UK Strategic Planning

[OutByEaster?]

9 minutes ago, bickster said:

Apples and pears

I agree with you but conflating pricing of fares with building and improving the infrastructure are two entirely different issues. Conflating those issues is a bad idea. Making that connection is what people opposed to such schemes want you to do. The "trains are expensive enough as it is without having to pay for this on top of it."

The rail structure needs massive improvement and investment that is a good for everyone

The fare structure needs decreasing and yes Nationalisation would massively help that but the two are not connected.

The sooner this country wakes up to the fact that we are the only country in Europe that generally runs trains as a for profit business the better. The rest of Europe views the railways as crucial infrastructure, not just for people but for business too, they go hand in hand.

 

I'm entirely in agreement - not my intention to conflate the two at all.

I'm always surprised by the degree to which people don't get this - that the train companies don't own the track, or the stations, or the trains - we pay for all of that already in tax - the important bit is ours, we own it - why we're then paying out huge sums of money to people that paint their logo on those trains is an idiocy. The sooner we cut out the middle men and adopt the same attitude as the rest of Europe, the better.

 

 

 

[OutByEaster?]

5 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Re the speed vs capacity thing, I think you run into this same issue with “affordable housing”.

People say we need more affordable housing, not more unaffordable / luxury housing.

In practice, all that matters is building more houses, as that depresses prices and increases availability across the market - which indirectly makes more houses “affordable”.

I'm not sure that holds up - demands and price on houses and travel don't work the same way - HS2 will be competing against flights and cars as much as other rail services - I can't see tickets on the Avanti West Coast mainline out of New Street getting cheaper as a result. Am I not getting what you're saying?

 

 

 

[Lichfield Dean]

2 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I am a bit OCD and I've decided that all of the problems in this country could be solved if we made the UK symmetrical.  I've now finalised my plans and I am ready to start it off. 

Stage 1 Birmingham. This would remain unchanged initially and would be the central point from which symetry would be measured.

Stage 2 London. It's the biggest city so we leave it where it is. It would be stupid to move a city as big as London. 

Stage 3. Bristol and Cardiff would be merged and moved to a new location that makes a symmetrical triangle with Brum and London. This might be somewhere in the Bristol channel but we'll be filling a lot of that in to make the Severn and the Thames match.

Stage 4. Liverpool. Moved slightly to ensure symetry with Bristodiff (see above). The Mersey would be altered to match the Thames and the Severn. 

Stage 5. Hull. The last of the 4 cities that will form a square around Brum. It might need to be moved a bit.

Stage 6. Edinburgh stays in the same position. 

Now we have the easy stuff sorted we can tackle the more difficult stuff. 

Stage 7. We need to create a symmetrical equivalent to Edinburgh. But to do s, it will need to be in France. Invasion is a possibility but could get messy. Much better to swap most of Wales with them. Flattening Wales to be symmetrical with East Anglia is going to be time consuming so we avoid that problem. 

Stage 8. Decide whether to fill in the Channel or dig a symmetrical version north of Hull & Liverpool and south of Edinburgh. Filling in the channel would assist with the invasion (Stage 7) and provide a place to put all the rubble from the Welsh mountains (see above). 

I'm not sure of the best option for Stage 9. Does anyone have any suggestions?*

*Find a good psychiatrist is already in progress. 

Sounds like we can delete Manchester entirely, so I'm all for this plan.

[blandy]

37 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

What I'd really love to see is rail services that are free at the point of use - paid for in tax  - so that if you wanted to or needed to, you could just get on a train and go to where you were going.

That’s madness! I mean look at how that’s gone with a comparable system, like I dunno, the roads. I mean it’s clearly not possible and weird thinking. Imagine if you could just use a road. As if! 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I mean, yeah - but there's a bit in @bickster's video (I've time stamped it here) which explains some of it. I'm with you generally, though.

 

Thanks for that, and I have previously watched it and yes, I can see the case for people from Aberystwyth being better served by less delays through Wolverhampton.

However, you’ll know that local to Aberystwyth we have Cardigan and Fishguard and the sister University town of Lampeter. These local places aren’t well connected. I would humbly suggest that reinstating the train to Cardigan and connecting Fishguard, Cardigan and Aberystwyth might give more benefit to the local community than getting to London faster, or not having to stop outside Wolverhampton. Imagine if that local connection even linked up with existing lines to Carmarthen, Pembroke Dock, Swansea.

It’s currently 3.5 hours by train or 1.5 hours by car to do Fishguard / Aberystwyth. Remembering, Fishguard is a major port link with Ireland. Wouldn’t improving rail to two university towns and a port be of more benefit than getting passed Wolverhampton quicker? 

That’s just the example I know a little about. I would imagine similar examples could be given for Boston or Kendal or Kings Lynn.

As someone mentioned somewhere else, the problem is we should be doing both, we don’t have the vision for both, so we do the one which gets people along an existing route, quicker. If the aim was ever to benefit Aberystwyth, this was not the way to do it.

[KentVillan]

18 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I'm not sure that holds up - demands and price on houses and travel don't work the same way - HS2 will be competing against flights and cars as much as other rail services - I can't see tickets on the Avanti West Coast mainline out of New Street getting cheaper as a result. Am I not getting what you're saying?

It will drive down prices / increase capacity on all equivalent routes via any mode of transport.

You can see the inverse of this during rail strikes - traffic jams on road networks.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

2 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Sounds like we can delete Manchester entirely, so I'm all for this plan.

Well........we have a choice.   

Manchester and Swindon are almost in symmetrical position from Birmingham.   Our options are are to move both over a bit to make them directly north/south of Brum.  Or we just destroy them both. 

If we decide to keep them we will have to alter one to match the other.  So we have some difficult choices. 

Do we keep Oasis or the Wurzels? 

[Lichfield Dean]

2 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Well........we have a choice.   

Manchester and Swindon are almost in symmetrical position from Birmingham.   Our options are are to move both over a bit to make them directly north/south of Brum.  Or we just destroy them both. 

If we decide to keep them we will have to alter one to match the other.  So we have some difficult choices. 

Do we keep Oasis or the Wurzels? 

Wurzels. Is that even a serious question?

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

 

Stage 3. Bristol and Cardiff would be merged and moved to a new location that makes a symmetrical triangle with Brum and London. This might be somewhere in the Bristol channel but we'll be filling a lot of that in to make the Severn and the Thames match.

 

They’ve already tried this. They called it Newport.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

7 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Wurzels. Is that even a serious question?

Sorry. I added Oasis as a joke. 

[bickster]

11 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Do we keep Oasis or the Wurzels? 

XTC because they actually were from Swindon

[fruitvilla]

28 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

2 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I am a bit OCD and I've decided that all of the problems in this country could be solved if we made the UK symmetrical.  I've now finalised my plans and I am ready to start it off. 

Stage 1 Birmingham. This would remain unchanged initially and would be the central point from which symetry would be measured.

Stage 2 London. It's the biggest city so we leave it where it is. It would be stupid to move a city as big as London. 

Stage 3. Bristol and Cardiff would be merged and moved to a new location that makes a symmetrical triangle with Brum and London. This might be somewhere in the Bristol channel but we'll be filling a lot of that in to make the Severn and the Thames match.

Stage 4. Liverpool. Moved slightly to ensure symetry with Bristodiff (see above). The Mersey would be altered to match the Thames and the Severn. 

Stage 5. Hull. The last of the 4 cities that will form a square around Brum. It might need to be moved a bit.

Stage 6. Edinburgh stays in the same position. 

Now we have the easy stuff sorted we can tackle the more difficult stuff. 

Stage 7. We need to create a symmetrical equivalent to Edinburgh. But to do s, it will need to be in France. Invasion is a possibility but could get messy. Much better to swap most of Wales with them. Flattening Wales to be symmetrical with East Anglia is going to be time consuming so we avoid that problem. 

Stage 8. Decide whether to fill in the Channel or dig a symmetrical version north of Hull & Liverpool and south of Edinburgh. Filling in the channel would assist with the invasion (Stage 7) and provide a place to put all the rubble from the Welsh mountains (see above). 

I'm not sure of the best option for Stage 9. Does anyone have any suggestions?*

*Find a good psychiatrist is already in progress. 

Expand  

Sounds like we can delete Manchester entirely, so I'm all for this plan.

And whilst we are at it ... Newcastle can be moved twenty miles east.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

They’ve already tried this. They called it Newport.

 

I am considered adding Newport onto Bristodiff at a later stage. 

New Bristodoff wasn't built in a day! 

[MakemineVanilla]

Surely 15-minute communities will solve the problem?

Why take on huge debt to build a transport system which acts as a subsidy to private companies, for the enrichment of their management and stock-holders?

Transporting people to where the jobs are, takes a huge amount of energy and the required infrastructure uses up vast areas of land which would be better used for other purposes.

Move the jobs to local communities instead, where people who do not need a vehicle or expensive travel costs, can actually be paid less, as owning a vehicle costs something like £3k a year.

Lower wages would mean lower costs for companies, which means lower prices and more competitive export goods and services.

No commuting, and no railway unions to hold the community to ransom.

Smaller communities leading to more devolution of political power, meaning more policies which cater for local needs.

[sidcow]

34 minutes ago, blandy said:

That’s madness! I mean look at how that’s gone with a comparable system, like I dunno, the roads. I mean it’s clearly not possible and weird thinking. Imagine if you could just use a road. As if! 

Are roads actually free to use?

You pay Road Tax and huge amounts of tax on the fuel you put in the car to use the road. 

(OK, you can use a bicycle but that's just piggybacking on the back of someone else's payments) 

Surely a better system would be some kind of small reasonable payment for the use of the service which is low enough to pay for regular use and tempts people out of cars.  Maybe if you are a frequent user some kind of reasonable price for all use of the system. Let's call it a season ticket. 

[OutByEaster?]

17 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

It will drive down prices / increase capacity on all equivalent routes via any mode of transport.

You can see the inverse of this during rail strikes - traffic jams on road networks.

Do we see traffic jams on roads during rail strikes?

The differences in the numbers don't make a lot of difference to the roads - I think rail accounts for about 5% of commutes locally.

The Scott Arms junction has almost as many people pass through it each day as Birmingham New Street.

I guess one way that HS2 will help in terms of competition for cars is that it's triggering the (re)opening of (sort of) new stations to link to it - a new passenger line along existing freight routes from Walsall through Sutton Park to the HS2 station at the NEC for example will make a difference to people along that route and provide them choices.

From what I can gather, HS2 might take some pressure of the First Class element of regular services - I guess if that leaves existing stock of carriages to be repurposed, that could add to capacity on the existing routes - but I suspect it'll lead to slightly less standing, not less expensive tickets.
 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

6 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

And whilst we are at it ... Newcastle can be moved twenty miles east.

I am not keen on keeping Newcastle.  What would we call it? New-Newcastle?  Newercastle? 

In order to maintain symmetry from Birmingham we would need to take over Caen in Northern France.  

The cost of providing basic English Languge tuition to such a large population would be massive.  Luckily it would be a much smaller problem in Caen.  

[fruitvilla]

4 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I am not keen on keeping Newcastle.  What would we call it? New-Newcastle?  Newercastle

Actually, it would be renamed Newcastle under Sea

[Mandy Lifeboats]

1 minute ago, fruitvilla said:

Actually, it would be renamed Newcastle under Sea

I like it.   Its going on my symmetrical map. 

 

[sidcow]

If we're not keeping it then Nukecastle