Christian Wolmar's November newsletter (from Russia)
Christian Wolmar
Dear subscriber,
This is an unusually late newsletter as I am writing this from a hotel in Ekaterinburg, having spent the past two weeks on the Transsiberian. This followed the, literally, busiest month of my freelance life, caused mainly by the fiasco over the West Coast franchise but also because of an unusual number of other commitments, such as a conference on urban freight in Gothenburg and making preparations for this trip.
Russia first. I have blogged a couple of times on the site about the trip and will write some more. But there’s lots more to say. My partner Deborah and I have now stayed in five towns, all pretty sizeable, and each with their own particular transport peculiarities but all characterised by unfettered car growth whose damaging effects are becoming all too obvious. The central areas of towns seem to have no parking restrictions and certainly no traffic wardens, with the result that cars are parked in a higgledy piggedly fashion with no regard to pedestrians – though interestingly they tend to avoid getting in each other’s way.
Already there are far too many cars and some places, such as Irkutsk’s main street, Karl Mark Street (Ulitsa) seem to be in permanent gridlock. There is little sign of any attempt to control this unrestricted growth and as Russians get more affluent – well some of them anyway as this is a very unequal society – and buy more cars, there will be many more situations like that.
Most towns have tram and trolleybus systems which are incredibly cheap to use – typically 25p or 30p – and still have conductors collecting the money. Most of the systems clearly date from Soviet times and the trams in particular look like something that a Lego set half destroyed by a disgruntled five year old. Moreover, they rarely seem to have priority over other traffic when they run on the roads. Without rapid investment, half these systems look as if they will be forced out of use within a few years just when they will become even more vital as the roads become ever more clogged up.
It sounds patronising, but I wish there were a way of pointing out the disaster that lies ahead for these cities if they do not attempt to control the use of private cars in cramped city environments. In terms of transport policies, these cities are in the 1960s. In a couple, Ekaterinburg and Vladivostok, they even favour nasty cold subways as ways of forcing pedestrians to cross roads in a way that does not disrupt the traffic. Novosibirsk, on the other hand, had excellent traffic controlled crossings with those countdown timers that are now popping up in London.
There is one aspect that works well which is the marshrutkas. In most towns the municipal bus systems of soviet times have fallen apart and been replaced by private enterprise marshrutkas, little minibuses – typically around 14 seats – which run on fixed routes, clearly regulated, with fixed prices – usually 15 roubles (30p) for the shorter distance ones, and up to 40 or even 100 roubles for longer ones. They do not seem to run to fixed schedules but wait until a few people have got in and then start off. But their routes are clearly designated outside and are fixed. In that Russian way, passengers collect the fares themselves, wordlessly, and pass them to the person nearest the driver, and I was rather discomfited when handed a couple of hundred roubles and had to remember the Russian for the number of passengers who had contributed, as one was expecting change. Although the system does work well, there are times in intermediate stops when the buses are all full, but hey I have experienced that in London.
On the matter of the West Coast franchise, I have put on a couple of blogs and written about it in several places, all of which will be on the site by the time I send out the next newsletter in mid December. Suffice to say that this is a Premiership level cock up that arises from the structure of franchising and its internal contradictions but, of course, the politicians will stick to the franchising model whatever the evidence in front of them that it is inherently flawed. Ho hum
As for the site, I am unable to upload very much from here, though there are a couple of reasonably recent Rail columns which I put up before leaving covering on the franchise chaos and on American railways . I also managed to put a piece I wrote about railway nostalgia for the Sunday Telegraph but the rest will have to wait for my return and will be mentioned in the next newsletter. There will, too, be plenty more about the Transsiberian which has lived up to every expectation.
I will by then hopefully have competed the online version of the Stagecoach book, though that may have to wait until the New Year but meanwhile the combined sales of On the Wrong Line and Down the Tube from the Kindle platform were at record levels last month. You can get them here
I note I am getting Russian ads on my website – do click on them and any others, too as it all pays for the site.
Christian
Ekaterinburg, November 20 2012