On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:38:31 -0000, wrote:



David, did you see my post? I'm repeating it here for you, just in case
you missed it.


I thought that the time had actually come to draw in line in the sand over the
exchanges made at uk.transport.london and the only reason I kept it going for
so long is that Internet searches on the West London Tram would reveal
discussions going on in this backwater. However it seem no matter how much I
dot the eyes or cross the tees it never seems to be enough to satisfy some
people that are sceptical that a trolleybus solution can deliver any real
benefits.

I thought it would be reasonably easy to respond to the issues raised by you
but found myself very quickly bogged down trying to provide bullet point
replies. All I could manage was several paragraphs before getting a headache,
but you might as well get the feel of what might have been said in a longer
reply.

If there is going to be street based public transport along the Uxbridge Road
and the tram scheme can't get funded then what's left to provide the public
transport provision in the area? Making suggestions that there are old
railway alignments that could be used for a tram scheme when oddly no one else
seems to identified their potential before now, still ignores the fact that
street running will still be required with all the attendant problems of
slotting trains onto an urban road which is barely wide enough in places to
allow buses to pass. Without substantial property demolition at pinch points,
it is impossible to give trams priority over other traffic, including BUSES
with passengers who have destinations that the tram does not serve.

Concepts of ideas that are dreamt up in a couple of minutes do not stack up
when you pour over the detail in the ensuing days, weeks and months. There is
a team of transport professions and engineers working at TfL on this [ill
fated] tramway and there is no sign of them shutting up shop on a job that has
at least completed the design phase. It is naïve to suggest that congestion
can be reduced, or even eliminated, along the length and breadth of one
artially roadway, without applying traffic management schemes and improvements
at least in the immediate vicinity of the Uxbridge Road corridor and perhaps a
much wider area beyond.

You also can't improve public transport provisions London wide if a single
[tramway] scheme absorbs so much money that there is next to nothing left in
the kitty. What IS special about West London is that it is where this prestige
project will [perhaps] be built; the rest of London is earmarked for nothing
more spectacular than what is in place already. How you even start to improve
perceptions of public transport by do nothing is certainly a neat trick that
has yet to see the light of day. It is certainly not going to impress anyone
using a car to think 'I must catch the bus / tram / train next time'.

If we say a trolleybus option is better than a tram, then we have arrived at
that conclusion by considerable research into TfL's tram scheme. We have
examine many documents in the public domain against our own very detailed
analysis of trolleybus operations created by a team of transit professionals
who are sympathetic to this mode of transit. A false assumption was made by
you that we did neither. I don't wish to get bogged down in dealing with what
are, for the most part, poorly though out or ill informed criticisms of
trolleybus alternatives for WLT that frequently seem to go over again and
again, much the same ground.

And there are so many subtle 'inversions' in your posting e.g. where we said
"As the design of WLT as a tramway does not integrate bus stops with trams
stops …." Your response was "I would hope that whatever mode of WLT is chosen,
it wouldn't integrate its stops with bus stops. Keeping them separate would
help establish it in the public's imagination as something new and different.
This will help stimulate their curiosity more than just the same old bus
routes calling at the same old bus stops but with added overhead cables."
Taking this text alone I assume you intended to throw the baby out with the
bathwater by not even trying to have an integrated public transport system.

Trying to deal rationally with this sort of exchanges is just going to be an
endless task and quite frankly I would much prefer to spend my time more
productively in producing pages for www.tfwl.org.uk - a site that has quickly
established itself to have exceptional credibility and well thought out
responses to the avalanche of misinformation that is circulating to make it
appear that the West London Tramway is the best thing since sliced bread. Just
follow what is going on there and you will learn so much more.

David Bradley


[snip]