Motorists Subsidising Train Travellers.

[rs1952]

Rude-boy said:

rs1952 said:

You're probably in the wrong branch of the profession

....

You may have missed the gravy train (pun intended)

With you a bit more now. Yes not my bag man but it's more a side effect than an intention. Just like in the old days of GNR, GWR, GER, etc!

Actually nothing at all like the old days. The railways you quote were integrated vertically (ie. they owned everything on their routes) so, for example, if the Permanent Way people cocked up and something came off the road, then the Chief Civil Engineer got invited to a stand up meeting without coffee with the General Manager. He didn't get a letter from the lawyers acting for the people who ran the trains.

Inter-railway issues were complicated back then, but generally not litigious. The Railway Clearing House dealt with such matters as revenue apportionment etc.

[0000]

Hackney said:

So your solution is to turn railways into roads, but to maximise the benefit you'd group loads of trucks and buses together to make a super truck / bus.
It's certainly not "pie in the sky". It's called A TRAIN you fking numpty.

Except it's run at a fraction of the price and could share the infrastructure with those who run their own "train". As well as benefitting from being able to use the existing, larger "train" network that can actually serve the locations people travel between rather than only routes between arbitrary hubs that EasyJet would consider outside the local terminus.

You could even make them available to only electric vehicles, get some funding from Elon Musk and even the green lobby would support it. Design them for higher speed limits and you can abandon HS2.

[menousername]

greygoose said:

eccles said:

It does seem strange this fixation with the South East and London. Many of these companies could easily relocate as their business is predominantly electronic.
Does much of the financial industry actually need to be in London? Why does it physically have to be there?

That puzzles me too, all transactions appear to be computer/telephone based, perhaps it just helps with expenses claims if they are all together in an area with expensive restaurants rather than working from home?

Both in order to be able to service clients and the fact that a huge portion of economic activity in London is interconnected. Finance drives finance-focused Law firms. Law firms drive accountants. Accounts drive Law firms. All of them drive stationery suppliers, coffee shops, etc etc.

If your clients are in London why would you set up shop in Manchester. If you are a law firm services investment banking and most of that is in London, why would you set up in Leeds. If your clients and suppliers are in central Leeds why would you set up 10 miles down the road, etc

I agree with the sentiment being made, my point is that its unavoidable really. If there was a major relocation the same thing would happen again in the new town/city and the same conversation would take place. Futher, setting up out of town would see congestion in both directions. Good analogy is Canary Wharf... there are people who live in the West End and work in CW, and people who live in CW but work in the City.

Not sure what the answer is

[rs1952]

0000 said:

Hackney said:

So your solution is to turn railways into roads, but to maximise the benefit you'd group loads of trucks and buses together to make a super truck / bus.
It's certainly not "pie in the sky". It's called A TRAIN you fking numpty.

Except it's run at a fraction of the price and could share the infrastructure with those who run their own "train". As well as benefitting from being able to use the existing, larger "train" network that can actually serve the locations people travel between rather than only routes between arbitrary hubs that EasyJet would consider outside the local terminus.

You could even make them available to only electric vehicles, get some funding from Elon Musk and even the green lobby would support it. Design them for higher speed limits and you can abandon HS2.

There is an old saying "if something is so simple an idiot could have thought of it, then either an idiot has thought of it or it ain't that simple."

The idea of converting railways into roads has been around since railways were invented. There was a UK politician in the 1830s (can't remember his name and can't be arsed to look it up because its not all that relevant) who wanted the railways nationalised so that they could be ripped up and turned into Turnpike roads for the stage coach industry. There is a very good reason why railways have not been converted wholesale into roads.

They aren't wide enough, and extra land would have to be bought on one or both sides.

And the moment you do that, you have immediate and substantial extra costs to deal with:

1. Cutting, embankment, tunnel and bridge widening
2. Drainage to relay on one or both sides
3. When you want to widen a route in towns and cities, it means taking bits of people's gardens or knocking their houses down and this is, shall we say, not always welcomed by the current owners...

You also have the problem, as I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, that the railways are responsible for fencing their entire route mileage in the UK whilst that job falls to adjoining landowners on roads. However, if you simply turned a railway into a road, you could try saying to the adjoining landowner "this is your fence to maintain now," but I have a fair idea of the sort of answer you would get and the court cases that would follow

There are of course roads in the UK that follow the course of former railway lines (the A34 over part of its length between Newbury and Winchester, and Broadstone Way between Broadstone and Poole in Dorset spring immediately to mind), but you will find in each and every case that the road is a bloody sight wider than the railway that was there before.

So in a nutshell, forget "at a fraction of the cost" because that ain't the way the real world works.

0000 said:

Design them for higher speed limits and you can abandon HS2.

You might find that building HS2 is a cheaper option than your idea

[0000]

rs1952 said:

1. Cutting, embankment, tunnel and bridge widening
2. Drainage to relay on one or both sides
3. When you want to widen a route in towns and cities, it means taking bits of people's gardens or knocking their houses down and this is, shall we say, not always welcomed by the current owners...

Meh. More or less one off costs that will look trivial over the following 100 years.

rs1952 said:

You might find that building HS2 is a cheaper option than your idea

That I don't doubt but it's hardly as effective and there's no point throwing good money after bad.

[Neonblau]

Rail to road? Won't happen. Some good points here, and from a pro-car forum.

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/railconv.html

[rs1952]

Neonblau said:

Rail to road? Won't happen. Some good points here, and from a pro-car forum.

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/railconv.html

Interesting

0000 said:

rs1952 said:

1. Cutting, embankment, tunnel and bridge widening
2. Drainage to relay on one or both sides
3. When you want to widen a route in towns and cities, it means taking bits of people's gardens or knocking their houses down and this is, shall we say, not always welcomed by the current owners...

Meh. More or less one off costs that will look trivial over the following 100 years.

So, to paraphrase:

"Don't try to confuse me with the facts, I've made up my mind"

[Magog]

There are loads of roads that have been converted from railways, the A143 follows much of route of the Waveney valley line, the A66 through the Lake District follows the route of the Keswick line in places. The new Hastings Link Road uses some of the old formation of the Bexhill West Branch.

[Neonblau]

Magog said:

There are loads of roads that have been converted from railways, the A143 follows much of route of the Waveney valley line, the A66 through the Lake District follows the route of the Keswick line in places. The new Hastings Link Road uses some of the old formation of the Bexhill West Branch.

Nobody is saying that there haven't been reuses but the cases you cite are where road builders have used the formations of lines that have already closed. There can be sound reasons for doing that such as cutting down on the amount of earth to be moved or more often because the railway was there first and followed the lie of the land - railway builders had to avoid gradients and sharp curves. Part of the M90 north of Kinross for example is built on the route of the old Glenfarg line but by no stretch of the imagination does it use the formation.

What's being proposed here is closing an active railway and covering it in tarmac.

[0000]

rs1952 said:

0000 said:

rs1952 said:

1. Cutting, embankment, tunnel and bridge widening
2. Drainage to relay on one or both sides
3. When you want to widen a route in towns and cities, it means taking bits of people's gardens or knocking their houses down and this is, shall we say, not always welcomed by the current owners...

Meh. More or less one off costs that will look trivial over the following 100 years.

So, to paraphrase:

"Don't try to confuse me with the facts, I've made up my mind"

Not at all. I fully support your list of suggested investments in our road network.