Liverpool City Council: Enlightened, or nuts?

Headhuunter

vermin wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

msmancunia wrote:

vermin wrote:

Which is also why HS2 is such a ridiculous idea. If the authorities redirected even a fraction of the proposed cost into local public transport systems in the regions it would make a world of difference.

My feelings exactly. The sorry excuse for rolling stock that Northern Rail use in the North West and Yorkshire is over forty years old. Most people don't want to get to London any quicker - Manchester to London in 2hrs 10 mins is pretty good going. They just want their daily journey from A to B to be on time, and on a clean, newish, spacious train that doesn't break down.

Having said that, Northern Fail is the reason I got back on a bike when I moved back up here, so it was useful for something.

The thing with HS2 is that if you build major, new efficient infrastructure, business will develop around it. So at the moment it may seem prohibitively expensive but ultimately it should take pressure off the road system and London as the burgeoning centre of business for the entire UK. Following the Beeching cuts and subsequent periods of disinvestment in the rail network, billions upon billions of quid of investment in roads, motorways etc, (particularly through the Thatcher years) business and logistics has evolved to rely on heavily trafficked roads and away from rail. This needs to be reversed... If you look at continental Europe and countries like Japan where investment in rail has been maintained rather than being pumped into roads, huge efficiencies still exist. Unfortunately we now need to reverse decades of focus on roads and cars in this country

The problem with HS2 is that whilst it will marginally reduce the time it takes to get out of London to a handful of other cities, those other cities are so poorly served by regional networks that they cannot operate efficiently. There's no point trying to bring trade out of London until the regional centres can sustain themselves. For example, taking public transport from my home in Cheshire, it takes less time to reach my firm's London office 200 miles away, than to reach either of the two regional centres, Liverpool or Manchester.

Improvement of rail and PT links within and between other cities in the UK should also be embarked upon eventually but currently London is the major trading and business centre for the whole of the UK and something needs to be done to diversify business away from London. To have all the UK's businesses concentrated into 1 city in the SE corner of the country, putting enormous pressure on housing and other facilities is ridiculous and unsustainable, the more that can be done to make it effective for businesses to be based in other cities the better and a high speed rail link might help this although as I mentioned it will be a long, slow process for this to bring benefits. I think it's a bold step for a government to back this scheme which will most likely not realise benefits for decades when the party has completely passed out of power. Unlike most governments, they are looking beyond their current term in office and investing in a longer term future.

Headhuunter

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

...if you want to get across SE London to SW London you largely have to go by bus unless you want to go into central London, change and then back out again.

Not only PT, but *shudder*, a bus!
Thats the extra punishment you get for living in SLondon. I say "extra" because living in SLondon is a punishment in itself.

Having lived in north and south London I have to say I am a complete convert to the south. By and large the north has a much busier, cramped and compact feel. Most of SE London at least was developed relatively late in the 19th and early in the 20th century so the roads are wider, there is more green and more space whereas the north was often built on medieval street plans. Also property prices and rents are waaaay higher in most parts of the north

msmancunia

Headhuunter wrote:

Improvement of rail and PT links within and between other cities in the UK should also be embarked upon eventually but currently London is the major trading and business centre for the whole of the UK and something needs to be done to diversify business away from London. To have all the UK's businesses concentrated into 1 city in the SE corner of the country, putting enormous pressure on housing and other facilities is ridiculous and unsustainable, the more that can be done to make it effective for businesses to be based in other cities the better and a high speed rail link might help this although as I mentioned it will be a long, slow process for this to bring benefits. I think it's a bold step for a government to back this scheme which will most likely not realise benefits for decades when the party has completely passed out of power. Unlike most governments, they are looking beyond their current term in office and investing in a longer term future.

In an ideal world maybe, but, (and I've lived in both Manchester and London), 90% of Londoners seem to have a severe dislike for ever setting foot outside the M25. HS2 won't bring business outside the capital, all it will do is force the rest of the country to continue coming in to London, whether it's for business meetings or commuting. At the moment a peak return ticket from Manchester to London is £300, standard class. I could fly across Europe for that.

We've got a guy from London coming in to see my boss today , who is the head of the most successful sports governing body in Britain. I've had to juggle his diary for days to try and get a space in for this guy, who has moaned and moaned about 1) coming "half way up the country" to see him, and 2) won't meet before 1230 or after 3pm because he'll have to get a peak-time train. There is absolutely no way the government is going to be able to get commercial companies to invest in the north, so the only thing they can do is to move things like the BBC to Salford, or the NHS to Leeds, or the DVLA to Cardiff, or wherever - and these are the same organisations who have to cut staff when there is a recession on. I just can't see why the goverment can't invest in decent trains and infrastructure for the people who have to use local services day in day out. That alone would probably win the Tories the next election in the North.