Staying with the public transport theme from yesterday, earlier I came across this report that the government wants to spend £1bn on bringing public transport in the rest of the country into line with London’s. If you ask me, it’s about time. These days, I’m used to being able to wheel on and off busses and trains without help. Public transport in the capital is far from perfect, of course, but it’s far better than that outside of it. For instance, whereas around here I’m used to busses having automatic wheelchair ramps, to the best of my knowledge, outside of London bus drivers still have to get out of their cabs to open the ramps manually. While that may only sound like something minor, believe me, when you’re faced with grumpy, reluctant bus drivers who see letting you on and off their bus as nothing more than a burden, having an automatic ramp which glides smoothly out to let you on without a fuss is a great relief. I really hope that busses across the country will now be brought up to the same standard. More to the point, it seems to me that, while London is used to getting massive new infrastructure projects like Crossrail, the rest of the country gets woefully left behind; perhaps this plan will go some way to resetting that imbalance.