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HS2 under review


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On Stratford, you are both wrong, if you take the starting point back a while. There was only one tube line (Central) and a reduced layout for main line and local trains, in the 1980's. It was hardly an interchange "hub". What changed it was vision, availability (of new space from demolitions and preserved old routes) and money - lots of it - from developers and taxpayers. Once DLR was added from one direction, and then from another, and once the Jubilee arrived, plus Stratford International, and then all the other upgrades, expansions and improvements, plus a huge new shopping centre and a very expensive, under-used sports ground, it only then became what it is today.

 

The GLA appear to have the same vision for Old Oak, although availability for new links/re-established old ones is definitely more limited, but not impossible. It will come down to money and planning powers. The same planning powers that demanded HS2 call there and provide over-provision for future aspirations. Whether it will all ever happen, is a different debate.

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Once upon a time, Stratford was about as busy as any other outer London interchange, like perhaps Norwood Junction.  It is now, I think, amongst the 10 busiest stations in Britain.  Something happened to do that.  Having gone through it daily for twelve months, I can assure anyone unfamiliar with that part of London that Stratford is a VERY busy place in the rush hour.

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I’ve been travelling regularly through Stratford since 2002.  When I first started, you could get straight on a jubilee line train and get a seat.  Now,you have to wait at least one train if you want a seat.   Also, the direction of travel is now two way with almost as many arriving as leaving.  

 

David

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1 hour ago, ess1uk said:

650 MPs in the commons 

so 370 didn’t even vote

 

 

English votes for English Laws? Any way, take out the speaker and tellers, 7 Sinn Feiners, 10 DUP, 56 Scottish, and I dont know how many Welsh

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8 hours ago, ess1uk said:

650 MPs in the commons 

so 370 didn’t even vote

 

 

That 280 is a very large number, compared to the normal polishing of the green leather.  Take out the PM's questions and a few other popular items, then look around the chamber, while various expensive blether merchants produce massive amounts of CO2.  There may be a dozen places taken, perhaps a couple of dozen, 280 represents a considerable level of interest, particularly in view of those more distant constituencies already identified.

 

Regards

 

Julian

  

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1 hour ago, jcredfer said:

 

That 280 is a very large number, compared to the normal polishing of the green leather.  Take out the PM's questions and a few other popular items, then look around the chamber,

 

 

Check the number of voters against chamber attendees and you will often find far more vote than appear to be in the chamber as they are elsewhere in parliament and turn up to vote when the division bell sounds.

Edited by melmerby
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12 hours ago, melmerby said:

Check the number of voters against chamber attendees and you will often find far more vote than appear to be in the chamber as they are elsewhere in parliament and turn up to vote when the division bell sounds.

 

Don't forget also that many MPs have “pairing” arrangements by which they declare themselves in advance, as casting mutually opposed votes which are so recorded in their absence. 

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9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Don't forget also that many MPs have “pairing” arrangements by which they declare themselves in advance, as casting mutually opposed votes which are so recorded in their absence. 

Technically I believe they just agree not to vote, so the majority is unaffected but the total votes may not reflect the intentions of all MPs. 

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/pairing/

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A propos what the estimable Mr Johnson might, or might not do, I strongly suspect that HS2 is playing the role once played by the Jubilee Line Extension - a smokescreen behind which funds are vaguely promised whilst more immediate and useful things are ruthlessly cut.

 

I’d actually retired from offshore work, when the chaos in the construction industry in the early 90s led me to feel I’d been somewhat premature! Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose..

 

Were I a cynical soul, which Heaven forfend, I’d be tempted to the view that transport policy in this country had passed out of all semblance of order. The sheer complexity and controversial character of the supposed benefits of HS X, Y or Z suggest that no one else has any real idea, either. 

 

Listening to Radio 4 in the car last night, I heard a piece about the works of Thomas Hardy and other novelists much beloved of the producers of BBC costume dramas, and the political chaos and instability which settled on the country following the end of the Napoleonic wars. It all sounded very familiar, especially the part about gridlock in the Commons in which it seemed impossible to achieve a majority for any possible course of action...

 

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With all this talk about the possible cost to tbe public purse, i wonder if anyone bas ever done any analysis of bow much eventually comes back to tbe exchequer. Tbe total of VAT, income tax and NI must be a good percentage. As a lot of the expenditure is in labour costs there must be a good return.

 

Jamie

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5 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Technically I believe they just agree not to vote, so the majority is unaffected but the total votes may not reflect the intentions of all MPs. 

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/pairing/

 

Is that how it works? The outcome is the same, anyway, as you rightly say. 

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8 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

With all this talk about the possible cost to tbe public purse, i wonder if anyone bas ever done any analysis of bow much eventually comes back to tbe exchequer. Tbe total of VAT, income tax and NI must be a good percentage. As a lot of the expenditure is in labour costs there must be a good return.

 

Jamie

The 'multiplier' effect may be included as part of the benefit-cost analysis.

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16 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Technically I believe they just agree not to vote, so the majority is unaffected but the total votes may not reflect the intentions of all MPs. 

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/pairing/

Yes, that's correct; I'll ask my MP, next time i see  him, what actually happens. I believe it is that incoming MPs actively seek out another who is likely to vote in the party in power, and they mutually agree not to pass through the lobbies if the the other can't. What i don't know is if the 'pair' carries on over several parliamentary sessions as long as both MPs are still sitting.

 

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9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Promotion of railway lines of unknown cost has a long history! 

 

 

That's not what 'multiplier' refers to in this case; it's how much each unit of currency spent initially generates in terms of wealth, a basis of Keynesian economic theory.  It's why governments encouraged the railways to modernise their infrastructure in the inter-war period. Every pound initially spent would generate additional demand in the wider economy. 

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45 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

With all this talk about the possible cost to tbe public purse, i wonder if anyone bas ever done any analysis of bow much eventually comes back to tbe exchequer. Tbe total of VAT, income tax and NI must be a good percentage. As a lot of the expenditure is in labour costs there must be a good return.

 

5

 

Almost all government spending is returned as tax. The only real exceptions are private and foreign savings.

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1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Regarding increased traffic on any given line, isn’t that what they call “the M25 effect”? Provide any random transport link and it immediately fills to capacity, without actually solving the original problem? 

 

Depends what you define as the original problem. But if you are right, then why is there any concern over the cost/benefit? If it does fill to capacity immediately, and that continues for 30 years, it will pay for itself in no time, cost increases or no.

 

Many anti's however, are saying it is unnecessary as no-one will use it.

 

Which statement is true?

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Depends what you are trying to achieve. The M25 appears to have created at least as many problems as it has solved, and is currently being extended yet again. The M6 and M62 appear to defy all attempts to complete whatever is being done to it. The A14/A45 area seems to be under permanent repair. 

 

I don’t doubt that any rail link between main cities would be full to overcapacity within quite a short period, wherever it went; but whether that would be a benefit in the wider sense, isn’t quite the same thing. 

 

Theres also the not-so-small matter that the railway didn’t create the industries it served; THEY arose from the unfolding of various issues involving resources and demand. 

 

From what what I can see in my travels, the road network is collapsing under the huge demands of freight haulage placed upon it. There are numerous controversies raging about the nature and profitability of much of the much-bruited “full employment” and there is a parallel, and contradictory controversy about the so-called “productivity gap”. 

 

Frankly, the HS scheme seems to be part of a wider issue in which there seems to be little, if any clarity or agreement. Its final cost appears to be incapable of definition. If Boris Johnson does cancel it, or some part of it, that would seem to be little more than recognition of the inevitable.

 

 

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45 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Frankly, the HS scheme seems to be part of a wider issue in which there seems to be little, if any clarity or agreement. Its final cost appears to be incapable of definition. If Boris Johnson does cancel it, or some part of it, that would seem to be little more than recognition of the inevitable.

 

 

Reading your conclusion it seems to be an argument for doing nothing to rectify any capacity on either rail or road.

 

The problem to me is no rolling programme of improvements to national infrastructure or even just joining up roads to a constant standard!

 

Mark Saunders

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1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Depends what you define as the original problem. But if you are right, then why is there any concern over the cost/benefit? If it does fill to capacity immediately, and that continues for 30 years, it will pay for itself in no time, cost increases or no.

 

Many anti's however, are saying it is unnecessary as no-one will use it.

 

Which statement is true?

 

Add in the fact that new roads don't/can't create additional vehicles, the new roads [other transport] filling up rapidly is simply a factor of the previous imense over-capacity of the original roads [modes].  When politicians and others make illogical statements like [it immediately fills to capacity, without actually solving the original problem], it would be better if they sat on the bit the statements come from.

 

I'm old enough to remember the roads just post WWII, when cars were few in number and traffic jams were restricted to short periods in a few major city rush hours [remember when it was just an hour??].  Now with increased wealth and 15m additional population, almost every town has a rush hour and the major cities seldom have times in the day without conjestion.  Back then, in our road, there were 6 cars between 16 houses/families.  Those same houses are now likely to have 2 cars per houshold, more than a 5 fold increase - and still not factoring in increased population numbers and distances people travel to work.  There doesn't seem to be anything like a comparable increase in miles of road to drive them on.

 

Julian

 

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17 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

 

Reading your conclusion it seems to be an argument for doing nothing to rectify any capacity on either rail or road.

 

The problem to me is no rolling programme of improvements to national infrastructure or even just joining up roads to a constant standard!

 

Mark Saunders

 

That wasn’t my point at all. The “M25 problem” has now become an accepted feature of planning; the fact that it attracted additional development in excess of its original intended capacity, and was obsolete by the time it opened, is a matter of record. 

 

I wasn't advocating doing nothing, rather proposing that the overall understanding of the situation, and clarity and quality of forward planning, are insufficient to reach useful conclusions. 

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4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Regarding increased traffic on any given line, isn’t that what they call “the M25 effect”? Provide any random transport link and it immediately fills to capacity, without actually solving the original problem? 

There is a subtle difference between roads and railways here. 

 

In conditions of supressed demand, as apply in much of the UK, a new road will indeed tend to attract more drivers until the journey time saving is choked off by congestion elsewhere.  Some of these will transfer from public transport, increasing accidents and environmental damage and worsening the economics of the public transport so risking a downward spiral of slower and costlier journeys reducing passenger numbers further.  Also the extra congestion makes life more difficult for the people who don't have any alternative but to use that bit of road. 

 

If the same thing happens with a railway then the environmental and safety consequences are far less because rail is less damaging in those respects (by the same logic as above, any traffic taken off the roads will most likely be replaced unless road capacity is also reduced). Also the passengers on the railway continue to enjoy faster journeys because the trains will continue to run to timetable however crowded they are (within reason), unlike roads which slow down when busier. 

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1 hour ago, Edwin_m said:

There is a subtle difference between roads and railways here. 

 

In conditions of supressed demand, as apply in much of the UK, a new road will indeed tend to attract more drivers until the journey time saving is choked off by congestion elsewhere.  Some of these will transfer from public transport, increasing accidents and environmental damage and worsening the economics of the public transport so risking a downward spiral of slower and costlier journeys reducing passenger numbers further.  Also the extra congestion makes life more difficult for the people who don't have any alternative but to use that bit of road. 

 

If the same thing happens with a railway then the environmental and safety consequences are far less because rail is less damaging in those respects (by the same logic as above, any traffic taken off the roads will most likely be replaced unless road capacity is also reduced). Also the passengers on the railway continue to enjoy faster journeys because the trains will continue to run to timetable however crowded they are (within reason), unlike roads which slow down when busier. 

 

Up to a point, Lord Copper. The railways (especially the Metropolitan Railway) set the precedent that if you provide the railway, and then develop the surrounding land as housing, you can create demand where none previously existed. They were selling a whole package, a compete way of life whereby you bought the house from them, and commuted to work on their trains. They controlled both ends of the scale, and so they could balance the housing development and the train capacity. 

 

The M25 was a different animal altogether; uncontrolled development dissociated from the building of the road, designed to maximise profit without investment and with no regard for the final outcome. 

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