A number of road pricing and congestion charging proposals in the UK have been resoundingly rejected by the public.

One reason is that bodies - especially local government - promoting the concept are supposed to remain neutral. This makes debate with opponents who make false claims and misrepresentations difficult to handle - the promoter is then seen as an advocate and not a neutral.

People with vested interests can easily hijack the proposals, misrepresent issues like the level of charges and privacy, and cause the proposal to be rejected. So - among other things - people likely to benefit from the scheme can be led to believe that they will end up paying significant amounts for something for which they've already paid.

Planning for road pricing? Beware!

Travelling on the Dubai Metro in November, I noticed an unattended bag in the baggage pen of the Gold Class car and drew this to the attention of the attendant. I was told that it belonged to the security officer!

Subsequently on another train I noticed an unattended ladies handbag: I told the train attendant who said it was hers. She then went off through the train to check tickets - leaving the bag there! I did wonder what was in it!

The issue arising from this - apart from the totally trusting and casual attitude which seems wholly alien to one who travels regularly on the London Underground - is the need for personal storage space for crew personal property. The Dubai Metro trains are automated, with no driver's cab: clearly there is no storage for hand-bags and lunch packs and such-like. Maybe there should be?

Over the last few weeks I have been able to compare the economy class seating on some big long-haul aircraft - and it was fascinating.

Cathay Pacific's A340 has 2-4-2 seating. It's comfortable with good leg-room. There was no intrusive in-flight entertainment box under the seat in front of me - some aircraft have this, and it's a nuisance because it means you can only comfortably stretch out one leg! However, because the seat pillars were offset, I couldn't totally stretch out my legs.

The in-flight entertainment was less comprehensive than on Emirates' A380 - less music, extracts only from classical symphonies and concertos, and no cameras.

The plane was very quiet with comfortable seats. They recline by moving the seat squab forward, rather than by moving the seat back backward. This is better for the person behind, but reduces the legroom for the person reclining!

The left hand seatbelt is thicker than normal, and padded. I didn't find this particularly comfortable.

Emirates B-777
Seating is in 3-4-3 configuration. The seat pitch was poor when the seat in front was tilted back. Footroom was restricted in some window seats.

The seat-back pockets were really too small: I had A4 sized papers to look through and there wasn't enough room for them.

The in-flight entertainment was reasonable, although control using the mouse was difficult, with unintuitive movements and unpredictable results.

I really only used the map and the cameras. On the map, there were too many distracting advertisements and irrelevant bits of Emirates news. The forward and downward camera options were good.

Emirates' A380
My flight was at 7:45 and the first metro arrives at the airport at 6:47, so I needed the service to be quick and efficient - and it was. I had checked in my bag the previous day (and, well done Emirates, checked it through to Barcelona on BA from Heathrow, on a completely separate booking - and Emirates gave me air miles on the BA flight!).

The security queue was quick and efficient: there was slight ambiguity in the signage to the gates, possibly because you could go one way for a lift and a different way for escalators.

There was no gate information until the upper level, the duty free area, which was quite crowded. However the gate processing was efficient. There was a 2-level gate lounge - First and Business, and Economy below. The economy lounge was big, with toilets and free newspapers (including the Financial Times).
Television screens had messages calling passengers by zone - families, then from the back of the plane: I saw no evidence that this was policed so if you just turned up, you could probably just walk through.

There were three jetways in use - one for the upper deck, and two for the lower deck (Zone C, and Zones D, E, F and G at the rear).

The lower deck started with row 44. This is behind, and a few steps down from, the flight deck.

Seating was in 3-4-3 layout. The seat support was just slightly in the way if you wanted to stretch your legs out, but there was no in-flight entertainment box there.

The seatback pockets were big, unlike those on the 777.

Spotlights were well positioned and the airflow was good although difficult to reach when strapped in.

The airshow (moving map) was good, with the map over most of the screen and flight information on the right hand side: stationary, in the airport, ground speed was 0 and true air speed 70 miles/hour!

The television screen included the seat number - nice.

Forward, downward and tail cameras (the latter high on the tail, looking forward) were accessible on the airshow: there was useful streaming information below the map but too many advertisements. Changing between screens or between cameras was sometimes slow and unresponsive. Coming in to land at Heathrow, you got full benefit of London rain on the camera lens! The ability to switch off the Arabic text - displayed for half of the time - would have been appreciated.

There was a USB port and a power socket between each economy class seat (and at each first/business class seat).

The cabin was quiet.

One downside is the limited headroom when the overhead bins are open. They are also quite heavy when full, so people who were not particularly tall had trouble shutting them.

My notes record the push-back as being "imperceptible" - which is impressive, on an aircraft that size.

There were plenty of toilets - at the front, one each side and two up the staircase towards the flight deck (and, possibly, more for the flight deck crew).

Windows look big but in fact are not - they are less than A4 size. They look big because the window orifice on the internal skin of the aircraft is much larger than the window proper on the outside.

When the seatbelt sign pinged for turbulence, there was no check by the cabin crew that people obeyed. There was also the usual reluctance to turn the sign off again afterwards so as usual some people ignored it.

There was a lot of crew communication - the "ping ping" sign - which was a nuisance if you wanted to sleep!

I was very close to the front of the aircraft and, probably because there was a separate jetway for first and business class passengers, was able to disembark quite quickly.

I was told by someone who had tried it that the business class seats on the Singapore Airlines A380 were actually not very comfortable. Because they convert to a bed, they are very wide - too wide to sit in comfortably!

In September last year, the UK Department for Transport issued a report, "Public experiences of and attitudes towards rail travel: 2006 and 2009".

In section 7.9, they discuss some interesting responses to the question, "Why did you use train for your last long distance train journey?".

Almost one in 10 of the respondents mentioned that they chose rail because it gave them the opportunity to do things while travelling.

68% had read, 52% had looked at the view, 44% ate or drank and 41% had chatted to travelling companions. 38% had used mobile phones and 28% listened to music. 16% had done work for their job while travelling.

Interesting!

When doing an economic evaluation of a transport investment scheme, it is conventional to put in money for the value of time savings brought about by the scheme. This is because time spent travelling is viewed as wasted - it's a cost. So if your journey takes less time, that's a benefit: time is saved so you can do more with it.

Certainly this is reasonable for car travel (unless, like too many, you indulge in 'distracted driving' - or you have a chauffeur!). It's reasonably true for air travel - certainly for short-haul air travel, where your overall end to end journey is so broken up you can't do anything much with it.

However, for a long-ish train journey, is it true that travelling time is a cost? If you can and do work, it can be a benefit. Especially if no-one is using a mobile phone or radio and distracting you!

Certainly I find a train a very conducive area for complex reading or writing.

And should this change the way we do transport evaluations? If in-train time has a positive value and in-vehicle time for air or road has a negative value, perhaps this should be reflected in evaluations?

Although, obviously, not to the point where it's not worth speeding up trains because it would reduce the working time of the passengers!

With apologies for the delay - our blog is now back, and I will be posting comments of interest shortly!

The main web-site, www.iaro.com, and the traveller's web-site, www.airportrailwaysoftheworld.com, are also now fully available.