Northern's targets for diesel, electricity and water usage reduction

[Bovverboy]

How can there be a water shortage up north? That is just deranged. Britain doesn't have a water shortage, it has water infrastructure shortage.

The hard fact is, it doesn't make sense to build create additional reservoirs when they're only really going to be needed at times of drought. There are always going to be water shortages, if only once every few years.

 

[Chris M]

You are probably right that droughts very rarely, if ever, affect the entire UK at once, so it should be theoretically possible to build water infrastructure to transport water from regions where rainfall and water is abundant, to those under drought conditions. I think this happened between Lancashire and Yorkshire in the hot summer of 1995. Whether there would be political issues with having a national water grid (e.g. moans about Southerners stealing our water) that would make a national water grid impossible I don't know (although no-one has a problem with a national electricity grid). It would kind of make sense to do so, because you have one region with a high population density which has limited stored water due to lack of significant topography (SE England), and you have regions with big hills and valleys (or glens) which both amplify rainfall and store it in lakes (NW England/Scotland). Drought conditions in SE England can be coincident with wet conditions in Scotland due to a northward displaced and stationary jet stream steering low pressure systems, so in such a situation, it would make sense to have the ability to move water from the wet areas to the dry areas.

Unfortunately water isn't as simple as electricity because it isn't pure H₂O, it contains lots of dissolved minerals, etc. You'll be familiar with hard water and soft water - moving hard water to soft water can cause problems (sometimes very expensive ones) for industrial users in the latter areas who don't have hard water filters they don't normally need (I'm not sure if moving the other way also causes these sorts of issues, but I would imagine that anything which is based on water chemistry will have issues as soon as it changes). Domestic users are very quick to complain about the quality of their water if it changes - years ago I was chatting to someone who had experience of this. I can't remember the precise details but he was based in somewhere like Stroud and for some reason the water supply to the town, which normally gets the same water as (say) Gloucester was changed to get water from the (say) Cheltenham area. They had hundreds of complaints about how the water "tasted funny" was "bad", etc.

 

[TUC]

Shorter, less frequent trains would reduce them even more (and there's nothing like a frequency cut to thin out the passenger numbers). It all depends on what these targets actually are, not to mention what other commitments Northern have.

Yes, you can always count on environmentalists to be totally passenger unfriendly.

 

[TUC]

Northern and their staff have solved this issue by themselves, by the company being too incompetent to run all its trains, together with too many staff not turning up to work.

 

[Clip]

They also have challenging targets for disposal of waste from stations and depots

Do all their train washes now reuse the water for a few cycles?

 

[Jozhua]

Sometimes I wonder whether we can consider the lesser of two evils. Northern Rail provides much greener transport than other options available such as cars. I wonder whether car drivers have the same environmental targets to hit? Obviously I'm not advocating that all the staff start bludgeoning wild animals and dumping acid into rivers, but wouldn't their efforts be better spent on improving service so less people use their cars?

Also, if the government actually cared, they'd spend money on new bi-mode trains for Northern so they could reduce running under wires, which seems to be a massive thing in the Manchester area at least.

An even cheaper fix (which results in zero water usage) is getting those things that sit over the "plughole" and turn a regular urinal into a waterless one. To be fair, several TOCs have already done this.

I've heard that pee can be quite damaging to pipes if undiluted, you end up with big pee stalactites that block the drains. Although I'm guessing the filters are supposed to deal with that...

 

[Meerkat]

Northern Rail provides much greener transport than other options available such as cars

Is it greener than battery and hybrid buses? Are empty 30year old diesel trains greener than modern cars?

 

[Bovverboy]

Is it greener than battery and hybrid buses? Are empty 30year old diesel trains greener than modern cars?

Where are the empty 30-year-old diesel trains?

 

[Llama]

I gather they've done the easy bits in depots and offices with good results. Getting staff to sort their litter is difficult, but the travelling public is almost impossible. Many don't use a bin at all, but those who do are most likely to chuck everything into the nearest bin they pass, whatever the colour or signage.

We've had separate bins for recycling and general waste for years in our mess rooms. And for years we've watched cleaners come along and empty the contents of each separate bin into the same bag.

 

[cle]

2 car ops being banned through Castlefield is an absolute must - to be honest, 3 car and even 4 car should be eventually too.

But then you're getting into platform extension territory, which is not a terrible thing if our cross to bear as a nation is a lack of paths, then train lengths are the solve.

And wires - Lostock-Wigan is nice on a map, nut not hugely useful. However, until Kirby, Southport, Rochdale and Stalybridge ends are done, the Manchester network is patchy. And the CLC is an absolute no-brainer, and should be made a much more frequent metro service (turning at Oxford Road if never rebuilt, or a new Cornbrook, or running through to Airport/Stockport/Guide Bridge at the expense of North Wales and others).

 

[Jozhua]

Is it greener than battery and hybrid buses? Are empty 30year old diesel trains greener than modern cars?

Probably not, but considering the continually declining ridership on buses, are they exactly a good replacement?

The vast majority of Northern services are not empty, especially on busy commuter routes.

I highly doubt the 70-150 or so 'modern' cars you'd need to replace the average train are significantly less green. Sure, modern cars may release less particulates, but CO2/greenhouse gas wise, I don't see how they'd be any better. Also cars have a habit of causing congestion, so the majority of them spend a lot of time getting no miles to their gallons sat still in rush hour traffic. The majority of cars have far worse loading percentages than trains, about 1.5 people per vehicle on average!

If the government actually cared about this, they would finish electrification of many routes like Manchester - Leeds and Oxenholme - Windermere as well as making funding available for new, cleaner rolling stock.

 

[Clip]

We've had separate bins for recycling and general waste for years in our mess rooms. And for years we've watched cleaners come along and empty the contents of each separate bin into the same bag.

I think the idea is is that it gets you used to recycling so you will do it at home and when out and about sop it becomes second nature to you - your company probably pays for co-mingling recycling anyway which is a little more expensive but does reap reward

 

[Killingworth]

We've had separate bins for recycling and general waste for years in our mess rooms. And for years we've watched cleaners come along and empty the contents of each separate bin into the same bag.

Sadly that's fairly common practice at stations and many other places with segregated litter bins. When in a hurry to do something else the general public isn't too bothered about what goes where.