The venerable Economist has come out in opposition to a $52 billion plan to build high-speed rail from London to Manchester and Leeds. As the magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper explains in an accompanying article, the new line would take two decades to build and produce questionable benefits for the nation.
While rail proponents claim that new train lines will create “a golden age of prosperity,” the Economist is dubious, noting that it is more likely that fast trains will benefit some cities at the expense of others. “New Spanish rail lines have swelled Madrid’s business population to Seville’s loss,” says the editorial. “The trend in France has been for headquarters to move up the line to Paris and for fewer overnight stays elsewhere.”
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“Mature economies rarely see huge benefits from a single project,” says the article. The $52 billion would “yield a higher return if it were spent on less glitzy schemes, such as road improvements and intra-city transport initiatives.” Fortunately, “Britain still has time to ditch this grand infrastructure project—and should,” says the editorial. “Other countries should also reconsider plans to expand or introduce such lines” as well.
The Antiplanner wrote:
“Mature economies rarely see huge benefits from a single project,†says the article. The $52 billion would “yield a higher return if it were spent on less glitzy schemes, such as road improvements and intra-city transport initiatives.†Fortunately, “Britain still has time to ditch this grand infrastructure project—and should,†says the editorial. “Other countries should also reconsider plans to expand or introduce such lines†as well.
What does make some sense (in my opinion) in the UK is to build a third runway at London Heathrow, yet that was scuttled by NIMBYist and environmentalist objections.
An other thing to keep in mind is that the UK is missing 10,000+ miles of rail line.
“New Spanish rail lines have swelled Madrid’s business population to Seville’s loss,â€
Interesting. I know that a major opponent to putting a train on the I-70 corridor heading west out of Denver is towns like Idaho Springs that like the gridlock on the interstate. It serves their local businesses well. A train might skip them. Not that the train would take a significant number of cars off the road, but every person on a train is a potential gallon of gas, slice of pizza, slurpee, chainsaw bear, pint of ale, shot glass, T-shirt, etc. not sold.
C.P,
I’m admittedly not that familiar with London air traffic, but why can’t one of London’s 23 (sarcastic exaggeration) other airports help alleviate the burden on Heathrow?
bennett wrote:
I’m admittedly not that familiar with London air traffic, but why can’t one of London’s 23 (sarcastic exaggeration) other airports help alleviate the burden on Heathrow?
International carriers serving the UK seem to like to cluster at Heathrow. It’s a good jumping-off point for flights to and from North America, for example, and most of Europe is a relatively easy flight as well. That synergy thing.
Same reasoning, I think, why most international flights in the D.C. market are at Dulles and not at BWI, or why most long-haul flights into and out of North Central Texas are at DFW and not at Dallas Love Field
To answer your question, the BBC’s article that I linked above says:
There has been some rumblings about constructing an entirely new airport in the Thames River estuary, but I don’t know if those are serious or not.
It’s also important to note that much of the opposition to more runway capacity in the London area is (supposedly) predicated on building new domestic HSR lines from London to larger cities in England, and north to Scotland as well.
“An other thing to keep in mind is that the UK is missing 10,000+ miles of rail line.” – The Highwayman
You wouldn’t happen to have a source to back that up? One that you’re willing to share, do you?
It’s mind boggling that England is looking to spend as much as they are on a project that will marginally decrease travel times….. for those going to or from London. The distances involved are insanely short. it’s hard to see how triming 15 minutes off a 120 mile trip from London to Birmingham is worth what the huge debt they’re willing to rack up on the project.
Independent of whether it is a good idea to build it or not, why does it take 20 years to build? After all the original railway was built in 3 years I believe. It reminds me of a more local example of this, the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Here we are 22 years after the 1989 quake and we are still several years from replacing half of the bridge. But the original bridge was built in 3 years.
I know that a major opponent to putting a train on the I-70 corridor heading west out of Denver is towns like Idaho Springs that like the gridlock on the interstate.
The major reason, in my view, for the opposition is the tremendous cost simply to alleviate traffic for a tiny (but monied) group. If you don’t like to sit in gridlock, don’t go that way or don’t go skiing. Simple. The argument is the same as the anti-choochoo arguments. Very same argument.
DS
C. P. Zilliacus said:
“What does make some sense (in my opinion) in the UK is to build a third runway at London Heathrow”
London Heathrow, unlike most modern airports, is situated inside a housing estate. Thus, the environmental impacts are much more severe. Additionally, Heathrow management are incompetent. They are engaged in a silly game of rock soup, adding a terminal here, and a runway there. Lots of people including myself are fed up with being deceived.
“There has been some rumblings about constructing an entirely new airport in the Thames River estuary”
That’s the plan of Boris Johnson, another Bullingdon Club muppet. When he starts taking himself seriously, other people might as well.
Highwayman said:
“Another thing to keep in mind is that the UK is missing 10,000+ miles of rail line”
We’re certainly missing a lot of motorway (freeway) miles.
Paulmcl said:
“Why does it take 20 years to build?”
Because, like President Obama, Mr. Hammond hasn’t got the money, and is hoping that something will turn up.
Dan says: “If you don’t like to sit in gridlock, don’t go that way or don’t go skiing.”
No doubt. Don’t tell anybody, but all the best turns are to be had on the western slope. Seeing I-70 on a Saturday morning makes Telluride, CB, Purgatory (called something else now), Wolf Creek, Monarch and Silverton look so much closer to D-town. It’s worth the extra 1-2&1/2 hours for no lift lines, no traffic, and fewer assholes.
But don’t tell anybody.
England already has 125 mph rail up the west coast and 140 mph rail up the east coast. You would think that using tilting trains to go through curves faster, or doing some work on junctions, speed restrictions, and slow stretches could accomplish 50% of the same goal for 10% of the 52B.
Its hard to believe that anyone flies from London to Manchester or Birmingham, considering the slight distances involved and the rail and motorway network available. So I don’t see how this saves money on airports either.
If England really has 52B to burn on rail additional rail projects above and beyond anything already planned, its hard to believe this is the best they can come up with.
It’s worth the extra 1-2&1/2 hours for no lift lines, no traffic, and fewer assholes.
I definitely hear you on CB or Steamboat. Some of those, like Durango (whatever it is now) mean you are spending the night, which is another C-note on top of the C-note to ski, and there aren’t many places to stay in Silverton worth a C-note if you’re not local! But I mainly meant going the back way to get to, say, Breck area. We had the same thing in Tahoe every weekend too and no one there was floating more train service to South Shore (cost).
DS
Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world (3rd in the world), whats so wrong with one more runway. London’s own mayor has openly admitted that London needs more airport capacity but favours constructing an entirely new airport in the Thames Estuary rather than expanding Heathrow. I don’t really see that much of a difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FqB-0G3Zlw
FrancisKing wrote:
London Heathrow, unlike most modern airports, is situated inside a housing estate. Thus, the environmental impacts are much more severe. Additionally, Heathrow management are incompetent. They are engaged in a silly game of rock soup, adding a terminal here, and a runway there. Lots of people including myself are fed up with being deceived.
Francis, you know more about Heathrow than I ever will, though I have been through the place many times, and like it a lot better than (for example) JFK in New York City and EWR in Newark, N.J. (both of those are (in my opinion) terrible airports, and I avoid them at all costs).
A few questions and points:
Regarding Heathrow’s location, was the housing there before the airport was built? Some of the housing stock seen from the airport and when landing looks pretty old, but I am not willing to express opinions about that either way.
Mrs. Thatcher’s government privatized British Airports Authority by selling it off which turned it into BAA Plc. Is management better since it was privatized? I also recall reading that BAA Plc is now owned by Spanish investors. Has that made any difference?
Even though BAA Plc is a private entity, can it use eminent domain to buy up land by condemnation if it needs to (and has the appropriate government approvals)?
Regarding an airport in the Thames estuary, it seems that would be difficult or impossible to build something like that in the United States today, given the provisions of the [U.S.] Clean Water Act. Perhaps it’s easier to obtain permits to fill in waters in the U.K. than it is in the U.S.?
The notion that an HSR line or two (presumably built with U.K. taxpayer money) would obviate the need for more capacity in London (at Heathrow or elsewhere) seems to make little sense, especially since BAA Plc’s owners, and not British taxpayers, would have to fund any airport expansion. And it’s hard to build HSR from London to the United States, Canada, the UAE, India and Hong Kong (those are some of the nations that have significant traffic to and from of LHR, according to Wikipedia.
Please explain what Bullingdon Club is, and significance of same. I saw the Wikipedia article, but am I to infer that Mayor Boris should not be taken seriously? At least he’s been on-record as opposed to articulated transit buses (ooops, “bendy” buses) and in favor of the proven London double-decker bus.
“Interesting. I know that a major opponent to putting a train on the I-70 corridor heading west out of Denver is towns like Idaho Springs that like the gridlock on the interstate. It serves their local businesses well. A train might skip them. Not that the train would take a significant number of cars off the road, but every person on a train is a potential gallon of gas, slice of pizza, slurpee, chainsaw bear, pint of ale, shot glass, T-shirt, etc. not sold.” — Bennett
Not that I think you mean to imply it but it does imply people in Idaho Springs are such dunderheads that the most they dream for their town is a few gas stations. That is, they’re just not very bright.
The main driver behind Idaho Springs opposition to the _widening_ of I-70 is that the little town is crammed into a pretty narrow mountain valley. There just isn’t a lot of room to expand the width of the freeway without taking out a lot of the town.
C. P Zilliacus:
It seems that when Heathrow started it was built in the countryside. The housing has extended out around it. Heathrow started in 1929, so that the majority of the housing post-dates this.
I cannot say if BAA is a better company for being privatised. The Spanish ownership means that BAA is heavily in debt.
Only the government, local and national, have powers of eminent domain. An expansion of Heathrow, although arguably a good idea, is unpopular for people living there, and other people too (including myself). BAA is on the receiving end of Global Warming concern and a very bad way of dealing with members of the public.
The Thames estuary has numerous problems, of which two stand out. One is bird-strike. The other is that there is a ship from World War II, sunk in the channel, and it’s still loaded with live ammunition. It would be better to find a site on land, outside of London, and preferably to the north or south (air traffic comes in east-west).
The Bullingdon Club is a drinking club within Oxford University. The cost of the full dress outfit is £3500 ($5000). I never had that much money to live on in any one year when I studied there. The members have a reputation for getting drunk and trashing things. There are two people from the Bullingdon Club who are famous (after a fashion). David Cameron had the brass neck to complain about the riot in London, and advocate harsher sentencing policy (which would have encompassed the Bullingdon Club in his day). The other one is Boris Johnson, mayor of London, whose shtick is starting to wear pretty thin. Both are over-privileged, and completely out of touch. Proposing an airport in the Thames estuary pretty much sums up Mr. Johnson.
FrancisKing posted:
It seems that when Heathrow started it was built in the countryside. The housing has extended out around it. Heathrow started in 1929, so that the majority of the housing post-dates this.
Then I have a lot less sympathy for anyone living there. In fact, I have no sympathy for them at all. Rather like Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), built by the U.S. federal government in the early 1960’s about 26 miles (42 km) west of Washington in what was then the Virginia countryside. Plenty of houses have grown up around Dulles since then (some right under the approach and departure paths), and some of the people living in the houses complain rather too loudly about aircraft noise, even though aircraft engines today are a lot quieter than they were when Dulles was built.
I cannot say if BAA is a better company for being privatised. The Spanish ownership means that BAA is heavily in debt.
I would think that BAA would be in debt even if they were still owned by the Crown (that’s the right way to say government-owned in the UK, right?).
Only the government, local and national, have powers of eminent domain. An expansion of Heathrow, although arguably a good idea, is unpopular for people living there, and other people too (including myself). BAA is on the receiving end of Global
Warming concern and a very bad way of dealing with members of the public.
I asked about eminent domain because in the U.S., some private companies (notably electric, gas and water utilities and railroads, which are sometimes privately-owned sometimes government-owned) have the rights of eminent domain in some circumstances.
I have read some of the anti-air travel stuff that various British groups have cranked out over the past several years, and it’s strikingly similar to the anti-highway/anti-auto rhetoric from the “anti-auto vanguard” (as Professor James Dunn, Jr. put it). Seems that an easier way to reduce carbon emissions is to replace coal-fired electric generating stations with nuclear generation.
The Thames estuary has numerous problems, of which two stand out. One is bird-strike. The other is that there is a ship from World War II, sunk in the channel, and it’s still loaded with live ammunition. It would be better to find a site on land, outside of London, and preferably to the north or south (air traffic comes in east-west).
Bird strikes can be a problem, as we learned from that near-disaster involving USAir taking off from LaGuardia not so long ago. Did not know about the ammo-laden ship.
The Bullingdon Club is a drinking club within Oxford University. The cost of the full dress outfit is £3500 ($5000). I never had that much money to live on in any one year when I studied there. The members have a reputation for getting drunk and trashing things. There are two people from the Bullingdon Club who are famous (after a fashion). David Cameron had the brass neck to complain about the riot in London, and advocate harsher sentencing policy (which would have encompassed the Bullingdon Club in his day).
Thanks for sharing this. Sounds like the late Keith Moon of the Who (I loved and still love the band, he was one of the greatest drummers ever) would have been right at home in the Bullingdon Club, though I don’t think he ever made it to Oxford.
The other one is Boris Johnson, mayor of London, whose shtick is starting to wear pretty thin. Both are over-privileged, and completely out of touch. Proposing an airport in the Thames estuary pretty much sums up Mr. Johnson.
As I said before, the main thing I know about Mayor Boris from this side of the pond is his favorable attitude about London double-decker buses.
But putting a major airport in an estuary seems pretty foolish, especially when London has plenty of Metropolitan Green Belt land available for a new “inland” facility with three or four runways (it’s probably heresy to say that, at least among Britain’s Greens). Washington Dulles has four runways now (all long enough for 747 and A380 aircraft), with room on its property to easily add a fifth.
Anti-auto vanguard? CPZ, you & anti-rail types posting here don’t exactly help the situation either.