Cambridge Guided Busway
It’s not long now before the Cambridge Guided Busway comes into operation. It will be the longest guided busway in the world and will have six services an hour between Huntingdon and Cambridge.
Cambridge Guided Busway
I took this picture where the busway goes under the A14. Note the track at the side, which will be a cycleway.
The cycleway will definitely be a success, but can that be said for the busway. After all, when it was planned, it was thought that there would be a lot more housing on the route to generate revenue, but the recession has put that into touch. So will it be a financial disaster.
But overall, I think that the busway is typical of lets-get-something-cheaper British thinking.
As an example, if you want to go to Manchester on a train from Cambridge, the route meanders through Ely and March, when the disused Huntingdon-Cambridge railway line used for the busway could have been reinstated to provide both short and long distance travel from and to Cambridge. One could argue, that this was one of the lines that should never have been removed in the first place.
I wish the busway well, but I have a feeling it could be a rather expensive and underused white elephant.
Italian Trains
Since my wife died, I’ve been to Italy three times. And every time I’ve been I’ve used the trains.
Italian High-Speed Train
On the first trip early in 2008, I flew to Venice and then took trains from there to Florence, from Florence to Naples and then back from Naples to Rome. The first two trains I booked on the Internet by a link from the excellent train site, seat61.com, to the Italian on-line booking site, trenitalia.it, whilst the third was booked from a machine in Naples station.
In March this year, I took a train from Milan to Venice and then on my last trip, I took one from Lamezia up to Naples. All were booked on machines locally.
There were no problems either with the trains or the ticketing, other than that the trenitalia.it site was very slow at one time and it resulted in them thinking my credit card had been nicked. Because of this and because you don’t get any discount for advance or on-line purchases (I couldn’t find one!), I would recommend using the machines, either with a credit card or cash. I had to use a €50 note in Lamezia as the machine was slow again.
But you get a reserved seat, coffee at a reasonable price if you want it and all at a price that would put Britain to shame. And most of the trains I have used have been half empty!
Dualling the A11
More on the local news about the costs and lack of dualling of the last piece of the A11 between London and Norwich. It’s about time it was done, but then East Anglia is very much on this dreadful not-do-anything-for-them list, as we don’t have too many Labour MPs and virtually no councillors.
I drove up to the Norfolk coast yesterday and because it was Thursday, the traffic was not too great. But try doing that journey in the rush hour or at the weekend!
Norwich needs to be connected by dual carriageway roads to Ipswich, Yarmouth, Peterborough and Newmarket. On current progress, only Newmarket will ever be done and probably in about 2020. If this was Scotland or the North of England, it would have been done years ago.
If I was to talk about trains, I could add that East Anglia gets everybody else’s cast off rolling stock. But they do work pretty well, despite what you read in the papers. Let’s have a decent Cambridge-Ipswich service.
