Controversial UK public transport opinions.
- HS2 needs to built. All the way to Scotland.
- HS3-13 also need to be built.
- We need another rail connection to the continent.
"But how do we afford to do that ?" I can already hear some of you racing to type.
To which I ask one very simple question.
"How can we afford not to?"
@quixoticgeek Also, we need to dig up and replace the entire sewer system with segregated black water and rainwater systems. That means digging up every road in the UK, est. £700Bn.
The UK has built up a Mount Everest of technical debt since our infrastructure went in circa 1830-1880, and it's all coming due this century.
@etchedpixels @cstross @quixoticgeek
https://youtu.be/THoCE_9tyfk?si=_gjbXn-OrvSHx1Uf
Reminds me of this lovely and very sensible old advert.
@quixoticgeek HS1 was built on time and under budget. The Tories refused to hire the same project manager for HS2, probably because he wouldn't have tolerated the waste and corruption their donors benefitted from. They larded it with gold-plated civil engineering works to appease rural Tories, added unnecessary speed requirements that grew costs exponentially to show up those Continental duffers and that's how we ended up with the current shambles.
UK civil engineering is 4x more expensive than comparable projects in the EU, and until that is sorted out, we can't have nice things.
@fazalmajid who cares about the monetary cost? It's denominated in pounds. The UK government can always pay for anything it wants using pounds sterling.
That said, the UK really needs a ministry of infrastructure that does the construction. With engineers, designers, builders who are employed by the state and essentially civil servants.
@quixoticgeek Let me introduce you to one Liz Truss, who tried something like that and it failed spectacularly. The UK state is skint, the Boomers have sucked out all available funds by voting themselves goodies like the Triple Lock.
One example of how to contain costs: HS1 kept their budget secret from contractors so the latter wouldn't simply expand Parkinson's Law like to fill it. HS2 didn't.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sunak-tory-conference-b2422922.html
@fazalmajid @quixoticgeek that was not for infrastructure, though. that's arguably why the finance bods freaked out: it wasn't for capital investment, but to pay off a loan. borrowing money to pay off a loan…
that said: a) the finance bods freak out at random b) i'm personally not convinced hs2 will bring jobs north; probably the opposite
@quixoticgeek Creating a Ministry of Public Works would not work unless the way the British government is run is reformed root and branch. The case of the senior civil servant telling Rob Holden to his face he lacked qualifications and experience despite delivering HS1 on time and under budget is enlightening.
His real fault: not being a good old public-school boy and not having gone to Oxbridge. The Establishment promotes and protects its own, going as far as letting the Cambridge Five escape. Search for accountability for cock-ups in the last 70 years or longer, and you will keep searching. Aberfan, Hillsborough, Grenfell, Jean-Charles de Menezes, the list of scandals just goes on and on, with the guilty parties more often than not promoted rather than sacked or jailed.
British government hasn't fundamentally changed in the last couple of centuries, with only the trappings of democracy added as window dressing. The reason why this is no longer working is the UK no longer has the £250 billion a year it extracted from India over two centuries to mask the incompetence of its ruling class and Establishment.
@quixoticgeek Just make sure HS3 is specified and controlled entirely by engineers and the politicians only get to do enabling and cheesy PR shots. The borders railway was delivered on time for example
Whether we need crazy high speeds is questionable. The number of stops dives as you increase speeds and so the faster train takes longer in real terms for most users. More important IMHO is having European loading gauge paths through the UK especially for freight.
@Nicovel0 @etchedpixels @quixoticgeek Very much so.
1) every train goes to Paris and if you want to go somewhere that's not between you and Paris then you have to go via Paris anyway.
2) everyone wants a TGV station, but no one wants TGV lines.
TGVs are cool by the way.
@Nicovel0 @etchedpixels @quixoticgeek
That’s why they saved the sleeper from Inverness and Fort William to London. That and rail access to their shooting estates.
The swingeing cuts of the 1960s were for the little people, not for them.
@peterbrown @Nicovel0 @etchedpixels @quixoticgeek It’s astonishing in hindsight that Marples was allowed to implement the Beeching cuts *and* implement a big expansion of the road network *and* be managing director of a road construction corporation.
Not to mention the quiet billions made by taking the ex-railway land sectors in towns and villages and building houses and roads on it.
@etchedpixels Curve radius also goes up with linespeed, so you have less flexibility with the route. As, of course, does energy consumption due to air resistance.
I would finish building HS2 to Manchester since the capacity is needed, the design work is done, and improvements around Manchester rely on it. But the proposed alignment is no longer protected, alas, so if I understand correctly there will need to be a new hybrid bill.
But once that is done, I think what the UK needs more than anything else is a rolling programme of infrastructure work, electrification and signalling modernisation, combined with incremental linespeed improvements. Basically what the TransPennine Route Upgrade is doing (and doing well), but fully funded and scoped in advance, and on every significant route nationwide.
No point having a shiny route from London to Glasgow if everything else is falling apart and your electric trains can't go anywhere.
@AbramKedge Well, Old Oak Common, at least.
@HighlandLawyer @quixoticgeek precisely. And it’s not a controversial proposition. Infrastructure built by the nation for the nation does not cost the nation if they have their own currency.
Most of the modern road network was built during the depression of the 1930s, when the nation was considerably in debt.
(But the highest rate of tax was 85%)
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