Val Stevens, former deputy leader of Manchester City Council and chairman of GM Buses, writes for Manchester Matters about her new life in France. Her columns will appear here after they have been published in the magazine...

June 2011

One of the many pleasures of living in the French countryside apart from the wine, the food, the warmer weather etc is the absence of traffic on the roads. This does have its downside in winter because it is obviously very expensive and impractical to grit the side roads. The French are rather resigned to this and just stay at home.
This ease of travel by car on many local roads is probably too boring for French drivers and they travel at great speed and most scarily crossing the centre line to take corners in a Formula 1 tactic. This can be unnerving if the unwary driver driving correctly in lane is faced on turning a bend by a large vehicle travelling at speed with two wheels over the white line. They always manage to get back as far as I am concerned but I have a woman friend who refuses to drive here because of this practice.
This is all planned to stop next year. Well the speeding part is anyway. There has been an increase of 20% in road casualties this April and this is in addition to the 10% rise over the first 3 months of this year. A third of road deaths are alcohol related so no surprise there to British drivers. Stricter penalties are being proposed and also for the use of mobile phones.
What has probably caused the most outcry is the removal of warning signs for radar traps and this has impacted on GPS systems that alert drivers to their presence. Some of the manufacturers are complaining and some members of President Sarkozy’s party believe this will lose them the election. Speed restrictions are extremely confusing. Villages of any size and sometimes small hamlets have some restrictions but they can vary from 70kph to as low as 30kph and near schools, shops and the centre 50kph. A 30kph has just appeared in my village randomly now the redesign of the centre is finished. I have yet to see anyone complying with this new limit. In bad weather these levels reduce by 10kph on main roads adding to the fun.
The UK government seems to be moving in completely the other direction by proposing to increase the speed limit to 80mph not least because the UK accident levels per mile and head of population are much better than France. When I was the executive member for transport it was always difficult to assess measures because of people’s perceptions of danger. Many times I heard the phrases “an accident waiting to happen” and “you are waiting for someone to die before you take action” Conversely the perception of most dangerous roads sometimes result in fewer accidents because people take more care. This thinking is behind the Dutch road changes taking out traffic lights at junctions taking the view that it is self policing. One overriding fact is that speed does kill because in the event of the unexpected there is no time to react. Mr Hammond should reflect on this and so should Chris Huhne who allegedly asked someone to take his speeding points.
Drivers hate restrictions here and in the UK so I look forward with interest unlike the bereaved families to the many ways that speeding drivers get round the new proposals. A straw in the wind only yesterday when driving back from Bergerac, I was flashed by oncoming cars and there in the next side turning were police.
Plus ca change.

May 2011

April 2011

I was sorry to read about the death of Eddie Stobart, the founder of the famous haulage company. He died at what seems to me now a young age of 56. I am sure that the many fans of his company are also saddened. On my many trips driving to mainland Europe, the lorries along with the opposition, Norbert Desstrangle, were a familiar sight on the roads. It was mixed with fear of course because driving in a right hand drive car behind a large lorry meant no overtaking on two lane roads. Well not exactly unless your passenger was a sensible co pilot and yelled now, now, go, go. This was often the role my husband played because he reckoned that you had to be mad to drive in France. Things are beginning to change and new speed checks are being put in place much to the annoyance of the many Brits who live here and tend to make the long journey to the coast. The chances of getting caught by a trap increase the longer you travel and the later you leave home.
The whole idea of fan clubs for lorries is just a little strange but since my time at GMBuses I am not surprised. One man used to listen to recordings of bus engines in his lunch break and this is not a late April fool. It was a bit worrying though because he was a union rep. I blame CB radio and the romance of the long distance truck drivers in the US. There was even a convoy song featuring the call signs Smokey Bear to Rubber Duck. In the UK the fascination with large trucks starts at an early age for boys and Tonka trucks have a profited largely from this love of the big waggon over the years.
One of the many aspects that I enjoy about living in a rural part of France is the almost complete lack of major traffic jams. The down side of course is the requirement to have a car to link up to the public transport service. There is a problem with access to the network in many parts of rural France. Large wagons, however narrow the road seem to plough on regardless. My friend in the highways department of the Conseil de General tells me there are restrictions for over 38 tonnes but how that is enforced I am not sure because many of the bridges and roads have not been constructed to take heavy loads. There are over 400 bridges in the Dordogne as his work colleague told me who looks after their maintenance. The locals here blame satnav and this could be the case. Time is of the essence for haulage companies and they are always trying to clip time off the trip. The road through my village is so narrow that parking is only allowed on one side of the road but this does not deter wagons of Eddie Stobart size coming through. Not any of Eddie’s I hasten to add.
These would not be allowed through Manchester City centre now and I asked the Mayor why it continues and it would appear that permissions or bans are at another level of local government. All too familiar to me when I had responsibility for highways in Manchester trying to get the right funding from the right pot between the local authority, the sub region and the Highways Agency. I recall a farcical situation between Manchester and Trafford when a boundary road had new street lights fitted on the Manchester side and Trafford would not pay for their side. Sense was restored when the road came up for resurfacing. I do hope that the newly named Transport for Greater Manchester now taking on extra road responsibilities will be able to integrate the traffic flows and funding on a rational basis. I wish them well in their new role. Not an easy task in the short term I suspect. Bon chance as they say here.
PS I have received requests by email for more information about the Arts Centre at Perroquet Vert. It is located in Chalais and run by Amanda Rackowe and others for interested travellers this summer.

March 2011

Many years ago in the dark ages of employment when a young person could work part-time from the age of 14, I used to have a Saturday job at Willshaw’s book shop on John Dalton St. My sister worked there fulltime and got me an interview. In a very strange circular coincidence she then left there and went to work for a law stationers managed by the current chair of GMITA, Ian Macdonald. He was part of the family that owned the business. I had not seen Ian for over 40 years until he came on to the ITA. A surprise to us both I suspect. Since my time at the bookshop I have never been able to resist book sales. In one sale at Willshaw’s I bought a copy of the circulation of the blood by Wm Harvey. I could recommend this to any transport planner, policy maker or politician.
Very simply transport links provide life to communities and those with poor links wither economically, socially and to a certain extent spiritually. Poor links make for gangrenous societies as we have seen in post war estates far from amenities and jobs. It is also the same in the rural areas here in France. The local elections here, called the Cantonales, take place later this month and the issues of resources, schools, post offices, transport and social care are at the forefront just as they are in the UK. In defending the rural world the propositions suggest that there should be a minimum distance for these services, 20mins by car to a doctor, post office or primary school, 25 minutes from secondary school or college and so on. Granted the distances here are much greater but I wonder what would have been the outcome for the recent spending review if distance parameters for public services were included.
It is certainly recognised here in France the value of good transport links especially rail and high speed rail. It is 482 miles from Paris to Marseilles and the trip by TGV takes 3 hours. By comparison the distance from Manchester to London is 200 miles and takes 2 hours 10 minutes. France already has these links and is planning more. In the UK we are least a decade behind if not two decades. In relation to the European economy we will be back on the outer fringes of this world and the NW economy will suffer seriously. Just recently I read that the Danes are planning an eleven mile sea tunnel to Germany costing £4bn planned to cut the journey time from Copenhagen to Hamburg by more than an hour. Surely the UK has the will and political foresight to move the high speed rail debate out of the discussion stage on to the commitment stage. Manchester certainly does and so it should as the home of the first passenger railway.
Just a small footnote for this month only, a hundred years of International Women’s day will be celebrated on March 8th and thanks to a friend in Manchester who suggested Pankhurst Tuesday. I hope it won’t take another 100 years to get more women involved in planning, managing and policy development for transport or the high speed rail link to reach Manchester!

February 2011

By way of a change from travel further North I decided to warm up a bit and visit friends in Madeira, one of the baby boomer’s isles of choice.

European based low cost airlines don’t seem to operate out of France. It may be a sign of the dominance of the British operators or the French government’s relationship with Air France. Just like the train service, very good but fastest through Paris. My first trawl produced a flight to Funchal  from Bordeaux via Paris! I found a match with Air France and Easyjet via Lisbon. No problems this time and the added bonus of an overnight stay in Bordeaux at saletime.  It feels somewhat decadent writing this since I am listening to the Liverpool City Council leader outlining the impact of the cuts on the city’s services and mirrored in Manchester.

Each year the Mayor in villages here hosts an event for residents to review the previous year’s activities and wish them best wishes for the New Year. This year he gave details of the government’s plans to cut home care by 2014 and plans to introduce a requirement for people to pay an extra top up insurance. This will no doubt add to the pension decisions agreed late last year  and play strongly in the run up to the Presidential elections in 2012.

It is the first time, since the banking crisis, that I have visited Portugal especially since the news about its troubled economy. Madeira was dependent on the tourism industry before the crisis and still is heavily dependent. The difference now is that the British tourists are being replaced  by Germans.

It is a poor island, the birthplace of Ronaldo, and cars are very expensive. (A small 10 year old Peugeot  9000E). The upside is the provision of a very good cheap bus service for workers, schoolchildren and tourists alike. A 45min journey to Funchal costs 2.60E. The service runs regularly and starts at 6.30am. Three separate companies run services and some of the fleet looks like they have bought second hand coaches from everywhere,Leyland, Volvo and Fiat.  They also operate eco electric buses in Funchal for city centre use but I didn’t get to try one this time. They are free and you hop on and off a bit like Metroshuttle. Madeira is one great extinct volcano and travelling by bus  on the road system is a challenge if you get travel sickness. The drivers whizz around the many  bends with skill but with a cavalier attitude to passengers. No-one got up before the bus stopped only to ring the bell. It was sad, while travelling, to see the impact of the recent floods on this poor island and there are still families who are not rehoused.

The geography of the island is dramatic and you certainly need the safety instructions for sea landings when using the airport. Only sea planes could be used as late as the 1960’s and the airport runway is built on support pillars that look like Egyptian temples.

It was great to visit a place where affordable public transport has such a central role in the life of the community and wish that the British government could emulate the investment and commitment.

 

January 2011

I wish everyone a very happy new year and hope that there will be some respite from all the transport difficulties over the last few weeks. Although it can’t be much fun for rail users about to pay an extra 6% and motorists paying more for petrol on duty rise and then a VAT increase.  There are all sorts of strange coincidences that occur in life and one of them was having a meal before Christmas with French friends and one of them revealed that his father designed the TVA ,the French VAT. Not necessarily something that you want inscribed on your tombstone.

Some time ago in the 1990’s I qualified for membership of the Chartered Institute of Transport and later it joined with the Institute of Logistics and I could put MILT after my name. I ceased paying the subscription sometime later after I finished my time with GMBuses.  I was reminded of logistics when travelling this Christmas and the importance of logistics managers the unseen heroes of everything that moves from A to B and back again.

No-one controls the weather yet as far as I know and 2010 had some of the worst weather conditions across Europe and elsewhere that I can recall in my lifetime. Most travellers accept that bad weather affects travel to some degree but what they can’t accept is lack of information. We live at a time of maximum communication, telephone, email, mobile phone, gps  and the media in realtime and online. So why is that travel companies can’t communicate with their customers when they are affected by travel changes?  The chaos at Heathrow but not at Manchester, failure to deal with the snow in Scotland causing a minister to resign and then grit and salt supplies not reordered until late for England and people in Northern Ireland using lemonade to flush toilets.

All these problems caused by small decisions by chains of people resulting in good or bad consequences for the end user. When we built a new high school in Chorlton we needed to construct a bridge across a brook that cost £250000 because it had to withstand the 100 year flood regulation. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for provision for the 100 year snow rule.

My journey back to France with Flybe took 3days for a journey that usually takes about 2 hours. The whole lamentable saga was made worse by the failure of the company communications to work. Email messages were automated stating they could not reply within 2 to 3 weeks and referred you to a continually engaged phone line and when answered referred you back to an email address. I am sure this is familiar to most people travelling this Christmas. They failed to book a promised hotel room and I spent a night in Southampton airport alongside another pensioner and random travellers. There will be of course a long and detailed letter sent to Jim French, the award winning CEO of Flybe and I expect little in return. Just in time business planning when emergencies arise becomes  just not good enough. Back office staff is trimmed to the bone and then there is no elasticity in the system resulting in catastrophe.

To get over the cold weather I intend to defrost in Madeira staying with friends but like Sleeping Beauty’s christening the wicked witch may strike in the form of Air France. The only other company that bumped me off a flight and lost my luggage twice. They are now in partnership with Flybe.

December 2010

Last month I got a little sidetracked with the strikes and transport turmoil and intended to write about the new tram system in Bor-deaux.
It seems as though the sight of multiple strikes on the streets of France about the retirement age increase has inspired, triggered or incited just the opposite end of the age range in the UK on to the streets of our cities.
The new coalition government has slowly realised to upset all the people all the time is not a good re-election strat-egy which is presumably why the worst news is all up front. Nevertheless into the gloom a welcome announcement for the North West in the Transport review committing £300m to electrification with a proposed completion date of 2016. I have not seen the details of the long awaited extra rolling stock. This was almost a monthly item on the GMITA agenda before I left in May so any more would be welcomed by all political parties and the business community and the poor squashed commuters. There has to be something to be seen for the extra 6.2% fare increase.
Meanwhile back in France the rail system is back to normal and special offers for winter travel come through my email box nearly every day. I do in-tend to use my rail pass to travel to Bordeaux because it is about 30mins faster by train than driving. My trip in October was by car because a visiting friend wanted to see Bordeaux and the train times didn’t fit for us. Driving for two hours can get tedious but it does get more interesting when you pass vineyards and signs for some of the best of Bordeaux like the wine village of St Emilion. As we ap-proached the city and traffic began to build up suddenly we spotted a sign P+R and we cheered and followed it to an enormous multi-storey car park in unscenic Bordeaux. The price of ad-mission was the price of one ticket each for one tram trip 1.40E (about £1.25). We had arrived at an interchange and we took the tram into the centre of the city. Bordeaux is on the estuary of the Garonne and the 3 route system takes people from the working side of the city across the river into the business sector and old city. Bordeaux has been trading wine to the UK for over a 1000 years and grain ships from Bordeaux can still be seen on the Man-chester Ship Canal. It also has a pretty good football team.
The tram is a very good way to see the city and I am told has the longest shopping street in Europe. I feel another trip may be necessary before the end of the year although I may just catch the end of the fantastic German market in Manchester when I come back for Christmas. It’s great being European.

November, 2010

This month I planned a less serious piece about the hierarchy of transport spotters or even my seamless  transport visit to Bordeaux using the park and ride and the tram. I should have thought a little longer and realised that the important issue both in the UK and here in France is the economy and the response to both governments’ plans to address their finances for the future.

After reading the long list of proposals made by the Chancellor and their impact on local government in the UK I can only get a sense of déjà vu from my time in politics in the 80’s and 90’s.

 Richard Leese, the Leader in Manchester ,says not but no-one is saying life is not going to be harder in the North. There appear to be some shafts of light in the gloom around transport capital spending and the agreement for a LEP for Greater Manchester but it all involves less money spread differently. The localism still seems to be centrally controlled. Plus ca change.

Here in France the demonstrations and strikes are continuing against the proposals to change the retirement age in spite of the changes being approved by the French parliament.  Last month I wrote about the difficulty of travelling across France little realising that travel anywhere was going to be difficult or non-existent.  When the French strike they really strike but remarkably the systems set up by SNCF, the French rail company, to move people around also work. I visited friends in the French alps and caught the train from Perigueux to Geneva via Lyon the only main cross country service. Great trip but the return journey was hit by a strike the day before my departure.

No trains to Lyon. The person at the help desk asked if I really needed to travel that day and after  I refused to cave in gave me an itinerary and a half. I travelled train, bus, TGV,  walk across from one Paris station to another, train, bus and lift home. The whole journey took 15 hours and it all ran to time.  I arrived after midnight astonished that a help desk in Geneva could be so accurate in spite of les greves  (strikes).  The issue still remains though, nearly everything goes through Paris and there are no plans to change this because as the TGV gets faster the incentive to build more routes in less populated areas disappears.

Perhaps transport spotters next month?

October, 2010

When I first came to France, a friend who retired here four years ago told me very forcefully to buy a senior rail pass. “It can save 10s of Euros” she said. C’est vrai, but like all bargains, things are not always what they seem. I have waited along with many others in the North West for successive governments to fund the NW rail upgrade and the plans to have high speed links to Europe with TGV style service looks increasingly unlikely in the short term.  Construction costs and timelines make it unrealistic in the next five years. The recent report on the Network Rail costs putting the maintenance costs at 40% higher than their European counterparts makes it unlikely that major developments will be underway shortly.We seem to have had problems with funding rail for all of my life. Nationalisation was the result of private sector failure.  Governments have tried to solve the problem of rail funding for years.

I did buy a rail pass to test the French system for E57 and I can travel at 25% or in some cases 50% off the regular fare.  The French are moving away from road investment towards rail and out of E170bn planned expenditure over the next 20-30 years only 4.5% will be spent on roads and more will be spent on ports than airports. Good I thought on reading this if I live long enough. The real test comes when you make your own travel plans. France, like the UK, has networks  geared up to the capital. It is a very difficult country to cross W/E further south than the Loire. I want to visit friends near Salzburg by train. All routes go through Paris then out again to Munich. Try going through Lyon and still the trains go through Paris and out again. Granted the alps do have something to do with this but how can it be better to fly Limoges/Stansted/Salzburg and it is both cheaper and faster but not greener.  Rail is by far the most sustainable form of transport for inter Europe travel and I commend the French for their investment and I wish that the UK could emulate them but I do  also wish I could get to Salzburg more easily!

September, 2010

There is a phrase “distance lends enchantment” and so I am looking at Manchester from the SW of France. I have lived in Greater Manchester all my life and Manchester city for the last 40 years. Like many of us I am fiercely parochial and still regard myself as a Lancastrian.

One of the big advantages of living in a large conurbation is the connectivity and the ease  of travel. One of the features of France because of its size is the fantastic rail service but not buses somewhat closer to my heart.  France is not good bus territory as Alan Westwell , the last CE of Greater Manchester Buses,used to say about parts of the UK. You need a critical mass of users along the route to make it feasible. 

In my arrogant British way I had already planned to campaign for a bus service linking my village and the rail network.  I soon found out that there was a bus run on the lines of a sort of Taxibus/dial-a-ride but for everyone. It costs the user 30euros a quarter and is funded by three of the local cantons. It goes to local shops and markets and the County town of Perigueux for hospital appointments etc. The staff also will make appointments for health and pick up prescriptions and shopping if you are ill.

There are other services that come under the heading ‘animations’ that I have yet to investigate. The problem still remains though of links to rail so I still have to think about campaigning. It would of course benefit the transient British using the airports so it might be difficult to persuade the Mayor.  One of my tasks for my first winter here.