Rail Upgrade Costs "staggering And Unacceptable"

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34877027

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-34597795

How on earth has this been allowed to happen ?

When the NHS is collapsing around our ears, how can we spend £2.8b upgrading a railway that seems to work perfectly OK as it is, at least according to my journey to Paddington and back last Monday ?

[naomi24]

Mikey, //We keep being told that the country is in a mess//

Unless you're listening to an echo of your own voice, I've no idea who's telling you that.

[New Judge]

"I can't understand why preferring money to be spent on homes and health makes me "moving well to the right" ?"

Please help me understand, Mikey, why my hard-earned should be used to house other people. Nobody paid to house me. I am not "lucky" or "privileged". My parents both worked in low-paid jobs (father a painter and decorator, mother a wages clerk) so no money came my way from them. I worked hard (early in life having a regular job plus two others to make ends meet). Fortunately, through my endeavours, I am now "comfortable" (but by no means wealthy). Why should I pay to house people who have not organised their affairs properly by, say, having children before they could afford to house, feed and clothe them?

[Ellipsis]

mushroom25> mainly because the infrastructure limits the number of train paths available

Thanks very much for answering my question, but I still don't get it. My proposal (at it's simplest level) is for exactly the same number of trains running as at present, on the same lines. The difference is that different operators would be running different trains, so the customer would have a choice of for example the 09:30 with Virgin or the 10:00 with GWR. Slots could then be lost by the companies providing poor service, and awarded to companies that provide good service.

[mushroom25]

ellipsis, at the risk of boring you, i'll try and explain why it wouldn't work.

every hour, there are 9 virgin trains and 3 london midland trains leaving euston; 3 to birmingham, 3 to manchester, 2 to northampton and 1 each to crewe, chester, liverpool and glasgow.

all these trains have different stopping patterns, eg the virgin "00" manchester calls at stoke, macclesfield and stockport, the "20" manchester omits macclesfield but calls at milton keynes and the "40" manchester runs via crewe and wilmslow. awarding any of these trains to another company would mean the intermediate stations being served exclusively by that company. and unless both companies tickets were interavailable, it would unbalance the principle of a "clockface" timetable.

[mikey4444]

NJ...I don't agree much with your post of 16:55, as I am the product of good, hard-working Council House tenants, and one of my brothers still lives in one. There are areas of Britain, like London, where affordable housing is the only way to house families, but all those were sold off in the 80's and 90's. We don't need any more expensive homes, just homes that ordinary people can afford to live in.

But I presume your comments don't extend to the NHS. It might be fighting for its very life but we all use it and would be lost without it, and that is why I would prefer this Tory Chancellor to spend his money in these areas, rather that frankly vanity projects like HS2.

[Ellipsis]

Far from bored, mushroom25, I am fascinated ...

Thanks to your explanation and a bit of further reading, I think I understand now why it's very difficult. It's hard to believe it is actually impossible for several operators to operate on one line.

I find myself imaging several parallel train lines, with a different operator on each line, then gradually merging them until all the operators are on one line. Seems doable ...

Maybe in order to achieve it you have to give up something else, e.g. the trains being decked out in the owners' liveries (since they may need to be frequently swapped between operators), or the idea of clock-face scheduling (possibly something we could get past in the modern world, if we had a better service to compensate).

The lack of true competition is the biggest problem with the current setup.

[Ellipsis]

Mikey, I don't consider HS2 to be a vanity project, but I do consider it to be ill conceived. The money would be far better spent on superfast broadband nationwide, rather than a single fast trainline.

The likes of Singapore and Japan already have 2 Gbps Internet services into the home ... that's gigabit ... whereas in this country, some areas don't even have 1 Mbps, over 2000 times slower, and some so-called forward-thinking councils are trying to get 10 Mbps into every town and village in their region by 2020!

[mikey4444]

Ellipsis...I am guessing here but I expect we could have super-fast Broadband everywhere in Britain that would cost a lot less than £2.8bn !