Again and again

Another month, and regular as clockwork another major scheme hits problems and generates more excuses. This time it is Manchester-Preston electrification and a delay to a delay. Network Rail couldn’t meet the original six years programme, and have impressively managed another delay of a year in just two years since the Hendy Review ‘reset’ the project.
Less impressive are the excuses, which are ‘ground conditions’ and ‘uncharted mining sites’. Let us be clear, it is not the fault of the ground. The ground is just there: you can put a pile in almost anything, or redesign around it if you know what you are dealing with. It may cost a bit more, but it shouldn’t delay the programme.
That’s why you do a site investigation (SI). If it really is true that (as reported in Modern Railways) that 3 out of 10 foundations were initially unsuccessful, either the SI was seriously deficient, or it was ignored or wrongly interpreted, or follow-up surveys were not carried out as the design was finalised. I’ve been involved with rail projects and SIs in the same geological area and find it hard to believe the claim that ground conditions were so different within ‘half a metre of the surveys’ unless the survey (or its interpretation) was defective, structures were totally different to those originally envisaged, or someone just made a series of mistakes. As for mining, activity in this part of the Lancashire Coalfield ceased early, well before the 21st Century; mining for most of the 20th century is well-documented and older unrecorded workings near the railway will have settled by now. I know because I’ve used the records for other schemes. In any case, the depth of piling for electrification masts should not cause a significant risk.
Network Rail also claim that running sand and water slowed progress, but how did these come as a surprise? The same conditions were encountered (and caused delays) when the Farnworth Tunnels were re-bored in 2015 for the same electrification project. How was it possible that the lessons that should have been learnt just two years ago on the same project had been forgotten so quickly?
All this points to project management failure on a epic scale. Again. The lack of notice to operators about the delays to the scheme suggests that internal project control was, and almost certainly still is completely ineffective. The use of seasons in Network Rail’s suggestion that work can be completed by ‘’late summer or early autumn’ should not fill anyone with confidence that the programme is under control and there will not be further delays. Everyone thought and hoped that Hendy would bring a new rigour and competence, but this certainly hasn’t happened yet. What a shambles.

Network Rail get it wrong again

I am going to scream if I ever see the planning system blamed again for delays and cost increases to GW electrification. In November 2017 Modern Railways carried an article about rebuilding a bridge to allow electrification, and suggested that ‘obtaining planning consents has been a major drag on the process’. A standard ‘bureaucracy gets in the way of modernisation’ story?

But hang on a minute! The bridge in question at Steventon was listed in 1988, and electrification was authorised in 2009, so why has the need for Listed Building Consent come as such a surprise?

As a chartered planner I am exasperated. I’ve worked in rail and light rail for several decades and regularly deal with planning applications, Conservation Areas, Listed Buildings and landscape designations. The range of planning consents and the time and effort needed to get them has barely changed in my time in the profession. British town planning is a permissive system that needs consultation, negotiation, and balancing of different interests. Local and national town planners are aware of the needs of the rail industry, want to encourage investment, and compromise is usually possible.

A good example is the elegant OHLE design achieved for the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick. This is a very historic structure (Grade I listed – the highest possible, and much higher level of protection that Steventon) in an historically important but windy setting. Lengthy and sometimes difficult negotiations were needed between British Rail and the Royal Fine Arts Commission and other stakeholders, but a solution was negotiated. ECML electrification went ahead on time and budget and the results look good.

Contrast this with OHLE installed between Reading and Didcot through the statutory North Wessex Downs and Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Despite the legal requirement for Network Rail to ‘have regard to the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the AONB’, and a 2013 commitment to consult the AONB Board over OHLE design, Network Rail ploughed ahead with some of the most horrendous structures imaginable. This has created predictable outrage and Network Rail have had to commit to review the design. The result is terrible for everyone. Either tens of millions of pounds will be wasted replacing OHLE, or the AONB will be blighted for ever. And we haven’t even mentioned the lack of sensitivity, panic and consequent ill-feeling over electrification through Bath.

What has changed since East Coast electrification seems to be the skills, attitude and project planning competence of our atomised rail industry. Leaving aside the arrogance of relying on Permitted Development Rights for electrification, all the town planning consents needed were predictable. They could and should have been programmed in when GW electrification was approved in 2009. Yet unbelievably and unforgivably, eight years later, Steventon Bridge still doesn’t have a planning solution, let alone a Listed Building Consent. I despair.

Cardiff Blues - regeneration and transport in the capital

Cardiff: how has regeneration and transport fared almost 30 years after devolution unleashed a wave of energy? First, the good news, and there is plenty. The city centre is looking good, helped by a sensitive pedestrianisation scheme. It has superb historical assets in the castle with its Animal Wall, the market, the glorious arcades full of cafes and little shops and the civic area with excellent museum. At half term the city centre is buzzing. There is plenty of public art, including a snow dog trail providing fun for kids.


There are some good new buildings too. Cardiff Library (BDP 2009) has good proportions and a bright interior. It has a prominent site directly on The Hayes and seemed well-used and liked. The sensitively restored old library houses a lovely if confusingly named ‘Story Museum’ (the story of Cardiff rather than a museum of stories). I’m in two minds about the city-centre Millenium Stadium. It occupies a large block and it is not obvious why Cardiff City needs a separate 33,000 capacity stadium just a mile away. But it adds character to the city, it’s great for fans to have direct public transport and all the city centre facilities. It attracts a lot of people to its tours. And it is just out of the way enough to avoid sterilising too much of the city.


But the cracks are obvious even in the centre. Duke Street is a moat of traffic isolating the castle and as it races along the oddly named ‘Boulevard de Nantes’, and walking to the even more isolated museum involves instant traffic death or a grotty subway. The architecture and contents are worth it. The subway, not the death from traffic.


Cardiff Bay was the big regeneration hope. The Senate and millennium centre are great buildings. The Norwegian Church adds character but the rest of the bay is a disappointment. Mermaids Quay is lowest common denominator commercial development. Nice for a stroll, great if you like chain eatieries, but with very little character. Behind you are the grand old surviving commercial buildings. But many are vacant, some derelict and the surroundings are poor, enveloped in a swirl of traffic and fumes. This is the big opportunity area in Cardiff. Great buildings, crying out for new uses, for decent architects, for urban planning, for a decent environment to walk or cycle, for a bit of the regeneration cash that has been spent elsewhere on roads and faceless apartment blocks.

A walk around the bay reveals huge areas of derelict land waiting for development and the views are dispiriting. St David's Hotel looks awful and none of the other development seems to relate to the water or give it a decent skyline. There are a lot of apartments but little soul.


We walk round to Penarth, a pleasant but run-down seaside area and then need to get back to the city centre. The 89B took a mind and bum numbing 40 minutes to cover the four miles but we did get a lovely look at a lot of housing estates and out of town supermarkets. The bus company is the delightfully named NAT ‘New Adventure Travel’. They sure do make bus journeys adventurous. Which brings us to transport. Outside the pedestrianised city centre, traffic is supreme, the city is a mess of roads, flyovers and car parking that are hard to navigate on bike or foot. It is made clear that pedestrians and cyclists are very much second-class citizens and only tolerated because you are too poor to be in a vehicle.


A note to highway engineers – if you put up a ‘cyclist dismount’ sign, then you have designed something that is not fit for purpose. You wouldn’t expect to see a ‘motorist get out of your car and push’ sign, would you? Second note: Everywhere, everywhere are miles of pedestrian barriers. In doing so they make crossings feel longer, introducing psychological barriers, with most impact on the least mobile, and encouraging some others to make dangerous crossings to get around them. These barriers don’t just make it harder to cross the road, they sever communities and decrease opportunities for healthy transport.


Residential areas are dominated by roads and parking too. Despite the amount of tarmac, car dependency means all-day congestion which makes journeys on the limited, tortuous and confusing bus network slow and unpredictable. Multiple operators and fares makes things worse. Cardiff bus charges odd fares (£1.80?) but doesn’t give change.


The one-mile journey from Bay to City is typical. It should be easy. There is a train, but the station is marooned inland next to a traffic island, and trains go to Queen St, not the more convenient Central. There appear to be four bus routes by three (?) operators, but there are no bus maps, timetables are incoherent and fares appear random. Walking is unpleasant and cycling suicidal.

What should be done? Cardiff should be easy. Distances within the city are relatively small and much of the urban area is compact. Cardiff Bus is one of the few municipal bus operators left. It has an extensive but run-down suburban train network which should be converted to trams tomorrow.

First a change in mindset. It is the movement of people, goods and ideas that is important, not the free flow of traffic. Public transport, walking and cycling are very good at shorter distance movement, and they free up a lot of urban land for development. They create better conditions for living, working and investment. A really high-quality walking and cycling route from the Bay through the middle of the city centre and up to the University would be a good start. We need to redesign a few roads for people rather than traffic, and get the scrap metal merchants in for the railings.

Then there is the curious train shuttle, underused and of limited transport value. The obvious solution is to convert to a tram and extend it to the waterfront in the south and through the town centre (probably along St Marys Street) and out to the north. I know trams are expensive and hard to build in Britain, but this is a capital city we are talking about, not Stockport.

And then there is planning. It seems so unfashionable in Britain to link land-use and transport planning, but it can be done. Take a trip to Germany. Higher density near tram and train stations, but we know all that. Why can’t Cardiff do it?

Northern Transport Conference

As over 200 of the great and good of the north gathered in the swanky Manchester Midland Hotel for the Northern Transport summit 2017 the general election felt like ages ago; Cameron and Osbourne are ancient history. Pinch yourself to remember ‘Northern Powerhouse’ was only launched in 2014 as the idea fades from a minority Government with other things on its mind and about to spend transport cash in Northern Ireland rather than Northern England.

To recap, the stuttering northern economy is outperformed by the south, which also has higher education standards from secondary level. The London black hole becomes denser as all investment and talent is sucked into it. The further south you go, the easier it is to justify decent public transport: anything built fills up with passengers, and the economy can support local contributions from both the public sector and business. There’s not really any room for new roads, and the price and sort supply of land encourages denser communities and more walking and cycling, which in turn creates a better quality of life. In contrast, northern cities and communities are starved of public transport investment, lack skilled people, are poorly connected and find it hard to attract quality jobs outside the big cities. Northern railways are filled with slow, old diesel trains, the roads are filled with commuters and goods that should (and in other European countries would) be on rail and tram, and by dirty, lowest common denominator buses. The potential of cycling is untapped and everything is expensive, poorly co-ordinated and difficult to use. And it rains more. Welcome to the North.

Paul Swinney from Centre for Cities gave a solid and fact-based presentation that suggests that the north is a series of economies, not just one. Cities attract and generate the best jobs, but northern cities are key underperformers with skills and access to skilled labour the key reason. He painted a bleak picture of low skilled, poorly paid jobs in suburban call centres and distribution depots served mainly by congested roads. Sunderland, despite Nissan came in for special mention. He suggests that intra-regional transport is the main transport challenge, although the rest of the summit focussed on glossy inter-regional solutions: Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR): not High Speed 3 as it will not be high speed or trans-pennine motorway tunnels. Trams are obviously not sexy enough.

Light relief was provided by Jesse Norman (Eton, Merton, dad called Sir Torquil), Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport. Only in post 7 days, his civil servants put together a wiki-speech with plenty of northern facts, but he didn’t know anything about anything. He wanted us to have a single voice. Great - let us know when you have something to say, Jesse.

The dilemma for most participants was how to big-up their areas, companies and contributions but also recognise the desperate state of northern transport. Liverpool concentrated on NPR and the port. Cumbria points out that it is more than the Lake District. Is it? Lancashire look longingly at the unitary Greater Manchester system and wants to improve East-West links. Why, when the main economic focus is south to Manchester and Leeds? Sheffield is more interested with internal connections. Apparently 2 pairs out of the 4 South Yorkshire centres (Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley Rotherham) don’t have direct rail links. Can you guess? I couldn’t. And Manchester is the centre of the universe, has the biggest airport and wants NPR.

New GM Mayor Andy Burnham gave a rousing speech. He recognises the need to break through the Treasury appraisal rules, a key thread of the event. Now London Crossrail is almost finished, and Crossrail 2 is taking shape. It is obvious to everyone in the room that using conventional appraisal NPR is a dead duck and Crossrail 2 will overtake NPR in the funding queue. But no one was brave enough to say it out loud.

Highways England explanation of how they have got on and built roads and bridges contrasted with the highly defensive attitude of Graham Botham from Network Rail when challenged on high costs and poor project management. And this highlights a real problem: rail projects take decades and are risky, road projects are much easier. We’ve been here before. Recent northern history has seen integrated transport packages created, but only the roads get built. Perhaps Highways England should build our new rail lines? If we get any, that is.

Overall the impression was of some dedicated and passionate professionals looking for the right transport solution for the north. But I do wonder if everyone has been seduced by the glamour of new, almost-high-speed rail lines when currently 3-car diesel trains on a 2-track railway chug between Leeds and Manchester, held up by 2-car local trains. Transpennine electrification was announced in November 2011 and would reduce journey time, increase capacity and improve comfort but no progress is visible on the ground after six years. Why not?

As John Swinney pointed out, intra-regional transport is a key factor in attracting quality jobs. Manchester wants to be a world city but doesn’t even have a Metro, and local transport in Leeds is based on primitive buses. Thank goodness Liverpool built their Northern and Wirral lines tunnels in the sixties – they certainly wouldn’t be able to now.

What is my prescription? First, it is essential that Manchester-Huddersfield-Leeds TransPennine electrification is completed as soon as possible. This should come with some limited line speed improvements and four-tracking to allow fast trains to pass slower passenger and freight trains. Much of the route was originally four-track, so this should all be possible within the existing railway. There is plenty of decent quality surplus electric rolling stock available in the southeast.

Secondly, Manchester as the major growth generator in the north needs to start work on a tunnelled metro connecting electrified suburban lines. Metrolink is a good start, but it is slow and the city centre saturated with trams. A proper Metro would dramatically improve connectivity and unleash urban regeneration particularly to the north of the city where huge areas of derelict or underused land is available.

Everywhere there should be a focus on urban renaissance and walkable, cyclable communities based around fixed transport links. This is not rocket science and a quick Ryanair trip to any German city will explain how it can be done.

And we need to bin all those road proposals. They evidence is that they lead to dispersed, low quality and poorly paid jobs, and disparate, unconnected settlements with a poor sense of community. At the top of the pyramid the proposed tunnelled Transpennine motorway is a hugely destructive and wasteful scheme. We can do better than this.

Cycling around Manchester

The National Cycling Centre was Britain's first indoor Olympic cycling track; VisitManchester says it’s ‘a bike-friendly city with many marked cycle lanes and dedicated routes throughout the city centre and beyond’. Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) aims to make cycling ‘a mainstream, every day and aspirational form of transport’. I hired a bike from Oxford Road station, headed into the University area to see the excellent new Elizabeth Gaskell House museum, then across to Salford Quays for some ‘iconic’ architecture at Media City to test it out.

For those used to brutal concrete, Oxford Road is easily the best 1960s station in the country. A beautiful and recently sympathetically restored laminated wood structure was needed to keep the weight down. Now it has a ‘Cycle Hub’, which contains Northern Rail’s ‘Bike and Go’ operation. Register and for the day you can hire a beautiful red Dutch bike (the trains were run by Dutch Railways until early 2016) for about the price of a pint.

Immediately outside the station the first junction is an intimidating mess dominated by buses, white vans and taxis, but at least the weight of the bike helps with the potholes. Down Oxford Road a lot of money has been spent on new cycle lanes but these aren’t continuous. A lot better than nothing, but I feel safer in the main carriageway.  At one corner roadworks have exposed 1960s tram lines, while I count no less than 13 buses waiting in line at the traffic lights. Perhaps this is a clue. Maybe instead of trying to make buses and other road vehicles happy, we should remove the vehicles along the busiest bus route in Europe and have a tram, or even an underground Metro with the space given over to people in what is one of the largest concentrations of students in Europe?

Having paid my respects to Elizabeth Gaskell I head west. You would expect the University area to have good links to Salford Quays with BBC, MediaCity and other cultural attractions. But you would be wrong. Stretford Road is wide, straight and was supposed to be the New Naples: the arch and some of the architecture is nice. Few of the intended ground-floor shop units materialised, and the Naples street buzz is missing. It should be ideal for cycling, but the road is totally dominated by moving and parked cars. Nearer Salford Quays it gets worse as getting to the Bridgwater or Ship Canals requires braving an intimidating gyratory and then the towpaths are unnecessarily blocked by minor works.

Salford Quays itself is a negation of planning. That so much money has created something so ugly, poorly connected and cut off in its gated enclaves is dispiriting. The mean square outside the Lowry is little more than a turning circle, the tram stop is pig ugly, and the bland commercial buildings of MediaCity enclose a dank and draughty open space. Behind is neglected landscaping, a vast amount of car parking and an underused cycle hub (shed).

After more intimidating junctions on the way back it’s a relief to hand the bike back. We have a way to go before we have a Netherlands cycling experience. TfGM aims to increase the total number of journeys made by bike across the city region from 2% today to 10% by 2025, but the scale of the challenge and the tiny amounts of money spent so far (almost all from central Government grant-aid) make even this modest target seem faintly ridiculous. Cycling has an incredible list of benefits. It improves health, cuts pollution and noise, improves quality of life and creates jobs and other economic benefits too. All the best places in Europe to live and the most prosperous have a lot of cyclists. But all this is lost on the Councils of Greater Manchester as they designate land near Motorways for business, Green Belt for housing and build more and more roads for cars and scratch their heads and wonder why nobody wants to live in town centres anymore and why wealth creators give a wide berth. WAKE UP MANCHESTER!

Death of Stockport Announced by GMSF

The poverty of thought that passes for planning today was underlined with the recent Greater Manchester Strategic Framework (GMSF) launch. Having bizarrely invited landowners and developers to suggest sites (how is this ‘planning’? - I never got taught this at planning school), they simply put a red line around four bits of Green Belt to the south of Stockport, a town with a proud history, excellent transport links and plenty of spare urban land, but in desperate need of regeneration (see ‘Jones the Planner’ for a great description) and consigned Stockport itself to the dustbin.

High Lane is a typical Green Belt site, now earmarked for 4,000 houses. It is pleasant farmland that stops High Lane, Marple and Hazel Grove merging. The area relies on the A6 which is already congested all day with average speeds of 5-10mph. GMSF suggests that the much-loved Middlewood Way could be sacrificed to provide a tram-train link to Manchester, but this form of transport doesn’t currently exist anywhere in Britain. In any case, it would require a Transport and Works Act Order, cost over £400 million, and would take 15-20 years to build based on the experience of Metrolink (tram) schemes. By this time the volume house builders will be long gone.

Yes, we do need more, quality, well located and affordable housing. But we should look where there is already land or underused buildings next to good public transport services with spare capacity. The obvious place is Stockport centre which has a surprisingly interesting urban landscape but a centre like a swiss cheese. I wouldn’t live there now, but I probably would if we could create sustainable development based on European models.

Of course, GMSF did assume that some housing would be developed in town centres (1,500 in the case of Stockport). But the business model of volume house builders revolves around large new greenfield developments. If Green Belt sites like High Lane are released, these will be developed first, and the opportunity for real regeneration in Stockport (and other satellite towns that desperately need development like Ashton, Hyde, Oldham, etc., etc.,) will be lost for a generation. Forget about the 1,500, Stockport will be lucky to build 150.

​So what to do? First we need a proper, objective urban capacity and design study, together with an assessment of what is needed to make towns liveable again. And then we need to do it, rather than take the lazy way out with the red pen by building on the Green Belt.
Britain used to lead the world in town planning, and people came from all over the world to see our garden cities, new towns and other wonders. But no more. Our leaders in Greater Manchester need to get on a cheap Ryanair flight to The Netherlands or Germany to see how it should be done. In the meantime it is left to local people to do the planning for the planners.

Birmingham reborn

New Street, New Start they say. The big city saddled with the black hole of New Street station has spent £750 million on New Street and another £128 million to return trams to the streets for the first time in 62 years. So what does Brum look like now, and how does the transport function?

The standard image of Birmingham is big but boring; motorways, urban sprawl, industry, sixties concrete. Not in the top twenty UK places to visit, and that hurts particularly as there is a lot of great museums, architecture and spaces to visit. But Birmingham is changing. Concrete is crumbling, cars tamed, the permanent city-centre bus jam has been banished and several billion pounds on urban regeneration.


New Street is the main arrival point and was the weakest link with dingy platforms and a bare concrete concourse stuffed under an insipid shopping centre. So what does £750m buy you?  The new soaring curvy atrium is definitely second-city, with plenty of space, and a ginormous Pret-a-Manger. But nothing has been spent on the platforms, still hidden in their hole and accessed through colour coded lounges that are neither coloured nor lounges. I don’t know about you, but I have some seats and a sofa in my lounge. And some colours too. And I can find my toilet, a task that was beyond me at New Street. And don’t even ask about left luggage – perhaps they could find some space under the stairs - that's where I store mine. On arrival at New Street there's no street maps, no local public transport information, and generally no-one around to help. I’m not sure which way to go, and only find the exit I want at the second attempt.

Finding the station on the way back is almost as difficult, unless you follow signs for the shopping centre. The old station was buried under a shopping centre but is now promoted to be part of the ‘new’ Grand Central shopping centre. Time to rename New Street as ‘Grand Central’?

What about the services? Pick a German city at random and find a unified suburban train network, probably an underground Metro and overground trams too. But Birmingham has unaccountably split their transport by diverting trains to Snow Hill, a decent walk away. The single new tram line links the stations, but meanders at walking pace through precious city space and arrivesup apologetically at the side entrance to New Street. Plans for a new HS2 station will fragment the train network further. Surely a priority must be a proper cross city tunnel for trains and trams?

Of course every German city has integrated fares for all public transport too, but English expectations are so low I’m not surprised New Street has no sign of where to catch a bus or how I buy a ticket, or if I can buy one that allows me to use trams and trains too. To emphasise the lack of integration, I enter a ‘Travel Shop’ near New Street and ask for a public transport map. The staff look confused. Apparently they work for a bus company and send me back to the station.

So we’ve made it outside, what to see? Birmingham has an impressive Town Hall, Art Gallery, etc., together with some opulent pubs, banks and shops which show how rich and important Victorian Birmingham was. But sixties carmageddon and concretopia (also the name of a surprisingly readable book) has eliminated most other evidence. Some nice old buildings survived around Gas Basin on the Worcester and Birmingham canal: the remnants have been used as a backdrop for regeneration and I head off there. The walk from New Street takes you through the bland, lumpen Mailbox (a former sorting office converted into upmarket shops) to the Cube (ditto). Gas Street Basin itself is actually quite small. And the quality of the new stuff is shocking. The Premier Inn is awful beyond belief, blank brick walls, privatised space, clumsy fire escape, looming like Mordor in Lord of the Rings. Even worse is the lumpen Crowne Plaza behind. Between this and the canal there are plans to squeeze another 1.2 million square feet of mixed office, flats, leisure, retail etc. The artists’ impressions look ominous and desperate. All around are weeds, litter, random car parking and underused buildings. It's clear that Birmingham still doesn’t really understand people.

Out in the Jewellery Quarter things look up. Despite a general air of decay, many of the buildings have character. At the centre is the slightly shabby neoclassical St Paul's church in a square of interesting buildings housing independent businesses. Organic growth has produced real regeneration and real local jobs. Walking back past Snow Hill, a solitary baroque terracotta archway with a Great Western Railway Crest stands defiant against the monstrous blank wall of a car park.
So what did I learn? New New Street looks nice, but the result of £1 billion is disappointing. How can you spend this much without touching the platforms or providing space for HS2? Or somewhere to sit? Big cities desperately need to think bigger and integrate their trains. And maybe integrate fares too. There are some good regeneration projects, but still too much reliance on ‘icons’. But the spirit of enterprise is there, pushing Birmingham to tear itself down and build itself up again. I just hope it lasts longer than the 1960s.