Has Boris Shot The Fox?
Has Boris shown Remoaners and the other parties to be bad losers?
They’ll all running around like headless chickens!
He’ll surely win the next election by a street!!
The only person, who can stop Boris, would be a brilliant orator, with total respect from everybody!
Metrolink Customers Complete 170k Trips Using Contactless System
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Rail Technology Magazine.
The high number of journeys is no surprise to me and Manchester should have introduced this system several years ago!
This post from September 2015 is ntitled Transport for London Are Leading The Contactless Revolution.
I’ll repeat the short post here.
This article from Rail Magazine is entitled Contactless Ticketing Booms In London.
It states the following.
- In the first year, 180 million journeys have been made using contactless cards.
- This accounts for a fifth of all pay-as-you-go journeys.
But what isn’t said is the fact that despite the predictions of some left-wing and green politicians, there has been no hint of any problems. If there had been, the various tabloids would have had a field-day.
When are the rest of the large cities of the UK going to copy London, so I don’t need to use that nineteenth century technology of paper tickets?
Manchester’s figure of 170,000 in four weeks is a rate of around two million in the first year.
- Greater Manchester is a lot smaller than Greater London.
- London had been running Oyster successfully since 2003.
- Oyster and contsctless ticketing could be used on the Underground, Overground, trams, trains and buses.
I will be very surprised if Manchester doesn’t expand their system.
This is said in the Wikipedia entry for Oyster card.
Since the launch of contactless payment in 2012, over 500 million journeys have been made, using over 12 million contactless bank cards.
Assuming the rate of use is level, which it isn’t as it’s increasing, this works out at 71.4 million journeys per year.
- Greater London’s population is 8.8 million
- Greater Manchester’s population is 2.8 million
Just doing a simple pro-rata means that Manchester should see 22 million journeys a year or 62,000 journeys a day.
According to Wikipedia, the Manchester Metrolink had 43.7 million riders in 2018/19.
Conclusion
Manchester must do the following as soon as possible.
- Extend contactless ticketing to all buses and trains in the Greater Manchester area.
- Make sure all taxis accept contactless cards.
- Extend the Mabchester Metrolink.
- Put in an order for some more trams, as soon as possible. They will be needed as traffic will grow exponentially.
- Purchase some vandal-proof terminals.
They should also enter into discussions with Cheshire, Lancashire, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Yorkshire about creating a common and integrated contactless card system for the North!
Contactless ticketing would transform lhe North!
Will Contactless Ticketing Generate Funding For Extensions?
Some extensions to the Manchester Metrolink will be fairly easy and not very costly to build. In Tram-Trains To Hale Station, I talked about a simple extension to Hale station, that could go a lot further to perhaps Northwich, Sandbach and Crewe.
When Transport for Greater Manchester get a decent financial model and data from a year of contactless ticketing, some of the routes for tram-trains might be possible to fund from a large insurance or pension fund.
I have used this tram-train extension as an example, as there is no need to lay a lot of new track, so costs can be less.
London should have been able to fund improvements, but Sadiq Khan brought in a fare freeze and Crossrail turned out to be late.
A Lesson For Brexit
Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, when full contactless ticketing was implemented in London.
- It was the first such system in the world.
- The left and the green were against it and said it would all end in tears.
- All Londoners and visitors have embraced the system and I’ve never found anybody who refuses to use it.
- Attacks on staff have dropped to a very low level, as there’s no money about.
- In my opinion it is one of the main reasons, that London has been so successful in recent years.
I voted Remain and still think, there are reasons we should stay in Europe.
- But the referendum went the other way and everyone must abide by the result.
- Boris probably had little to do with London’s contactless ticketing revolution, but if it had failed he would have got the blame.
- All politicians in London now embrace the technology and would be voted out of office, if they decided contactless bank cards couldn’t be used.
Boris is now in charge of Brexit and just like those of the left and the green who opposed contactless ticketing, those that oppose Brexit will be Yesterday’s Men.
Like contactless ticketing, it has nothing to do with Boris, but all to do with the power of the man and woman on the bus or in the voting booth.
I think it is too late to stop a No-Deal Brexit.
The Tide At Greenwich
The Tide At Greenwich is a new walkway ans sculpture park.
It looks like it will be extended.
The Coaling Jetty, Battersea
This Google Map shows the riverside to the North of Battersea Power Station.
The area is by no means fully developed, but you can see the two Northern chimneys of the power station and their shadows.
On the river there are two structures; the smaller Battersea Power Station Pier for the Thames Clippers and the larger Coaling Jetty, which was originally used to bring coal to the power station.
This summer the Coaling Jetty has been opened as a free public space with bars, chairs, music and entertainment for children.
I can envisage, as more of the riverside opens up, the site will develop further.
The area is certainly worth an explore and there are several places to get food and drink.
A Walk Past Battersea Power Station – 11th August 2019
I took these pictures, as I walked past the Battersea Power station site last Sunday.
It’s certainly coming on!
This Google Map shows the area, where I walked.
I had taken the Thames Ckipper to Battersea Power Station Pier and then walked down the Western side of the Power Station before following the access road to Battersea Park Road, where I caught a bus.
Government Announces £25m Brexit High-Speed Medicines Train
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Rail Technology Magazine.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to this proposal!
Donald Trump: ‘Make Plastic Straws Great Again’
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Live.News.
This is the first two paragraphs.
US President Donald Trump has raised nearly $500,000 (£411,000) for his re-election campaign by selling plastic straws.
The branded straws, released in Republican Party-red, were launched on the 19th of July, selling out in a matter of hours before being restocked.
The site also links to another post, which is entitled. President Trump: ‘Wind turbines cause cancer’.
I am a reasonably knowledgeable engineer and scientist and know a Compleat Wanker, when I see one
How can so many Americans take this idiot seriously?
Job Sharing
I found this little story on the Railway Gazette web site.
Leasing company Porterbrook has jointly appointed Helen Simpson and Chandra Morbey to the role of Innovation & Projects Director as a job-share; they will report to Director of Engineering Services Jason Groombridge. Both have been involved with the development of Porterbrook’s Innovation Hub and the Hydro Flex fuel-cell multiple-unit demonstrator.
I’ve always thought job-sharing is a good idea, but rarely do you see it formally announced.
Perhaps, Porterbrook are making a statement about their policy towards job-sharing?
The Painted Hall At Greenwich
The Painted Hall at Greenwich is now fully restored.
I went on Saturday and these are some of the pictures I took.
We had an excellent guide, who explained the imagery of the painting.
Much of it is aimed against the French and today, it can almost be considered to have a Brexit theme.
So has this philosophy about Europe and mainly the French been passed down the generations from the time of William and Mary?
The older I get, the more I realise that some of my personal philosophy on how I live and treat others has a Jewish slant.
Has it all come down from my sole Jewish ancestor, who arrived in this country from the Baltic in around 1800?
.
Aberthaw Power Station Set To Close, Risking 170 Jobs
The title of this post is the same as that pf this article on the BBC.
This is first two paragraphs.
Wales’ last coal-fired power station looks set to close in March due to “market conditions”, putting about 170 jobs at risk.
RWE said it was proposing closing the 1.56-megawatt Aberthaw B Power Station in Vale of Glamorgan on 31 March.
Read the section called Oerations in the Wikipedia entry for Aberthaw power station.
This is a sentence from that section.
Coal now mainly comes from the Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme in Merthyr Tydfil.
I may be very much against, the burning of coal for the generation of electricity or heat, but surely an exception should be made, when it is part of a process to clear up the considerable mess left by coal mining. As Aberthaw power station can use the Welsh coal in conjunction with bio-mass, perhaps there could be an argument to mothball one of the later coal-fired power stations.
Carbon Capture And Storage or a sensible use for the carbon dioxide, will be developed within the next ten years and in conjunction with one of the more modern coal-fired power stations, it could be used to help clean up the detritus of coal mining.
If nothing else, we could plant a lot of trees on the sites being reclaimed.
Bare in mind, that carbon dioxide produced by a coal-fired power station or cement factory is all in one place and can probably be collected using well-established engineering processes. On the other hand try collecting the carbon dioxide produced by a large fleet of diesel trucks.
