Disbelief at plan to fix #London #potholes as part of #NetworkNorth project
£235m funding for capital’s #roads is possible only because of investment that comes from scrapping northern leg of #HS2
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/20/disbelief-at-plan-to-fix-london-potholes-as-part-of-network-north-project
#ToryPoliciesInAction #Transport #Rail #ToryLies
'Experts warn it hasn’t been properly costed; £ numbers have been “plucked out of the air”, no value for money assessment; some massive projects - e.g. electrification - reliant on other projects not in the plan.'
Sunak's Network North plan just as robustly thought-through as all the rest of his vapourware policy.
Quite apart from concerns about the costing & planning for #RishiSunak's #NetworkNorth rail proposals (intended to replace aspects of #HS2), for those of us living in #Lancaster & the surrounding areas, once again the large urban area of Lancaster-Morecambe is right in the middle of a blank area....
There's a strange blindness about Lancaster; we have a top 10 University, a major new visitor economy development (Eden North) & a large population yet somehow are always missing from plans!
Safe to say Ian Dunt is not impressed with Sunak's latest 'clever wheeze' which doubtless came out of the mind of a chinless 21 year old SPAD:
"The prime minister's Network North document might genuinely be in the top ten most half-arsed embarrassing policy documents we've seen from a British government in our lifetime. That’s a highly competitive market to muscle your way into and yet somehow by God he's done it."
The rail announcements in #NetworkNorth come in three categories.
1. Projects that were already built a decade ago.
2. Projects that have been promised and cancelled for over a decade.
3. Projects that were cancelled the day after they were announced.
What Rishi Sunak scrapping #HS2 – and promising a new #NetworkNorth – means for the north of England. Infrastructure development there has been increasingly muddled in recent years. Few will be convinced by #RishiSunak’s new pledge to fix this.
To go with this, apparently Nottingham’s tram network is also getting an extension to somewhere it already goes and has since 2015… clear that zero thought has gone into this despite Sunak’s claims… delivering difficult decisions for the long ago…
It’s also pointed out that these Network North projects are across the country and not actually linked… redefining both Network and North… thought the Tories didn’t like that?
#CPC23 I just saw Clive Myrie ask Faisal Islam a good question:
“Does Sunak’s #networkNorth vision add up?”
…and then Faisal avoid answering the question (while sounding like he was somewhat acting as a government spokesperson).
It deserves an answer and it’s the kind of question #BBCnews *should* be on top of.
Just how far could £34bn divvied up between “100s of road and rail projects” go?
(Note the ordering of “road and rail”, not “rail and road”)
Rishi Sunak has announced
New tram links to Weatherfield
New tube links to Walford
New bus links to Emmerdale
and fast rail link to Manchesterford
👏
Tories: delivering fiction since time immemorial
SubtleBlade ⚔️
Abelian
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Emeritus Prof Christopher May
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Phil Sturgeon
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