Rail Spend is now 150% of Road Spend

[mshsrfc]

Sign this petition NOW, rail spending is out of control.
Rail spend is now 150% of road spending, they government is really taking the p*ss out of road users

https://www.change.org/p/chris-grayling-make-rail-...

[Yipper]

Railways, by their nature, are expensive and unprofitable. They cost billions to build and maintain and everyone wants a trip for a fiver. The world subsidises rail to the tune of about quarter of a trillion dollars every year. Britain is not alone.

[mshsrfc]

Just because everybody is doing does not make it right, UK rail only moves 3% of population and yet it gets all the money, that cannot be right, sign the petition

[Heartworm]

I'd be happy to invest more in rail if it got more traffic off our roads, I've recently moved to an area with a new train station after a line extension and it's been fantastic not having to take a car into the city. It's hardly getting all the money, when roads are still getting £10Bn!

[glasgow mega snake]

But a decent rail infrastructure is really important to enable our economy to be productive. Just the same as roads, airports, schools, hospitals, universities, etc. It might cost a lot but you are ignoring the (difficult to quantify but undeniable) benefit brought to our economy by the railways. The railways might not make a profit but plenty of profitable companies rely on the to move their employees to work, their raw materials around, etc. etc.

[mshsrfc]

Rail spend is £14.8bn this year, that is 36p / passenger mile, it might get a few people off the road, but at an eye watering cost.
Road spend is £10bn / year and works out at 3p / road mile, so rail spend has 12 x road spend / mile
Road taxes raise £50bn / year which means every road mile is taxed 13p.
It cannot be right that of the population are subsiding the 3% that use rail, spend more on roads and their might be less congestion.

[glasgow mega snake]

There are two areas where government spending creates a return on 'investment' - infrastructure (rail, road, airports, power, etc.) and education. everything else is a net loss. I think that with a worse railway system you'd have a much less pleasant, productive and prosperous country.

[audikentman]

So do you want more money spent on roads or less money on the railways?

If all the people that use the railway and tube in London was to use the roads then the South East would grind to a halt

[SantaBarbara]

The road spend on motorways currently is actually making them worse.

Smart motorways are less safe than they were initially.

[mshsrfc]

Now you are getting to the point, 65% of all rail journeys are in South East (tubes are TfL different budget).
Basically we are paying 36p / mile to keep South East going - very expensive way of moving people

Also not necessarily more roads (we have only built one in last 10 years M6 Toll), just more spend eg

Stop making out that drivers to the 'bad guys' and using that as an excuse to milk us for £34bn every year and saying that higher road usage taxing will reduce congestion, get it in to your thick heads that nobody with a choice drives in rush hour, people with a choice have another coffee and wait till the traffic dies down.

Stop making such as fuss about breakdowns and minor repairs with miles of cones and closing multiple lanes, countries like Japan and Germany close one lane, place a vehicle 100m back with lots of flashing lights and get on with it.

Provide free parking places at all motorway junctions (as in Germany) so people can meet up and carry on in one car

Provide free parking places at key junctions in cities, so that car sharing is made easier

Put more money into road works to provide 24 hour and weekend working.

Put recording camera's on all main motorways, so that serious / fatal crashes can be cleared quicker and not turned into 2 day crime scenes, use intelligent camera software to spot non movement of cars and signal operator

On congested motorways have dedicated light / heavy breakdown trucks, waiting on all junctions, with the same crash protection system as maintenance trucks, so that they can drive down motorways the wrong way on hard shoulder.

Change the four lane continuous upgrade approach to 1 mile before / after junctions as that is where the congestion occurs

With 4 lanes at at junctions, signal non exiting lorries / slow moving traffic into lane 2 and allow undertaking at speed in lane 1 for exiting traffic

Give lorries a graduated speed difference based on load weight, at present anything over 7.5tonnes is stuck at 56mph and the roads are blocked with lorries passing with only 0.5mph speed difference and taking a mile to manage it.

The only major new motorway built in the past 20 years is M6 toll road, which at £6 a go hardly anybody uses it, wonder why?

[Pica-Pica]

mshsrfc said:

Just because everybody is doing does not make it right, UK rail only moves 3% of population and yet it gets all the money, that cannot be right, sign the petition

No.

[mshsrfc]

Fair enough

[SantaBarbara]

Lets spend More money on rail transport

[Pica-Pica]

mshsrfc said:

Fair enough

You could have added, please.

[mshsrfc]

Pica-Pica said:

You could have added, please.

I had the feeling that from response, that if I had put cherries on top they would not sign,

you can fool all of the people ...

[LeoSayer]

mshsrfc said:

get it in to your thick heads that nobody with a choice drives in rush hour

Charming.

And wrong.

I know a number of people that choose to drive in rush hour despite having viable and sometimes quicker alternatives such as walking, bus, tube and train.

[SantaBarbara]

The spend on Motorways has resulted in excessive disruption by too many roadworks.

Motorways were better before they tried to Improve them.

[mshsrfc]

LeoSayer said:

Charming.

And wrong.

I know a number of people that choose to drive in rush hour despite having viable and sometimes quicker alternatives such as walking, bus, tube and train.

The 'thick heads' are government / DfT, I pulled it from www.makerailpay.org.uk, but the choice I was inferring was 'time of day' for the people with no option for efficient public transport, ie anyone living away from of mass conurbation, without a convenient rail station and without a train / bus that goes anywhere where they work = most of working population, would rather not queue at rush hour.

In general trains & buses are radial beasts to and from town centres, how many buses have you seen going through isolated industrial estates?

summary - public transport only really works in mass conurbations or if your home / work is on a route and round here (Warwickshire) that option is scarce.

[mshsrfc]

SantaBarbara said:

The spend on Motorways has resulted in excessive disruption by too many roadworks.

Motorways were better before they tried to Improve them.

Most of the current spend is on that concrete central barrier and I think that is from EU as all over Belgium and Holland.

You are right roadworks take too long, spend more money and get 24hour / weekend working to speed them up

[Lowtimer]

mshsrfc said:

Basically we are paying 36p / mile to keep South East going - very expensive way of moving people

London within the M25 generates almost as much tax as the next 37 largest UK cities combined, and cannot exist on anything like its present scale without a massive rail-borne workforce commuting from dormitory towns.

Yes, it's an expensive way of moving people, but it's economically a crucial piece of expenditure.

Edited by Lowtimer on Monday 30th October 12:54