Talk:Transport for West Midlands

Quality as at 3 March 2010

Some quality issues, examples below.

Cost of congestion

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Midlands_Passenger_Transport_Executive&diff=338734306
The £2.3 billion figure is an "estimate", and I can find no evidence that it was derived from studies. If someone can show how or where this figure was "calculated", please do.

Australian shopping centre

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Midlands_Passenger_Transport_Executive&diff=338750732
Different line of business. So no real risk of confusion.

Network West Midlands identity

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Midlands_Passenger_Transport_Executive&diff=338733400
Given that Network West Midlands is little more than than a name and a visual identity, I'm unclear as to why the description of NWM graphic design, and its similarity to 'Preparing for Emergencies', was cut down.

Is TfWM the Transport Delivery Committee of the WMCA?

I have just reworked the introduction to the article, which was placing too much empasis on the former PTE (Centro). There had been a sentence regarding TfWM's policies and budget being set by the Transport Delivery Committee of the WMCA. This may be worth keeping, but can first anyone confirm: is this committee actually a separate entity? I was under the impression that TfWM, which combines the functions of the old PTA (ITA) and PTE, is in fact the Transport Delivery Committee of the WMCA? P M C 08:58, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Legally, the combined authority itself is the executive, and TfWM is a brand used by the authority for transport matters in the metropolitan area, i.e. all staff members of Centro are now employed by WMCA. The transport delivery committee is in essence the board which sets the strategy for TfWM, similar to the WMITA. As the transport delivery committee is a board of the metropolitan borough and LEP members, but TfWM's policies are delivered by several hundred others it would perhaps be best to separate the two roles for clarity? Sammich28 (talk) 12:46, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

If there is no distinct separation between the two, then best to leave the snippet out. Otherwise, we would in effect be saying "The WMCA's transport policies and budget are set by the WMCA" which is a pointless tautology! 62.156.255.28 (talk) 15:26, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

References

TfWM logo

The top of this article currently contains the Network West Midlands logo. This is a big part of what TfWM does, but it isn't everything (roads, for example). I think in addition to (or instead of) the NWM logo we also need the TfWM logo at the top of the infobox.

An example of this logo can be seen here , to the left of the main WMCA logo. I assume the TfWM logo is copyright, but can we get a fair-use copy from somewhere?

My suggestion would be to have only the TfWM logo at the top of the infobox and to move the NWM logo to a thumbnail box somewhere in the article, with a caption along the lines of " 'Network West Midlands' is the name used by TfWM to brand public transport services in the West Midlands". P M C 09:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, however I think it would be best to wait for a higher resolution or vector version of the logo to become publicly available. Sammich28 (talk) 12:47, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Separate article for WMPTE as an historical organisation has been (re-)created

Per earlier discussions on this page, I have re-established West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive as separate article, so that it can be properly covered as an historical entity, leaving this article free to cover TfWM and public transport in the West Midlands as it is today and into the future. This seems very much to be the right approach, as there are such clear distinctions between the two bodies (as discussed above).

I have put the page at West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, rather than Centro, because:

• This was the organisation's legal name for the whole of its existence
• 'Centro' requires the aticle title to be disambiguated

I have changed the redirects for WMPTE, Centro, WMPTA and WMITA from this page back to West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. There may be some others that would better point to the PTE article than here, but I couldn't see anything else obvious in the list of redirects to TfWM.

I will shortly go through and remove anything historical from this article that pertains only to the PTE to avoid any unnecessary duplication between the two articles.

The PTE article is more or less the same as this article was up until the creation of TfWM, other than I have made the necessary changes to the language and phrasing so that it is purely historical. There is however plenty of room for expansion of the PTE article, as there are lots of things it does not currently cover that I think it should, for example:

• Vehicles operated 1969-86, liveries, etc.
• Development of community transport, Ring & Ride, etc.
• Rationalisation of routes in the 1970s, development of a West-Midlands-wide network
• Ticketing. The 'n' tickets that were in use in Centro's final years are covered but there's nothing for the period 1969-2005. If I'm not mistaken, the original early 1970s Travelcard was a first for the country?
• Infrastructure - bus garages, bus stations, railway stations, tracline guided busway
• Etc.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Petecollier (talk • contribs) 11:59, 28 June 2016 (UTC) 

I've now removed historical, PTE-only information. This information can be found on the WMPTE article instead.

I had planned to keep a "History" section in this article, but it dawned on me as I edited that, apart from "took over from PTE in 2016" (which is already covered in the introduction), there is nothing to put here as TfWM is less than two weeks old. It will be a good section to reintroduce at a later date though, when there is some TfWM history to put in it! We need to be careful not to fall into the trap of duplicating WMPTE information here, and remember TfWM's history starts in 2016. P M C 12:38, 28 June 2016 (UTC)