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‘Dalek’ pothole killer that may save British roads

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The Telegraph, 17 April 2014

A new machine called the ‘Dalek’ has revolutionised the way to fix potholes, exterminating them in under two minutes

The new pot hole repair machine being tested in the village of Clifton

The new pothole repair machine being tested in the village of Clifton, Bedfordshire Photo: Geoff Robinson

By Ben Lazarus

Driving over a pothole is always a nuisance. Not only does it jolt you, but it also doesn’t exactly do your car the world of good. And yet, potholes are absolutely everywhere, ensuring our journeys are always filled with bumps and bangs. Soon, however, potholes may be exterminated.

A new invention called the ‘Dalek’ can fill potholes in less than two minutes, rather than the conventional time that it normally takes of an hour.

The ‘Dalek’ is a robotic arm that attaches to the front of a truck and fills potholes with tar and gravel at a rate 30 times faster than the standard methods normally used to fill up such holes.

The vehicle is being trialled in the UK for the first time in Bedfordshire, and if deemed successful will be used across the country.

It is currently used in America, and has been dubbed the ‘Pothole Killer’.

Like the Doctor Who Daleks, the machine has a robotic arm at the front which is controlled by the highway staff in their vehicle using a joystick.

It was reported earlier this month that it would cost £12 billion to fix Britain’s potholes.

Hard shoulder driving begins with ‘an almighty jam’

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The Times, 15 April 2014

Philip Pank, Transport Correspondent

Smart technology that allows the hard shoulder to be turned into a fourth lane, flopped yesterday when a breakdown cause a jam

It was heralded as a solution to the interminable M25 jams in which drivers can be trapped for hours. Smart technology would allow the hard shoulder on one of the busiest stretches of the motorway to be turned into a fourth lane, immediately easing congestion.

Yesterday it was given the green light but almost immediately ran into trouble. The engine of a car cut out and, with the driver unable to pull over, a long tailback began to grow.

Motoring organisations had foreseen the problem, opposing the introduction of “smart” motorway technology on an eight-mile stretch of the M25 in Hertfordshire, on the grounds that drivers who break down would be more at risk without quick access to a safe area. There are emergency refuges for those in difficulty, but they are 2.5km apart.

Paul Watters, the AA’s head of roads policy, said that an “almighty tailback” developed early yesterday, just as ministers were hailing the development as the future of motorway driving.

“We are going to have to contend with it because it is going to happen again, possibly day in, day out. It reduces resilience of the road when something happens and that is the problem.”

He added: “We have concerns about people getting trapped in lane one, people who may have broken down in the dark and may not be spotted and are potentially an enormous hazard.”

David Bizley, technical director of the RAC, said that his organisation was also concerned about safety implications. He said the Highways Agency’s own risk assessment had concluded that motorists who broke down were more likely to become casualties.

Schemes similar to one between Junctions 23 and 25 of the M25 are being built between Junctions 25 and 27 and also between Junctions 5 and 6/7 on the same motorway. The hard shoulder is being turned into a continuous running lane on the M3 between Junctions 2 and 4a and there are plans to do the same between Junctions 3 and 12 on the M4. Other schemes will be introduced on the M1, M62 and other roads.

The Highways Agency said that “smart motorways” were at least as safe as conventional roads. Motorists will be subjected to variable mandatory speed limits at times of particularly heavy traffic or when a lane is blocked. Temporary restrictions are displayed on overhead gantries.

Infrared CCTV cameras relay images of breakdown or potential hazards back to a control room, while sensors buried in the road surface measure the volume of traffic. Grey speed cameras enforce the temporary speed limits. The Highways Agency declined to say whether the speed cameras were also housed in the overhead gantries or were mounted separately on the roadside.

The agency believes that the technology will reduce congestion, ease traffic flows and improve reliability of journey times. Graham Dalton,chief executive, said: “Smart motorways are quicker to build, more intuitive for drivers and more efficient to operate, while maintaining safety.”

New Rural Bus Services Piloted in Wales

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From the BBC News web site, 22 April 2014.

Two councils to pilot new bus services in rural areas

Stagecoach buses
The councils will look at new ways of providing bus services in their area.

Two parts of Wales are to get £100,000 each in a bid to develop better public transport.

The Welsh government cash will be spent on year-long projects in Ceredigion and the Vale of Glamorgan.

The pilots will use council vehicles as well as coordinating existing bus and community services.

The announcement comes just days after Wales’ largest bus operator, Stagecoach, confirmed it was cutting services in five counties.

Cardiff Bus has also blamed a cut in subsidy for reducing its services.

The Welsh government says it wants the pilot projects to help find new ways of delivering public transport.

Vale of Glamorgan council’s remit will include looking at how to encourage more people to use rural bus routes, setting up an online booking system and reducing the costs of services.

New public transport routes to communities around Tregaron will form part of Ceredigion council’s scheme, as well as using its own vehicles to bolster bus services.

The work to identify best practice from local authorities will report to the Bus Policy Advisory Group.

Stagecoach buses
Stagecoach blames a cut in subsidy for the loss of or reduction in its services.

 

Transport Minister Edwina Hart said: “I want to ensure everyone in Wales is able to access jobs and services via reliable public transport.

“We must start looking at new and innovative ways of delivering these services, particularly in rural areas, by means of a sustainable and efficient network.”

Ms Hart announced councils will have £25m in 2014-15 toward socially-necessary bus and community transport services, the same amount as in 2013-14.

Service cuts

Bus operators, including Stagecoach and Cardiff Bus, have blamed the Welsh government slashing its three-year funding package from £213.3m to £189m for the cutbacks they have made.

Stagecoach announced last week that it was cutting 14 bus services, putting 77 jobs at risk.

Last autumn Arriva announced the closure of its Aberystwyth depot as well as a number of route losses blaming cuts in public transport funding and rising fuel costs for the decision.

In February, BBC Wales revealed nearly 100 subsidised bus routes have been scrapped by councils in Wales in the past three years, with further cuts expected as authorities make savings.

The Welsh government has said the new reimbursement rate for bus operators was set following an independent review to ensure operators were “no better and no worse off” by taking part.

 

Cwmbran veterans’ Green Goddess fire engine parts stolen

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BBC News web site, 16 April 2014.

The hunt is on to find rare parts of an historical Green Goddess fire engine which were stolen by thieves.

The Green Goddess Cwmbran Veterans believe the culprits targeted the vehicle for metal to sell for scrap but it will cost them £1,000 to restore.

Thieves cut through a fence at the Territorial Army Centre in Cwmbran to carry out the theft last week.

Military and Gwent Police are investigating.

Army veteran Mike Saunders and friends bought the former Bedford truck three years ago. They have used the vehicle to help them to raise £15,000 for the Help For Heroes military charity.

The vehicle’s 61 year old engine and original bells and sirens still work but its hoses will remain dry unless a replacement pump intake can be found.

Thieves cut through the fence to steal the parts from the vehicle

Green Goddess fire engines were built during the Cold War in the 1950s and were designed to roll into action in the aftermath of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.

They were manned by civilian volunteers from the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS).

In 1968 the AFS was disbanded and the Green Goddess fleet was put into storage and some were later sold off.

“First of all we have got to locate the bits and then we’ve got to raise money to pay for them,” said Mr Saunders.

“We are talking over £1,000 worth of parts being taken.

“It’s sad. We’ve worked hard for the last three years. We can’t do what we’d like to do with the machine.”

 

Swansea Bus Museum to Lose Home?

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From the South Wales Evening Post, 26 March 2014.

Brakes put on Swansea Bus Museum’s plans to move

 
  • A South Wales Transport AEC Renown single decker bus turns into High Street from Alexandra Road in 1950.
  • Swansea Bus Museum was hoping to move its premises to Clarence Street, but the council is proposing to demolish the building.
  • The old and the new in Oxford Street, mid-1950s. The buildings behind this United Welsh double decker bus represent post-war Swansea rising from the ashes of wartime bombardment.
  • A South Wales Transport AEC Renown single decker bus turns into High Street from Alexandra Road in 1950.
  • Swansea Bus Museum was hoping to move its premises to Clarence Street, but the council is proposing to demolish the building.

MEMBERS of Swansea’s historic bus museum say they are upset after being told they cannot relocate to a former bus garage in the city.

The Swansea Bus Museum said the unit they are currently leasing is costly and too big.

So they sent an email to Swansea Council asking to purchase the old bus garage on Clarence Street, but this was rejected by the council.

Alan West, chairman of the museum, said: “The old bus garage is of great historical value to us and we thought it would be the perfect place to move the museum to.

“At the moment the current unit we lease in the SA1 Business Park is costing us a lot in rent and rates.

“We only have three years left on the lease, so are looking for somewhere smaller and cheaper to move to.

“The place where we are now is far too big for us. So when we found the old bus garage we thought it would be perfect.”

However the museum group was told by Swansea Council that the building, close to the former Vetch football ground, is structurally unsafe and needs to be demolished. Mr West said: “That bus garage has been there since the 1950s and was custom made for United Bus Wales.

“It is a piece of heritage and we would be so upset if it was demolished. It was in use right up until last year when the electrics were condemned, but I think the building itself is sound.

“We are really interested in taking it on and think it would be a perfect place for the museum.

“The location is great and there is lots of parking nearby. As it is very near to the Quadrant I think it would be the perfect place because there would be plenty of footfall.”

A Swansea Council spokesman said: “We couldn’t agree for the Swansea Bus Museum to relocate to Clarence Street, because the building there is structurally unsafe and needs to be demolished.

“The plan is to put a temporary car park on site once the building has been demolished, pending redevelopment in the long term.”

Swansea Bus Museum is run by the South Wales Transport Preservation Trust and restores, preserves and displays buses from former public transport companies of South and West Wales.

At the museum there is currently a large fleet of buses including a 1959 Bridgemaster double decker.

The bus is one of only four surviving vehicles and the museum is looking to restore it so it looks back to its best in time for the 100 years celebration of South Wales Transport later this year.

South Wales Transport began shortly before the outbreak of the First World War and, at its height, it was responsible for 92 million passenger journeys a year. This year South Wales Transport is taking steps to celebrate the history of buses in order to mark its centenary.

Iconic bus companies from South Wales will be recalled in a new book, to be launched as part of the Roads and Road Transport Associations’s event Wales on Wheels, at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, on Saturday, May 17.

The weekend of events will mark Swansea Bus Museum’s centenary year, and Return Ticket — the Story of South Wales Transport, by former Evening Post News Editor Jonathan Isaacs, will detail the troubles and triumphs of ‘The Transport’, as it was affectionately known.

 

 

Brecon Beacons Bus Service Axed

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From the BBC News web site, 31 March 2014.

Brecon Beacons Sunday and Bank Holiday bus to be axed

Brecon Beacons

A bus service used by thousands of visitors to the Brecon Beacons is being axed as part of budget savings of £650,000 over the next two years.

Brecon Beacons National Park Authority faces a budget cut of 8.9% from the Welsh government from April.

It follows a public consultation over the bus, which brings passengers from Cardiff, Newport and Swansea on Sundays and summer Bank Holidays.

But a bike bus service will still run on Sundays and summer Bank Holidays.

The authority had said it needs to make savings of more than 13% over the next two years, which prompted a review of its services.

It has 130 staff and has responsibility for planning issues and managing the national park, which attracts 4.15m visitors a year.

‘Disappointed’

Earlier this year the authority also decided to cut seven posts as part of its savings plan.

The authority said it had decided to stop the service as a result of falling income from partners and concessionary fares, and a significant rise in tendered prices for the coming year.

Beacons bike bus The bike bus will still run during the summer

It added that the Cardiff to Brecon bike bus using a 24 bike trailer will continue to run from 25 May to 28 September on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

The service will interchange with the Hereford 39A service in Brecon and then shuttle between Brecon and Abergavenny twice during the day.

Martin Buckle, Vice Chair of the National Park Authority’s Planning Committee said: “We understand how very disappointed many of our regular passengers will be at the withdrawal of the service.

“We hope they will still be able to travel to the National Park by making use of the Monday to Saturday bus services, and we will continue to work hard to promote these.

“The bike bus has been very popular with cyclists wanting to explore the National Park and to ride the Taff Trail back to Cardiff, and we are very pleased that we have been able to negotiate this new arrangement to allow the bike bus to run.”

The Beacons Bus bought passengers into the area on Sundays and bank holidays between May and September.

Axing the service – which was used by 5,552 people last year – will save the authority £26,000.

 

Older People: Making sense of the costs and benefits of travel – April 1, London, FREE

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Chartered Institute of Logisitics and Transport

FREE EVENT – full details here.

Date: Tuesday April 1st 2014
Time: 10:00 (for 10:30) – 16:45
Venue: Transport for London, 197 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8NJ

A CILT Accessibility and Inclusion Forum Event

Many of the UK’s large and growing population of older people are making a significant contribution to the country’s economy but the size of the ageing population also creates both economic and social challenges – not least to the transport industries.

The purpose of this seminar is to take an in-depth and balanced look at the reality of enabling older people to remain independently mobile – in both urban and rural communities.

Topics for discussion will include the key part that free bus travel places in enabling many older people to support working age families, and undertake voluntary work among other activities.

Speakers include:

  • Louise Ellman MP, Chair, Transport Select Committee
  • Peter Rayner, Vice President, National Pensioners Convention, and Chair of the CILT Accessibility and Inclusion Forum
  • Ann Frye, Ann Frye Ltd and Vice Chair of the CILT Accessibility and Inclusion Forum
  • Karl Demian, Assistant Director of Strategy & Impact, Royal Volunteer Service
  • Professor Roger Mackett, University College London
  • Rodd Bond, Dundalk Institute of Technology
  • Alice Woudhuysen, Age UK
  • Phil Southall, Operations Director, Oxford Bus Company
  • Philip Oxley, Oxley Research
  • Pauline Reeves, Deputy Director, Sustainable Accessible Travel, DfT

Speakers will also focus on what needs to be done to create environments within which older people can live without support and at how to make sense of the costs of mobility – who pays and who benefits. The perspective of the bus operator will play an important part in this discussion.

The seminar will bring together speakers with a wealth of experience and expertise both academic and practical and will focus on the issues that face the UK in the coming years and how best to address the needs of or ageing populations in a way that makes economic sense for all of us.

Booking: 

To book, contact Membership Services 01536 74010401536 740104 or email membership@ciltuk.org.uk quoting Event Code: AIF0305.

Further information:

For the day’s agenda please click here.

Refreshments and a light buffet lunch will be provided.

 

Gasping for Air

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The Times leader, March 13 2014

The capital is playing catch-up in the race to curb traffic pollution

London’s effort to persuade drivers to switch to electric cars with an £8 million network of charging stations has been a miserable failure. Almost no one uses them. Even so, Vincent Bolloré, a French billionaire, wants to invest £100 million in expanding the system and setting up a fleet of 3,000 electric rental cars to run on it.

Good luck to him. It is Mr Bolloré’s money and if one result of his investment is that more of those who already drive in London do so in zero-polluting vehicles it will help to improve the city’s air quality. There is, however, a more effective way of tackling this extremely urgent problem, both in the capital and the rest of the country. This is to speed up the electrification of two of the biggest polluters in Britain’s cities — taxis and buses.

Particulate pollutants, better known as fumes, cause cancer and respiratory illness on a scale that dwarfs the public health impact of traffic accidents and disproportionately affects the very young. A World Health Organisation study last year blamed air pollution for 29,000 premature deaths in Britain each year. It singled out London as one of the most polluted cities in Europe. Adding insult to injury, the European Commission threatened the capital last month with fines of up to £300 million for persistently failing to tackle its dangerously high levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant blamed mainly on road traffic and linked to still births and poor cognitive development.

Boris Johnson’s efforts to cut London’s air pollution are in the right direction, but so far they are trifling compared with what is needed and what is being done elsewhere.

The technology exists to replace heavy duty, heavily polluting diesel engines with all-electric and hybrid propulsion systems, and other countries are seizing it. Over the past five years Britain’s Green Bus Fund has dispersed £88 million to help pay for 1,250 hybrid and battery-powered buses nationwide. Last week an order for 1,200 all-electric buses was placed by a single Chinese city.

The scale of the response in China is partly a result of its acute emergency, fuelled by a reliance on low-quality coal for power generation that is forcing millions to wear masks outdoors and keep children indoors. However, China’s rush to electric buses reflects an awareness of what can be achieved by focusing on transport fleets whose movements are predictable.

Fleet managers know how far and over which routes their vehicles need to travel each day, and where they will be every morning and evening. This vastly improves the feasibility of relying on batteries and hybrids. China’s own leading maker of electric buses, backed heavily by the American investor Warren Buffett, produces a single-decker vehicle sold worldwide with a 150-mile range between charges.

Transport for London maintains that this is not enough for most routes in the capital. It is relying instead on new hybrid Routemasters to make a reality of a central “ultra-low emission zone” by 2020. New London taxis are also required to be capable of running only on batteries by 2018, and five manufacturers are bidding for licences. The deadlines are unambitious and other cities and towns, including Coventry, Milton Keynes and Nottingham, are innovating faster with new charging methods. London claims to be leading the way to cleaner air. It is actually playing catch-up, and must speed up.

Green cars to rival Boris bikes

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Philip Pank, The Times, March 13 2014

The “Boris bike” is morphing into the Bluecar as an electric hire vehicle that has opened up affordable green motoring to Parisians makes its way across the Channel.

Vincent Bolloré, the French billionaire, announced plans yesterday to let up to 3,000 of the compact vehicles loose on the streets of London, drawing power from 6,000 charge points.

Drivers will pay a monthly subscription fee of £5 plus £10 for each hour of motoring, which, Mr Bolloré says, is far cheaper than owning, insuring, maintaining and running a private car.

On a test drive yesterday, the vehicle proved adequate for London driving. Acceleration was more like that of a milk float than other low-emission vehicles, but for businessmen travelling to meetings or couples on an evening out, the four-seater car with a theoretical top speed of 68mph will certainly be cheaper than a black cab and more appealing than bicycle hire in the rain.

Mr Bolloré acknowledged that it might not be the best electric car on the market, but it was the cheapest and the most resilient, able to cope with 30 drivers a day.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, hopes that the car-sharing club will kick-start an electric car revolution. Drivers will be able to reserve a car at a specific location using a mobile phone app or a call centre.

Paris has 45,000 active users who between them take up to 13,000 journeys a day.

London air quality remains worse than in most other European cities, and since 2010 has been in breach of EU limits for nitrogen dioxide.