#road-to-rail

#road-to-rail

"Over the last year, our committee set out to learn about asset management and the state of one of our most important assets, which is our streets and our roads. We learned that our streets are riddled with potholes, and many of the streets are failing. The condition has worsened over the last five years. We learned that if we do not act now to address the degradation of our streets, it will continue to worsen."

Sick days are costing the whole of the UK a lot of money, and that's one of the reasons we're involved in the prevention sprint, to look at ways to try and stop people from becoming ill in the first place.

The larger share of the order consists of 200 Scania intercity buses equipped with CNG fuel systems designed for extended range, allocated to services within the Paris region.

The DLR first opened in 1987, it had two lines: Red - Stratford to Island Gardens and Green - Tower Gateway to Island Gardens. Within just a few years, as the DLR extended out to Beckton and later Lewisham, they turned the whole map green.

"Fuel use increases significantly at higher speeds, so even a relatively small reduction can result in noticeable savings," he stated. He added that lowering motorway speeds could improve fuel efficiency by around 10%, depending on the vehicle.

The real problem is infrastructure, not vehicle safety. Roadways are open systems with infinite variables—weather, pedestrians, distracted drivers, and aging infrastructure. Communication between vehicles is minimal, and infrastructure is largely silent—and in that gap lies the potential for deadly collisions.

Intercity bus transport in Europe is characterized by a fragmented operator landscape, including a high number of small and medium-sized companies, alongside less standardized operational patterns and frequent dual-use vehicle profiles.

It's tempting to frame autonomous driving as a single leap. In public transport, adoption tends to be incremental - because the system is built for reliability, and new capabilities have to fit into daily operations without disrupting service. That is why a practical strategy is evolution, not revolution: introduce autonomy in a defined domain, learn safely in real operations, and expand capability step-by-step.

The planned order is expected to include 12-meter and 18-meter vehicles, and potentially also 24-meter bi-articulated trolleybuses. All units will be equipped with traction batteries enabling off-wire operation. The new trolleybuses are expected to cover at least 20 kilometers without overhead wires, while remaining fully compatible with Riga's extensive existing trolleybus infrastructure.

Every city contains two transportation systems. One is the visible network of roads, rail lines, sidewalks, and bus routes mapped in planning documents. The other is the invisible geography of privilege and exclusion embedded within it: the neighborhoods that received highways instead of parks, the communities whose bus routes were cut, the sidewalks that abruptly end at the edge of a district.

When routes are well organized, there are clear directional signs, and speed limits become reasonable. The early installation of warning signs allows transport companies to plan deliveries more accurately and avoid delays. For businesses, time is money. When a truck carrying goods does not spend hours detouring due to an unclear traffic scheme or stuck in traffic where it could have been avoided thanks to competent traffic management, fuel costs, driver wages, and vehicle maintenance costs are reduced.