East West rail, Bletchley to oxford line

[Ron Ron Ron]

This chap has been out and about, filming some of the EWR work.

The video is a bit slow with DIY quality presentation, but it provides some interesting views.

 

 

 

 

 

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[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

we should have seen the end of business travel long ago.

You clearly don't seem to have been involved in business involving people who are spread in different locations.

 

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

business travel should be banned; end of!

Dictatorship is the best policy, as far as you are concerned. What the consequences are you neither know nor care.

 

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

is an expected / entitled perk of a certain level of business management.

Sure, we all like to waste our time travelling to meetings. Just because we "feel" like it. You clearly don't have a clue about this.

 

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

charge silly money for first / business class,

Strangely enough, all my business flights have been in economy. I've travelled in business and first class on my own dollar - because the comfort mattered to me for the long journeys I was undertaking. It was worth it.

Even my last personal train journey was in first class - because that is what suited me best for that journey.

 

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

Abolish first / business class

There you are, dictating to people again. I don't want to force you to buy a particular food, a particular car. Leave the rest of us to make our choices how we spend our hard earned cash.

 

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

face up to the constraints of reducing carbon output 

These constraints are yet another form of dictatorship...

 

Yours, Mike.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Its not only winning jobs that needs face-to-face, running any project does too, it is vastly more difficult to get anything done without direct meetings, site visits, etc.

 

Added to which many jobs can only be done by being there ......... I don't imagine that all this pharma and biotech happens with nobody present in the building. And nobody present to build the building and all the techery inside it in the first place.

 

And, and, people will travel for leisure and VFR, so its a whole lot better that they travel by bike, bus, and rail than in their cars.

 

Of course we've got to get real about sustainability, but we need to find sustainable ways of doing things, rather than sustainable ways of not doing things ........ live close to work, reduce travel, use sustainable modes, eliminate pointless consumerism, use sustainable building materials and methods, eat decent food instead of mega-processed cr@p, etc.

 

 

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

I am afraid that we really do need to change attitudes to every form of energy and resource consumption if we are not to leave the next couple of generations in  an impossible situation. But that does not win elections. However, governments are there to make the difficult decisions whether you like the result or not. 

As it happens I agree that face to face business meetings are a lot more efficient than using video links, but I also agree that they can be seen as a perk - a nice train trip to somewhere we would not otherwise get to probably followed by a good dinner someone else has paid for. 

But it is not just business travel we need to reduce. Zooming off to the opposite side of the globe for a week is also something which should be seen as something which needs to end.

And that would make room for getting freight back on to the railways, something governments will not do because there is no "business" case even though the environmental case is overwhelming.

And a frightening statistic I came across the other day is that the area of the most rapidly increasing energy use is freight shipping. So we need to think local far more. It is OK to say that shipping is the most efficient way of transporting goods but it still uses an awful lot of energy just because there is so much.

And to get back on topic, EWR in its entirety should be part of that policy shift, not because it is "financially viable" but because it will help with other essential policies.

But what hope?

Jonathan

[melmerby]

42 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I am afraid that we really do need to change attitudes to every form of energy and resource consumption if we are not to leave the next couple of generations in  an impossible situation. But that does not win elections. However, governments are there to make the difficult decisions whether you like the result or not. 

As it happens I agree that face to face business meetings are a lot more efficient than using video links, but I also agree that they can be seen as a perk - a nice train trip to somewhere we would not otherwise get to probably followed by a good dinner someone else has paid for. 

But it is not just business travel we need to reduce. Zooming off to the opposite side of the globe for a week is also something which should be seen as something which needs to end.

And that would make room for getting freight back on to the railways, something governments will not do because there is no "business" case even though the environmental case is overwhelming.

And a frightening statistic I came across the other day is that the area of the most rapidly increasing energy use is freight shipping. So we need to think local far more. It is OK to say that shipping is the most efficient way of transporting goods but it still uses an awful lot of energy just because there is so much.

And to get back on topic, EWR in its entirety should be part of that policy shift, not because it is "financially viable" but because it will help with other essential policies.

But what hope?

Jonathan

Oh Dear. Joined up thinking.

You'll never make a politician!😄

[John Isherwood]

12 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Sorry but that's utter, utter rubbish.

 

The pandemic certainly showed how a lot of day-to-day meetings and discussions could be done without travelling to meet in person, but it would be a very brave businessperson who thought they could win work over the phone.  You still learn a great deal from being in the same room as someone, shaking their hand and watching their body language - in ways we often do sub-consciously - when discussing potential contracts or even current tasks.  It is precisely why industry clusters form, so that businesses can trade with each other by "walking round the corner to discuss it".  Being able to easily pop across from Oxford to Cambridge or vice versa to do that, benefits all those organisations involved.

 

We're not talking about booking a night in an unknown hotel here, this is where six-figure (or bigger) contracts are dependent on customer and supplier really understanding how the relationship is going to work.  And if you think £100k is a big contract, consider that in many technical fields, even mid-level consultants are billed at over £100/hr, so if you're using five such specialists it buys you not much over a month.

 

Like it or not, we're going to have to get used to a new way of doing business - there is no option if h0m0 sapiens is to survive.

 

You and I know that the alternative is not the telephone - if Cabinet  meetings and inter-governmental conferences can be done via Zoom, etc., anything is possible. Hand shakes and pats on the back are wholly unnecessary when the future of the planet is at stake.

 

I am fully aware of the importance of mutual trust when negotiating contracts - I was a senior engineer with Cambridge City Council at the culmination of my forty year career there.

 

Producing CO2 simply to be physically in the same room as a colleague / business partner is demonstrably pointless, and WILL have to be abolished, despite the protestations of the those who currently enjoy it.

 

We'd all better get used to the fact!

 

CJI.

Edited July 28, 2022 by cctransuk

[Nearholmer]

Remaining, or returning g, slightly OT for a moment, it would be helpful/interesting to understand which of our individual actions cause what depletion of natural resources and environmental damage.

 

My gut feel, possibly way off beam, is that heating out homes (because we live in a place with cool/cold winters), owning and running a car, using aeroplanes to go on holiday, buying stuff we could manage without, and eating an overly processed, overly protein-rich diet, are probably the real biggies, along possibly with building things (houses, roads, railways, anything really) using very energy-rich and poorly-renewable materials (concrete, bricks, steel, aluminium).

 

Any thoughts?

[John Isherwood]

11 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

You clearly don't seem to have been involved in business involving people who are spread in different locations.

 

Dictatorship is the best policy, as far as you are concerned. What the consequences are you neither know nor care.

 

Sure, we all like to waste our time travelling to meetings. Just because we "feel" like it. You clearly don't have a clue about this.

 

Strangely enough, all my business flights have been in economy. I've travelled in business and first class on my own dollar - because the comfort mattered to me for the long journeys I was undertaking. It was worth it.

Even my last personal train journey was in first class - because that is what suited me best for that journey.

 

There you are, dictating to people again. I don't want to force you to buy a particular food, a particular car. Leave the rest of us to make our choices how we spend our hard earned cash.

 

These constraints are yet another form of dictatorship...

 

Yours, Mike.

 

 

 

Nature is the dictator - if anyone now believes that h0m0 sapiens can survive without radical change in the way we treat this planet, they are completely delusional.

 

I couldn't give a  d*mn how you live your life; it is the lives of future generations, when you and I are replenishing the Earth with our bodily minerals, that concerns me!

 

Massive change WILL come - though it may well be too late by then!

 

CJI.

Edited July 28, 2022 by cctransuk

[phil-b259]

On 28/07/2022 at 10:29, cctransuk said:

 

Nature is the dictator - if anyone now believes that sapiens can survive without radical change in the way we treat this planet, they are completely delusional.

 

I couldn't give a  d*mn how you live your life; it is the lives of future generations, when you and I are replenishing the Earth with our bodily minerals, that concerns me!

 

Massive change WILL come - though it may well be too late by then!

 

CJI.

 

Change will only come when the public decide to elect Governments that 'radically change the way they treat the planet.

 

Unfortunately, that sort of change makes most people poorer, reduces their movement and deprives them of what they are used to!

 

As such nothing happens because people will  continue to elect Governments who do what the likes of 'The Sun' or 'Daily Mail' tell them will keep their cushty lives intact.

 

For real change you need several dictatorships in several economically connected countries to emerge and enforce unpopular decisions on the people...

 

China for example has an impressive record in building high speed rail infrastructure - but is only able to do so because of the ability of the Communist party to trample roughshod over the ordinary people with plenty of nasty secret police style institutions to deal with people who are not 'on message'

Edited July 29, 2022 by phil-b259

[Nearholmer]

Nature is indeed the imperative, and it really, really, really is imperative that we change what we are doing, and right now that rate it f change is pathetically inadequate, but it’s also necessary to make the right changes, not just the ones that serve pre-existing prejudices or jealousies.

 

My gut feel, again could be wrong, is that the travel change to go for biggest and hardest is holidays by air travel. That is a massive sector, with very high per unit environmental damage and, as the pandemic demonstrated, not going on foreign holidays might be annoying and disappointing, but it doesn’t kill anyone. The economic and social disruption of screwing right down on recreational air travel would be immense, but it does seem to be one of the lower hanging fruits in all this - high benefit to cost compared with many other things.

[keefer]

Can those who wish to discuss the socio-environmental impact of free choice start their own thread in Wheeltappers?

Whilst some it was relevant to the E-W Rail situation initially, it isn't now.

Thanks.

[highpeakman]

17 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

Why?!

 

In this age of instant, person-to-person communication, we should have seen the end of business travel long ago.

 

Since there is an imperative to reduce carbon-production, business travel should be banned; end of!

 

Let's be honest, it was never about the need to be in the same place at the same time. It was / is an expected / entitled perk of a certain level of business management.

 

Moreover, the transport companies - in particular airlines - rely on being able to charge silly money for first / business class, as it is charged to the employer.

 

Abolish first / business class and see how many business persons want to travel economy.

 

Sooner or later, we will all have to face up to the constraints of reducing carbon output  - let's reserve travel for pleasure, and at a realistic price.

 

CJI.

 

 

Sorry but not really true in my experience. Speaking as someone who spent a 40 year career in international Hi-Tech sales, while I wouldn't deny that a few do exploit such travel and expense opportunities I certainly could not agree with you for the majority of travel and meetings. It is, of course, true that the Internet makes transfer of information so much easier but meeting people face to face is very different indeed to screen meetings (I have done both) and it would just not be possible to pick up so much detailed information on how your customer/supplier feels and to physically see and discuss complex technical equipment is vital. I was a partner/director in a start up business that built up over 20 years and we always watched our expenditure very carefully indeed and certainly never took any car trips/flights/hotels/customer visits as "Jollies". We were successful because of our careful use of our cash and our supportive attitude towards our customers. In 40 years of regular flying, both overseas and internal UK all journeys/hotels were economy. All customer/supplier visits had to be justified and similar attitudes prevailed in the other companies I worked for over the years. 

 

Edited to add that some of my travel was by train and I am aware that quite a lot of business travel was done by rail. Rail is important to businesses for that reason and i think that the East West link will be very important for travellers between those two high tech centres. I used to live near Bedford and dealt with both those towns. That rail link would have been very useful to me.

Edited July 28, 2022 by highpeakman

[RJS1977]

On 27/07/2022 at 20:54, cctransuk said:

 

 

Sooner or later, we will all have to face up to the constraints of reducing carbon output  - let's reserve travel for pleasure, and at a realistic price.

 

CJI.

 

 

 

But then surely travel for pleasure is itself a non-essential, and therefore ripe for the axe in the rush to cut CO2 emissions.

 

(Personally I would have thought that - for example - axing non-essential foreign travel would be "low hanging fruit" - albeit politically unpopular - compared with decarbonising the energy grid, introducing electric vehicle charging points, enabling people to buy said electric vehicles that cost much more than their petrol equivalents, enabling people to afford the cost of installing heat pumps and replacing all their radiators etc).

[Davexoc]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Remaining, or returning g, slightly OT for a moment, it would be helpful/interesting to understand which of our individual actions cause what depletion of natural resources and environmental damage.

 

My gut feel, possibly way off beam, is that heating out homes (because we live in a place with cool/cold winters), owning and running a car, using aeroplanes to go on holiday, buying stuff we could manage without, and eating an overly processed, overly protein-rich diet, are probably the real biggies, along possibly with building things (houses, roads, railways, anything really) using very energy-rich and poorly-renewable materials (concrete, bricks, steel, aluminium).

 

Any thoughts?

 

You missed pets. Huge carbon footprint because of the protien rich food they consume.

I seem to remember that the average dog is worse than a car.... Think that was from QI.

[dibber25]

Gosh! Here's me opening a thread about the East-West rail link in order to read about a railway and I get a whole load of pontificating about global warming. Thought I was going to read something interesting - learn something I didn't already know. Well, that's another ten minutes wasted. Yes, I do care about global warming - not that I can do much about it - but apparently there'll be less global warming if I sit in the back of the aeroplane. That's OK - never flown business class anyway. (CJL)

[simon b]

So back on topic for a moment, I was in Bicester earlier today and work has started on the track laying from western end. There are now concrete sleepers extending out under both Charbridge lane and Bicester road bridges.

[melmerby]

So when the section Bletchley to Bicester is complete what services are there going to be?

[phil-b259]

5 hours ago, melmerby said:

So when the section Bletchley to Bicester is complete what services are there going to be?

 

Nobody really knows. Yes there is an outline timetable giving TPHs, but its not clear who is going to run the thing or with what.

 

However given the DfT are firmly in 'cuts' mode you can be sure it will be a lot less than originally proposed and basically a 'do the minimum we have to'.

 

Pre-pandemic the DfT had this idea they could set up East-West Rail as some sort of golden boy to give NR and the franchised TOCs a kicking by using it as an example of a low cost railway system...

Edited July 29, 2022 by phil-b259

[Nearholmer]

This does have the makings of a bit of a mess, because if everything east of Bletchley is cut from the scheme, the best any service could achieve would be Bedford-slowly-MK-Oxford/Aylesbury, which will produce traffic, without doubt, but with all due respect to Bedford, it isn’t Cambridge, and anyone wanting to go to Cambridge will continue to drive, or catch that really tedious bus, not swap modes half-way.

[melmerby]

I was wondering about such things as Rugby/Northampton(?) to Oxford etc.

At least giving a link from such places to south coast XC trains

 

Problem is the lack of wires so diseasal or bi-mode.

[Nearholmer]

Once HS2 abstracts some intercity traffic, possibly, although the volume of freight on WCML is impressive too, but right now it’s going to be a pain squeezing paths in the get between Bletchley and MK, let alone beyond MK, unless something else is cut back.

[Davexoc]

Using how far can you go in 5 hours looks like this from CMK....

 

 

EWR if it ever gets completed, that map would change considerably. I'm guessing CMK to Oxford is via Brum and not London, as Didcot takes longer....

[Nearholmer]

Great minds think alike, or maybe the other old saying!

 

I was just going to post that very picture to make the point how poorly all of us along this famous arc are presently served for E-W trips, as opposed to N-S.

[melmerby]

9 hours ago, Davexoc said:

Using how far can you go in 5 hours looks like this from CMK....

 

 

EWR if it ever gets completed, that map would change considerably. I'm guessing CMK to Oxford is via Brum and not London, as Didcot takes longer....

72 mins BNS- Oxford (hourly)

54 mins MKC - BNS (hourly)

 

Not good connections,  the Milton Keynes train arrives 3 mins after the Oxford train departs Birmingham.

However change at Coventry and you can catch the same XC train but there is 43 mins wait. (Also possible using International)

[RJS1977]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

72 mins BNS- Oxford (hourly)

54 mins MKC - BNS (hourly)

 

Not good connections,  the Milton Keynes train arrives 3 mins after the Oxford train departs Birmingham.

However change at Coventry and you can catch the same XC train but there is 43 mins wait. (Also possible using International)

 

However IIRC there is a Coventry-Kenilworth-Leamington stopper between the hourly Coventry-Leamington XCs, which in turn connects with the XC services via Solihull which should knock some time off.