More about the Richmond car park charges...

Fury over ‘£3m cost’ of unwelcome car park charges (From Wandsworth Guardian)

Implementing car parking charges in Richmond and Bushy parks will cost the Royal Parks Agency (RPA) nearly £3m – and will not make it a penny for more than six years, it has been claimed.

My own views are here: Park Tax

richmond, parking, park, richmondtransits.blog

Park Tax

As I was writing earlier (here Sign the petition to keep Richmond park free and there Another petition, for Bushy park) it seems that there will be another place (after it was imposed that it would no longer be free to park in Richmond on Sundays) where you can't escape the Parking tax:

London Royal Parks parking fees approved (on freetopark.co.uk)
I hope Susan Kramer will keep on the fight.

Some think it's a good thing, I view this as NIMBY (see my comment on the post): Parking charges approved for Royal Parks :-).
But overal parking charges in the park are hugely impopular. An unwanted impact is that the Borough will inevitably extend the Sheen CPZ to cover Fife road as it will be used by park-goers instead of the Sheen Gate car park. That's parking tax contagion!

See also my previous posts: Kingston hospital parking and Blatant hypocrisy over parking spaces

richmond, park, parking, richmondtransits.blog

Oyster on National Rail but not in stations

So you can use your Oyster card in the trains around London... but you can't buy one in Richmond station -despite it being a District line terminus.

Hum, not too good...

Kew is now on Streetview

Kew Gardens have been visited by the Google black cars and you can now do a virtual visit:
Kew News - Kew Gardens On Google Street View

Nice...

Kew, gardens, richmond, richmondtransits.blog, streetview

The circle line now runs to Hammersmith

Good news for commuters, as it increases the frequency.

I've never understood why they never joined the two Hammersmith tube stations though?

Side note: this picture show the different gauges of the LU -incompatible rolling stock doesn't help with reliability, line extensions, etc...

Integrated transport anyone?

One of the most frustrating aspects of the transport system in London, apart from its high-cost (busses went from 70p to an eye watering £2 in just a few years) and unreliablility, is the lack of integration. There are many examples -just look at a tube map to see where rail stations don't connect with the tube, like in Putney for instance: that one is quite frustrating as both lines actually intersect but instead of building an interchange above the train line, commuters have get out of the station and walk 200 feet. Or, why is the Waterloo & City line not extended to Moorgate and then through using National Rail tracks? And South?

Some things are improving though: from yesterday, the Oyster card is accepted on National Rail (except to Heathrow, etc). At last you may say...

There's some more scope for improvement though. For instance, this Evening Standard column suggests using the Thames a proper highway.

In under three years, and for an initial outlay of just £30 million, we can create a new, waterborne Tube line, with a frequent service of high-speed boats at 20 piers from Putney to Woolwich. That is about a quarter of the time, and less than a hundredth of the money, that a similar project would need on land.

Would Boris dare?

London, transportation, rail, railways, Waterlooandcity, tube, thames, richmondtransits.blog, TfL

Lessons to be learnt from the Eurotunnel Christmas debacle

Alright, this isn't very timely but I was enjoying my holidays in a nice farmhouse in Dordogne. So, here I am: we too were stuck with Eurotunnel because of some Eurostar trains stuck in the chunnel.

Our short story is that we heard on the radio a 5 am that the tunnel was closed, so we went back to sleep and set off late around 10 to try get through the EuroTunnel shuttles. After spending some time in a traffic jam on the A20 caused by Operation Stack (another typical English Dad's Army band-aid-like approach to solving infrastructure issues) we came back on a trailer lorry after out car broke down. Which wasn't that bad since friends of ours spent 18 hours getting through -not that nice with two small children.

At no point Eurotunnel proactively contacted us to advise on the situation, either by email or telephone, mainstream media was at least 2 hours late and we got our most reliable information from Twitter and Facebook.

Jasmine Birtles puts it well here: How not to do it – lessons from Eurostar and Eurotunnel.

Use social media and use it properly. As I pointed out above, I’ve been following #eurostar and #eurotunnel for at least a week and it was quite clear from the start that neither had a proper social media strategy. Eurostar had brought in a fledgling social media company to promote itself on Twitter using the handle @little_break but they hadn’t even taken up the @eurostar name which was used by a guy in China! It took them days to get round to tweeting information – it should have been minutes. People on the stranded trains were tweeting, angrily, the moment they got out of the tunnel. The anger and hatred poured out on the Twittersphere and Facebook (which set up a ‘We hate Eurostar’ group after just a day or so) and was largely ignored for the first all-important 48 hours after the incident. Social Media is here and is a very important means of communication. Ignore it at your peril.

Their web site was reduced to a single page, only referring to a telephone number. That number was diverted to a recorded message prompting to call that same number.

On the causes of the incident, they are now quite well documented (wrong kind of snow), but I must say the PR has been way better in France than in the UK -they got some journos onboard of the test trains, etc... As Daniele Beccari (@danbec) points out in his blog post "Eurostar communication failure: here is a glimpse of what caused it" point out details of the communication breakdown between Eurostar and Eurotunnel, in particular when it comes down to liaising with the staff in the trains inside the tunnel, it's far from clear whom the responsibility lies with.

Daniele concludes that he is "now getting nervous for my future travels, because I don’t like the idea of being left alone in an emergency situation due to gaps in responsibilities."

This same post also goes on to comment that incredible Eurotunnel press statement fingerpointing Eurostar -well worth a read for anyone in communications. They accused Kent Police too -can't think this will benefit them in any ways...

His conclusions:

• Eurostar staff inside the trains was probably not allowed to do and say anything at all. They have probably been waiting for information from Eurostar HQ, which was in turn waiting for information from Eurotunnel HQ.
• Eurotunnel staff have executed the emergency operations, and they probably have the instructions to report to central without leaking any information – even to Eurostar staff.
• Eurotunnel HQ has probably taken the time to verify every detail and ensure control before communicating to Eurostar.
• Eurotunnel is not a consumer facing company. Hence I am not sure if they have any marketing, customer service or consumer focused PR agency. I am not sure if they have any procedure for external communication at all. [There is an @eurotunnel Twitter account but it seems never been used].
• This is probably a stretch, but if Eurotunnel zone of responsibility stops just outside the tunnel I wonder if this explains the reports from passengers that they had to wait again for hours once outside the tunnel for someone to come and pick them up.

On my side've tried to send them an email, but all I only ever get was an autoresponder.

Heather Yaxley MIPR echoes this in her post "Winter blunderland – snow highlights poor PR at Eurostar, Eurotunnel and more":

• Marketing messages are still being communicated – I called the Eurotunnel FlexiPlus phone number yesterday (to cancel a booking) and instantly was advised this was the fastest route to France. What a joke!
• When there is a crisis, hiding behind recorded messages is insulting. In the case of Eurotunnel, the customer information line (08444 630000) provided little information and directed customers to the web (www.eurotunnel.com) to rebook. That means of communication was equally poor – and only allowed you to select another date, to travel in the same direction. The online instruction was to call the customer contact centre (08443 35 35 35) to cancel – which was another pathetic recorded message. (Or you can email: customer.relations@eurotunnel.com) Hence, under “contact us” I found the FlexiPlus premium customer line (0844 335 3335) answered (after the marking message) by a real person. Although no apologies were expressed my cancellation was efficiently wiped off the system with a “phew that’s one out of the way” attitude.
• There has been no direct communication with people booked onto either Eurostar or Eurotunnel – and this seems common in other organisations such as the airlines. When making most travel bookings, you are required to provide email and mobile phone contact details. So, why not use these to actually update customers. Relying on media reports, rarely updated websites or recorded customer phone lines does not put the company in control of its own communications. Hence people turn to Twitter and other forums where wider criticism of the organisations soon escalates. I was busy packing my car to leave yesterday when my mum called – she lives in France but heard a television news report regarding Eurotunnel’s “saturation” meltdown – without this, I would have been stuck with two dogs in freezing conditions for hours. A text or email – or preferably both – would have been simple. After all, my dentist, doctor and car dealer all manage to do this for routine matters.

Not so simple if you don't have a good CRM system...

The information provided by Eurotunnel on the situation was to not travel and we decided to tempt our chances again on Tuesday 22nd. We had been unable to either call Eurostar or change our booking via your web site as the reservation below did include a password.
At this point, Eurotunnel was still indicating long delays and even that your Folkestone terminal was closed.

We eventually crossed but this has not only costed us a 180 miles roundtrip and a full day in the car for nothing and we missed two important Christmas celebrations with some relatives we typically only see once a year.

We arrived there and saw the shortest queues we've ever experienced in over 12 years of regular custom!

Bottom line:
I believe all that could have been much better managed by Eurotunnel (not to mention Eurostar), via real time communication with their customers by SMS, email and some PR that would focus on actually helping customers (rather than finger pointing Eurostar). Or put in other words, their response has simply been inadequate: answerphone, autoresponder, finger pointing PR.

I've asked Eurotunnel a full refund of my ticket, some vouchers for a new crossing in the future and £100 in compensation for the journey that we undertook in vain and the expenses incurred then. We'll see what we get...

PS
Slate.fr explains (in French) that UK is now much more European than it was 15 years ago and that Brits can't now do without the tunnel anymore. UK isn't an island then?

Recipe: truffled quail eggs

Very easy, once you get hold of the ingredients (readily available in Dordogne).

Take some quail eggs and lay them in a tupperware with a good sized truffle for a few days in the fridge.

Break them in small dishes and add some raw foie gras.

Salt, pepper and grill for about 10 mn.

Serve warm and enjoy!

CardAid in Richmond

Sharmin from CardAid asked me to post this -you can help by buying your cards from them:

Hello,

I apologise for springing this on you out of the blue but I couldn't find another way of contacting you. Basically, I'm writing from one of the Card Aid shops in Richmond. As an organisation, we represent over 250 Charities and each year, during the winter season, we set up two shops in Richmond Old Town Hall and St Mary Magdalene Church. Unlike many commercial outlets where as little as 2% goes to charity, all profits go to charity from our cards. Just so you know we're not crazy frauds, our website is here: http://www.cardaid.co.uk/

In short, and I hope it's not too cheeky to say this, would you be able to do us a huge favour and mention us on your blog? We would be incredibly grateful - the charity xmas card market is really suffering this year!

I love Mar I Terra too, by the way!

Thanks so much,

Sharmin, Card Aid

charity, xmas, richmondtransits.blog

I know where my vote will go...

It's a proposed cut I like: Tories 'would scrap third Heathrow runway' - UK Politics, UK - The Independent
The Right is greening, somewhat weird but nice.

We now have to make them promise this is more than just a pledge...

LHR, heathrowexpansion, BA, BAA, UK, rail, transportation, HS2, richmondtransits.blog

US Police sounds Orwellian

There's a weird sense of Orwell blended with Minority Report, a la Brazil in this clip:

(via Nothing To Do With Arbroath: G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon)

A bit frightening if you ask me, that it takes so much armed force and sound canon to police a demonstration...

bigbrother, richmondtransits.blog

Reversing the burden of the proof would encourage cycling

I read today in The Times, an article sensationally titled Cycling plan to blame drivers for all crashes.

As usual, facts are quite different from the eye catching headline: it is only question to reverse the burden of the proof towards motorists for accidents involving cyclists. Which seems only fair as they don't have a metal body around them when travelling as opposed to those driving cosseted within two tonnes of metal

Such scheme would place the presumption of blame against whoever was driving the most powerful vehicle involved in an accident, so they or their insurers would be liable for costs or damages.

If a cyclist were hit by a car, the presumption of blame would fall on the driver, while a cyclist would automatically be blamed if he or she knocked down a pedestrian.

It's already the case in the Netherlands for instance, and it forces drivers to be more careful.

I already hear the voices saying that

...the risky behaviour of some cyclists — particularly those who jump red lights and ride the wrong way along one-way streets — that is to blame for a significant number of crashes.

This comment for me stems from people who never ride, as jumping a red light is often safer than risking being mowned by cars turning left or accelerating forward when the green light comes on. Some odd cyclist behaviours are also caused by the stupidity of those planning cycle lanes in the most bizarre fashion (read this great book for more: Crap Cycle Lanes)

Cyclists to be given the right to ride the wrong way

Read in the Times of this morning:
Cyclists will be given green light to ignore one-way signs - Times Online

At long last, it seems that common sense is prevailing and that the DfT is recognising that road rules made for cars are not appropriate for the poor souls plodding the street with no armour and taking little space.

The main advantage is to allow cycles to use quieter roads, moving them off busy and dangerous main roads in many cases. It is also a good traffic calming measure for one way streets, where cars tend to go too fast.

It's a small step in the right direction towards better ways to share the space between users of the roads. We just have to get proper cycle lanes now (post series on the subjet coming soon on this blog!)

cycle, cycling, bikelane, cyclelane, transportation, UK, London, DfT, richmondtransits.blog

Moonsoon halts London transport system

Says a lot on the state of our transport infrastructure...

I mean I understand (well not really but) that we can be un-prepared for meterological events that occur once every 5 years in average, like for instance snow. But rain, even when it's a lot?

But I can't comprehend how or why rain can still flood Richmond tube station (it's not underground!) or the M4 (elevated section).

The Department of Transport has a Dad's Army approach to infrastructure engineering: it's so bad it becomes farcical!

Restaurant review: Mar I Terra (Blackfriars)

I ate at Mar I Terra on Saturday, en route to check the Thames Festival on the Southbank.
Both were quite pleasant. The fete was interesting because of the laid back village to watch this country becoming more continental as the years go by: the ambiance was laid back, with performers and food.

However, by that time we were quite full having made a detour via Blackfriars to have dinner at Mar I Terra for some proper Spanish tapas. All felt right in place, relax and good. We had the classics: boquerones, patatas bravas, some meat balls and some cervesa to wash it. All tapas are around a fiver except the jamon, which at thirteen and a half quid isn't cheap. It's very very good and probably worth it though.

It's my idea of casual food: simple, with good ingredients and no fuss. I would recommend this highly for a dinner with friends, around a good bottle -their wine list is well researched. No real downsides, apart the fact they don't take bookings -but they do have a bar. It's also a bit out of one's way, but worth the trek.

I haven't been to the Soho one, but the address is here as well.

Mar I Terra (www.mariterra.co.uk)
Blackfriars: 14 Gambia Street, London SE1 0XH - 020 7928 7628

Soho: 17 Air Street, London W1B 5AF - 020 7734 1992

While I'm on the subject of tapas, here's are some quick comments on two others I have in mind:

• Don Fernando in Richmond: not very refined nor cheap, but okay for a casual dinner if you catch their offers. Just.
  27f The Quadrant, Richmond TW9 1DN -020 8948 6447
• La Tasca in Covent Garden and elsewhere: avoid like plague unless you're really interested into finding out how tourists can be (badly) treated in London ; probably the worst paella I've ever had, we almost walked out as the service was agonisingly slow.
  

restaurant, review, london, blackfriars, spanish, tapas, richmondtransits.blog

Heathrow is not safe: chilling crash map

Just found the web site of the Friends of the Earth on LHR T5 -a must read, there's also a chilling map by Hacan of possible crashes on Heathrow flight paths.

Stricken jumbo flew over West London (also there)

Campaigners against the expansion of Heathrow have long predicted that a disaster will eventually happen because more than 500 flights a day pass over Central London as they approach the airport.


The Government has proposed building a third runway at the airport, which would add 1,000 more flights a week over the capital. Most other big cities have positioned their airports in places that do not require planes to approach over the centre."


FOE comment. Heathrow is by far the most dangerous airport in the country for those on the ground. This is because there are far more planes flying over far more people than anywhere else. This fact is largely ignored by the government, which takes into account only 'individual risk' as opposed to 'societal risk'.

The AIB report is here (direct link to PDF).

See map of potential crash sites.

Update: Seems  Friends of the Earth moved to a proper website but did not migrate all files, this link doesn't work anymore. Fortunately,
Waybackmachine had an archived copy... Here's another link to the document, just in case.

Check also this post:Heathrow is just dangerous where it is

24/5/12 update: removed/changed dead hyperlinks.

Bring on High Speed Two, not more runways

Regular readers will know I think high-speed rail is a necessity. Today, on BBC.com there was an interesting statistic in this news article: Cities urge high-speed rail lin

Over 60 years, it is estimated that the line could save 30 million tonnes (29.5m tons) of CO2 worth £3.2bn by diverting passengers from air travel to rail.

Although 60 years can seem a very long time, rail infrastructure is ammortised over long periods. The real saving could be that a proper high-speed rail (HSR) network could avoid building more runways around London. I'm sure BAA thinks differently, but it worked just like that in France where TGV has displaced air travel on routes such as Paris to Nantes, Lyons, and even Marseilles.

Will this happen in the UK? I'm sceptical it will happen quickly, mostly because of the lack of proper planning, decentralised decision making and short-term focus.

UK, transportation, rail, railways, airlines, pollution, environment, train, richmondtransits.blog, HSR

BAA caught lying... again.

The list of BAA lies is very very long, Terminal 4 was going to be the last one, then it was Terminal 5 to be the last expansion, the planes noise data is based on theoritical levels and future emissions calculations are based on planes that don't exist.

The Advertising Standards Authority has caught them for the last one:
BBC NEWS | England | London | Heathrow noise claim 'misleading'

According to BAA, the Government said that a third runway would "would have to result in a Heathrow noise footprint no larger than with two runways in 2002, and that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide around Heathrow would have to be within the future EU limit."

So BAA would buy a brand new runway but not put extra planes on? Give me a break...

Read on this article on why they get away with it: BAA's close links with the DfT.

Concerns over their influence have been heightened by the presence of Tom Kelly, formerly the official spokesman for Tony Blair when he was prime minister, who has taken charge of "all aspects of BAA's communication activity" since being appointed as group director of corporate and public affairs for the company in late 2007, when the campaign for a third runway was in full swing. Kelly heads a network that plugs BAA directly into government and Labour, several of whose senior figures are involved in the pro-runway campaign. Julia Simpson, another former adviser to Blair, left Downing Street in 2007 for BA.

On the other side of the fence is Joe Irvin, former head of corporate affairs at BAA, who has switched to Number 10 to be a key adviser to Gordon Brown. Irvin was also involved with one of the main aviation lobby groups, Freedom to Fly, which was funded by BAA and BA - as was Stephen Hardwick, a former adviser to John Prescott and ex-head of public affairs at BAA. BAA also employs financial PR company Finsbury, which is headed by Roland Rudd, a close friend of business secretary Peter Mandelson, who was in favour of the third runway.

BA has fostered close links with government for years through PR firms Brunswick, headed by Gordon Brown's friend Alan Parker, and Lexington Communications, run by Mike Craven, a former Labour press chief. Senior Labour figures, paid to help the runway lobby funded by BAA, include Lord Soley, a former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who has appeared in the media to promote the runway for Future Heathrow, one of the BAA-backed successors to Freedom to Fly.

The issue of Heathrow was tackled in a recent report on lobbying by the public administration select committee. After the inquiry, MPs concluded that lobbying needed to be open to public scrutiny. The report said: "There has also been widespread public concern that some areas of government policy have effectively been captured at an early stage by interest groups, usually within industry, and that public consultations have been unbalanced in the favour of these interests." It named Heathrow as an example of this.

BA, BAA, DfT, LHR, Heathrow, HeathrowExpansion, air, transportation, richmondtransits.blog

Traffic pandemonium: just a sign of things to come?

Thanks to Thames Water who shut the Northbound Clifford avenue section to replace aging water mains the A205 South Circular in Richmond (This Is Local London), combined with Transport For London who revamped Richmond Circus to add more car lanes but still no cycle lanes (I'll post again on this) plus some more water mains replacement in White Hart Lane, Richmond was totally grid locked this summer.

Great planning guys....

One of the fundamental issues is that our borough has the plight of being sectionned by a train line with only a few crossings: a bridge on the Quadrant, another one in Church lane, a level crossing in Manor Road, a bridge on Clifford avenue and then some more level crossings in Sheen Road by Mortlake train station, White Hart Lane in East Sheen/Mortlake, Vine Road in Barnes. There are then only three bridges before Putney, including on Dryburgh road -which is closed during rush hours...

I've been lobbying long to get a footbridge in North Sheen and believe level crossings are a problem in general, I'm not the only one it seems according to this BBC article:

More people die on level crossings than in derailments or train crashes, killing on average one person a month.

Network Rail says that every year 2,000 people are reported to misuse level crossings with motorists ignoring warning lights or weaving round barriers.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers Union (RMT) says that even crossings with barriers and warning systems are unsafe and should be replaced with bridges or underpasses over a period of ten years.

The bad news is that it's only going to get worse for local residents, with longer wait at crossings if BAA gets their way.

Yes, BAA, the London Heathrow airport operator who's wanting to put more planes overhead. Because they just figured out that Heathrow is poorly deserved by trains. No, not really, the truth is that they are trying to curb on car mouvements around the aiport in order to land more planes without breaching too much the European directive on air quality (thank god for the EU). Insane? Yes, but these are the facts.

So, if Airtrack goes ahead the trains frequency will double -from 8 to 16- with no or little benefits for local residents as it's far from certain the extra trains will stop in North Sheen for instance, while Manor Road will be continuously clogged with a traffic jam caused by the level crossing barriers being shut for 45 minutes in one hour!

This is obviously not acceptable, and this train line should be buried under street level from Putney to Richmond. Period.

Our MP Susan Kramer is running a petition: http://www.susankramer.org.uk/pages/airtrack.html. The consultation closes on 18 September.

Tags: air, BAA, Heathrow, Heathrowexpansion, LHR, rail, railways, North Sheen, level crossing, richmondtransits.blog

Chaos in Chalkers Corner

If you're just back from holidays you're in for a surprise at rush hour: Chalkers corner is completely grid-locked, so is Lower Richmond Road (A316) Eastbound, Manor Circus and Richmond Circus aren't better...

I'll post later on this but it seems it's largely due to Clifford avenue being closed to Southbound traffic due to water mains replacement.

To compound the things, they (not sure who is "they") have reversed the one way in Kingsway (from Lower Richmond Road) for no apparent reason as now Shalstone road and Kingsway are both only leading into Clifford avenue (Northbound), creating even more congestion...

Daft really?

richmond, roads, transportation, richmondtransits.blog