snookertam
Member
- Joined
- 22 Sep 2018
- Messages
- 779
On the issue with delegates, something worth remembering is that there are also a substantial number of visitors to the city for fringe events and protest marches. Many of these people will be staying in suburbs and satellite towns. Glasgow is very much a suburban sprawl which, under normal circumstances, relies on a substantial public transport network. This is the reason why it has such a large commuter network converting on the city centre.
The delegates will also be getting free travel passes for the time that they are here, which will include rail travel. They will most certainly notice if they are staying somewhere like Giffnock or Bishopbriggs and can’t get the train into the city centre. The potential for this to reflect badly is there, but I suppose that lacks the context of comparison to elsewhere. For example, when previous COP summits took place in Paris, Kyoto and copenhagen, were there disputes involving public transport workers there? If so, we never heard about them.
The other point worth noting is that the Clydeside Expressway will be closed for the duration of the event, which is a major road artery to the North and West of the city. The North Clyde and Argule Lines especially will be needed to take on the load as alternative way to access the city centre. If they are not operating, that would be problematic.
I would take the point @Taunton made about the risk to the 7 day per week railway, although I’d disagree that nobody would notice if the railway disappeared north of the Central Belt. Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee heavily rely on their rail connections to the south, both socially and economically, and routes such as the Far North, Kyle and West Highland not only provide additional tourist £s to the areas they serve, also provide a social function too. That’s not to say they are heavily used or the preferred mode of transport for the population. But people would notice if they were gone. These trains don’t run empty all the time.
In saying that, I agree that people may well adapt to a reduced Sunday service or a scaled back railway, and that is something I’d be concerned about. From a few years back talking about expansion, and believing Sunday travel habits on many routes more likely to resemble Saturdays, we might end up back in the 1990s with many Sunday routes withdrawn or with skeletal services.
However, government isn’t just an innocent bystander here, responding to consumer demand. Much of that demand can be induced by ensuring a frequent train service is retained into the future. Most demand for cars and road usage is induced by subsidised petrol costs and low cost car ownership, along with road building schemes. Make a mode of transport easier and more convenient for people to get from A to B, and they’ll use it. They may even use it when they might otherwise have not made a journey at all. That’s as true for the railway as it is any other mode - you only have to look at the Borders railway to see what happens there.
So the idea that the unions will be responsible for the demise of the railway in Scotland is, for me, a red herring. Government has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that doesn’t happen, and as has been discussed elsewhere, aren’t really showing much interest given the proposed timetable that cuts 300 services per day.
The delegates will also be getting free travel passes for the time that they are here, which will include rail travel. They will most certainly notice if they are staying somewhere like Giffnock or Bishopbriggs and can’t get the train into the city centre. The potential for this to reflect badly is there, but I suppose that lacks the context of comparison to elsewhere. For example, when previous COP summits took place in Paris, Kyoto and copenhagen, were there disputes involving public transport workers there? If so, we never heard about them.
The other point worth noting is that the Clydeside Expressway will be closed for the duration of the event, which is a major road artery to the North and West of the city. The North Clyde and Argule Lines especially will be needed to take on the load as alternative way to access the city centre. If they are not operating, that would be problematic.
I would take the point @Taunton made about the risk to the 7 day per week railway, although I’d disagree that nobody would notice if the railway disappeared north of the Central Belt. Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee heavily rely on their rail connections to the south, both socially and economically, and routes such as the Far North, Kyle and West Highland not only provide additional tourist £s to the areas they serve, also provide a social function too. That’s not to say they are heavily used or the preferred mode of transport for the population. But people would notice if they were gone. These trains don’t run empty all the time.
In saying that, I agree that people may well adapt to a reduced Sunday service or a scaled back railway, and that is something I’d be concerned about. From a few years back talking about expansion, and believing Sunday travel habits on many routes more likely to resemble Saturdays, we might end up back in the 1990s with many Sunday routes withdrawn or with skeletal services.
However, government isn’t just an innocent bystander here, responding to consumer demand. Much of that demand can be induced by ensuring a frequent train service is retained into the future. Most demand for cars and road usage is induced by subsidised petrol costs and low cost car ownership, along with road building schemes. Make a mode of transport easier and more convenient for people to get from A to B, and they’ll use it. They may even use it when they might otherwise have not made a journey at all. That’s as true for the railway as it is any other mode - you only have to look at the Borders railway to see what happens there.
So the idea that the unions will be responsible for the demise of the railway in Scotland is, for me, a red herring. Government has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that doesn’t happen, and as has been discussed elsewhere, aren’t really showing much interest given the proposed timetable that cuts 300 services per day.
The government absolutely view the railway as key infrastructure, it just depends how essential they view it, and for how long. They certainly don’t have the same view of it as per-Covid though, but that could apply in a lot of areas of policy.
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