I was delighted to learn today that GMPTA and Northern Rail have agreed to jointly fund a new PA system for Walkden station. The ticket offices at Walkden and nearby stations (including Swinton and Moorside) will also be upgraded to improve communication for those with hearing difficulties. These are small steps forward but they are nonetheless extremely welcome and will provide real improvements for passengers.
I’m glad that GMPTA and Northern Rail are beginning to recognise the work that is needed on the station. A big pat on the back should also go to the Friends of Walkden Station and the hard work they do in lobbying for station improvements on behalf of all station users – they have pushed station issues right up the agenda and they are starting to get results.
I walked past the Members’ Room in the Civic Centre earlier to find the television blaring away to itself – a fairly regular occurance. I switched it off and pondered who the culprit was…
Update: In the end I had to switch the television off twice in one evening because it had been left on in an empty room. It’s not a huge amount of energy but it all builds up and it’s a terrible example for Councillors to set.
When I went to London a few weeks ago, the lines into both Euston and St Pancras were closed for engineering work and I had to take what I thought was a pretty convoluted route - I had to get a Cross Country train heading for the south-west and change at Leamington Spa for the Chiltern Railways train into London Marylebone. Everything went exactly to plan and it still took four hours. Yesterday I took a direct Virgin train from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly and after following a slow-moving engineering train for most of the route, and then suffering a lengthy stoppage at Crewe due to an “incident on the line”, we finally pulled into Manchester after four hours and fifty minutes on the train. Ouch.
Anyway, by the time I stepped off the train, the last bus to Walkden had been and gone (no trains on a Sunday of course – that’s another blog post in itself) but to give Virgin Trains some credit (especially as neither delay was their fault) they were laying on taxis for stranded passengers, which brings me to the real reason for this post.
By the time my taxi (a “black cab” hackney carriage) arrived in Walkden, the meter stood at £26, and that included a fairly lengthy diversion through the streets of North Manchester to drop another stranded passenger off. The meter was already at nearly a tenner by the time we reached the far end of Cheetham Hill, so I doubt it would have come to much over £20 for a direct route to Walkden.
So my question is this – when did it ever cost £20 to get a black cab from the City Centre to the Worsley area?
I don’t hail black cabs in Manchester City Centre to get back to Walkden. The simple reason is that if you ask “how much?” you’ll be told “£25″ if you’re lucky and anything up to £35 if you aren’t. The City Centre private hire firms are no better with their “out of area” fares – I was quoted £35 last time I went to Rainbow Cars (I got back out of the car). Yet in the early hours of this morning I’ve seen with my own eyes on the meter that it doesn’t cost £30 or even £25 in a hackney carriage to get back to Walkden – so why do punters get quoted such extortionate figures, and what are the licensing authorities doing to check the fares out?
For what it’s worth, on the few occasions I do need to get a taxi back from Manchester, I ring the same local Walkden firm. They are much cheaper, I know they are reliable, and as my mobile number comes up on their system they know that I’m reliable and they’ll send a car promptly.
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