It has been a pretty wet, miserable day to be honest. As usual though, I far preferred to go out than stay here at home, so it has been a case of darting between busses, shops and trains as quickly as possible. Fortunately, here in London we have a world class public transport system, so it hasn’t been too bad. Busses are frequent and accessible, and thanks to the DLR I actually managed not to get too wet. However, I have to wonder whether this would have been the case anywhere other than the capital. You’ll have seen yesterday the announcement of massive a new rail infrastructure project in the North of England, which will enable faster connections to Leeds, York, Manchester and Liverpool. I naturally think this is only to be welcomed, although yesterday I facetiously began to wonder what ‘Crossrail’ would sound like in a northern accent. However, I must say key questions remain: new rail lines are all well and good, but what about other improvements? Are busses in Cheshire any better, or are they as crap and inaccessible as they were twenty years ago? Linking the ‘big’ cities (what a subjective term that now seems) is cool, but what about access to the other smaller northern towns? If we are serious about ‘levelling up’, surely these are the kinds of questions which must be answered. As a wheelchair user, I remember getting between towns and villages was an utter nightmare: you waited ages for a bus, and then the driver had to reluctantly get out of his cab to unfold the ramp manually for you. My biggest concern now is that things haven’t improved.