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Bandwagon syndrome, or if you go deeper, the innate tendency of humans to feel safe believing what other humans with whom we identify do. It’s absolutely innate to everyone (including TJ) – people identify with groups
pure nonsense. I am perfectly capable of looking at the data and making my own mind up. I despise the Tories with all my heart - not because its trendy but because my partner and I spent our lives dealing with the damage they have inflicted ion the poor. when yo have seen the results of their deliberate cruely time and time again then it colours your view
I object to HS2 because its another way of London sucking money out of the rest of the country and its so obvious that HS2 was never going to have any effect for the majority of the population.and the money wasted on this huge vanity project could have been spent so much better with much more beneficial effects if spent outsdide London
Population of London is roughly the same as the North West so I assume transport spending is close aswell.
Nowhere close. London has a genuinely excellent public transport system. It has the advantage though of significant public subsidy and of all being run by TfL under devolved powers.
When Thatcher deregulated the buses ("market forces / competition"), London was spared that particular blight so it's got buses run by one company (TfL) for the public rather than half a dozen private bus companies fighting it out for the most profitable routes.
London has geography on its side too, it's a fairly simple hub and spoke pattern for most of it. Nowhere else in the UK even comes close to that level of transport investment.
ctk
Full Member
Population of London is roughly the same as the North West so I assume transport spending is close aswell.
I missed out the winky face/ question mark. I believe London gets x2.5 more spending per person. The rest of the country really does need levelling up. Absolutely crazy that it's a Tory governments idea to do it. More believable that they don't intend to.
I despise the Tories with all my heart – not because its trendy
That wasn't my point at all.
Well its what you said Molgrips!
Bandwagon syndrome, or if you go deeper, the innate tendency of humans to feel safe believing what other humans with whom we identify do. It’s absolutely innate to everyone (including TJ) – people identify with groups – the more popular a viewpoint is the more popular it becomes.
this is pure cod psychology and bad psychology at that. It may be a general trend but cannot be extrapolated to individuals
Just to point out i am not a train hater i am on the train right now. Twice in two days. 100mph electric ttain. Wifi and charging. This should be the minimum standard.in the uk.
<This message posted via Wi-Fi from a high-speed train. Apologies for brevity, misspelling and shocking punctuation>
😜
Sod that. I have a cellphone and a portable charger. Instead focus on a train from e.g. SE to Scotland not costing £180 return!! Maybe I would use it more then... as it stands it's just WAY cheaper to drive.Wifi and charging. This should be the minimum standard.in the uk.
this is pure cod psychology and bad psychology at that.
I think it's a pretty widely accepted phenomena isn't it? At it's most basic it's just an easy way for everyone to assimilate cultural norms. It's why you're not applying makeup, high heels and tights like your 18thC ancestors. (because no one else is)
This should be the minimum standard.in the uk.
Did you miss the bit where it's been pointed out by several posters that it's incredibly difficult (if not impossible in places) to upgrade the existing Victorian infrastructure?
The current lines, especially across the north - but also more broadly across most of the country - are surrounded by buildings, wiggly, go through long tunnels, over viaducts/bridges and cannot be upgraded. Not without literally ripping the entire thing up, reboring tunnels and straightening the rails. All for the sake of being able to put an electric train on it that can go 40mph faster but at the cost of decades of disruption.
Lets say you upgrade a line between Manchester and Leeds. OK, what about Liverpool, Warrington, Sheffield, York, Doncaster, Hull...? This is about a NETWORK. I think that's been poorly understood from the start, the fact that HS2 was part of a whole network that was intended to be part of NPR. That's the only way that the whole economic benefit gets unlocked. It's not "a fast train to London". It's a connectivity network for the entire north.
It's also not only about speed, something else which has been excessively commented on. It's about capacity, speed, reliability and connectivity, all interlinked.
Currently, places like Bradford are woefully under-served by rail. Freight in and out of Hull and other NE coastal towns is neglected. There's universal condemnation from northern leaders about the Integrated Rail Plan proposals and the supposed "upgrades" that are alleged to be coming.
To upgrade rail across the north, it needs HS2 in full and the NPR network across the top of it. Not a few bits of electric here and there then back to diesel as it goes through the big tunnel.
Well its what you said Molgrips!
No it's not, I said humans have this innate tendency, and we do. You have a tendency to think you know all about something, overly simplify it and then bang on like you're the world expert; when as a non-expert you should be open to discussion of all the complex issues surrounding the topic. So for that reason, I'm out.
Re trains, the original topic - HS2 may not be perfect, but it's a start, and one we should embrace IMO. You can't make a journey without a first step, even if it is faltering. The fact that they've 'cancelled' the eastern leg is by far the biggest problem.
I object to HS2 because its another way of London sucking money out of the rest of the country
It's really not.
It teally is molgrips. You have been given the data
The problem with HS2 is its sucked up all the money that could have done more for more people spent more wisely.
No i didnt miss that bit crazy legs. The money wasted on HS2 could have been used to give yournew transpennie line. To provide better train services etc but its all been spent on HS2 instead
I thought any money created for HS2 was in effect money ringfenced for it under legislation? If HS2 disappeared overnight, so does the money allocated for it, You can't "spend it elsewhere" as it literally doesn't exist.
Is that not right?
Crazy legs. I have listened and accepted what you said about the limited abuty to upgrade. So some new infrastructure needed.
I just maintain that the money spent on HS2 would have privided .more benefit for more people if spent in the m62 corridor wven if (as i now understand) that means new infrastructure
I am astonished that anyone wver thought it would be built to Yorkshire. That bit was such an obvious sacrificial add on
A we point of order. Hs2 was only ever going less than halfway up the country. . Manchester is in the southern half of the uk
I have learnt stuff on this thread. Thanks for thar
Correct.
It's ringfenced funding "created" for HS2. It's not available to be spent on other rail, hospitals, social care, roads or defence.
This is standard on large scale infrastructure. The Millennium Dome, all the Olympic stuff (there were plenty of arguments about "oh it could pay for a football field for every school...")
No it couldn't, it was to build an Olympic park.
Nickc
That is true of all government spending
Its still money spent tbat if spent elsewhere would have given more benefit
Are you really claiming the same could not have been done for Other projects. Its an absurd arguement
Its atill government spending. It still adds to government debt. Of course it could have beenspent elsewhere
Btw bad spelling because i am usung a Phone without reading glasses 😀
I am astonished that anyone wver thought it would be built to Yorkshire.
Have to agree with this. It might have been pushed by the now Chancellor for years. It might have been promised by the now PM in order to win votes in the North. But anyone that ever believed that either of them would stick to their word, or really care about infrastructure in the North, is as gullible as they come.
Of course it could have beeb spent elsewhere
But is isn't. Our "boosterism" PM talked about spending on infrastructure spending, but as soon as the chancellor says that money needed saving.... BOOM... the North has its budget decimated. Cancelling Yorkshire HS2, and NPR, doesn't free up that money to spend elsewhere. And, if it did, that spending would take place in the South East. That's the first and last priority for this government.
Did you miss the bit where it’s been pointed out by several posters that it’s incredibly difficult (if not impossible in places) to upgrade the existing Victorian infrastructure?
Have we managed to electrify any lines yet? Let me guess in the South East and to and from London?
Money should be spent elsewhere before London. Start HS2 in the North then join it to London when the Northern bit is finished. The trains to and from London are the best on the UK network already, we should upgrading everything else first.
It teally is molgrips. You have been given the data
Lol have I bollocks. That's not 'data' in any sense. I actually read the report.
But whatever.
Molgrips - you have been given the data on this thread and on other similar ones. Its a proven fact that improving transport links in and around london draws money away from the towns that are newly connected to london. this is not a controversial point. Its accepted and well understood.
London gets many times the public transport subsidy of any other region. Again well proven and accepted. Again this is london sucking money out of the rest of the UK
Lol have I bollocks. That’s not ‘data’ in any sense. I actually read the report
You have seen that London gets more spent on transport per person thaneverywhere else in the country and in many cases double or triple. Surely to Christ you think this is wrong?
You have seen that London gets more spent on transport per person thaneverywhere else in the country and in many cases double or triple. Surely to Christ you think this is wrong?
How much money does London actually need spending on it?
How much economic growth comes from that spend?
How much would GDP fall if that money wasn't spent?
How much would GDP increase if that money was taken from London and spent elsewhere?
What would the result on tax receipts be if that was done?
There are so so many questions here, the situation in the North is very different from the situation in London, SE Wales, Scotland and everywhere else. In my view it's nonsensical to simply assume that every region should have the same spend per capita. It's that kind of logic that produces the most ridiculous budgetary decisions.
Instead, each region should have the money it NEEDS spent on it. There's no question that other areas are underfunded, of course, but the assertion that every region should receive the same money on transport per capita is illogical, in my view.
Molgrips – you have been given the data on this thread and on other similar ones.
No, you've given me data that YOU think is sufficient, however I don't think it is. And you simply reiterate ad infinitum. That's not good debate.
Again this is london sucking money out of the rest of the UK
And yet, it also generates more money for the rest of the UK through its economy.
Honestly you lot are oversimplifying to the point of absurdity.
There’s no question that other areas are underfunded,
And yet, it also generates more money for the rest of the UK through its economy
You're nearly there mate.
And yet, it also generates more money for the rest of the UK through its economy.
this is also wrong and well proven and accepted
You seem to have such a blind spot about this which I find astonishing considering where you live is badly underfunded compared to London!
Instead, each region should have the money it NEEDS spent on it.
correct - londons needs are much less than other areas but it still gets the lions share of the funding
I doubt any of the major decision makers in this (Sunak, Johnson etc) will move to Bradford when they retire..
On a related note I heard TFL need government money to replace the 70s stock on the Bakerloo line. Presumably this would free up some stock for the North.
londons needs are much less than other areas
How so?
You seem to have such a blind spot about this which I find astonishing considering where you live is badly underfunded compared to London!
No, I'm just thinking about it in much more depth than you appear to be.
I mean - London clearly relies on its tube network. What are the extra costs of funding that vs say, overland trams or light rail, or busses?
Read this next bit very slowly, carefully, preferably more than once before reaching for your keyboard:
1. Non-London areas are obviously underfunded.
2. I dispute the fact that London sucks money away from the rest of the UK. The ONS thinks it subsidises the rest of the UK, and it would seem to me even then to be a very complicated thing to unpick.
3. I have not yet seen anything that says the needed per-person spend is the same across the UK.
4. The existing network that the economy depends on in London is already big and expensive, for historical reasons. So that needs upkeep. The rest of the UK needs new investment, in terms of new projects. So you can't really compare the two like-for-like. Different environments, different needs.
If you want to convince me you're right, you need to do a lot more than simply post a link and keep saying 'you've been given the facts'. It's not going to work, you cannot convince me of anything by brute force, sorry. You need to explain it with knowledge, reasoning, RELEVANT numbers and evidence, and when I scrutinise them you need to be able to come back and justify your reasoning.
So the questions for you are as follows:
- How exactly does London 'suck' money from the rest of the UK?
- Why should the per-capita spend on public transport be the same across all regions of the UK?
TfL annual budget, which I presume is operational, is about £10bn, and given the geographical coverage that's probably 25m people who would be using TfL services at least semi regularly, I'd guess. That's £400 a year per person. How much does it cost to run a bus service across Mid Wales vs how many people it serves? How much for a ferry service to a Scottish Island? Those kinds of services of course need to be subsidised, precisely because they need MORE spend per capita than say Cardiff City centre busses.
Another point:
If you have five areas, and four are underfunded, is the solution to under-fund the 5th one as well?
No, I’m just thinking about it in much more depth than you appear to be.
LOL
Does London suck money from the rest of the UK? I know it sucks up art funding 25% of arts council England funding goes to London, it even sucks up art collections, nicking a fantastic collection of photography from Bradford. I would have gone to Bradford to see it but getting there from South Wales is so bloody difficult...
Yes London has a transport infrastructure that needs maintaining and masses of art museums that I assume suck up the funding but isn't this problematic for you? Wouldn't it be better to spread stuff out a bit? Art collections, government departments, national stadiums etc?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/23/london-stop-sucking-up-cash-britain
If you have five areas, and four are underfunded, is the solution to under-fund the 5th one as well?
If 4 areas get £400 per person and the 5th gets £1000 what would you do?
(Never mind that there is no need to underfund anywhere and investment in transport brings in cash FFS!)
Never mind that there is no need to underfund anywhere and investment in transport brings in cash FFS!
Which has been my point all along.
But you said this nonsense:
molgrips
Full Member
London NEEDS many times more money spent on it than other places because there are so many more people and businesses.
More people? We have transport spending statistics per person and its many times more PER PERSON. More businesses? No wonder when so much govt money is spent there! Let's spend more money on the rest of the country to encourage businesses elsewhere.
Thread bump:
Transport Select Committee is meeting now to discuss the Integrated Rail Plan. Featuring Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham.
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/9dbbb7e7-5a1c-4550-8465-96965d60c57f
Live at the moment but I assume it'll be in the archive for a bit afterwards.
Thread bump with the latest wholly unsurprising news...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64901985
Although this is quite amusing:
Small but obvious mistake in the copy for that BBC article....
The high-speed railway will link London, the Midlands
andbut not the North of England.
Levelling up.
They’re still carrying on with the ludicrous pretence that it’s ever going to make it north of Birmingham?
Bless ‘em.
It could be worse. The 171 mile Phase 1 of the California high speed rail project will now cost more than the whole 500 mile route was supposed to cost.
https://jalopnik.com/californias-cant-afford-128-billion-la-bullet-train-1850205169
...and that one doesn't go to Hebden Bridge either.
Terrible scandal. **** em all 😡
I think there are several points:
Major infrastructure is expensive
If you delay part of it to save money, you don't realise all the benefits, and it costs more in the long run
One motorway junction can cost upwards of £300m...
Cruising around London again for a couple of days
Thameslink ✅
Elizabeth ✅
DLR ✅
Stratford interchange ✅
I haven’t been to new £700M Bank Station
Only shining light outside of London is the communist LNER that took me there.
Why oh why is this so difficult outside of London?
Well at least we're not having a tunnel/elevated train line into Manchester. Wasn't really going to happen anyway. Andy B's going to be raving mad.
Why oh why is this so difficult outside of London?
its not - its just london based politicians will throw money at london
I believe London gets x2.5 more spending per person.
CBA to fact check this so assuming it's true it does need countering with 2 points.
1) Unlike any other part of the UK London wouldn't function without public transport. It's too dense, which means a lot of people couldn't park a car if they wanted one anyway. A it of a chicken Vs egg, but it is what it is.
2) As per Scuttler's post, it's all concentrated on the center anyway. It looks/feels great as a tourist being able to hop on/off the tube and seemingly get anywhere you need to be. What you don't realise is that from Paddington you can probably walk to 8 tube stations in 5 minutes. Conversely getting from Stamford Bridge to Tower Bridge feels like you're on the tube forever (it's about half an hour to do 6 miles).
To illustrate this:
Further out if you pick somewhere that a non-Londoner would consider to be London (remember the TfL maps famously aren't to scale) It's still pretty rubbish if you want to get from say Staines to Canary Wharf.
28miles
110minutues by car
66minutes by train
Preston to Manchester on the other hand
35 miles
67 minutes by car
37 minutes by train
I think the focus should be on 'how can we make this happen', rather than 'how can we save money'. It's like everyone in the UK has no concern for anything beyond their own front door. So frustrating.
I’m not sure how much has actually been spent and what is legally liable right now, but what about just binning it altogether? The maths to justify it in the first place were a joke which no commercial organisation would have passed, and from then on no one has had the balls to simply stop the spending (sunk cost fallacy). Surely an upgraded Trans Pennine route would have far superior cost-benefits.
The upgraded Transpennine route is happening. There was some suggestion about it all being upgraded to W12 loading gauge as well as electrified (I'm not clear if this will allow double-deck trains or not) but I suspect that will be spendy.
no commercial organisation would have passed
Commercial organisations have little regard for the externalities (both costs and benefits) of national infrastructure projects.
as well as electrified
🤣
How many times have we heard that?
its not – its just london based politicians will throw money at london
1) the population of greater london is 50% larger than the whole of Scotland. 70% of Scotlands population lives in the Central Belt.
2) Thameslink is Peterborough to Brighton - three times as far from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Elizabeth Line is Reading to Shenfield - twice as far as Edinburgh to Glasgow. They're not "in London" any more than the ECML is "in Scotland".
3) Transport is a reserved power in Scotland. Scotland gets 117% of the UK per capita budget to spend how it likes. England gets 97% of the UK per capita budget...
If you want to moan about underinvestment in public transport in Scotland, go and ask your friends in the SNP!
(Cue more moaning about how it's all London's fault)
We're too far in to bin it now. Half the route (london-brum) has been bought + dug out! What's the alternative? More cars - that would be worse. At least if LON-BIR is done, the rest can potentially be added later.
Plus, 'the money is better spent elsewhere' assumes those projects would be managed more effectively. I'm not sure that would be so.
The Big British Castle news states;
the delay will primarily affect sections from Manchester to Crewe and Birmingham to Crewe.
when the truth is "anything north of Brum"
An utter white elephant from the get-go. Billions spent to save 15 minutes London to Manchester? Madness.
I think the biggest expenditure has been on the big 4 beancounters, all checking each others homework, all charging for 'management services'. When can us taxpayers see how much has been spaffed away on them?
Billions spent to
save 15 minutes London to Manchesterbuild a commuter line from Birmingham to London?
FTFY
Channel 4 did a documentary a few years ago and not one of the industry experts they interviewed thought it would ever get north of Birmingham. The Birmingham Manchester leg will be quietly scrapped when the costs for the London to Birmingham section get north of 120 billion
I’m not sure how much has actually been spent and what is legally liable right now, but what about just binning it altogether? The maths to justify it in the first place were a joke which no commercial organisation would have passed, and from then on no one has had the balls to simply stop the spending (sunk cost fallacy). Surely an upgraded Trans Pennine route would have far superior cost-benefits.
The original design was something as follows:
Do Transpennine Route Upgrade to at least buy a bit of time while HS2 gets built to Manchester and Leeds.
Build Northern Powerhouse Rail to connect the two and expand / build upon the TRU work.
Gradually expand HS2 up to Edinburgh and Glasgow (HS3, of which vague plans and desires sort of exist).
What costs money is the constant changing of plans, timelines, deadlines and scope while also constantly delaying everything for re-scoping and redesign work.
There was a famous one of some land being acquired, then it wasn't going to be used, then it was, then it wasn't so the land was sold and a developer built some flats on it and then it was needed and they had to buy it back at cost of land plus cost of flats plus cost of demolishing some brand new flats. Utterly insane - and probably a fair bit of corruption as well.
Euston got redesigned half way through when, in another attempt to save money, they decided it should be 10 platforms instead of 11 (which also removes all the contingency options) and so the £105m design for Euston was binned and started again.
A lot of the initial work has already been done. Survey work, land acquisition, preparation work (including felling all the trees)... and then it gets re-phased or cancelled and you've done a whole load of prep work and got **** all out of it. Basically you've done all the destructive bits and built...nothing.
It's sort of too-big-to-fail at the moment, it kind of needs to continue to get any sort of benefits at all because if they cancel, they'll only look to restart work in 10 years time anyway. The whole thing is a disaster, an absolute textbook of how not to run a big project. Kind of like the Edinburgh Trams fiasco only about 100x bigger.
There's so much connected with this though. New developments in Birmingham in particular. Plans for better regional connectivity once HS2 has taken all the express stuff off WCML. Cancel HS2 and all that gets lost as well.
Honestly should just have gone to the Chinese or Japanese and said "here you go, you're good at this high speed rail stuff, build that". It would have been running by now.
Honestly should just have gone to the Chinese or Japanese and said “here you go, you’re good at this high speed rail stuff, build that”. It would have been running by now.
Although absolutely true, its interesting to note that the initial Japanese project nearly died on its arse too after annihilating it's budget
Billions spent to save 15 minutes London to Manchester?
Speed was never the point. Should have called it something else, for people who don't look behind the titles.
DLR
I'm not sure you can really count a 35-year-old train line as modern development.
Thameslink
isn't a new railway line. its a set of trains running on existing lines, and through a tunnel that was dug in 1874.
Cancelling HS2 now is a great idea...
Except for the minor fact that you'd very suddenly have to work out what to do with 30000 unemployed construction workers plus the entire supply industry (sorry, you cant just send them elsewhere and get them to do something else, you need a clear plan thats finianced and able to be put into action right now otherwise theyre all on the dole so thats a HUGE impact on the national economy) , what would you do with a huge ammount of half-constructed infrastructure, the issue of binning 25+ years of planning and land buy up. etc etc etc.
Oh, and the minor thing of trying to work out what to do on the core railway from London to Birmingham (very highly congested and the last upgrade carried out 20 years back was an expensive sticking plaster solution) , Crewe and Manchester that depearatley needs to be upgraded as its been operating at over max capacity for the last 15 years. Euston is long overdue a full rebuild and this still needs to happen, OOC, Birmingham Curzon street etc have been started so construction is fully underway.
Oh, and we still need to fully electrify the entire national railway system which was the original plan in the 1950's, er sorry whoops, 60's, 70...er 1980's (on a shoestring..) then 2000's er, oh, hang on, the 2010's... instead of going half measures and chickening out of this every time to "save" money.
I mean, how do you think you will get all of that freight off the roads and onto rail? How do create additonal capacity? How do you decarbonise transport?
Face it, infrastructure is expensive. Done well it lasts a very long time (the core railway network is 180 years old) , done in half measures you need to go back and do it again and again...For some reason in the UK everyone likes to scream white elephant at the top of their voice while conveniently forgetting that we have precisely ZERO large transport infrastucture projects in living memory that have failed to deliver a clear economic and strategic benefit.
Doing infrastructure properly involves hard work and long term investment and vision that produces a tangible asset and a clear benefit so treat it as such.
In the words of Yoda: Do, or do not do. There is no try.
Or alternatively just give up and convince yourself that that is a viable long term, cost effective solution.
@kelvin There's a 'yes, but...' on that. Got into an argument on Twitter with someone I know about this, as I thought the main benefit was capacity - but all the business cases were done on speed.
Big problem we have is the age of the network meaning lots of old tunnels/bridges that can't easily be adjusted to make way for bigger trains (double deck or containers). HS2 will be built for these from the off, and so long as the lines feeding into it can take bigger trains even with 100mph running that would be helpful.
but all the business cases were done on speed
Does this mean the PR was based on speed?
The "business case" was the beginning of a modern rail network fit for the 21st Century. Currently it's as if we're living in the pre-motorway age, and people are pointing at plans for the first motorway and asking "what's the point?" If we'd gone on to to build just the one motorway, they'd have had a good point.
If the cost is going up because of inflation surely they should be speeding it up and spending more sooner, so that there's less inflation.
I’m not sure you can really count a 35-year-old train line as modern development.
In large parts of the country, that would be as close as it gets to brand spanking new!
If the cost is going up because of inflation surely they should be speeding it up and spending more sooner, so that there’s less inflation.
It's very difficult to increase spend.
Work being done now was planned in 12-18 months ago in terms of supply chain, deliveries, staffing, ground prep, logistics etc and payment to the hundreds of contractors involved will be based on a certain amount up front and a certain amount in terms of key milestones so to spend quicker you need to hurry that along. Which you can't really do cos it was all planned in a year ago and what you're planning for now won't / can't be built for another year because it depends on all the above being available and the current work being completed.
It's no good the tunnelling guys saying "oh yeah, we can go 3 months earlier" if the groundwork guys haven't got to the site yet.
On the other hand, if you say "cancel it now!" then everyone still needs paying but you have no tunnel.
Point on the London networks is they’re well maintained, have brilliant interconnections, modern high capacity trains and are on a single ticket network. There are strong bus connections too. It doesn’t matter a jot when the original tunnels were dug. None of this stuff came for free but it did come with ambition.
Yet more short sighted short termist myopic British mis-management and lack of any long term plan except how to reduce taxes for the uber rich.
Same mentality that makes us highly dependent on imported energy, have no capacity, run out of water each summer because nobody has built a decent reservoir for nearly 40 years , the roads are ****ed, the motorways semi permanently jammed up, the NHS is broken, etc etc etc.
We're heading back into the dark ages. A country that needs to stop harping back to the days of the Empire and how we won a war 70+ years ago. Those had absolutely fheckall use in 2023.
At least my offspring will have the skills and qualifications to be able to go work in numerous other countries when they want or need to. And I'll be dead before the worst of this sh1tfest really comes home to roost.
One of the worst kept secrets ever.
Should have spent the cash up North the Yorkshire rail franchise cancells more trains than beeching
Not just the population of the north I think everyone had a suspension.
Meanwhile it sounds like there’s been a massive cut to Active Travel England’s budget, which is piss poor in a climate emergency.
https://twitter.com/allpartycycling/status/1633895831521640458?s=61&t=8LkrnWDnhDoht21U_ISBdg
It’s very difficult to increase spend. Work being done now was planned in 12-18 months ago....etc etc
That all makes sense of course (my comment was slightly tongue in cheek), but delaying the spend doesn't reduce the total cost of the project unless you're actually just not doing it rather than delaying. Or you're expecting a recession to reduce costs.
I'm with Robertajobb, we just need to do it*. We've had 10-50 years (depending on your point of view/which bit of the country you're in) of running things down, 'sweating the assets', selling off the family silver and ripping the wiring out of the walls to weigh in the copper. And now we're looking around at the mess left, wondering why a country without a functioning public transport system isn't particularly productive and why real wages haven't increased from where they were before the 2008 crash, but still finding excuses not to do anything about it.
* By 'it' I mean HS2 and a million other infrastructure projects. Wind power, solar power, cycle lanes, local railways, town and city regeneration, trams, hospitals, schools, parks, etc.
Another failure of the conservatives. Have they actually delivered anything,but failures?
JeZ
Have they actually delivered anything
Shareholder value innit. We’re all have extensive stock portfolios don’t we? 🤑
The whole of the north of England is presently looking at their utterly dysfunctional, Victorian railway network, looking at all the investment that was promised, then cancelled (again!) and taking this as confirmation that HS2 is just yet more squillions spent on servicing commuter lines into London
The rest of the country can just rot for all they care.
They literally couldn’t give a ****.
Let’s all rejoice that after spending the GDP of Spain you will one day be able to get from Birmingham to London in half the time it takes you to get from Manchester to Leeds
‘Levelling up’?
I said from the start that they should have started at the most Northerly point and built South, that's the only way to make sure the whole thing gets built.
The whole of the north of England is...taking this as confirmation that HS2 is just yet more squillions spent on servicing commuter lines into London
I think you're mistaking your own opinion for that of the whole of the north, and you're mistaking your own rusted-on prejudices about HS2 for about what HS2 factually was (which has been explained to you by numerous people numerous times on this thread).
Shareholder value innit. We’re all have extensive stock portfolios don’t we? 🤑
If this were about satisfying the private sector, then it wouldn't have been paused. Those contractors and engineers would have preferred work to continue!
The problem is… what HS2 “factually was” and what we’re now getting in “the north” do not resemble each other. Lack of surprise about this further retraction of scope comes from the fact that many people up here expected that to happen, they have never bought into it being a nationwide project… and it turns out they were right.
[ I’m a long term defender of HS2… but impossible for me to argue that this isn’t now yet just another “London First” project ]
I think you’re mistaking your own opinion for that of the whole of the north
You reckon?
If you conducted a poll to see where people up here wanted infrastructure investment to go
A) improve and upgrade the crumbling rail network in the north
B) HS2
I can assure you you’ll only get one answer. And it’s painfully clear we can have one, but not both
You’d get a similar unanimous answer to the question ‘do you believe HS2 will ever get north of Birmingham?’
Maybe it’s you who needs to look at your prejudices?
We’re all funding a ludicrously expensive white elephant that will, once again, exclusively benefit London. All while the public transport infrastructure in the north continues to collapse through being starved of even the most minuscule levels of investment