What happens when a Minister announces that public transport fares will be frozen

Signing of the new Enterprise Train Contract at Grand Central Station

We all know the quotation from David Copperfield, the most impenetrable novel I had to study in school. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. Translink wishes. The reality is that Translink has been running at a substantial loss for the last two years.  Forget Grand Central, forget new buses, forget the new Enterprise trains, all funded by DfI and not …

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Fix climate change and congestion with better buses

A recent job change, for me, led to a minor conundrum associated with the loss of a free city centre parking space. I could either continue to drive to work and pay for all day parking (£7 is the lowest price I’m aware of) or I could use the bus. I opted for the bus.  The Antrim Road area, where I live, is quite well served by the Metro 1 route. Using the “Belfast Bus Tracker” third party app (App …

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Interview with Translink CEO Chris Conway

Thursday afternoon in the Europa Buscentre, and knowing I’ve been scooped by the Business Telegraph (the price of blogging), I meet with Chris Conway in the conference room.  We’ve met before, as I happened to be at Stormont for an Autism event on the day Translink launched Train and Bus week, but this chat has been pre-arranged to talk about the new ticketing systems. Phone is recording the audio (no boos today), and we dive fairly quickly into the new …

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