Stephen Rees's blog

The image above shows how this blog has grown over the year. Because WordPress uses GMT I have delayed copying as late as I can – so there may be one or two more views today. In fact the blog did break 9,000 views this month – but it doesn’t really matter. The growth has been pretty steady in recent months with a noticeable – and perfectly reasonable – dip over the holidays. I am glad that so many of you had better things to do – and no doubt will also have tonight. I have been trying to set up a meeting for tomorrow and nearly everywhere seems to be closed on New Year’s Day, so I suppose everyone is expected to be nursing wicked hangovers.

One or two subjects really seem to have hit a nerve. My championing of the Evergreen Line, for example, seems to be very controversial in the TriCities and has attracted over 2000 views. The other regular top of the list posts have been about the new high speed train services into St Pancras – there ‘s more than one post in that series and they all got more than a thousand views each.

Overall this blog has had 54,000 views since it started. And I want to say thank you once again to everyone, but especially the regulars and those who take the time to comment – which includes people who come here for an argument.

What I have noticed is that people who profess to have no interest in these issues are only too happy to talk about them. And a common theme that comes up again and again – especially with people who have lived here a while – is how we used to have a really good, rail based transit system with local trams and long distance interurbans. It was a shame, most people say, that we ripped them all out just before we realised we would need them again. But we still have many of the tracks in place. Our officials seem incapable of recognizing the opportunity they represent. We seem to keep on repeating the mistakes of the past.

So the New Year seems like a good time to wish that we will come to our senses, and stop repeating the same mistakes, and start some much needed renewal of our transit system. It is long overdue.