The item mainly talked about how rubbish as a car it is, going on to become an item about what kind of car you could get on the second hand market for that kind of cash.

Coincidently, this lunchtime I called into the bike shop to get some new tyres for my bike, the current ones needing replacing partly because off-road tyres are a bit silly for somebody who never goes off-road, but mostly because they’re getting a bit ripped to shreds on the sides. Seeing the cheapest tyres that were any good came to £20 I did that sharp intake of breath thing, deciding that i didn’t feel like ponying up £40 at once instead getting just one tyre, to replace the other one next month.

Standing by the till waiting to be served, I saw this bike in the rack for sale:

I did manage to stop myself from saying out loud that for that price, I’d expect it to come with an engine attached.

Well, in a completely unexpected turn of events, it appears they are:

“Plans for £8bn of investment in Britain’s railways have been announced by the government.

It is buying about 2,000 new carriages to tackle overcrowding, electrifying some lines and pressing ahead with the Thameslink programme”.

Credit where credit’s due. Let’s see if they deliver.

It’s good that MPs have finally realised there’s a problem with train overcrowding – a problem which is, of course, Britain’s Best Kept Secret(TM).

Previous reports about train overcrowding you might think you have seen are actually figments of your imagination.

Inside Out South reporting on it in January 2009 didn’t really happen, as didn’t the University of Nottingham in January 2003. The report from the Strategic Rail Authority in July 2001 was just hot air, as was the Commons Transport Select Committee‘s findings in November 2003. As for the Department of Transport‘s research published in July 2007, and the General Consumer Council‘s study of September 1999 – well you can take that with a pinch of salt. Just like another report from the Department of Transport in August 2008.

Good news is at hand, though – because according to David Cameron in April 2007:

“Tackling overcrowding on commuter trains will be an ‘urgent priority’ for a Tory government as part of its focus on green issues, said David Cameron.

The Tory leader said more cash was needed to boost capacity on the busiest routes, although it would have to come from existing transport budgets.

Mr Cameron was warned in a leaked memo to avoid tax rises for better trains”.

It’s very easy to release Yet Another Report about train overcrowding. When is somebody going to actually do something about those reports?

It is of course entirely my own fault. I mean, silly me – I made the stupid error of assuming that because every single other train to London stops first at Birmingham International, then at Coventry, the journey taking a mere 20 minutes, that the 09:42 from Birmingham New Street would also stop first at Birmingham International, then at Coventry. So naturally it didn’t occur to me to stand there for some minutes whilst the display scrolled round to confirm my assuption. Why would I need to? Apparently my quickest way to Coventry now is to get off at Rugby and then get a bus; the ticket man didn’t say whether it was a rail-replacement bus from the station or whether I’d have to wander around looking for some other information about buses – and pay for a bus fare on top of my train fare. So, I’ll be lucky to get to the meeting which finishes at 4pm by lunchtime, making the value of my attendance now questionable. The cost of this exercise in time wasting so far – around £10, including the rail ticket and the extortionately priced coffee and breakfast sandwich. To put that into perspective, the cost of my night on Broad Street last night with some good friends was, including my meal, only £14.

Last Saturday public transport let me down too – I had to attend a meeting in Cotteridge, thinking the 10 minute train ride from Five Ways to Kings Norton would be a doddle. Sadly there had been a power failure at New Street first thing in the morning which had stuffed things up, but when the Network Rail website at 3pm was giving the impression things were nearly back to normal I thought it seemed better than the bus. After about half an hour at Five Ways with no sign of when a train might come I re-evaluated that decision and opted to risk my life on the 8A Inner Circle to then pick up the 45 at Pershore Road. Arriving at the 8 bus stop over the road from Five Ways I found a sign giving me all the information I might need to know about locations of city centre bus stops, but nothing to tell me when the bus which went past this stop might be expected to arrive, or even how frequent it was. After 15 minutes I gave up and started walking. My return journey at 7pm wasn’t much better – at Kings Norton station the trains were still stuffed up with no indication of when one might come on the screens, and the man on the end of the loudspeaker-box on the platform was still saying my train hadn’t left Longbridge (and he didn’t know when it would do) literally as it pulled up at the platform 20.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the principle of public transport; it annoys me massively when, with the planet on the brink of environmental catastrophe and the city on the brink of total gridlock, that catastrophe and gridlock is being exascerbated by people with bus stops outside their houses get in cars to drive to workplaces with bus stops outside their offices.

But when I, as an occasional public transport user (I’m fortunate enough to be able to walk to most places I need to get to) who believes in it has such a poor experience of it three times out of every four, who can blame them?

Unlike parking on yellow lines or overstaying in parking bays – which are now civil offences – parking on the pavement is still actually illegal.

Not only this, it is downright antisocial – the weight puts extra strain on pavement masonry which is designed to carry pedestrians, not cars, invariably a car parked on the pavement forces people with pushchairs or those in wheelchairs to step into the oncoming traffic on the road to get around the car, an in the very worst instances – such as the one pictured here – completely obstruct the paths of blind people, and worst of all here, even obstructing the blind pedestrian from being able to cross a junction in safety because the car is parked on the tactile paving which the blind use to tell they are at a junction.

In busy residential streets, built before the mass ownership of cars and therefore too narrow to safely take legal parking on both sides of the road, this is bad enough, but it’s often accepted by many that a certain level of give and take is needed, so long as the driver still parks with due consideration for pedestrians of all mobility abilities. I’m not going to claim to be innocent of ever having put my wheels on the kerb’s edge in such situations.

However this road is not a street with people living there parking on it – it’s an access road to the blocks of flats either side, to the canal below, and to the footbridge to the other side of the canal. Until recently, parking was not permitted at all, as it was a private access road patrolled by clampers; nobody living there parks there, because everybody who does live there has their own parking spaces. Since the road ceased to be private and the clampers moved out, it has become a magnet for drivers all over the city who are too tight-wadded to pay for their parking like everybody else has to. They have a legal right to park there – for the time being – but no moral right, and certainly they have no right to park in an illegal and antisocial manner obstructing the way for residents and transiting pedestrians alike.

So I wonder if the radio station BRMB approves of its staff parking their cars – with the company logo plastered all over it – in such a way?

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? I have to admit, for years I myself was a bit of a supporter of fully electric cars as a green solution to the problem of urban transport – even allowing for the flaw in the solution of it moving the pollution from the city streets to where the power stations are.

However, I heard the other day somebody express a much more significant flaw with electric cars.

Most people live in towns and cities.

Most people don’t have garages connected to their houses.

Many people are often lucky if they can park their car in their own street, let alone directly outside their own house.

Where will most people plug their electric cars in to recharge overnight?

In short, that’s £250m which would be far better spent elsewhere.

That the cost of having your kerb dropped so you can park your car in your drive rather than on the street is being lowered is a good start, but actually, why should you have to personally pay anything at all?

The council built the road – and consequently the pavement – initially, so why didn’t they build it with dropped kerbs outside houses? It’s a bit of a racket when you think about it, charging you to do something extra which should have been done in the first place! Considerations about car pollution aside, I’d say in the Modern Era it’s a perfectly reasonable expectation for people to have that if they have cars, and space on their front to keep one, that the pavement is constructed so as to enable them to park their car on their drive.

There’s also the fact that a dropped kerb is more than something solely of benefit to the householder, it also acts to the common good – for every car parked on a drive is a car not parked on the street (or worse still, not parked half on the pavement), meaning there is more space on the street for the traffic, which includes cyclists, to flow freely. And since the dropped kerb is owned by the council rather than by the homeowner, it seems doubly unfair for the homeowner to have to pay for it – after all, it’s hardly going to add value to the house, is it?