Integration. Integration. Integration, that's what you need.

Tap & Go is here!

Get your MetroCard, link it to your bank details, and voila!  All you need to board a Merseyrail train  is a tap at the platform validators at the start and finish of your journey.  I've had a card for a couple of months now and I have to say it's transformative.  Wandering up to the barriers at Hamilton Square and simply tapping to get through.  Dabbing on the way out and knowing that the fare will be correctly calculated and capped.  No more queuing.  No more "pay at your destination" when the ticket office staff are on a break.  No more finding the ticket machine on the car park side at Birkenhead North isn't working so you go up and over the bridge to the booking office only to discover someone is trying to plan a journey to Woking via Swansea or something (this has happened and yes I'm still bitter).

It's a marvelous step into the 21st century at last from Merseytravel.  Even more excitingly, you can Tap & Go on buses too:

Oh no, hang on: that's a different Tap & Go.  You don't need a MetroCard for that one; simply use your debit or credit card and it'll go through.  Bus fares are fixed at £2 but if you use the same card the cap will still apply and you won't pay any more than the day pass rate.  It also means you don't have to talk to the driver any more, which is great, because bus drivers are almost always twats.  I've tapped and gone a few times on local buses and it's brilliant.

Oh no, hang on: it's not totally brilliant, because it turns out it only works on one bus company, Arriva, as I discovered yesterday when I futilely hammered my iPhone on the payment slot on a Stagecoach bus.  The driver - who was, in fact, a twat - covered it with his hand and said "We don't do Tap & Go.  What ticket do you want?".  

To recap, then.  If you live in the Merseytravel area and use Stagecoach, you need to ask the driver for a ticket.  If you use Arriva buses, you can tap with a credit or debit card, but not a MetroCard.  If you use Merseyrail, you can tap a MetroCard, but not a credit or debit card.  And none of these methods of payment interact with one another, so if you, say, take an Arriva bus to the station, then a Merseyrail train, then a Stagecoach bus from your destination, none of these will know about each other, so they won't be capped at the price of a Saveaway, so you'll pay over the odds.  I have no idea what the position is with the smaller bus companies, or with the buses that have had a rebrand to the yellow Metro branding and therefore you have no idea what company is running them.  Suffice to say, it's not exactly transparent.

This simply isn't on in 2025.  Liverpool and its environs are a major city region.  It has a good, comprehensive public transport network.  We deserve a payment system that is simple and easy to use.  The MetroCard is one step along the way, but it's a hesitant, tentative step.  I first wrote on this blog about the Walrus card in 2011.  Fourteen years later we've got one of the promised features, at last, at exactly the time the rest of the world has moved on.  Nobody uses Oyster cards in London any more; you tap with your payment card or your phone.  In Helsinki I had an app.  In Amsterdam I had an app.  In Stockholm I had an app.  Whizz the QR code on the reader and I was done.  There is no Tap & Go app as yet.

I understand it's difficult to implement these schemes, and it costs time and money.  I'm once again forced to ask - why don't you talk to the people who've made it work already?  Why not rock up at TfL and say "can we use your software, please?"  

I guess I'm getting a bit old and tired and cynical.  I'm getting a bit tired of Close Friend Of The Blog Mayor Steve Rotheram standing in front of some amazing new transport innovation and it turning out to be a bit rubbish.  The Tap & Go that's limited in scope.  The trains that suffer endless teething problems.  The bendy buses that aren't bendy buses.  The hydrogen buses that we simply won't talk about any more because that's a bit embarrassing.  The station at Baltic that's still not under construction.

I want Merseytravel - or Metro, if that's what it's called now; even the rebranding has been maddeningly done - to work well for its residents and encourage people onto public transport.  Simple, uncomplicated ticketing is one of those key elements, and it's still far off.  Perhaps taking the buses under local control will help.  I hope so.  

(And yeah, it'd be nice if Tap & Go were also available on the many stations within the Merseytravel region that are not on Merseyrail, but I'm trying to be a little bit realistic here.  You can't expect miracles.  That'll probably arrive in about 2087).  

RIP Walrus: 2011-2019

Steve Rotherham, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, made an announcement today:

“Today I am announcing the start of a new era for smart travel for the Liverpool City Region. 

“Our city region already has more than 400,000 journeys per week on the Walrus card, the largest scheme outside London, but I’m not satisfied with being the best of the rest. 

“Right now, our ticket system overall is a confusing mix of prices and products, with the challenge put to the travelling public to find the cheapest price – if they can. We need to change this by making catching a bus or train as easy as possible and ensuring that passengers know they are not being ripped off. 

“The first step will be the phasing out of Walrus to be replaced with a new MetroCard, with the ability for tickets to be bought online, coming in the next few months."

Yep, the Walrus is dead.  And let's be honest, this was a mercy killing. 

Merseytravel's very own smart card, the Walrus, was announced to the public back in 2011.  This bit of plastic would take every form of ticket available - season, day, single journey.  It'd be smart and updateable.  It'd be valid on every form of transport across Merseyside.  By 2012 it'd be used by season ticket holders, and by 2013 it'd have pay as you go.  The future was coming.  I was so excited, I actually typed a blog post from an airport departure lounge on my phone; I really had to get down how keen I was for this to happen.

Time moved on, and the Walrus didn't appear.  And when I say time, I mean years.  It was late 2014 before they started creeping out, purely as a method for holding the Saveaway.  You couldn't load them online; you couldn't buy them in advance; there was no personal details held, so you couldn't check the usage.  It was a bit of plastic you handed over when you bought a Saveaway - and keep the receipt, because hardly anyone had a way of checking if it was valid.  And you had to go to a PayPoint shop to buy it, because the buses couldn't sell it, and Merseyrail were sticking with the paper form.

Slowly, over time, other products were added.  Some of the yearly travel passes, and then some of the monthly ones.  But it was still clunky and ineffective.  Meanwhile, other city regions introduced their own smart cards without hassle or problems.  On top of that, new technology swept in to overtake the idea of a plastic travel card.  My mum used her debit card on the tube when she was visiting my brother - no Oyster required.  I collected Manchester's tram stops almost entirely using my phone - an e-ticket on Northern from Liverpool, then a day ticket on the getmethere app.  The world was moving on and the Walrus looked dated. 

I'm not sure what the problem with Walrus was; I've heard rumours about in-house software, or the zones being difficult to programme.  All I know is that the decision to kill it should've happened about five years ago.  Scrap the work, go to London, and pay them for whatever they use for the Oyster.  Sorted.  The swiftness of the MetroCard's implementation - online testing before Christmas, with availability for the public in the New Year - makes me think this is exactly what's happened.  The MetroCard isn't as sexy a name as the Walrus, but if it works, who cares?  (It's better than getmethere, anyway).  With it comes a promise of online top ups, fare capping, and smooth movement between transport methods.  Admittedly, we had these promises back in 2011, but this time I actually believe it might happen.  And about time too.

Goodbye Walrus.  We hardly knew ye.

Electronica

I do love a gadget.  I love anything that's computerised and miniaturised and has flashing lights and possibly an LED screen on it.  My house is full of useless gizmos and expensive baubles that no longer work because they had a special charging cable or need Windows ME.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when I worked out that I could go entirely paper free for my trip from Liverpool to Eccles.  A few taps on the Northern app, and I had an electronic ticket sitting there and waiting to go.

It's all very exciting.  I was slightly anxious as I approached the ticket gates at Lime Street, wondering if they'd easily accommodate the e-ticket, but a flick to the barcode and a press against the viewers and I was through.  If anything it was quicker than the paper version.

A while later I got off the train at Eccles, home of the cake and namesake of Ken Barlow's dog.  An Eastern European woman got off the train with me, and immediately asked me where the Metrolink was.  (She said it like that, incidentally; not tram, but Metrolink, her accent catching on the tro).  I told her to turn left out of the station and keep walking.  As always, the minute she walked away, I doubted myself, and hoped I hadn't just sent her wandering into a dodgy estate.

Has Eccles gone upmarket recently?  The last time I was here, in 2014, I'd found it a grimy and unfriendly little place.  Now it seemed far more vibrant and exciting.  Right outside the station was a coffee shop with the curious name of  The Malaga Drift Coffee Company, and then beyond was a series of interesting, intriguing little shops.  They seemed cared for and well-loved.  Across the way was a small real ale place with a map of the Northern rail network on its back wall; sadly it was too early for a pint.

 
Outside the church - which again, seemed much more open and well-scrubbed than on my last visit - I spotted Eccles' tribute to the late Princess Diana.  How appropriate that I found this memorial as we approach the 20th anniversary of her passing, and I'm sure she was deeply touched to see that the youth of the town thought the best way to memorialise her was with a rock.

I wonder who's still leaving flowers for Lady Di?  I bet they read the Daily Express.

It turned out I had sent the lady at the station in the right direction and, at the bottom of the pedestrianised section, I found Eccles tram stop.

Eccles was the very first Metrolink extension.  Between here and Manchester city centre are Salford Quays, the large area of disused docklands that were prime redevelopment material in the Eighties and Nineties.  Trams sprinkled a bit of transportation glamour over the development, with a nice terminus in an area that needed better links with the city as a bonus, and so the new line was opened as far as Broadway in 1999, and then on to Eccles a year later.  The Wikipedia page says that Tony Blair, when cutting the ribbon, said that Metrolink was "exactly the kind of transport scheme needed to solve the transport problems of the metropolitan areas of the country"; he then refused to actually build any, so that's politicians for you.

It's officially Eccles Interchange, because there's a bus station right next door, but that's not what the signs say.

Once again I was living in the future; a few taps on my phone using the MyGetMeThere app (...don't get me started) and I'd bought a day pass for the trams.  This was the first time I'd ever traveled on multiple forms of transport and been entirely paperless throughout.  It was incredibly easy, and something I'd happily do a lot more.  (Meanwhile Merseytravel are looking at maybe, possibly, letting you put money on a Walrus card online.  By the time they get that system up and working, we'll all be traveling on the HyperLoop using tickets on microchips implanted into our forearms).

The tram took off and passed down and under the busy Ladywell roundabout in a brief but thrilling bit of tunnel.  On the other side was Ladywell stop, and I got off barely a minute after getting on board.  You don't get much of a chance to sit down when you're tram stop collecting.

Ladywell has a Park and Ride attached to it and it's signposted with a remnant of the old turquoise Metrolink corporate identity.  It's only when you see it in situ, next to the yellow and grey, that you realise how dated the old logo was.

I crossed the busy road and walked towards the next stop.  It was a chain of industrial units to my right, tool hire, decorator's yards, trade counters.  On my left, housing association flats, their bin stores tight with padlocks.  They were just about separated from the carriageway by a strip of grass verge, but I hope they have thick double glazing.  In the distance, the blade of the Beetham Tower seemed to beckon you into the city.

The road passed over the freight line to the quays and past the council depot.  At a pedestrian crossing, as I waited to go, a tram went swishing past, through the lights on its own special signal.  I reached Weaste stop as it left, but it didn't matter; there would be another in a few minutes.  The reliability of good transportation.

There was a familiar block of flats behind the tram stop.  Last time I'd come to Eccles, I'd spent a pleasant afternoon meeting friend of the blog Phil for the first and, as it turned out, last time.  I'm rubbish at being a friend.  I don't have the confidence to just say, "hey, fancy a pint?"  Even as a kid, I never knocked on other people's doors to say "coming out?" - I waited for people to knock on mine.  I get anxious about it.  What if they say no?   What if they don't want to?  What if they thought I was awful?  There's also the difficult second album syndrome - I'll have used up all my tried and tested anecdotes in my first encounter, if it went well, so a second encounter means I have to come up with new stuff.  It's awkward.  I'm awkward.  I couldn't even nip in and say hello to Phil there and then; he's moved about three times since.  It's nothing personal.  I'm just a terrible human being.

The tram stop quietly filled up.  A man and his daughter, hunched on the bench, awkwardly chatting.  A couple who hid behind the hedges so they could kiss some more.  A student with earphones rammed in tight wearing a mix of riotous colours.  The tram came in and took us off again.

What to say about Langworthy tram stop?  It was there.  Two platforms and next tram indicators and a bit of seating.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  I originally started station collecting because I like station buildings, so the tram stops of Metrolink are a big whole of nothing for me.

I crossed the tracks - always tinged with excitement and guilt - and headed down Langworthy Road, a long straight heading to the Quays.  Thick wodges of tree screened off the carriageway from the business units behind.  There were no other pedestrians, just me and a stream of cars and lorries.  The only point of interest was FutureSkills at MediaCityUK - the random capitalisation is not my fault - which proclaimed itself in large letters by the side of the road.  I couldn't actually work out what it was, though, and I had to Google to discover it was a college.  Call me old-fashioned, but I feel like the word "College" should've been in there somewhere.

Up until now, the trams had shared the carriageway with the cars, but at Broadway they went off into their own trackway.

On the opposite platform was a young lad - presumably a student from the college - who seemed incredibly excitable.  He was shadowboxing, then shadow-kicking, then he ran back and forth, up and down the slope of the platform.  I'd like to think he was just filled with the joys of a summer morning, but I have a feeling it was more chemical based.

I'd hoped to end today's tram journeys at MediaCityUK's stop, accessed via a triangular junction beyond Broadway, but that's only in use in peak time.  Instead, my tram turned left, depositing me at Harbour City.  Above me another vast apartment block was taking shape.

Of course, since I was in the area, I had to wander down to the Quays.  One of the Universities was having its graduation ceremony at the Lowry and the plaza was filled with proud parents and embarrassed students trying to slope off for a pint.  I was on the look out for someone famous, in the same way I am whenever I pass Broadcasting House; surely there had to be at least one 5 Live presenter nipping out for a coffee?  Not a one.  It was very disappointing.

I wandered around the plaza for a little bit, but there's not actually much there.  The Blue Peter Garden was already full of people taking pictures, so that leaves you with the back of the Coronation Street set and the Tardis inside one of the studio buildings.  It's an office complex with the tiniest sheen of showbiz glamour.

And there's surprisingly little to it.  Go back one street, past the gleaming Booths, and MediaCityUK falls away remarkably quickly.  Back there it's still 1980s office blocks and industrial units, entirely unaffected by the presence of the BBC Breakfast sofa.  The minute you can't see the water in the docks, the land values drop precipitously.  It doesn't feel like real regeneration; it's superficial.  It's been shipped in.

I was back at Broadway stop, about to get the return Eccles tram, when I realised I hadn't got the sign pic at Harbour City.  I'd been so excited at the slim chance of seeing Business Steph I'd entirely forgotten why I was there.  Such a media tart.

I rushed back round the corner to the slightly clunky and dated environs of Harbour City for a picture and a tram.  The buildings here are in that exact sweet spot where they look both new and old-fashioned, before their style comes back.  Next to the gleaming steel and grey towers they seem provincial.  Salford Quays is a strange mix of buildings and styles and purpose; I looked forward to coming back and exploring properly.

This Is Not A Blog Post

I was going to write a blog post about the newest manifestation of Saveaways.  They've gone all hi-tech, you see. Smart Saveaways first became available on the 24th November, bringing ticketing on Merseyside into the 21st Century.

This isn't a proper Walrus card, I hasten to add.  It might have Walrus written on it but that doesn't mean a thing.  That scheme - to introduce a Merseyside version of the Oyster card - was announced to great fanfare in 2011.  Season ticket holders would be using it by the end of 2012, with pay as you go in 2013.  It's nearly 2015 and it hasn't happened so don't mention it.  Just pretend no-one said anything.  Ignore that Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire and Tyne & Wear are all rolling out their own smart cards.

I was going to write about how the new Saveaways are not able to be pre-loaded with cash, like a pay as you go Oyster.  I was going to write how, if you have a Smart Saveaway, you have to take your card to a shop and ask them to put a day's travel on it.  I was going to point out that I could do that right now, if I wanted to buy a paper one, and so the fact that it's got a magnetic strip means nothing to me.

I could have written about how you can't buy a Smart Saveaway over the internet, or how you can't top it up online, or using a ticket machine in a bus or rail station.  About how you can't buy one in advance, like you can with a scratch-off Saveaway, so that you can have a spontaneous day out if the mood takes you.  About how my nearest Pay Point is actually in the opposite direction to my nearest bus stop.  About how there will be a £1 charge for registering it after the 1st of April.

There's probably a lengthy and detailed blog post to be written about how Merseyrail will not be issuing or crediting Smart Saveaways, and will instead stick to the paper version.  I could probably get quite a lot of humour about the fact that Merseyrail ticket inspectors will have no technology to check if your Smart Saveaway is actually valid, so, in the words of the website:

In other words, to make sure you don't get fined for not having a ticket, carry a piece of paper with your paperless ticket at all times.  Unless there's a station with ticket gates.  There's a whole eight of those on the Merseyrail network (assuming that the one in Chester accepts this smartcard, which isn't guaranteed as it's outside the County line).

And I could probably get a bit of wry fun out of the fact that when they opened the new Ferry Terminal two years ago, it came with smartcard readers, but they won't be used in 2014.  Instead you queue up, show your Smart Saveaway to a person at the ticket office, and they'll give you a boarding pass for the ferry.  Saving you absolutely no time at all.

In short, I probably could have written a lengthy, extremely angry blog post about the Smart Saveaway being inconvenient, pathetic, ridiculous, customer-alienating, a blight upon Merseytravel, and a major cause for red faces among everyone at Mann Island.  However, it's all just too bloody depressing, so I shan't bother.

Plastic Fantastic

Exciting news in the Merseytart household: I got my TwoTogether railcard through the post.  It was only launched on Monday but I was straight in there with my £30 and my passport-sized photos. 

(Obviously I'm not going to put a picture of my real railcard up there, leaving myself open to all sorts of fraud.  What do you take me for?)

In case you missed it, the Two Together Railcard was launched after a trial in the West Midlands as a way of giving pairs of people a cheaper way to travel.  You and another named person are on the card, and if you get the train together, you'll get a third off your travel.  It's really that simple, and is well worth getting with a mate and shoving in a drawer on the off chance.

I got it with the BF, but don't hold your breath for a sudden upswing in the quality on the blog because I've got a pet photographer with me at all times.  For starters, it's not able to be used on most Rangers and Rovers, my ticket of choice for a day romping around the provinces.  Secondly, the BF isn't particularly enthused by the idea of walking between stations.  He's not big on walking.  He's not big on stations either.  In fact, probably the only thing that would persuade him to come out with me on a tarting trip is if we went to just one station, and there was a tea room right outside, and then we went home again.  So the 1/3 off would be pretty much wasted.

It's there in my wallet if we need it though, like my Oyster card and the Bite card that gives me 20% off at station food outlets and I always forget to use.  One card that might be added to it in the not-awfully distant future is the Walrus card.  You might have forgotten about the Walrus.  Launched in 2011, this was going to be the smart ticket for all of Merseytravel, our version of the Oyster card.  All the season tickets would be on the smartcard by 2012, with pay as you go use in place by 2013.

This didn't happen.  In fact, a comprehensive review last year called a halt to the whole project and a re-think of what the Walrus was going to deliver.  They concluded that the timeline was way too ambitious.  Meanwhile, TfGM has announced its "my get me there" card, Nexus have got their "Pop", the Glasgow Subway has a Smartcard - basically Merseytravel has been left behind.

A report to the Merseytravel committee today will suggest a new path forward: the Walrus card is going to replace the Saveaway.  Sort of.  Merseyside's One-Day Travelcard will be available electronically to Wirral passengers from the Autumn, and the rest of Merseyside by next year. 

Expert travel analysts and, well, pretty much anyone will notice that this is a bit rubbish.  The Walrus has been demoted from an all-encompassing smartcard scheme to an update of a 1980s scratchcard.  The report notes that the Saveaway has the advantage of anonymity, so there will be none of those pesky customer details to slow things down.  Of course, the pesky customer details are exactly the point.  A weekly Trio customer, or a monthly Solo passenger, wants to be able to renew their card at home, on the internet, in front of The Cube.  It frees up ticket office time.  It frees up personal time.  It frees up the space in your purse that was taken by a big flappy bit of plastic, four times the size of rest of your cards and getting more creased and illegible every time you used it.

Meanwhile, more irregular customers - people like me - want the freedom to chuck £20 on a card as a backup.  I could have that in my wallet for my trips to Liverpool and back, and also have it there in case I fancy getting a bus somewhere, or I change my mind and decide to head to Southport instead of Ormskirk.  A smart card gives you freedom, opens up new journeys, and lets computers do all the hard work of topping up and checking.  Plus - and I realise this will displease Julian Assange - all that customer detail is a fantastic resource for the transport executive and passenger alike.  I can't be the only one who's logged into his Oyster card just to get a weird thrill out of seeing I've been tracked all over the capital.  (It'll also help to discourage extra-marital affairs for exactly the same reason).

I can buy a Saveaway and go out for the day right now.  I did it last week.  It was easy.  It makes no difference to me if it's paper or electronic; I still have to go up to a ticket office on the day and hand over some cash.  And remember, you can't buy Saveaways on buses, so even though I'll have a Walrus card in my wallet, unless I've been to a shop or railway station first to put money on it, it may as well be my membership of the Dennis the Menace Fan Club for all the use it will be.

It's a sop.  It's a "will this do?".  It's a fig leaf, to cover up the fact that it's been two and a half years and nothing's really happened.  If Merseytravel couldn't - can't - handle it on their own, then they should just go over to Manchester and ask to borrow the get me there card for Liverpool.  In fact, if they did that, joining the two cities with one card, it'd be a lot more convenient for everyone.  It'd certainly be less pressure on my wallet's stitching.

Arty Party

Art on the Network is back!  Yay!

To me, this is one of the Capital of Culture's finest legacies - an annual art prize, sponsored by Merseytravel, and now in its fourth year.  This year's theme - clearly preparing for the introduction of the Walrus card - is to design a "travel wallet".  There are two categories: one for adults and one for schoolchildren.

(I'm going to be a curmudgeon here and say that I hate it when there are child-designed posters and artwork around - those "stay off the track" posters on Merseyrail trains, for example.  The only people who actually like seeing a badly scrawled felt tipped illustration on the wall are the kid who designed it and their immediate family.  To me it's just a mess of badly illustrated primary colours.  I'd rather stare at a No Win, No Fee solicitor ad).

It's a £500 prize (though the money goes to the kiddie's school, not the child, so don't go counting on armfuls of Haribo).  More importantly, your design will actually be put up for sale across Merseyside.  You can enter at http://www.artonthenetwork.co.uk.  If you win, my referral fee is 10%.  Cash only.

Hale Village 82a, by Laurence Langton

Hopefully, the competition will be more successful than last year.  I'm not criticising the winning artworks - one of which can be seen above, and more below; the winning entries were all excellent.  I was disappointed in the way the competition ran.

Discover Liverpool, by David Williams

Though I covered the opening of the competition in April last year, the winners weren't announced until January, and then in a very low-key way.  The prize seemed to have been downgraded as well.  The competition was themed around posters, so you'd have expected to be seeing these fine pieces of art all over the city by now.

No.  The designs merely appeared on the front of "limited edition Merseytravel publications" - posh bus timetables, in other words.  A much more transient and ignominious fate for all that hard work.  It means that the advertisements for entries to the competition received more prominence than the actual winners - that can't be right, can it?

Connecting People, by Daniel Lindsay

(You'll be unsurprised to learn the piece above was my favourite).

These posters deserved to be all over the Liverpool area - in stations, bus shelters, ferry terminals.  They're worth selling in the MtoGo stores, and the museums.  They're far more deserving of a spot on the shelves than Beatles frightwigs.  I hope this year's winners' designs fare a lot better.

Read It and Weep

I was at the Pier Head the other day, looking at the new landing stage for the ferry.  It's nice enough, though I can't help thinking that those open sides will make it a pretty unpleasant environment come January.  And why isn't it physically attached to the Ferry Terminal?

Anyway, while I was there, my eye was caught by something at the head of the stage.

Computer!  Zoom and enhance!

That looks an awful lot like a Walrus reader to me.  It's a preview of what the standalone readers will probably look like when they're installed across the network.  Though the underground stations (and Southport and Conway Park) have had gates with card readers in them for a long time, we've not really known what's going to happen at the ungated stations.

The assumption is that there will be a similar solution to the one used on the Docklands Light Railway.  These little readers will probably be installed at the entrance to the other Merseyrail stations, and maybe on the platforms as well, so that you can check in and out of the network as you come and go.  I haven't seen them being installed anywhere else though - if you have them at your local station, please let me know so I can go and have a look.  According to the official Walrus timetable, they should be replacing annual Railpasses with a smartcard in the next few weeks, so you would expect them to be implemented pretty soon.

The Walrus and the Tart

I did something unusual on Sunday night: I got a bus.  I'd been out for a couple of pints in town and instead of getting the train back I took the 437 to West Kirby home.

I don't normally take buses for a few reasons.  I like trains, obviously, and Merseyrail provide a good regular service.  I've never been really comfortable on buses, and they seem to attract a disproportionate amount of insane people.  I like the certainty of railway stations and train lines.  Finding out where a bus goes to and from is a hassle, especially if you're going somewhere unfamiliar, and it's not always easy to find out where to go (Merseytravel's bus timetable site is a nightmare in this regard).

However, it was a wet, miserable night, I didn't fancy the walk home, and I had access to wi-fi in the pub so I was able to do a few internet searches to find out where I was going and where my nearest stop was.  I had a bit of a panic when I asked for a single to Claughton, and the driver said "where?"; it was on the route but it seemed he didn't understand me for some reason.

The 437 was comfortable and quiet.  There were a smattering of people, and none of them seemed to be particularly mad.  The last time I got the bus under the river was a Saturday night Tunnel Bus, fifteen years ago, with a (cough) gentleman friend; it was like being trapped inside a vomit soaked sex club for ten minutes, with all sorts of drunken, debauched behaviour surrounding me.  This was much more civilised and pleasant.

I got off the bus and walked the five minutes or so home.  I wondered why I didn't take the bus more often.  I realised it was the little things - the uncertainties about fares and bus stops and routes, the timetables being a bit odd.  Just niggly points that mean I'd rather walk to a Merseyrail station than head for the bus stop at the end of my street.

And that's why we need Walrus: for people like me.  An all in one smart card that is the key to Merseyside's entire network.  Because I'd be quite happy to swipe onto the first bus I saw and see where it went.  I'd be more confident at risking an unknown bus that was going in vaguely the right direction if I knew my Walrus card had all the cost covered.  It'd also mean I wouldn't have wasted the return portion of my train ticket - I wouldn't have been charged for it in the first place.  It's something I've done before in London, with my Oyster card - nipped onto a double decker rather than walk to the South Bank, or take an Overground train for a change instead of the Underground.

The Walrus would open up the bus and train network for people who don't use public transport often.  Stick one in your wallet with twenty quid stored on it, and then just hop aboard a bus when it's raining, or the ferry when you fancy a change from Merseyrail, or a train into town because you can't face the idea of parking.  It takes away the worry of how much and where you go and what you do.  Walk in - waft your Walrus - walk out.  Simple.

I know this isn't brain surgery.  The Oyster's done all the ground work for us.  It just came home to me on Sunday what a great thing the Walrus card will be.  I can't wait.

The Central Question

What can you do with Liverpool Central?  It's the hub of the Merseyrail network, the centrepiece, but it's in desperate need of help.  The 19th Century by way of the 1970s station is bursting at the seams.  Last month's announcement of £20 million and a four month closure will go some way to alleviating the pain, but how far will it go?

I happened to be in town today so I headed there to have a look round before the refurb starts (being a Wirralite, I rarely stay on the train all the way to Central unless I'm heading for Bold Street).  The MtoGo has made a massive difference to the ticket hall.  It's a lot brighter and more welcoming, and the white tiled floor helps.  This is where the majority of the money's going.  A new glass roof is coming in, along with "improved toilet facilities" and "improved passenger flows".  The Central Village scheme (currently being constructed behind the old Lewis') will see escalators inserted to the left of the MtoGo, leading up to an intermediate concourse on the roof and then more escalators up to the new shopping district (you can see it on the video here).  There will reportedly be more Walrus-ready passenger gates put in as well.

All well and good.  But I can't say I'm not disappointed.  The problem isn't with the concourse; it's down below on the Northern Line.

The Northern Line platforms predate the Link & Loop; in fact, they predate an awful lot of railways, full stop.  The island platform was opened in 1892 as the terminus of the Wirral Railway from Birkenhead via James Street.  When redevelopment came in the mid-Seventies, the Wirral Line was sent deeper to a brand new platform on the loop, while the old Wirral platforms became the new Northern Line.

Head down the escalators and, despite the usual cigarette-smoke coloured cladding, you're aware you're in a completely different station to the Wirral Line one.  Island platforms are a rarity in UK underground stations (the London Underground only has two, left over from the earliest days of Tube building) and it feels narrow and restricted.

And look at those crowds.  I was there at the tail end of the rush hour, and the train on the left was just departing, but look at how full the platform on the right is.

The escalator banks occupy much of the centre of the platform, and so there's little space either side for waiting passengers.  It results in a "bunching" effect at either end and then, when the train comes in, a squeeze to get aboard.  The signs showing where the doors are help a little, but it's far from ideal.

Network Rail plans on removing some of the escalator machinery to give people more room to circulate.  That would help but it's a bit of a sticking plaster, like their decision to remove some of the seating units a few years ago.

The basic problem is that the Northern Line platforms just aren't fit for purpose any more.  Using the old island platform when the Link was built probably saved an awful lot of money, but it just created more problems years later.

That twenty million sounds like a lot but what's really needed is a more drastic plan.  My trip to the Glasgow Subway showed one solution.  The whole circle was built with tiny island platforms in all the stations.  At busy locations like Hillhead (below), they've built a second platform, across from the first.  The old island platform becomes one way only, and a glass wall is installed to stop people from plummeting onto the tracks.

Bash through the wall at the top of the Northern Line escalators, build a bridge over the track, and put in a new platform with escalator and lift access there.  You've just doubled the station's capacity.

Yes, it'd cost a bomb, but it's got to happen eventually.  The alternative - which Network Rail consider might be necessary in the future - is to build a whole new station, probably underneath the Church Street/Ranelagh Street junction.  Which would cost even more of a bomb.

There's still some smaller schemes that I think could be implemented to improve life for Central's users.  At some point in the rebuild forty years ago, some jobsworth realised they could save a few quid by only putting in three escalators, even though there was space for four.

Well done; you saved a little bit of money.  Can we replace that staircase with an escalator now?  Because I think that might help the passengers a bit by getting them to and from the platform a lot quicker.

Another way to lighten the passenger load would be to send more trains to Hunts Cross.  At the moment, in a typical fifteen minute period, there are three northbound trains and one southbound.  If, say, the Kirkby train continued on instead of terminating, you'd double the amount of trains to Hunts Cross - and halve the number of people waiting on the platform.  (As a bonus, you'd get twice as many trains serving the busy Liverpool South Parkway).

Next year's refurb will put in another lift; can I suggest it's a large one, so you can fit more than one person with a bike or a pushchair in it at a time?  Perhaps big enough for half a dozen people at once?  And if you could build it in a place that means people won't get rained on when they reach ticket hall level, that would be a good idea as well.

These are just a couple of idea; I'm sure you've got some of your own, and please feel free to use the comments to tell me what they are.  I think we can all agree that Central needs help.  Any money coming its way is of course appreciated.  I'm afraid that £20 million just isn't enough.

P.S.  I also noticed that Central's acquired a new bit of artwork on the floor, which looks a lot like a Grant Searl piece for the Animate the Underground series.

Firstly: on the floor?  Really?  Secondly, has this all been announced and unveiled and I missed it, or is it still being laid (I couldn't find this painting's riddle, which makes me wonder if it's a work in progress)?  Thirdly, how much of it's going to be left after the refurbishment works?