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Darling’s comments on ‘boring’ transport

Transport shouldn't really be boring but it should answer the problem it is trying to solve.

I hate to say it but Darling could be right – despite it being his government that started this, he makes a point worth further examination. Although I am generally always in favour of brave infrastructure spending and big projects, this smacks of a vanity project and appears to be the wrong solution to the right problem. It doesn’t even connect to HS1 or do anything imaginative about the tired and poorly connected interchanges in London.

What is worse is that the majority of people adversely affected by it will gain nothing from it to the point where it is distorting national politics and the price of travel does not look like something that will have hoards of the average public transport user crowding onto the system.

Furthermore the UK is not France or Spain etc. We are much more space constrained and the single use infrastructure for HSR is a very poor use of the land take. Slow down the trains a little and you gain much more capacity – we should have learned this from not only a couple of centuries of railway operating but also what capacity modelling from motorways has demonstrated for decades. Stand next to HS1 and count the number of Eurostar and Javelin sets that pass you in any given time – let alone the number of freight trains!

Four-tracking the MML to increase freight capacity, more AC electrification and building the ‘Y’ section on to the MML, upgrading train control to maximise capacity on all the existing main lines and introducing proper intercity trains running at up to 140 + mph over all the network would do much more to solve the real problem.

An hour or so on a train for most business people either way does not really count for much provided it is cost effective and they can work with good IT connectivity etc. – this was something the business case deliberately ignored because the CBA would not have stacked up (and I remain to be convinced it still does in the real world – although any infrastructure will get used to some extent if built). £100 off the regular fare would be a much bigger incentive for all travellers.

It is a fantastic project for the engineers and other professionals involved – very exciting and great to have on the CV and as an academic exercise fantastic: but I struggle to justify it in the current reality of our transport landscape or as an answer to a lack of freight, economic intercity and commuter capacity on the existing network. As a railwayman it is a great thing to be presented with but does it solve the existing problems and represent the best we could do with the money? I think not.

But it does allow the Government (of any colour, whoever happens to be in power at the time) to claim astronomic spending on transport infrastructure, getting the country back to work and be able to do it largely on ‘Jam Tomorrow’ as the majority of the spend will not be in this administration – or am I just a cynic?