The whole West London Tram scheme is dead in the water, so much
opposition exists to the scheme in West London that I cannot personally
see it happenning in the forseeable future. I suspect the scheme will
be dropped on cost grounds as the benefits behind the whole scheme are
pretty limited and cost have been escalating.


Colin McKenzie wrote:
David Bradley wrote:

Hi,

LB Hammersmith and Fulham have now come out fully against the West London
Tram,...

It's worth taking a good look at the TfL website ...
devastating new permanent layout proposals for West Ealing Lido junction,
Hanwell Broadway and Southall Broadway main junction. Many small shops and
other businesses will be wiped out, and old but perfectly serviceable and in
some degree townscape-valuable buildings, will be demolished.

If the tram doesn't go ahead, some of this demolition may happen
anyway, to increase capacity for cars and buses. The basic premise
behind the tram is to increase the capacity of the Uxbridge Road to
move people, in exchange for a reduction in its capacity to move cars.

It is worth stressing that a trolleybus scheme would require far more
minimalist (and much shorter-lived) construction compound facilities, and no
such destructive road widening in town centres. Presumably substation
requirements would be similar to tram although why roadside cabinets using
local electricity supplies can't be used is a mystery to me.

The reasons for choosing tram over trolleybus were never, in my view,
very good. They were mainly: trams are better at attracting people out
of cars, and will make it politically easier to achieve the necessary
demolitions and reductions in capacity for other motor vehicles.

But I'm not sure there's any actual UK evidence that trams attract
more people out of cars than trolleybuses - how would you obtain it?
Asking people to predict what they'd do is not very accurate,
especially if you don't explain very carefully what a tolleybus is.

Cyclists may like to know that at present they can get from one end to
the other faster than the tram is projected to be able to. There is a
real danger that changes to get the tram in will delay cyclists enough
to make them slower than the tram.

Colin McKenzie

In article . com,
MartyJ writes
The whole West London Tram scheme is dead in the water, so much
opposition exists to the scheme in West London that I cannot personally
see it happenning in the forseeable future. I suspect the scheme will be
dropped on cost grounds as the benefits behind the whole scheme are
pretty limited and cost have been escalating.

Would that it were so. Unfortunately it is being pushed by Ken L, and
he doesn't seem to pay much attention to public opinion.

Incidentally, what is the latest cost estimate? The last figure I saw
was £648 m, but that was probably a year ago. I imagine it must be
nearing £1 bn, which means that if it were ever built it would probably
cost not far short of £3bn - of your and my money.
--
Thoss

Would that it were so. Unfortunately it is being pushed by Ken L, and
he doesn't seem to pay much attention to public opinion.

Public opinion it seems to me is generally in favour. Its more
a case of a load of standard issue Nimbies down the bottom end
whinging about it because it might make driving Jemima 500
yards to school a bit harder. For the people of Southall and
onwards to Uxbridge it would be a godsend given the
generally lousy public transport in that corridor.

B2003

"Boltar" wrote in message
oups.com...

Public opinion it seems to me is generally in favour. Its more
a case of a load of standard issue Nimbies down the bottom end
whinging about it because it might make driving Jemima 500
yards to school a bit harder. For the people of Southall and
onwards to Uxbridge it would be a godsend given the
generally lousy public transport in that corridor.

B2003

Have a look at this from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...846599,00.html

'......Transport for London embarked on a massive consultation exercise,
produced 500 pages of data, interviewed 16,895 people and printed 440,000
brochures and questionnaires in 11 different languages.
The findings were as clear as a thumb's down from the emperor in the
Colosseum: 70 per cent of respondents did not support the idea.'

Paul

Bit of selective cut and pasting by you there I think. You
forgot the next bit:"The only enthusiasm came from 71 people living way
beyond the terminus, in Buckinghamshire.". Last time I looked 71 people
is not 30% of 16895. So I suspect this journalist is playing a bit
fast and loose with the facts. On an aside I'd also be interested
to know why TfL thought it appropriate to do the survey in 11
languages. If people can't be arsed to learnt the language of
the country they're living in why the hell should they be allowed to
give their views and perhaps influence people
who do give a **** about this place?

B2003

Boltar wrote:
Bit of selective cut and pasting by you there I think. You
forgot the next bit:"The only enthusiasm came from 71 people living
way beyond the terminus, in Buckinghamshire.". Last time I looked
71 people is not 30% of 16895. So I suspect this journalist is
playing a bit fast and loose with the facts.

Between the 70% opposed to it and the 71 from rural Bucks who were
enthusiastic, there were presumably 29.996% who weren't terribly
bothered either way.

On an aside I'd also be interested to know why TfL thought it
appropriate to do the survey in 11 languages. If people can't be
arsed to learnt [sic] the language of the country they're living in
[,] why the hell should they be allowed to give their views and
perhaps influence people who do give a **** about this place?

I'm not sure why you deserve a response, given the standard of English
in that last sentence, but it's probably because they are the very
people in Southall whose welfare you were concerned about in your
previous post, all of 21 minutes earlier. Remember?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

I'm not sure why you deserve a response, given the standard of English
in that last sentence, but it's probably because they are the very
people in Southall whose welfare you were concerned about in your
previous post, all of 21 minutes earlier. Remember?

Never heard of a typo? And my god , what a patronising reply
for the people of Southall. You ever been there? I have on
numerous occasions and I've never met anyone there who
couldn't speak English. The only people who can't be
bothered to learn the language are the ones who really don't
give a toss about this country but just use the place as a
convenient location to wash up in. So **** them and their
opinions and TfL should not have wasted money translating
into 11 languages. Same goes for my local council and its
endless PC efforts in all its hopeless multi ligual booklets.

B2003

Paul Scott wrote:
"Boltar" wrote in message
oups.com...

Public opinion it seems to me is generally in favour. Its more
a case of a load of standard issue Nimbies down the bottom end
whinging about it because it might make driving Jemima 500
yards to school a bit harder. For the people of Southall and
onwards to Uxbridge it would be a godsend given the
generally lousy public transport in that corridor.

B2003

Have a look at this from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...846599,00.html

'......Transport for London embarked on a massive consultation exercise,
produced 500 pages of data, interviewed 16,895 people and printed 440,000
brochures and questionnaires in 11 different languages.
The findings were as clear as a thumb's down from the emperor in the
Colosseum: 70 per cent of respondents did not support the idea.'

I always thought it was rather obvious that consultation responses are
heavily biased towards opponents of a scheme. You wouldn't ring up the
gas company to tell them they sent you a nice low bill, but you
certainly would if they tried to overcharge you.

The market research TfL did should be much more representative of public
opinion. The 2005 MORI market research says that 48% are in favour of
and 37% are opposed to the scheme, with higher support in Southall and
Uxbridge and lower support in Ealing.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/trams/download...eportFINAL.pdf


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 23:28:39 +0000, Dave Arquati wrote:

Paul Scott wrote:
"Boltar" wrote in message
oups.com...

Public opinion it seems to me is generally in favour. Its more
a case of a load of standard issue Nimbies down the bottom end
whinging about it because it might make driving Jemima 500
yards to school a bit harder. For the people of Southall and
onwards to Uxbridge it would be a godsend given the
generally lousy public transport in that corridor.

B2003

Have a look at this from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...846599,00.html

'......Transport for London embarked on a massive consultation exercise,
produced 500 pages of data, interviewed 16,895 people and printed 440,000
brochures and questionnaires in 11 different languages.
The findings were as clear as a thumb's down from the emperor in the
Colosseum: 70 per cent of respondents did not support the idea.'

I always thought it was rather obvious that consultation responses are
heavily biased towards opponents of a scheme. You wouldn't ring up the
gas company to tell them they sent you a nice low bill, but you
certainly would if they tried to overcharge you.

The market research TfL did should be much more representative of public
opinion. The 2005 MORI market research says that 48% are in favour of
and 37% are opposed to the scheme, with higher support in Southall and
Uxbridge and lower support in Ealing.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/trams/download...eportFINAL.pdf


First of all it needs be said that MORI are a very professional and objective
polling organisation. Polls for things like general elections are relatively
simple affairs (there really only being three main parties plus the 'don't
knows'). That being said all the pollsters (including MORI) got the prediction
for the 1992 general election badly wrong (in the sense of winning party not
majority!) So it's not an exact science.

Polling for a subject like WLT is far more complex than elections and that is
why there is always a full report given by the polling organisation. If you
are going to comment meaningfully, all of this should be read carefully in
detail. A one liner headline does not really do justice to the report which is
available publicly at the URL which you provided.

Some parts of the detail which can be extracted are as follows:

If you want to be 95% certain of the final result (note still not 100% certain
- that's never possible) you cannot just take the 48% pro and 37% against. The
figures are actually 48+/- 5 pro and 37+/-5 against (Top of page 8 of the
report). So although its is less likely than 48 to 37, it is still within the
95% probability that the result was 43% pro and 42% against. This of course is
a rather different picture.

Of probably much greater significance is the information contained on page 12
which states that only about 25% of respondents, by their own judgment,
considered that they had a good understanding of the scheme and 38% stated
that they only had a limited understanding. Note that the 'undecideds' were
only 15% so even if all of those were in the 'limited understanding' group,
there was still a significant percentage (23%) who definitely voted one way or
the other based on 'a limited understanding' of the scheme'. Note the comment
on page 13,

'Opponents of the WLT are more likely to have a 'good' understanding of the
scheme than those who are in favour of it (35% and 22% respectively).'
We can deduce therefore that many of those who voted in favour had by their
own admission actually a 'limited understanding' of what they were voting for.
If we assume that this group is only slightly more than half of the 23% (as
seems reasonable from the statement quoted from page 13), let's call it 13%
and that if they had had a 'good understanding' then they would have voted
against, then the end result would have been 35+/-5 % for and 50+/-5 % against
- a totally different result.

The results on the bottom of page 9 and the top of page 10 are also very
telling and I have quoted them in full below:
Among those residents who support the WLT scheme, the main reasons relate to
the perception that it will lead to less congestion, journeys will be quicker
and that trams are more environmentally friendly. In contrast, the most common
spontaneous reasons for opposing the scheme are the view that it will lead to
greater congestion in other areas as cars divert to side roads, that it will
not provide a solution to transport problems and that roads are not wide
enough to support the WLT. In addition, when prompted, 71% of residents agree
that the tram will cause too much disruption whilst building work takes place.
When presented with a number of potential benefits of the WLT scheme (e.g.
reduced pollution, more reliable than current bus services, lead to more jobs
in the area) the majority of residents say they would be more in favour of the
scheme if these scenarios transpired.

Similarly, when presented with a list of potential drawbacks of the scheme
(e.g. increased congestion, parts of the Uxbridge Road being closed to
traffic), the majority say they would be less in favour of it. Of note, seven
in ten would be less in favour of the scheme if it resulted in increased
congestion, including 57% of those who currently support the scheme. o On
balance, more residents disagree than agree that they would personally benefit
from the WLT scheme (47% and 38% respectively). Despite this, 59% say they
will actually use it. Of note, 28% of those who oppose the scheme say they are
likely to use the scheme.

In effect the respondents supporting the scheme are saying that they recognise
that there is a problem and that the tramway scheme has been stated to be a
way of solving that problem. They therefore feel that they should support it.
Note of course that no possible alternative options are presented in the poll.
So in effect the question is, 'This is a solution to the Uxbridge Road
congestion problem - do you support it?'

What is of great interest is the statistic at the end. Cynicism has led even
many of those supposed 'supporters' to believe that it really is not going to
work because they say that they will gain no personal benefit from it. Note
that 70% would be less in favour if they were convinced that the scheme was
not going to deliver its promoted benefits.

If 70% of those who were pro scheme for instance were to become agnostic
because of such conviction, then the overall result would be 15+/- 3% in
favour, still 37+/-5% against and nearly half not sure at all!

I would venture to suggest that if far more people understood the issues
better and were honestly informed that there were other (cheaper) options
available, this latter result might actually be far nearer to a true opinion.

The bottom line is that policy in regard to an issue as important and complex
as WLT should be based on all information (and that includes the full detail
of the MORI report). What appears to have been done is that one headline
statistic has been extracted for political expediency. To quote Andrew Lang,

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts-for support rather than
illumination."

David Bradley

In message , David Bradley
writes
'Opponents of the WLT are more likely to have a 'good' understanding of
the scheme than those who are in favour of it (35% and 22%
respectively).' We can deduce therefore that many of those who voted in
favour had by their own admission actually a 'limited understanding'
of what they were voting for. If we assume that this group is only
slightly more than half of the 23% (as seems reasonable from the
statement quoted from page 13), let's call it 13% and that if they had
had a 'good understanding' then they would have voted against, then the
end result would have been 35+/-5 % for and 50+/-5 % against - a
totally different result.
Nice troll. What's that saying? Oh yes, Lies, damned lies and
statistics.
--
Clive