News from ... ? It's actually France, as we discover ...

[whole diary]

[LiskeardRich]

I was looking at a new tram line being built (first power applied to the overhead wires last week).

Zaragoza? Just re-read your post and remembered seeing that Zaragoza has had a new tramline powered up in June.

[stuving]

Still the wrong country. I  thought there was a big clue in that yellow sign (OK, it is only small in the picture).

[LiskeardRich]

Ahh now you point it out, that looks like a French Post sign.

[stuving]

OK I'll accept that as "France", though in fact it's the sign telling you not to do silly things with trains. That means I can name Orange F as the guilty provider that's had me chasing all over town trying to find a place I can get internet access. I have had no end of trouble explaining that I have almost no access just in the part of town I am staying, even with a god 3g+ etc. link, but no trouble elsewhere. Can I report a potential network fault? No. Several telephone numbers that do not work unless you have an Orange phone (fixed or mobile), staff who can't help and can't say who can, etc. I must look up the French for jobsworth. Grrr.

Still no call for that key, just yet.

[TonyK]

I must look up the French for jobsworth. Grrr.

Employ^ tatillon

The steepness of the pitch of the roof suggests somewhere that gets a fair bit of snow. Switzerland would never have such untidy rail. Holland?

[LiskeardRich]

I must look up the French for jobsworth. Grrr.

Employ^ tatillon

The steepness of the pitch of the roof suggests somewhere that gets a fair bit of snow. Switzerland would never have such untidy rail. Holland?

Read the post you've quoted, we've determined it is somewhere in France, with a new tram line, although that doesn't narrow it down as France is going tram mad recently and fitting them everywhere. I'm thinking somewhere in the south, possible Cotes D'Azur

[stuving]

Employ^ tatillon

I was thinking of something much ruder. But maybe they are so common in France that a special word is not so useful. At least, a lot of the French think that's how they are seen.

Yes, I did mean I am in France. The facts I gave are rather carefully worded; not just "a tram line"...

I usually say that the French provide very good counterexamples for us, since if it is at all possible to find two different ways of doing something, us and the French will do so. The classic example being: you think secondary school years should be number 1 to 6, then get complicated? Not in France where they go 6 to 1 and then terminale. Really though, other nations may do the same, they just don't make such a helpful choice of language to tell us about themselves.

I can see I shall have to prepare the items that I though worth putting beside our own domestic ones, off-line if need be, so as to best use any limited access time I have.

[TonyK]

I have seen one reference to "le jobsworth", but as "job" and "worth" are nothing like their French equivalents, I can't see it would be widely understood. I was put off from the answer by the key to the humidor being still unavailable. Not that it would matter to me, having parted company from tobacco on 12 May 1991. But I'll play along for fun, and have a punt at Nice this time, where I once got very drunk.

[grahame]

Employ^ tatillon

I was thinking of something much ruder. But maybe they are so common in France that a special word is not so useful. At least, a lot of the French think that's how they are seen.

At the risk of starting a grande diversion ... there is a tendency in many nations for individuals to be rather less helpful than they could be for tourists / visitors ... perhaps that's something that caught you?   Not just french - you'll see it in Bath too.

[Red Squirrel]

Employ^ tatillon

I was thinking of something much ruder. But maybe they are so common in France that a special word is not so useful. At least, a lot of the French think that's how they are seen.

At the risk of starting a grande diversion ... there is a tendency in many nations for individuals to be rather less helpful than they could be for tourists / visitors ... perhaps that's something that caught you?   Not just french - you'll see it in Bath too.

But of course never in North Wales...

[stuving]

At the risk of starting a grande diversion ... there is a tendency in many nations for individuals to be rather less helpful than they could be for tourists / visitors ... perhaps that's something that caught you?   Not just french - you'll see it in Bath too.

I don't know if it is possible to arrest this digression in its tracks, but I was really alluding more to the French view of themselves - which is of course what determines whether they have a word for something/someone. I've generally found the French very helpful outside big cities, but the idea that "we don't do American-style customer service with a smile" is I think current in a Parisian elite who travel enough to make comparisons and are willing to be self-critical. City size is more important than nationality, but as a wild generalisation I would say that judgements of people(s) about themselves relative to others are never anything like the objective truth as viewed by a Martian.

No, nowhere near Nice - I would have had better weather there, but been paying a lot more.

[stuving]

Allinges, and what it means for level crossing safety

This is the first (or the second, if you count the cost a track relaying posted earlier) parallel from France.

Last week the verdicts were announced following the trial resulting from the accident at Allinges in 2008. That was one of a sequence of level crossing accidents, some particularly scary - like the heavy lorry that derailed a train which demolished some buildings by the line.

Allinges was the one that grabbed the attention, especially of politicians, since it involved a school bus. Seven children were killed, three seriously injured, and many others (and their families) suffered in other ways. It was of course immediately followed by an official report and a plan to improve safety.

The verdict found the bus driver criminally responsible, which was  not a surprise and accepted by him. It awarded compensation for some 250 claimants (all family members counted individually) against SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) and RFF*, who are appealing.

This was an AHBC^▸ (Automatic Half Barrier Crossing), with a total of 13 seconds from first warning to train arrival.  The driver stopped on the crossing, and cannot now explain why. The road curved, and the track was canted, so that a bus had to cross very slowly - first gear, wait for any oncoming traffic, etc. The road was scored by buses and other vehicles grounding on it. The driver says this bus was always short of power (other drivers of it disagreed), and would not pull off the crossing. The investigators suspect he panicked and put it in the wrong gear (it had a manual gearbox).

However, since that report the actual rate of closure and reconfiguration has been modest: 100 a year are being closed, out of a total of 15,000. RFF's annual budget (^50M) is roughly the same as NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s (^30M, I think), though this may still be much more than it was before, and getting contributions from other public sources may add a lot to that. RFF does have the same stance of "no new level crossings", but this is not being applied to reopened lines (at least not tram-train reopenings).

Looking at the points that are seen as important in France, some things caught my attention.

• I have not seen any mention of a formal risk assessment procedure like NR's using ALCRM.
• NR/ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)/RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) identify this kind of crossing configuration issue as an important one, and if a bus cannot cross with enough momentum to get it clear this would rate high in risk scoring. This has not registered in France, even after Allinges.
• The fact that a driver might not see the flashing light immediately has been noted. But that's why our wig-wags have two lights: so there is always one lit. French ones have just one light (is it a wig or a wag?), and no amber introducing light, but no idea of changing that. What has been proposed is replacing all of them by standard three-aspect traffic lights. The argument goes that these are more familiar, evoking habitual responses even in those who rarely see a level crossing, do not flash, and have an amber phase. The advantage of  this is that with only a red light, drivers must sometimes have to cross when it is lit, and that weakens the "never cross..." conditioning. I have found that too: I saw the lights flashing (and heard the bell) as I crossed - did I miss them earlier?  Can't tell. I would add that our amber introducing light is meant to be lit for 3 seconds - my impression is that it is often a lot shorter (but I may be mistaken).

Lastly, I have tried to prod Wokingham BC about their lack of a plan for replacing our station level crossing elsewhere. The standard excuse is that there is no funding, so no point in planning how and where to make new grade-separated crossing. My point is that political priorities could change that quite quickly, for example after a bad accident at such a crossing. Planning, in the local councils' sense, a new crossing would take years. But planning, as most of us use the word, also means thinking ahead to avoid being caught out by events. I'm not sure if what has followed Allinges supports my point or not.

[*RFF=R^seau Ferr^ de France - the infrastructure operator.]

[stuving]

RFF and SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) to be re-merged

Since I was talking about RFF ... RFF was split from SNCF in 1997, at the European Commission's insistence. The logic is to enable fair competition between operators, approximating a single market for track access.

This is of course not the French way at all, and the unions opposed it at the time, but it did go through. There was quite a bit of miffity of the part of the French when they found that the Germans had done rather less than they had, agreeing with the EC a structure where both infrastructure and operators are within DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about) but with a Germano-Chinese wall between them.

It is now proposed to reintegrate RFF within SNCF, along the German model, going as far as the EC can be persuaded to swallow. Everyone seems to agree that the working relationship between the two is so bad something has to be done.

So it looks a bit odd that there was a well-supported strike at SNCF against this proposal. Is this just unions being anti for its own sake (e.g. like French teachers opposing the stopping of Saturday morning classes, and now opposing their reintroduction)? Not quite. RFF only has about 1500 staff, so all actual work is contracted out and I think most of it goes to SNCF. SNCF also manage the infrastructure for RFF on a day-to-day basis, for reasons of safety. The proposal is to transfer all those infrastructure workers (about 50,000) to the new RFF-inside-SNCF. That change evokes suspicion, both generally and (shock, horror!) that they might lose some of the special conditions of working for SNCF.

I've been looking for figures on RFF's income stream, but have not found any to set beside NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s access charges. RFF say they charge in three ways: once for having access to a route, once for reserving a specific path, and once for running a train. On aggregate these give them about the same income. I even found a web page for applying for track access, which looks decidedly ultra-liberal - though it did say the first step would always be technical feasibility studies.

[stuving]

Well, I am surprised my clues are unsolved - Google knows the answers. However, one last clue has presented itself. On the way through the aforementioned city, by car this time, Garmin took me past this. It is disused (actually the HQ^▸ (Headquarters) of a load of unions) but was in a sense the city end of the line, in that trains would arrive here and then reverse to what is still the main station. 100 years ago the lines in and out of this station ran through the streets, and the main line out to the West did so too - there were over 30 level crossings in the city centre. Next to this station, some of those rail/roads are now being converted for yet another new non-guided (but partly on reserved roads) bus service.

[JayMac]

That's the 'Maison des syndicats' (union offices) in Nantes, formerly the Gare de Nantes-Etat.

And after much searching of Google Earth I think I can say with some confidence that the first and second pictures are of Gare de Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie on the Atlantic coast.

http://goo.gl/maps/kfipu

Jeez, that was a tough find.