Blowin' in the Wind

'twas a little blowy out today.

95mph at the Forth Road Bridge, resulting in closure of said bridge. Normally not particularly a tragedy - if annoying on principle - people getting stuck this side of the bridge is fine for those of us stuck at home, it was bad today on account of it being my twins' sixth birthday and their grandparents selfishly living on the other side of the bridge.

Incidentally the principle in question regarding the Forth Bridge is due to the non closure of the bridge for 40 years, then last winter during the endless snow they had to close it. Precedent set, it's been closed to all vehicles on at least two occasions this year for wind speeds not unheard of before. I don't believe they would have shut it fully had they not got that first time hurdle out of the way.

I shudder to think what mayhem will unfold should any snow appear this winter. We're primed for last year, because weather is predictable and repetitive in that manner. Major panic and immediate shutdown will undoubtably occur as the total snowfall reaches 4mm. Just. In. Case. Virtually every shop in my town sells snow shovels and the likes. "Be prepared" they tell us, while urging us to fit snow chains to our tyres. No, sorry, we can't repair any roads because we spent the budget on salt.

The last gusty panic mongering winds were nicknamed Hurricane Bawbag, the humour of which escapes me other than the initial mirth at foreigners talking about Bawbag. But the ensuing jokes circulating afterwards just eluded my sense of humour. This did appear to be just me, everyone else got it.

So today, "return of hurricane Bawbag" comments were rife. Today was much worse as well, the damage is quite horrifying and people I know* came seriously close to injury. But the return? No. Hurricanes don't work like that. They move on a letter. The next letter after B is C.

If ONLY there was an amusing word that started with C.

* yes, it's worse if I know them.

Topical rantage

If I blog about what I'm studying then it counts as study, right?

Right. Thank you for reassuring me.

Through my studies I'm coming to realise that some of the decision taken re: transport aren't actually bonkers after all, that some of them are due to legislation and even that legislation has some sound basis for being. A slow understanding that probably means I'm on my way to being one of them. Cycling's the future, you know. Yeah. That was me that said that.

And so I appreciate how I used to think, and that everyone possibly doesn't read the same policy documents I do. But my opinions were never printed in a national magazine. Ray Winstone's have been. Today I read how he hates the congestion charge because there's all that money being taken and where's all the money for hospitals? Errr. Ok.
Answer to Mr Winstone: because the money is for transport. The legislation to allow for congestion charges was brought in in order to attempt to improve the appalling transport system we have. The money has to be sunk back into transport. It's the law. It's what it's for. And yes, theoretically the money could be clawed back from elsewhere and reallocated for hospitals, but that would defeat the purpose of introducing a scheme to improve transport.

When you see all the bus and cycle improvements that have been done so far, oh yes they have, it's a bit hard necked to whine on about the cost to the car driver. We do have a problem. We do have to do something about it. We have to stop being lazy fat arsed whiners that drive to the end of the road. We need to car share to the end of the road. Or do that perambulation thing people used to do before the car was invented. Boris is wrong: Ken was right.

Even Boris might have a clue about the Forth Bridge. It is not news that it's coming to the end of its life, I think it's been known since around about when it was built. The new plans are spectacularly short sighted and the funding to be borrowed from the Treasury against budgets up to 2018 was always a little optimistic. So the Treasury said no, we're not going to be in power then so we can't say (or something like that) and now we're up in arms because we'll have to use our own funds and business investments to build a stupid new bridge that isn't what we need and that we've needed for a damn sight longer than the plans have been in process so we can't turn round and say that it's because of the crunchy nut credit.

I'm still a bit confused about the other new bridge at Clackmannanshire. What's that for? It goes across the same bit of river in the same direction (more or less) to end up pretty much at the same place as the existing Kincardine Bridge. Why did they keep it a secret? Does it have a reason? Can't it be used to relieve the Forth Bridge? Could it not have been built somewhere less on top of the existing bridge? Couldn't it have been combined with the needs of the new crossing that isn't going to ever be? It is very nice and shiny, I do like it, and went across it completely unecessarily and drove the 2 feet back to Kincardine just for the hell of it.

facetiousness aside, I believe there is good logic for this bridge but it seems a little shortsighted (again) not to allow some sort of link up for the crossings

You know when you type a word so often it becomes weird and doesn't look like a word any more? That just happened with bridge, I need to stop talking about bridges now, although the word does look satisfyingly like a bridge between the b and the d. They should be called brids. Much better. Maybe sbrids to get the approaches in. Hmm.

25 marks for bridge planning? I feel confident.

Prettiness, pettiness and pitiful preferences

A practically perfect day, aside from the grumpiness of certain people that might well have been me.

The boys have only been on a train twice, once for the sake of it: we got the train from Kirkcaldy to Burntisland and back; and once on the Bo'ness Steam Railway. So today we thought we'd take them on an adventure and we got the train through to Edinburgh. It is a beautiful journey, and one which I have been doing on and off for 20 years. I miss it a bit, there's all the sights along the way, many of which have changed recently. But how nice to have two new pairs of eyes to point it all out to, and eyes belonging to people that don't think you're bonkers for caring like fellow commuters often do.

And then we arrived in Edinburgh and took ourselves off to Princes Street Gardens to travel on the Big Wheel.

Marvellous, and I was most pleased to note that the only tears were of frustration at not being able to get on till we got to the front of the queue. I took lots of photos and played around with the camera settings a bit (not enough, I have more learning to do).

Edinburgh Castle on automatic

Edinburgh Castle with a little tweaking

And then the children insisted we ride on the horses on the carousel, which pleased me immensely having never succeeded in getting anyone else to go on them. Waiting for the previous turn to end, I decided which horse was to be mine, as you do. Debating whether it was in fact the done thing to pull a small child off a horse because I wanted that one, imagine my joy when that horse just happened to be the next one and I got it.

This is he:

and this is why:

I was almost as happy as my son.

This, plus lunch, plus trying to understand the new system at Waverley took most of the afternoon and then we got the train home again as the sun set. I took some immensely rubbish pictures from the Forth Rail Bridge (the pillars don't half get in the way).

Oh what?

Disclaimer: if you're not interested in transport links over the Forth, this will probably be a bit tedious. I'm having a rant.

For approximately 3000 years, the A8000 link road that took travellers from the Forth Road Bridge to link with the M9 was desperately needing to be upgraded/replaced/taken out the back and shot. Finally, last year or so, the new link road opened, making the road smooth and dual carriagewayed. Marvellous. Journey times reduced massively, stress levels minimised.

But. While they were building this road, which took 82 years, they were establishing that the existing Forth Bridge was nearing the end of its likely life, due to the huge increase in usage compared to anticipated levels when it was built. A new bridge was planned. Or a tunnel. Or something. Something that would solve the problem of the sheer volume of traffic wanting to travel across the water. Something that could maybe incorporate a light rail system to accommodate commuters. Or just something. Just a new something to get excited about and be seen to be taking a proactive approach to the problem and stop the existing bridge from tumbling into the sea.

Then they announced the new plan. A dual carriageway bridge with a hard shoulder with possible room for a (small) change of use in the fullness of time. Sounded a leeeetle bit like the existing bridge, just up the river a bit and so not connected to the marvellous new road network. Not a tunnel. Not a multi use bridge. One with what pretty much sounded like it would have exactly the same capacity as the old bridge. But not connected to the road network. Which is quite important. There's another bridge just opened up the river at Kincardine next to the existing Kincardine bridge, which should address some of the traffic issues, but that's been a bit hush hush, surprise! We built a bridge! Now back to the one we use...

This is currently the work of the SNP, with the rather marvellous Alex Salmond, who's not shy of doing what he thinks is the right thing. Mostly he's done incredibly popular things, most of the ones I've paid attention to are trying to undo the ludicrous transport proposals by his predecessor, the utterly despicable Jack McConnell. Salmond couldn't stop the trams; he did take the tolls - put in at huge expense while the investigation as to the impending closure of the bridge was carrying on - out. I rather like the Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson, he seems to actually know a thing or two about transport and environmental issues which is a novel concept for a Minister. Or that's what I thought until I read the news today.

Most of the plans for the roads up north and so on sound ideal. Latest plans for the Forth Bridge? Oh dear. The new bridge is to be downgraded from inadequate to downright awful. Exactly the same as the existing one, just in a new location. It's going to be half the cost, should come in on budget (setting a new record, surely?), and will be ready to be operational in 2016. At which point it would be at capacity. And the finances. This is a response to the credit nibbles apparently, so we're not going to use the controversial fund (which I know nothing about but that sounds like it's supposed to be for projects like this), but instead we're going to borrow from the Treasury. All the funds up to 2018. Because that's what you do in an economic crisis: get into more debt. A good example to set, n'est pas?

But joy! The existing bridge will be saved! For use by buses only. A marvellous idea in theory, buses are carbon neutral if you fiddle the figures and la la la a lot, everyone should get the (ugh) bus. Presumably the bus operators would take advantage of this, run more services but fail to make it a less heinous experience, nor would the Council/Government/God address the issue of getting into town. The traffic from both bridges would converge at some point, additional buses wouldn't really help that, there'd be a bottleneck closer to Edinburgh. Unless the magical trams could link up with the buses out of town and then there'd actually be a solution to many problems in place but that seems like wishful thinking. The new roads make take away the traffic going to destinations other than Edinburgh, but the traffic on the bridge at congestion times? That's all headed for Edinburgh.

So the new bridge will be battered by lorries, the trains will still be restricted by the capacity of the rail bridge, and the buses that won't get used will have the existing bridge and the marvellous road all to themselves. If it survives. Which it might not. While they're investigating that fact, they will presumably get on with building stuff and worry about whether it works sometime after its operational.

all done now. Sorry if you're bored. I did warn you.