Political dishonesty, disillusionment with politics, polarisation, and shrinking attention spans are pushing voters to judge politicians on vibes, not policies, leaving us open to manipulation by hostile foreign powers. Welcome to the age of Tik-tok Democracy.
In the past five articles, we’ve talked extensively about the flaws of French Regional Transit. It is also clear that these flaws will persist unless radical changes are made. So what is the plan?
Since the outbreak of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, Europe has walked an imaginary tightrope between supporting Ukraine, and preventing escalation. But as the war enters its second year, it is clear that this policy has backfired: our failure to supply the weapons needed to neutralise Russia has harmed Ukraine, emboldened Putin, and made a Russian attack on Europe even more likely. If we are to defeat Russia, it is time we admit that we are at war, and act like it.
There are 3 main criterea for citizens when choosing their means of transport: price, convenience and speed. For a transit network to be successful, it needs to compete on two of three of these criteria. but French Regional transit barely manages one.
Part of the reason France’s regional services struggle to attract passengers is a poor passenger experience: what are the issues and how do they affect passengers?
The greatest weakness of the French rail sector is the lack of a planned, long term vision for its rail network. The first step towards improving regional rail in France is acknowledging that we want to improve the network, not just maintain it, deciding on priorities for projects, and allocating sufficient funds to maintain the network.
France’s regional transit suffers from poor ridership, terrible performance, and frequent delays and closures. Considerable investment and change is needed to fix it, but luckily there has never been a better time to do so.
French Regional transit have gone through something of a crisis in recent years: closures, slowdowns and low ridership, as well as criticism from the Cour des Comptes, France’s public spending watchdog.
The past year has seen the EU faced with two goliath crises: COVID-19 and the worsening climate emergency. The EU’s response to the former involved pooling purchasing power for vaccines, buying together, and developing streamlined, autonomous supply chains. Could we address the climate crisis the same way?
In March 2010, following a complaint from the European Commission, Microsoft launched browserchoice.eu. This application and website was a response to accusations that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with its Windows operating system.