I see the staggeringly stupid idea of ‘air taxis’ has gained enough traction to be the subject of an exhibition. A recent release seriously suggests VTOL aircraft seating two people as an alternative for commuting in road-level traffic to ‘avoid congestion.’ Such an idea, with aircraft at £500,000 a pop and landing limited to buildings […]
Dear Luke I’d just like to briefly take issue with some points made by your interesting article about mayoral powers. The general point that co-ordinated services can help meet needs more efficiently is one I’d agree with, but this doesn’t have to be as part of a franchised system; I think some LAs have forgotten […]
In our feature about HCT in relation to Section 19 licences, Dai Powell asks the question: ‘What’s the problem we are trying to solve?’ It is easily answered: unfair competition. The evidence has been there for years. I have met minibus operators who have lost half their work to CTOs who have bid at commercially […]
In a past life, I did a lot of off-road driving for a Land Rover magazine. It was enormous fun, and I still have a passion for it. Browsing the web the other day, I wandered on to Unvi’s website to discover that something which existed only in my dreams is built by Unvi – […]
It was inevitable that, at the start of the autumn term, horror stories about home-to-school services would surface. One popped up on my screen this morning; parents of special educational needs children in Suffolk baffled by endless, late changes of vehicle, driver and operator, whether taxis or minibuses. Their comments cast doubt on the efficiency […]
When your LEZ begins, with its ‘Euro VI or pay’ ultimatum for coaches, you’ll have almost exactly the same mix of vehicles you had before, and any notion you had of reducing overall coach emissions will be sunk. The reason? Appalling levels of stasis in developing a policy for retrofit coach emissions systems. If it […]
I must be getting soft in my old age, but Plaxton’s new double-deck coach has made me get all nostalgic and fuzzy. There’s something about ‘decker coaches which has always drawn me, gawping, like a moth to the flame. And here’s a brand-new model, the first for 27 years from Scarborough… and it’s even resurrected […]
That does rather depend on whether the Grim Reaper spares me for another decade or so, but despite all the advances in emissions control for diesels (and bus and coach engines are, beyond doubt, very clean) two spectres hover over them. The first is the problem of fossil fuels. While it’s possible to run compression-ignition […]