idea (and usually, a waste of money).
That tends not to be such a problem for rail because of rail's inherently much higher capacity - which means investing in rail usually isn't self-defeating in the way that investing in roads is.
You mention businesses that depend on an efficient road network. The answer to that is to invest in public transport so that fewer people need to drive, so that those businesses that really need to use roads can do so with less congestion. That's not being blinkered: It's recognising what the ONLY feasible solution to congestion is.
In the case of Carmarthen-Aberystwth (mostly rural but with small urban areas at both ends
And I haven't even mentioned pollution or accessibility etc., which of course just add to those arguments.
One can also add the inefficiency of the private motor vehicle in terms of usage- they spend 95% of their life times unused and storage space has to be found for them which is a huge problem in urban centres and for those that live in older housing/flats.
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