According to the Times:

And just when I thought that the Government had finally realised that vertical fragmentation doesn't work.

I live in south London, just north of Croydon. The closest railway station is Selhurst, but in a pinch I can walk to or from East Croydon. This is useful, as East Croydon is an important stop on the main line south, and thus has better services than just about any other station in south London. As well as all stations services, there are express services to both London Bridge and London Victoria, and one can thus get to central London more quickly than from many places that are physically closer to it. Some of the London Bridge services proceed along Thameslink, so one can also get to King's Cross and north London without changing trains. And if one wants to leave the country, there are also very frequent services to Gatwick airport.

So, along my local rail line from Victoria through Clapham Junction, Balham, Norbury, Thornton Heath, Selhurst, East Croydon and beyond, there are two types of service: local services that stop at all stations (including Selhurst), and express services that typically do not stop between Clapham Junction and East Croydon. If I am coming home it is best to get a train that stops at Selhurst, but if I can't manage it and I instead get a train that only stops at East Croydon, I can live with this.

And this is particularly an issue lat at night. For some obscure reason, the line from London Victoria via Selhurst to East Croydon and beyond is one of the very few rail lines in Britain on which a 24 hour service operates. Trains leave Victoria at 2am, 3am, and 4am, meaning that I can get home at any time of night. These are express trains, stopping only at Clapham Junction and East Croydon, and then a few places beyond.

When I first started living here, I often went to some trouble to make the last train home from central London that is scheduled to stop at Selhurst. This leaves Victoria at 12.40am. However, inevitably there were times when I missed this train, or when I missed the previous Selhurst train (which leaves Victoria at around 11.50) and I hopped on an East Croydon train instead.

Which is when I discovered something curious. Although the timetables, departure boards at stations, and PA announcements would declare that the trains stop only at Clapham Junction and East Croydon, these trains would travel rapidly from Clapham Junction to Thornton Heath and would then slow down and stop at Selhurst. People would get off the train at Selhurst, and the trains would proceed on their way.

I experimented further, catching more and more trains that were not supposed to stop at Selhurst. As it happened, I discovered that pretty much every train travelling from Victoria to East Croydon after 10pm stops at Selhurst, regardless of whether the timetable says it does or not. (On one evening a train genuinely did not stop at Selhurst, and the announcer made a point of announcing that "This train does not stop at Selhurst" three or four times prior to the train leaving Victoria, and once again just before it stopped at Clapham Junction). People who live near Selhurst are quite aware of this: sometimes in the early hours of Sunday morning, as many as 30 people will get off the train at its unscheduled Selhurst stop.

What is the reason for this? Well, it's quite simple. South Central (sorry, I mean Southern) has a major depot at Selhurst, and a lot of their staff start and finish their shifts there. The trains stop to allow railway staff who have finished work for the evening to return to their cars / homes / whatever.

Now this is entirely reasonable. However, given that virtually all late trains do in fact stop at Selhurst, can anyone think of a good reason why they don't just advertise this in the timetable? That way new people coming to the area would know at once that they could get home late at night, and would not have to discover the little timetabling secret for themselves.

Or is there some weird regulatory issue at play here. Perhaps if the Selhurst stops became official, permission from seventy six bureaucrats would have to be obtained if the extra stops were ever to be abolished, and if they never exist in the first place then this clearly cannot happen. Or something.

I'm afraid the PhotoStitching here is a bit ropey but even so I think it gets the idea across pretty well.

I took this to illustrate a not-fully-thought-out theory that I was playing with at the time, namely that you can tell the health of an industry from its aesthetics. The aesthetics here are good so you can tell that the railway industry in the 1860s (or whenever it was) was in a good state whereas today...

Update 06/05/04

I thought I'd just add in this photo of Vauxhall station just to illustrate what I mean about modern-day railway aesthetics.

I'm sure by now most readers are familiar with the procedure for posting comments but I thought I'd mention a couple of things that readers might not be aware of.

Firstly, we have e-mail notification. That means that if you comment on a posting, no matter how old, that comment will be e-mailed to the author. So, it won't be wasted - oh no.

I am looking into putting up a Recent Comments section on one of the sidebars but I am not quite sure how to do that yet.

Secondly, and on a slightly grimmer note, I must remind commenters that I own Transport Blog and you are guests on my cyberspace. I will tolerate all sorts of things including bad spelling, bad grammar, unsplit infinitives and even opposition (which actually I am all in favour of). What I will not tolerate is rudeness. You can think I or other authors or other commenters are the biggest morons in the universe but you still have to be polite to me/them. If you want to be rude to people go find a newsgroup.

We talk about it all the time especially in relation to trains but what is it exactly? How do we know when we are overcrowded?

Is it a number? Actually, rule that one out. I am highly dubious about any argument that requires the use of a number or requires the "drawing of a line". Anyway, the numbers are absurd. Here, in the UK we use the wonderfully oxymoronic term, Passengers in Excess of Capacity (PIXC), while in Japan they happily talk in similarly ludicrous numbers like 150% and 200%. 200% of what, exactly?

So, if it's not a number what is it? Is it standing up? Or rubbing shoulders with someone? What about sitting down and bashing your knees against the seat (or knees) in front?

If you take standing up, for instance, try this thought experiment. Imagine you have a choice of carriages for your daily commute. In the first you are guaranteed a seat. In the second there are no seats but the fare is significantly lower. Which would you choose? Actually, let's make that choice even more severe. The crush carriage is really very crushed indeed. Now, which one do you choose? Of course there a lot of other factors such as distance of journey, smoothness of train, average minginess of your fellow passenger and cost but are you quite sure that you want to rule out the crush carriage? I'm not.

And what is the difference between "overcrowding" and just, plain, ordinary "crowding"?

The more I think about it the more I think it is almost impossible to define. That is not to say it is not an issue. Many people endure conditions I am sure they would rather not endure every day.

Let's try this. There is such a thing as space and we'd all like more of it. And as we get ever less of it each of reaches a point where (depending on other factors) we decide we've had enough and we'll try an alternative. That is what overcrowding really is. It is a very individual thing.

When all is said and done I think the term is useless. Far better to talk about passenger comfort or passenger space and leave it at that.

A deal brokered by Centro and Central Trains will see ten new diesel units added to one of the busiest lines in the West Midlands. A new "train every ten minutes" timetable is also planned for a September launch, when the first of these ten units are rolled out.

I used to live in the West Midlands, and frequently took the Stourbridge-Birmingham-Stratford line, so I noted this story with interest. (Of course, like most who flee the area, I plan never to return, so it's not as if this development will actually affect my life in any substantial way -- but still.) Apart from the typically chaotic and unreliable services in and out of Birmingham New Street, I couldn't say if the state of public transport in the West Midlands struck me as being any worse than services I've experienced in other parts of the country. But things certainly weren't remarkably better. Additional carriages and more frequent trains could only be welcome news to a beleaguered traveller.

That said, my eye stuck on a couple of claims in particular that Centro and Central Trains have made about public transport in the Midlands. One:

Centro say the trains will encourage up to 1,000 cars off the road.

Two:

Ged Burgess, from Central Trains, said: "The issue in the West Midlands is not rail performance, which is quite good now, but rail capacity. This is aiming to alleviate that."

The Jeremy Clarkson vehicle (geddit?!) included items on:

• how to buy a car and drive it to Manchester and back for less than the price of the rail ticket
• Porsche v Ferrari track day specials
• Jordan
• the Dodge Charger v. the Dodge Challenger
• and, as if you hadn't guessed it… speed cameras

Update 24/05/04

This was written in ignorance of Jackie's post below. I checked out the timestamps - they're 7 minutes apart. Great minds, as they say.

Further to Clarkson's Great Race, Top Gear last night featured another (supposed) blow to public transport, using the almighty car as its weapon of choice. But it was really much more than that: It was a ringing endorsement of the free market.

Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear co-presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, were each given £100 with which to buy a car. It had to be taxed and tested, but otherwise they were free to purchase what they liked. Clarkson opted for an ugly Volvo, May for an Audi, and Hammond for a GTI...a Rover GTI, which was greeted with much derision by Clarkson and May. ("Ha ha ha! A Rover! Ha ha ha! A bleedin' Rover!" -- repeat ad nauseam.) Apart from being unattractive in the extreme, the cars really were in surprisingly good nick -- especially considering that they each cost less than £100.

Of course, Clarkson and co used this as an opportunity to rubbish trains. They calculated that a return train ticket from London to Manchester costs £182, a number to which we might all take exception. That's the price of a standard open return, whereas a saver return for off-peak travel would be £52.10. But I'm willing to let that slide, because if you compare the cost of deciding on the spur-of-the-moment to drive to Manchester with the cost of deciding on the spur-of-the-moment to catch the train to Manchester, and figure in the convenience that driving allows...Well, let's not get hung up on those numbers.

The fact is, for under £100 they got three cars, fully tested and taxed, that got them to Manchester and back. I believe that it was at one point stated that, even with fuel and the cost of the M6 toll road (oh, that glorious M6 toll road -- another post altogether), it still worked out at under £100 for each car and its journey northward and back. That strikes me as pretty good going and, leaving aside the question of the value of public transport, should please any supporter of the free market, in transport or otherwise.

As regular readers will have noticed Transport Blog has acquired a couple of new writers. Jackie D will be well known to those who remember the now sadly defunct Au Currant. She continues to contribute to GastroBlog and Samizdata. Mark Holland aka MH, on the other hand, though a frequent commenter has only recently set up his personal blog: Blognor Regis.

A warm welcome to both of them.

Regular readers of Transport Blog will be familiar with my belief that one of the major causes of the failure of British Rail Privatisation has been the vertical fragmentation of the network. However, I have never written a post specifically stating that view. Until now.

I've only been using public transport for seven years or so, since I came to Britain from the US. In that time, I've become somewhat obsessed with a certain aspect of travelling by bus and train: perfect timing.

I really hate being late for events or to meet people, but I'm almost as annoyed by arriving with too much time to kill. With the slight unpredictability, shall we say, of public transport, a fun-but-maddening game can be made of timing one's trip perfectly.

Yesterday evening was a case in point.

I see speed cameras are once again in the news. This time because the government is proposing to change the fines applied to those caught by them. I find it very difficult to comment on stories like this:

1. because this issue is not about speed cameras but speed limits
   
2. Because I want to see private roads which set their own speed limits
   
3. Because the issue of speed limits is predicated on the idea that safety is paramount. This isn't true.
   
4. Because the assumption is that speed limits make the world a safer place. This is also doubtful.

Recently, my laptop computer developed a fault. My laptop is my only computer, and it was thus very annoying to be without it for several weeks. Partly as a consequence, I am in the process of building myself a desktop computer out of various bits and pieces. The first step is just to get the thing to work in some form - I may upgrade some of the pieces to something nicer later. One thing that I needed was a screen. Lots of people have old screens lying around, and Brian Micklethwait wanted to get rid of his because it was taking up space in his flat.

So I just had to get it home. As I don't have a car, it had to be by public transport. The screen was an old model and heavy, and I did not want to have to carry it far. This led me to a different set of requirements when figuring how to get home to those that normally apply. In normal circumstances I would either walk to Victoria station, and catch a train to Selhurst just north of Croydon, which is where I live. Or I would walk to Vauxhall across the river, catch a train to Clapham Junction, and then catch the train from Victoria on its way through. (As Vauxhall is in Zone 2, going this way also works out cheaper).

However, both of these routes were clearly out in this instance. The screen was too heavy to carry to either of the railway stations. However, I could catch a bus in Vauxhall Bridge road to either Victoria or Vauxhall. However, there were disadvantages to both. To get to Victoria, I would have to cross a busy road, and walk a distance down the street to the nearest bus stop, get off a bus at a location not terribly close to Victoria Station, find the right platform, walk a substantial distance through a crowded station, go through ticket barriers, and get on the train. If I chose instead to get on a bus to Vauxhall, I would have to get off at a bus stop not especially close to the station, cross a complicated road intersection, and find the right train. I probably would have done this, except for the fact that I would have to change trains at Clapham Junction, which would mean carting the screen a fair distance including up and down stairs through another crowded station.

So what did I do? Well, I looked carefully at the bus map, and noticed that the bus to Vauxhall continued a substantial distance into south London. In particular it happened to stop right next to East Dulwich station. As it happens, not all trains to Selhurst start at Victoria: there is a less frequent service that starts at London Bridge and goes via East Dulwich and Tulse Hill. So as it happened, it was possible to get a bus to East Dulwich wich stopped right outside the station (although I still had to cross a road), where I could change to a train at a not very busy station with no ticket barriers and a relatively short walk. And this I did.

In this case, most of the usual considerations for choosing a route did not apply. I was not concerned with finding the route with the minimum time or the shortest route. (To say that the route I took was non-direct is an understatement). What I was concerned with was minimising the total walking distance, minimising the number of times I had to change from one vehicle or mode of transport to another, and avoiding having to walk in large crowds. Frequency was not very important to me, and journey time even less so. And this led me to make a completely different decision to the one I normally would.

Of course, Jeremy Clarkson would say that it would have been a great deal easier and faster if I had a car. And in this instance he would certainly have been right.

In a comment to Jackie’s post on satellite navigation Mark Holland manages to mention last night’s Top Gear in which Jeremy Clarkson challenged his co-presenters to a race from the Top Gear HQ in Cranleigh to Monte Carlo. Clarkson drove, his colleagues took the train. Why exactly, they didn’t pop down to Heathrow like everyone else is a mystery but that was the challenge. And Clarkson won.

That’s a bit of a shocker. I know there are all sorts of things that slow down train journeys. You have to get to the station. You have to buy your ticket. They have to slow for bends, dodgy track etc. They have to stop. I presume that his colleagues had to transfer in Paris but, you never know, maybe they didn’t. And I am sure that Clarkson took a “French” view of speed limits.

But even so I am surprised. The top speed of a TGV is 186mph. Average I would guess is about 140mph. My guess is that Clarkson (even he has to be mindful of his licence) was rarely driving at above 110mph. One wonders what he might have done if he’d really been allowed to rip.

So what happened? I wonder if SNCF frequency was the culprit.

A couple of years ago, I drove to the South of France with my friends. We borrowed my friend's father's BMW estate, so that we could bring back as many crates of wine as possible. But after the first twelve hours of driving and map reading, at least one of us (that would be me) was thinking that the wine may not have made such an ordeal worthwhile.

One of those friends, soon after we returned from France, bought a Mercedes CLK with satellite navigation, and has since purchased a Mini Cooper (for himself) and a BMW (for his wife-type-partner), all with sat nav. The idea is that we'll be able to take one or more of these cars to France with us and fill them with booze, without the hassle of maps and the spats they can cause. An expensive solution to a minor problem, perhaps, but one I approve of wholeheartedly. After using satellite navigation to find several potentially troublesome addresses, I have become a major fan of the technology, and would not dream of driving a car without it.

But these sat nav systems are not without their bugs.

One day last month, I was visiting with someone who has satellite navigation in his BMW. We decided to go for lunch at a restaurant near Colchester, in the village of Great Tey. But we couldn't find Great Tey in the sat nav directory no matter how hard we looked. And then finally, there it was -- under Tey Great. "That's a bit cheeky," the car's owner commented.

A couple of weeks ago, driving around central London in the same car, we were trying to find a certain restaurant. But at almost every turn, the sat nav system directed us to drive the wrong way down one-way streets, or to take avenues that were closed due to road works. The driver explained to me that there were updates to the sat nav software that you could get, but as he'd only had the car a few months, he hadn't yet bothered to do so. That explained that, then.

Fast forward to this week: same car, same car owner, in deepest Fingringhoe. After a couple of drinks in a country pub, we got in the car and entered our desired destination into the sat nav system. The system advised us to make a U-turn.

We were still in the car park.

It also indicated that we were 7.3 miles from our destination. Once we'd pulled out of the car park, it told us that we were 9.6 miles from our destination. Half a mile up the road, it sent us down what appeared to be a mud track for a quarter of a mile, then spit us back out onto the road on which we'd originally been driving.

Somehow, I don't think that my hypothesis -- that the car is possessed, a British Christine -- quite hits the nail on the head. I've looked on Google for information on sat nav bugs, and have come up quite emptyhanded. While I'd love to take this as an indication that the car is evil, I suspect there is more to it than that. Any suggestions gratefully received in the comments.