Why Is It Not Planned To Take The Nottingham Tram To Trent Bridge?
From my limited knowledge of Nottingham, I find the Nottingham tram, a bit of a conundrum, in the way it doesn’t serve the football and cricket grounds.
England has four major cities; Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and Nottingham, that use tram or light rail to move passengers around the city. In addition, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol have heavy rail networks that do a similar job.
Most major sports ground and arenas in larger cities are located on these networks. In fact, some clubs have the tram stop or train station named to connect it to the stadium or club.
There is Arsenal, Upton Park and White Hart Lane in London, St. James in Newcastle, Hawthorns in Birmingham and Hillsborough in Sheffield.
Nottingham has three stadia in the Trent Bridge area of the city; Trent Bridge cricket ground, Forest’s City Ground and County’s Meadow Lane, but surprisingly the Nottingham tram doesn’t go or isn’t even planned to go to the area.
However this lack of connection to the City Ground, didn’t stop the tram advertising in the stadium.
I am totally surprised that Nottingham are spending all these millions on constructing a tram system, that doesn’t go near the area, where a lot of visitors to the city want to go.
Today for instance, after arriving from London, I took the tram up the hill to a restaurant I like in King Street. After my lunch, it would have been so easy to walk to the tram line and then get a tram to the ground! I’d have also probably taken a tram back to the station. So instead of probably a day ticket for £3.70, I bought just one single ticket at £2.20.
And did a lot of walking!
The Trams Are Arriving At Birmingham New Street
This picture was the best I could take, which shows the work on the Midland Metro to bring it to Birmingham New Street station.
The Trams Are Arriving At Birmingham New Street
It is scheduled to open in 2015 and will eventually go on to the Town Hall and Centenary Square in 2017.
There is also news today, that the operator will make a decision, whether to order more Spanish-built trams by the end of the year.
London’s Plans For Trams
In TfL’s Transport Plan for 2050, trams don’t get much of a mention.
The document talks in vague terms about increasing frequency and capacity on the existing Tramlink and about extending it to Sutton.
So does this mean that effectively any new tram routes are off the agenda as TfLbelieves like I do after seeing the operation of bus route 38 in recent months, that new Routemaster buses are a more flexible and affordable option.
Are The Hackney Flyers The World’s First Bus-Trams?
With the publication of Boris Johnson’s vision of transport in London in 2050 , it would seem that we have the vision of transport sorted. The report’s plans for rail are detailed here in Modern Railways. Here’s a flavour.
The draft includes plans to maximise capacity of and extend Tube services, and approve Crossrail 2. ‘Further Crossrail projects may be required’ – an east-west alignment is mentioned, but with no specific proposals at this stage. Working with Network Rail, there is also huge opportunity to double capacity on the capital’s rail network, says the plan, and upgrades to main radial routes are outlined.
But all the reports and commentators seem to miss, the quiet revolution that is taking place in Hackney and several other places in London.
The most common journey I do, is get a bus from just round the corner from my house to the Angel or perhaps further. I have a choice of three buses to the Angel; the 30, 38 or 56.
When I moved here four years ago, the service wasn’t bad, but I often had to wait what seemed to be a few minutes.
A few months ago, the route 38 was converted to brand-new Routemasters and now everybody seems to choose one of these Thomas Heatherwick-designed buses if you have a choice, if say a 56 and a 38 arrive together.
Perhaps it’s because they get to the Angel faster, which they seem to do. Not that I’ve measured it! It may be just a perception. But they are definitely more comfortable and better if you’ve got shopping or parcels with you.
All buses have improved further since buses went cashless, as no longer does the driver wait whilst he sorts out passengers with cash.
The Transport Plan does mention buses, but only briefly.
However, after the experience here in Hackney, is London doing enough to use the humble bus to ease London’s transport problems?
I believe for instance, that if say you were thinking of running a tram between say Kings Cross and Elephant and Castle, you could create a dedicated bus lane and run a squadron of two-man operatord Routemasters on the route!
It would be more affordable than the tram and if say you got the route slightly wrong, all you’d need to do would be to move a few kerbs and white lines and tell the drivers about the new route. There would of course, be no construction chaos, like they had in Edinburgh.
If say you replace the route with an Underground line, the buses just get redeployed and you remove the road markings.
So did Thomas Heatherwick design the Hackney Flyer or the world’s first bus-tram?
Blackpool Is Finally Going To Link The Tram To The Train
I must admit that I don’t like Blsckpool and this post in my view sums up the seaside resorts attitude to visitors.
As I say in the post, Blackpool doesn’t have many useful maps, but one of the biggest problems is that the newly rebuilt tramway, doesn’t link up to Blackpool North station. Imagine if a main line station like Kings Cross or Paddington didn’t connect to the London Underground.
But Blackpool updated the trams a few years ago spending over £80 million. Surely, this upgrade could have been stretched to connect the trams to the station.
At least now this missing link is being built according to this report on the BBC.
Hopefully next time I go to support Ipswich at Blackpool, I’ll be able to get on a tram at the station to take me to the ground.
The Gdansk Trams
I used the Gdansk trams to get about the city, buying a daily ticket for a few zlotis. The daily ticket incidentally cost me just £2.36 according to my credit card statement.
I did play a bit of musical trams, where yoiu get on one and then get off at a promising site, before repeating the process to get srpound the city.
It’s Wet So It Must Be Manchester
To get to Blackburn I needed to get between Carluccio’s at Manchester Piccadilly station and Manchester Victoria station to catch the 13:00 train to Clitheroe.
I knew I was in Manchester, as it was raining.
As I had bought my ticket from Manchester Stations to Blackburn for the princely sum of £6.95, I had to walk, as you can’t use these tickets on the tram to get between the two stations. Also, unlike Sheffield, my Freedom Pass where it is valid on the trams, it is not valid in Manchester.
A French Version Of My Mother’s Rule
I’ve said before that my mother told me that stops on the London Underground are two minutes apart. I called it Irene’s law for calculating journey times.
A French Version Of My Mother’s Rule
This picture shows the institutionalised version on the Bordeaux tram.
Their interval is one minute and thirty seconds.
Trams and The Place De La Bourse
I think that this set of pictures show how you can run trams through areas of architectural importance.
Bordeaux is actually a World Heritage Site. The citation states.
an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble
So you don’t really want tram wires all over the place! But then Bordeaux’s trams are trams without wires. Surely the trams in Edinburgh should have been designed without them.
Note too, that there is a tram stop here called Bourse, but the only things you notice are the slightly raised paving and the fact that trams stop and open their doors to let people on and off.
Trams Without Wires
This set of pictures, shows trams running in the city centre and the unique ground level power system called APS.
APS or a system like it, should have been used in Edinburgh to avoid putting up unsightly wires.
The Anonymous Widower 