Each year, I get invited to speak at the European Training Centre for Railways (ETCR) in the College of Europe in Brugge (Bruges). My remit is to talk to European railway middle managers (who are there on a 2-week course) about the aviation industry and air-rail intermodality. It's always a pleasure to meet these young and enthusiastic people.

It means I get to ride on the train between Brussels and Brugge. There is a half-hourly service, usually calling at Gand (Ghent) only. Sometimes - as on my outward journey - these are double-deck units: coming back, it was a single-deck train. Trains are up to 10 vehicles long - comfortable, spacious and reasonably quiet (although I have found, coming from Brussels on a sunny day, that they can be full of people off to the seaside!). They are usually push-pull units, and sometimes divide at Brugge. Sometimes the loco is in the centre of the train - something I've seen no-where else!

You can catch these trains at three stations in Brussels. This time, I used Central - the terminus of the bus from my hotel. It's a horrible place to wait - it's a busy 6-platform underground main-line station: particularly in the peak, there are lots of trains there. Most stop in Central but a few intercity ones do not. Many of the trains are going just one or two stops - to Midi in the south or Schaarbeek in the north. On the day I travelled this year, many were up to 10 minutes late.

The big departure indicator at central concourse level is good, but at platform level the most visible indicators only showed the next train from that platform - so if platforms were changed (because trains were running late!) it would be difficult to know! Yes, there are announcements - but not very audible because of the background noise and the low roof. And if you could hear them, could you understand them? They are in anything up to four languages, since Belgium is legally tri-lingual and English is also used when announcing long-distance trains.

Brussels Nord and Midi are both big stations, elevated above ground level, with a number of subways under all of the tracks. This can be confusing, especially at Midi where the main subway houses facilities like the Eurostar check-in and the main ticket office while others are really only for changing platfoms or leaving the station (although the Air France check-in is in the south subway).

Midi has clearly benefitted from the major investment occasioned by the arrival of Eurostar and the decision to make it the main international station. Nord, by comparison, can appear the poor relation: investment is coming to the area but fairly slowly, so it is still in a relatively scruffy part of the city.

The route to Brugge has been upgraded over recent years, with new canal bridges and new grade-separated junctions.

More noticeable, though, has been the upgrade of Brugge station. At platform level, there is much marble and glass: it looks good, but there are insufficient seats and it would be an unpleasant place to wait in wet windy weather. At subway level - ground level, because the tracks are elevated - there are some shops and tourist information kiosks. Just outside is a small supermarket, a large bus station and an enormous bike park.

Announcements at Brugge station are only in Flemish.

The station has 10 platforms and lots of trains of all sizes - including freight and direct trains to places like Lille.

The trains and infrastructure were in good condition. It is especially good that, if you buy a Eurostar ticket to Brussels, it takes you to any Belgian station.

One downside of my travel experience was my attempt - ultimately successful - to change my reservation to an earlier Eurostar.

Having found the right place, I was prompted by a screen for my preferred language and destination country and then given a numbered ticket for the queueing system.

The ticket number indicated my place in the queue - normally a good thing because you can wait somewhere comfortable until your number is called, rather than waiting in a snaking line of people! However, the number I'd got bore no relation to any sequence on any screen I could see. After a bit, the screens changed and my number came up - so I went and stood behind someone trying to get to Germany, in a place where I could see a number of desks staffed but where the occupants were doing nothing except studiously ignore anyone who came to them.

Eventually, the person at the position next to the one I'd been called to attended to me.

This was unimpressive. While it was probably necessitated by the number of train companies using it, it didn't seem very efficient.

So it seemed that, as so often, information and other soft issues - the difficult bits - could be improved.

Sunday train travel in Great Britain is known to be hazardous because of the significant amount of engineering work which routinely disrupts services. So when I needed to go from St. Albans, 33 km north of London, to Rotherhithe, in London's Docklands, one Sunday, I checked my options very carefully.

A major problem was the London Underground - the Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, and relevant parts of the Circle and London Overground (former North London Line) were all shut. Thameslink was, as usual, not crossing London: trains from the north terminated at St. Pancras.

According to the National Rail web-site, the journey wasn't possible. I was given the last connection on Saturday night and the first on Monday morning: Sunday was a non-day!

Both the Transport Direct and the Transport for London (TfL) web-sites recommended changing at St. Pancras to the Northern Line, and changing to a C10 bus at Borough.

A useful option on Transport Direct's web-site is the choice of mode - you can tick or untick modes you do or don't want to use. So I unticked bus, assuming that I'd be given the option of changing at London Bridge and again at New Cross.

But no - I was offered the Jubilee Line rail replacement bus service from London Bridge!

Now come on, guys, if I don't want to travel by bus, I don't even want to travel by one which happens to be replacing a rail service!

As it happened, the journey went quite smoothly - using the recommended route through Borough.

In the course of some research, I recently used a bus, rather than the Airport Express, to get from Hong Kong International Airport to downtown Hong Kong.

The A11 bus costs HK$40 (rather than the $100 of the Airport Express). Once it started off, it took over 45 minutes to get to Wan Chai (the Convention Centre area). However, it started loading 7 minutes before departure. At that time of night buses were running every 20-25 minutes: they are every 15 minutes in the peaks.

The train, running every 10 minutes, would have taken 23 minutes to Central: the free connecting shuttle bus would have taken about 10 minutes to get from there to Wan Chai but I might have had to wait for it since they run every 24 minutes.

The buses on the A11 route are the massive six-axle double deckers operated by Citybus (and others) throughout Hong Kong. They have 94 or 102 seats - reasonably comfortable, to the extent that I didn't notice the level of comfort. This one, at 20:55 on a weekday evening, was almost full.

Many of the passengers had bags: there was a big luggage stack by the exit door which got quite full.

One problem when boarding was that some passengers had self-help baggage trolleys - sometimes very full self-help trolleys. They had to load the contents and themselves onto the bus and pay their fare - something which seemed to make them forgetful of the fact that their trolley was then left lying abandoned in the way of other intending passengers!

The bus was so full that I went upstairs, where the headroom was quite low - I couldn't stand upright. A nice touch was that I could see a television screen which showed the luggage stack - so if I'd had a bag there, I could have kept it under some kind of surveillance from my upper-deck seat.

On the journey to the city on open and relatively uncrowded roads, the motion was a kind of back and forward roll, as if the top deck was trying to overtake the bottom deck and was being reined in. In the city, where speeds were lower, the ride was much more bumpy. I did manage to make notes for this blog on the move, and to transcribe them afterwards - but smooth it was not!

Before (and to a degree at) each stop, there was some shuffling of bags in the luggage stack as people extracted their own from the heap. People didn't board the bus in the reverse order of disembarkation! However, stop times seemed quite short.

There are 12 scheduled stops between airport and Wan Chai: not all were made. They were shown on LED displays.

The bus then continued to North Point. Generally the bus was limited to 80 km/h.

The Airport Express would have been more comfortable, more frequent and almost certainly quicker. However, unless passengers were just going to Central they would have had to make an easy interchange between train and shuttle-bus there. The waiting area at the airport - unlike the bus station - is under cover and air conditioned. Luggage accommodation, passenger information, headroom and seating are significantly better on the train.

From this unscientific test, value of comfort looks quite low!

I was fascinated to read a recent article about local property tax yields in US cities.

Conventional wisdom has been that an up-market shopping mall is just the job to prop up the local property tax base.

However, when Sarasota County in Floria looked at the property tax revenue from each acre (0.4 hectares) of area, they found surprising results.

Residential property inside municipalities generated revenues of around $8200/acre for single family houses in one city.

However, very large stand-alone big-box stores produced much the same - maybe $8400/acre, probably because of the size of the car parks!

Upscale shopping malls with quality shops were good, at $22,000/acre.

However, a high-rise mixed use development occupying 0.75 of an acre was by far the best revenue generator, at $800,000/acre.

Even blocks of up to 7 stories generate $560,000, and up to 3 stories (shops with residential development on top) $70,000 - more than 3 times the revenue of the best shopping mall and 9 times the classic Wal-Mart supermarket.

Showing that in-town development - the classic transit-oriented development - is better for tax revenues than suburban sprawl. It's better for many other reasons too!

The full article (and some useful links) can be found in the Citiwire web-site. Authors are Peter Katz, Director Smart Growth and Urban Planning for Sarasota County, and Mary Newsome, associate editor and opinion writer at the Charlotte Observer.

We appear to have a new euphemism for delay or postponement as applied to capital projects (like new rail infrastructure, for example).

They are not delayed or postponed or (perish the thought!) cancelled: they are just "moved to the right".

In other words, the expenditure moves in the right-hand direction across the spreadsheet - from the original date of 2011 to a new (later) date of 2012 or 2015 or whenever.

Right?

What happened yesterday.
I got to my local station yesterday morning to find a crowd round the secondary entrance, the one I usually use. There was a barely audible announcement going on. The ticket barrier gates were closed and no staff were visible: there were a few people actually on the station.

Passengers being passengers, they had found that one of the barrier gates - the extra wide one for wheelchairs, buggies and large cases - could be pushed aside enough to allow passage, so a trickle of passengers was getting onto the station.

Then there was an announcement which I could only just hear to the effect that the next southbound train was at Luton, 16 km to the north, and there was an implication that it was being held there. I also caught something about a lineside fire.

I went towards the main entrance and the bus station: as I did, people were coming the other way saying that the main entrance was shut and they were hoping to get in by the secondary one.

I sent a quick text message to my daughter, who also commutes.

As I got to the bus station I saw a bus labelled "Stevenage" loading up: I joined the queue and got a seat. I reasoned that it would go to anything between one and three useful stations. When it had its full load of seated and permitted standing passengers, it set off: several were left behind.

It took half an hour to reach Hatfield station, some 10 km away.

Train passengers dominated: there were very few left on the bus as we got off at Hatfield, and only a few had boarded or alighted along the way.

At Hatfield, I caught a train to London. The service isn't nearly as good as at my local station: there was an 8:02 calling at most stations to Moorgate then an 8:18 semi-fast to King's Cross.

I got off at Finsbury Park and used the Victoria and Bakerloo Lines of the Underground to get to work at Paddington: the journey took 40-50 minutes longer than usual.

The use of barrier gates.
I did ponder the use of barrier gates to bar access to the station in times of disruption.

It wasn't working on the unstaffed side of the station. Determined passengers could by-pass them relatively easily - although presumably where there were staff, people were not getting in.

What are the advantages of trying to keep intending passengers out?

There may be a long-term issue of over-crowded platforms - although since there were few passing trains, the danger was limited!

Fewer staff would be exposed to the wrath of the frustrated Monday morning commuter - a force to be reckoned with!

Some passengers might have got onto the platforms intending to travel by train and then changed their minds: if they had day tickets (as opposed to season tickets) this might have caused problems.

There may be advantages in keeping passengers off the active railway.

Against this is the problem of communication. Station public address systems are designed to be heard by people on stations, not in the ticket barrier area (or near it, because of the crowds). So communication of the problem, of news and of updates was more difficult, which no doubt led to more frustration.

Another problem is that the gates would have had to be opened some time. Passenger psychology - especially commuter psychology - is that they have to get to the right platform quickly. There would be no orderly walk along the platform to the footbridge, over the footbridge and down to the London-bound platforms: there would have been a scrum.

The probability that someone would get hurt in the rush was quite high!

This depends to a degree on the length of the delay, the advice given to passengers and the alternatives available.

The worst combination is probably a short delay and no advice or information - so crowds would build up. As time goes on - as delays lengthen - it is more likely that the train operator would be able to find buses to take people to working stations, and passengers are more likely to find their own way (they can be a resourceful lot!).

It was an interesting experience, and one which will feed into IARO's forthcoming report on disruption, in course of preparation.

Thoughts on this use of ticket barrier gates would be welcomed.

I understand that 15% of the capacity at Sydney Kingsford Smith airport is taken up with the shuttle to Canberra. There are flights every 40 minutes on this 250 km sector.

The airport is capacity constrained, and plans for a replacement or for additional capacity are not close to fruition.

A high speed rail link sounds like a good idea, for all sorts of reasons.

Does anyone know the economics of those flights? A 250 km sector is pretty expensive to fly!

I've just flown from London to Hong Kong and back on Air New Zealand, and thought I would record my experiences.

The first shock was that I couldn't check-in on-line! How many airlines today do not offer this?

Check-in at Heathrow Terminal 1 was a bit of a scrum, because so many people were travelling with a lot of heavy luggage. Several people were unpacking and re-packing to try to get individual bag-weights right - at Terminal 4, there's a dedicated area with scales and tables where you can do this.

It was a hot day, so some people had come lightly dressed - and to reduce the weight in their bags, were putting extra clothes on!

I just had one hold bag, so I was hooked out of the economy class queue and taken to the business class check-in. Thanks for that!

My flight was due to leave Heathrow at 21:05. On my boarding pass and on the flight information displays (FIDS), it said boarding time was 19:35, which I though a bit early. At 19:38, the FIDS changed to "Please wait" and at 19:50, the gate number was displayed. I actually boarded at 20:42!

I felt the crew were a bit authoritarian in style.

BA style is for the pilot to ask cabin crew to, "Switch doors to automatic and cross-check": the ANZ crew were instructed to, "Arm your doors".

I was whinged at twice by the crew for opening the blind to look at the spectacular scenery. Hey, guys, that's why I book a window seat! And before you respond, the people beside me were awake.

The in-flight entertainment required numerous re-sets: this even affected the cabin reading lights.

The moving map showed Lithuania and Latvia as fixed points rather than real countries, so at one stage a compass on the map showed Latvia to the north-west and Riga, its capital, to the north!

The display was complex and in both English and Cantonese, so I found it quite difficult to follow. By the time the English version of the local map came round, the place I'd seen and wanted to identify was far behind!

The use on the moving map of just metric measurements for speed and height (10882 metres instead of 36,000 feet), and mach numbers for speed, seemed slightly odd. I thought aviation standard was Imperial? And who knows what a mach number is anyway?

The pilot announced the distance to Hong Kong in nautical miles at one point, just to add to the confusion!

Having announcements repeated on the in-flight entertainment (as a note at the top of the screens) was, I thought, a good idea - especially the "Fasten seat belts" message.

We flew through a thunderstorm over the Netherlands and Germany - quite spectacular!

My evening meal had no pasta starter but two helpings of dessert! No menus were supplied, but the cabin crew announced the choices over the public address system.

On the flight back, I was annoyed to find that the in-town check-in at Central Station closed at 17:00: I was told that it was the same at Kowloon at the airport. A pain, for an early morning flight.

And as we arrived at Heathrow, we were asked to fold blankets and put them in the overhead bins, ensure that the bins were left open after we'd taken our belongings out, put the window blinds down to keep the plane cool while it was awaiting its return flight, and watch that we didn't mark the business-class seats - the ottomans - with our rolling cases as we went past!

I expect that the last person out was also asked to switch off the lights and lock the doors!

One was invited to give feedback by email (and New Zealand residents who were members of their frequent flier club would be entered into a quarterly prize draw for 500 points if they did so): the survey is on www.airnzmyvoice.co.nz.

You may deduce that my feedback is not particularly complimentary!

The latest Korean high speed trains, the KTX-Sancheons, have a top speed of 330 km/h. They can accelerate from 0 to 300 in 316 seconds.

I found out - thanks to the Weekend FT - that all new employees at Ferrari are given a card. On this it says (among other things), that "The real secret of success is enthusiasm. You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis".

Wonderful stuff!

One of my measures of success of a television presenter is enthusiasm. Can they communicate it? If not, they've failed - however knowledgeable they are.

In October, I posted a blog about the withdrawal for refurbishment of Gatwick Airport's inter-terminal shuttle - the tracked transit.

I'm delighted to read that it's now back in service from today, with trains, stations and guideway fully refurbished. I look forward to riding it.

One nice touch is that sensors detect the number of people waiting, and trigger the departure of a shuttle.

Vehicles have more seats, and live journey information.

The view, including the amazing bridge over taxiways carrying 747s, could hardly be improved!

Recently, recorded and unrecorded announcements on First Capital Connect stations in the south of England have been reminding people to stand behind the yellow lines on the platform edges at all times for their own safety.

Excuse me, guys, but how can I catch a train if I stand behind the yellow line - parallel to the platform edge and anything from 300 to 1000 mm away from it - at all times?

If the answer is, You can't, it makes my trip to the station and your train operations irrelevant!

If, as I suspect, the answer is that the announcement is at the very least somewhat over the top, I suggest rewording it!

And next time, engage brain before setting mouth in motion!