Slower trains outside London

[John_Miles]

There is a report in The Guardian that trains to London are much faster than trains elsewhere in the UK. This seems to be part of an emerging theme that London has benefitted from investment whereas the rest of the UK is still essentially running at speeds from the Victorian era.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/28/british-trains-up-to-four-times-slower-outside-south-east-research

 

There is an argument that London pays more in taxes but this can be countered in a number of ways - for example London receives huge chunks of public money from having central government there to the fact that virtually every national facility (with a few exceptions such as the NRM) is in London. Also the UK economy has since at least the 1980s been run on the basis of a strong pound which helps the financial sector but is bad for manufacturing and the other industries that traditionally provided employment in the rest of the UK.

[Dunsignalling]

'twas probably ever so.

 

Even where fast inter-city (as opposed to Inter City) services existed in the past (e.g. Manchester to Birmingham) they usually ran over lines forming part of routes that ultimately served London.

 

Even when Cross Country HSTs were inaugurated, the top speed was only ever attained on those portions of the journey that ran over London main lines.

 

John

Edited August 28, 2017 by Dunsignalling

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Blame the Romans. Take a look at the road network they built! That London bears a Celtic period name in an Anglo-Saxon sea, should tell the story of its sustained importance as a location. This location was simply 'the right place' in this particular piece of geography; there was no grand plan, it just happened at the lowest point where the Thames could be crossed with some reliability. As well complain that gravity is discriminatory in only ever acting downwards, though I am sure The Grumbliad disapproves of that as well.

[DY444]

There is a report in The Guardian that trains to London are much faster than trains elsewhere in the UK. This seems to be part of an emerging theme that London has benefitted from investment whereas the rest of the UK is still essentially running at speeds from the Victorian era.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/28/british-trains-up-to-four-times-slower-outside-south-east-research

 

There is an argument that London pays more in taxes but this can be countered in a number of ways - for example London receives huge chunks of public money from having central government there to the fact that virtually every national facility (with a few exceptions such as the NRM) is in London. Also the UK economy has since at least the 1980s been run on the basis of a strong pound which helps the financial sector but is bad for manufacturing and the other industries that traditionally provided employment in the rest of the UK.

 

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.  I live in London and don't benefit at all from trains to here being faster than to anywhere else.  It seems to me the only people who benefit from it are those who live elsewhere and want to travel here.

Edited August 28, 2017 by DY444

[pete_mcfarlane]

Some very selective examples in that article, comparing semi-fast local services in the North with how long it takes InterCity services to reach their first stop just outside the M25.  

[Mark Saunders]

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.  I live in London and don't benefit at all from trains to here being faster than to anywhere else.  It seems to me the only people who benefit from it are those who live elsewhere and want to travel here.

 

You live in London and therefore are already there so therefore it is of no importance till you travel out of London!

 

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25.

 

Mark Saunders

[tomparryharry]

 

 

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25.

 

Mark Saunders

 

There is? Heavens! I must go and take a look!

 

Only joking, only joking........

 

By the way, I went to Huddersfield once. It was closed....

 

Ian.

[roundhouse]

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25. Mark Saunders

There is? Heavens! I must go and take a look!Only joking, only joking........By the way, I went to Huddersfield once. It was closed....Ian.

 

The beer is cheaper than London !!

[John_Miles]

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.  I live in London and don't benefit at all from trains to here being faster than to anywhere else.  It seems to me the only people who benefit from it are those who live elsewhere and want to travel here.

 

I'm not trying to make a point. The article just struck me as interesting. I can give examples to back it up. Cardiff to London - approx. 150 miles takes 2 hours (used to be 1 hour 50 mins) with stops. Cardiff to Birmingham takes 2 hours for 100 miles, again with stops.

[stivesnick]

_{The same story is repeated in the "i" newspaper.}

 

_{As noted above is does compare stopping local services with non-stop main line services.}

 

_{What this and other similar articles in the press in recent days have failed to understand is that Government will generally only back schemes that:}

 

• _{Have completed a preliminary design}
• _{Have a good business case, a benefit to cost ratio of 2:1}
• _{Have a means of delivery}
• _{Has outside funding}
• _{Has a high level of support}
• _{Are linked to new housing/ economic growth etc}

_{So Crossrail Line 2 has been under consideration for many years and manages to tick all the boxes, including a lot a local developer money. The proposed high speed line for the north is still at very early stages and no one can define what is involved, and I suspect that there is dispute between the various cities as to which route it would take. Hence Government is not able to give full support, although it can and should give money for further development of the scheme.}

 

_{The other issue is the scope of what is required. Many northern commuter routes still have 2-4 coach trains running in peak periods at say 30 minute frequency. Adding an extra coach or two does not normally require much investment. Once you get to the situation on some London routes with 12 coach trains running every few minutes, any extra capacity is going to get very expensive.}

 

_{An interesting example to watch is the case for re-opening the line to Wisbech with a train service to Cambridge. Transport Minister Chris Grayling gave some very encouraging noises when he formally opened the new Cambridge North station last week. Fenland District Council want to build thousands of houses around Wisbech but need to railway line re-opened to make it work - so that's what you need to do to try to get the investment.}

 

_Nick

 

_Nick

 

[Mark Saunders]

 

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25.

 

Mark Saunders

 

There is? Heavens! I must go and take a look!

 

Only joking, only joking........

 

By the way, I went to Huddersfield once. It was closed....

 

Ian.

 

I occasionally take a trip to London to see how my share of the transport budget is spent on Public Transport!

 

If you get in to the smaller towns in North Yorkshire you can forget commuting to work unless you are a stereotypical 9-5 worker! There are more night busses in one hour than most places see in a week!

 

Roads all repaired using a surface dressing of tar and chippings (high noise) on the main A roads but the Highways agency have a bigger budget and plane the surface before laying low noise Tarmac.

 

Mark Saunders

[Dunsignalling]

What was good in the times when a high proportion of domestic trade was carried on in coastal shipping is perhaps a disadvantage now.

 

London's geographical position means that most of the country is offset to the north and west of it and its hinterland to the south and east is relatively small in area.

 

Redressing (to a limited extent) this effect is what is driving HS2.  

 

From the point-of-view of having easy access to the capital from all directions, by road and rail, it would be better situated somewhere in the Midlands, near the geographical centre of the island, but that's not going to happen.

 

Therefore, it is desirable for other cities to develop greater commercial muscle so that more people will want to get to them and ease the ever-growing pressure on the capital.

 

Without that, those who commute to the capital are destined enjoy doing so less and less using infrastructure capacity that will require ever more ingenuity and expense in order to cater for greater demand.

 

Ultimately, there will be more "bang per buck" to be obtained from developing larger (even, ultimately, rival) centres than trying to service the logistical demands of a physically restricted area where the levels of political and commercial activity place extreme demands on the resources needed to service them.

 

Unfortunately, we have left it to other nations to provide that competition and most of the UK's eggs remain in the one basket.

 

Mr. Osborne's Northern Powerhouse idea came about a quarter century too late and is, in any case, being quietly euthanased by Whitehall decisions to divert planned regional infrastructure investment to Cross-Rail 2. Brexit is providing a trigger for some activity to move out of London but, sadly, none of it will be going to other parts of the UK..

 

John

Edited August 28, 2017 by Dunsignalling

[caradoc]

Given that London is both the capital of, and the largest city in, the UK, it would surely be more news/moanworthy if the fastest trains were not to London. Besides, as well as London, those fast trains serve numerous intermediate points on their routes; There are two 125mph trains every hour between, for example, Scotland and Carlisle, Carlisle and Preston, Preston/Wigan/Warrington (all of which are, I believe, in the North !). 

[Reorte]

That's fine with me, if for some reason I ever end up in London my first instinct is to get out of it as quickly as possible.

 

As for the rest I'm increasingly sceptical about the push for more and more speed anyway.

[D854_Tiger]

I'm not so sure journey times are the best way to highlight the case that, per person, rail investment is greater in the south.

 

There are some pretty slow journey times to be had south of London as well. When I arrive in London and inform my colleagues how little time it took to get down there ("Oh and there's a free breakfast in first class") they're usually left seething considering they just spent an hour and a half standing to come fifty or so miles.

 

Then the fastest trains of all are to and from the north.

 

There is an imbalance in rail investment but what about transport investment overall (roads and stuff) and Manchester Airport (and Metro) is world class nowadays but then the trouble with rail investment is that historically it's rarely been enough, too late and playing catch up so is bound to be done on the firefighting principle, where it's most urgent and where capacity is fast running out.

 

Trans Pennine does stick out though as inadequate, it really should have been sorted by now, some routes were faster when the L&Y ran them.

 

Goerge Osborne was pointing out that Manchester - Leeds was no longer than the Central line for a reason why journey times should be faster but then the last time I was on the Central line, blimey that takes forever, I certainly wouldn't fancy doing Epping every day.

 

Anyway, a price has to be paid for all that scenery personally I wouldn't want to do Manchester - Sheffield too fast because it's glorious.

[phil-b259]

There is a report in The Guardian that trains to London are much faster than trains elsewhere in the UK. This seems to be part of an emerging theme that London has benefitted from investment whereas the rest of the UK is still essentially running at speeds from the Victorian era.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/28/british-trains-up-to-four-times-slower-outside-south-east-research

 

There is an argument that London pays more in taxes but this can be countered in a number of ways - for example London receives huge chunks of public money from having central government there to the fact that virtually every national facility (with a few exceptions such as the NRM) is in London. Also the UK economy has since at least the 1980s been run on the basis of a strong pound which helps the financial sector but is bad for manufacturing and the other industries that traditionally provided employment in the rest of the UK.

 

Never let facts get in the way of a good story

 

Fact 1: EVERYTHING costs more to do in London and the South East. To achieve the same result in London you need to pay double or treble what the same costs elsewhere - particularly where it involves paying people. Housing costs (be it renting or mortgage payments) are far higher than in London than Manchester, etc - which means that you have to pay people more in wages. Labour intensive operations such as staffing costs are way higher in London than Manchester, etc and as such require a grater level of spending simply to maintain the status quo. Similarly if you want to do anything that requires land purchases, Londons sky high property / land values is it will cost you far more than an equivalent project elsewhere so its hardly a surprise that more money is required up front. Complaining that London gets more money per head than Manchester is no different to moaning that it used to cost 14p for a loaf of bread 4 decades ago say rather than £1 today - when considering prices / costs only an idiot ignores the wider context around such prices and they shouldn't be surprised if their moaning is ignored.

 

Fact 2:- The Government does NOT stupor public transport any better in London than the rest of the country these days, historically speaking it might have done - but even then most of that is down to other factors than simply choosing to dish out more cash because they felt like it. Running an Underground system costs a lot more than a fleet of buses after all. In fact what a lot of people ignore is that from next year the 'revenue support grant' the Treasury used to TfL to support day to day operations and maintenance of Tube, bus and rail services is being abolished - in other words TfL has to cover its costs of running and repairing the system from fare revenue and London Council tax payers! The Treasury will in future only pay out for 'Capital Projects' such as Crossrail (though please note even here they expect TfL to cough up 50% of the entire cost up front before the Treasury will release any funds) and with numerous strings that limit its exposure of costs rise.

 

Fact 3:- London generates something like a 3rd of the whole of the UKs GDP - thus if you actually look at how much it gets back in transport projects compared to what it pays in London does WORSE than the likes of Manchester, etc. Rather than continually whining about London getting preferential treatment it would be wise for such persons to remember that Londoners are effectively subsiding the rest of the country through their taxes. From a simply selfish point of view you could say if the folk of Manchester want more money spent on them then they should contribute more to HM Treasury in the first place.

 

Ultimately however these are all symptoms a much wider fundamental imbalance in the UK economy. As a general rule it used to be that the north had the heavy industry / manufacturing to generate revenue while London had the service sector to do that. With the demise of the UKs heavy industries and associated manufacturing base and no obvious effort to replace it with anything, it is perhaps natural that the UK has become over reliant on the performance of the City of London to generate funds. Solving this is not simply a case of providing 'better transport links up north' as some like to pretend - as the proverb says "you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink". Unless private business changes its cooperate outlook that everything needs to be 'close' to London to function effectively then nothing will happen - it needs radical changes to tax, business policy plus a change in cooperate and Government mindsets which recognises that relying on 'service industries' to generate the country's wealth is not sustainable.

[kevinlms]

_{The same story is repeated in the "i" newspaper.}

 

_{As noted above is does compare stopping local services with non-stop main line services.}

 

_{What this and other similar articles in the press in recent days have failed to understand is that Government will generally only back schemes that:}

 

• _{Have completed a preliminary design}
• _{Have a good business case, a benefit to cost ratio of 2:1}
• _{Have a means of delivery}
• _{Has outside funding}
• _{Has a high level of support}
• _{Are linked to new housing/ economic growth etc}

_{So Crossrail Line 2 has been under consideration for many years and manages to tick all the boxes, including a lot a local developer money. The proposed high speed line for the north is still at very early stages and no one can define what is involved, and I suspect that there is dispute between the various cities as to which route it would take. Hence Government is not able to give full support, although it can and should give money for further development of the scheme.}

 

_{The other issue is the scope of what is required. Many northern commuter routes still have 2-4 coach trains running in peak periods at say 30 minute frequency. Adding an extra coach or two does not normally require much investment. Once you get to the situation on some London routes with 12 coach trains running every few minutes, any extra capacity is going to get very expensive.}

 

_{An interesting example to watch is the case for re-opening the line to Wisbech with a train service to Cambridge. Transport Minister Chris Grayling gave some very encouraging noises when he formally opened the new Cambridge North station last week. Fenland District Council want to build thousands of houses around Wisbech but need to railway line re-opened to make it work - so that's what you need to do to try to get the investment.}

 

_Nick

 

_Nick

 

You could always apply to the EU for funding. Oh wait...

[phil-b259]

....... by Whitehall decisions to divert planned regional infrastructure investment to Cross-Rail 2.

 

I suggest you actually read up on this scheme  properly - because far from diverting funds into Crossrail 2 the opposite is true. Firstly there was no mention of it in the most recent Queen's speech - which covers the next 2 years of Government spending, not 1 as per usual AND Secondly the Treasury are demanding TfL stump up 50% of the construction costs BEFORE work starts (with Crossrail 1 TfLs contribution was less and it also could be generated during construction / from fares after opening). While its true things like the Mayor's decision to freeze all TfL fares for the duration of his Mayoral term (in contrast to the DfT who expect fares to continue to rise above inflation to help pay for such schemes) and the continuing tension between Mr Kahn / Mr Graying (which goes back well before they got to positions of power) haven't helped, the overall impression is the Treasury are doing all they can to delay / kill the scheme without actually saying so.

[Pacific231G]

I'm not so sure journey times are the best way to highlight the case that, per person, rail investment is greater in the south.

 

There are some pretty slow journey times to be had south of London as well. When I arrive in London and inform my colleagues how little time it took to get down there ("Oh and there's a free breakfast in first class") they're usually left seething considering they just spent an hour and a half standing to come fifty or so miles.

 

Then the fastest trains of all are to and from the north.

 

There is an imbalance in rail investment but what about transport investment overall (roads and stuff) and Manchester Airport (and Metro) is world class nowadays but then the trouble with rail investment is that historically it's rarely been enough, too late and playing catch up so is bound to be done on the firefighting principle, where it's most urgent and where capacity is fast running out.

 

Trans Pennine does stick out though as inadequate, it really should have been sorted by now, some routes were faster when the L&Y ran them.

 

Goerge Osborne was pointing out that Manchester - Leeds was no longer than the Central line for a reason why journey times should be faster but then the last time I was on the Central line, blimey that takes forever, I certainly wouldn't fancy doing Epping every day.

 

Anyway, a price has to be paid for all that scenery personally I wouldn't want to do Manchester - Sheffield too fast because it's glorious.

George Osborne was comparing apples and onions. The number of people who live in West Ruislip and need to go to Epping or vice-versa is tiny but the number of people needing to travel between the Leeds/Bradford connurbation and greater Manchester is probably quite high though both will need good local transport to make high speed travel between their centres worthwhile. Central Line trains don't normally terminate in either the West End or the City but most of its passengers do though they originate from a large number of stations along its route. That makes the effective length of the Central Line as a commuter route far less than half that of Manchester-Leeds and I doubt if journey times have improved all that much since the Central London Railway was first built, comfort even less so.

 

The Central Line used to offer scenery as well. Once, after a night shift in London, I travelled to the then end of the Central Line at Ongar instead of making my usual journey to Ealing. It was quite bizarre to get on a London Underground train at Holborn and end up on a single line trundling through miles of completely open countryside even with combine harvesters hard at work in the fields on either side.  As I recall, Epping-Ongar was even more rural than the Island Line is and, in any case, those are ex-Underground trains not current ones.

Edited August 28, 2017 by Pacific231G

[D854_Tiger]

Never let facts get in the way of a good story

 

Fact 1: EVERYTHING costs more to do in London and the South East. To achieve the same result in London you need to pay double or treble what the same costs elsewhere - particularly where it involves paying people. Housing costs (be it renting or mortgage payments) are far higher than in London than Manchester, etc - which means that you have to pay people more in wages. Labour intensive operations such as staffing costs are way higher in London than Manchester, etc and as such require a grater level of spending simply to maintain the status quo. Similarly if you want to do anything that requires land purchases, Londons sky high property / land values is it will cost you far more than an equivalent project elsewhere so its hardly a surprise that more money is required up front. Complaining that London gets more money per head than Manchester is no different to moaning that it used to cost 14p for a loaf of bread 4 decades ago say rather than £1 today - when considering prices / costs only an idiot ignores the wider context around such prices and they shouldn't be surprised if their moaning is ignored.

 

Fact 2:- The Government does NOT stupor public transport any better in London than the rest of the country these days, historically speaking it might have done - but even then most of that is down to other factors than simply choosing to dish out more cash because they felt like it. Running an Underground system costs a lot more than a fleet of buses after all. In fact what a lot of people ignore is that from next year the 'revenue support grant' the Treasury used to TfL to support day to day operations and maintenance of Tube, bus and rail services is being abolished - in other words TfL has to cover its costs of running and repairing the system from fare revenue and London Council tax payers! The Treasury will in future only pay out for 'Capital Projects' such as Crossrail (though please note even here they expect TfL to cough up 50% of the entire cost up front before the Treasury will release any funds) and with numerous strings that limit its exposure of costs rise.

 

Fact 3:- London generates something like a 3rd of the whole of the UKs GDP - thus if you actually look at how much it gets back in transport projects compared to what it pays in London does WORSE than the likes of Manchester, etc. Rather than continually whining about London getting preferential treatment it would be wise for such persons to remember that Londoners are effectively subsiding the rest of the country through their taxes. From a simply selfish point of view you could say if the folk of Manchester want more money spent on them then they should contribute more to HM Treasury in the first place.

 

Ultimately however these are all symptoms a much wider fundamental imbalance in the UK economy. As a general rule it used to be that the north had the heavy industry / manufacturing to generate revenue while London had the service sector to do that. With the demise of the UKs heavy industries and associated manufacturing base and no obvious effort to replace it with anything, it is perhaps natural that the UK has become over reliant on the performance of the City of London to generate funds. Solving this is not simply a case of providing 'better transport links up north' as some like to pretend - as the proverb says "you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink". Unless private business changes its cooperate outlook that everything needs to be 'close' to London to function effectively then nothing will happen - it needs radical changes to tax, business policy plus a change in cooperate and Government mindsets which recognises that relying on 'service industries' to generate the country's wealth is not sustainable.

 

I would agree with pretty much all you have written except the demise of our manufacturing base.

 

We actually have a pretty substantial manufacturing base, here in the UK, far from declining during the tail-end of the 20th century manufacturing boomed to being the forth largest manufacturing sector in the world by value.

 

The difference was due to large-scale industrial reform that the manufacturing sector did not employ quite so many people, though robots and computers are kept pretty busy.

[Southernman46]

 

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25.

 

Mark Saunders

 

There is? Heavens! I must go and take a look!

 

Only joking, only joking........

 

By the way, I went to Huddersfield once. It was closed....

 

Ian.

 

You'll love Westbury then ..................

[Foulounoux]

It's not just rail and not just the UK

 

I have to educate guests that whilst on the map the distance from our French house to the coast looks the same as a 2hr trip up toward Paris on the autoroute it actually takes much much longer as we found going to Royan one Christmas (Royan was closed when we got there which didn't help my mood)

 

Ended up being a very long day

 

But I remeber being educated about this in O level geography that radial routes to and from major cities were always of prime importance and thus developed quickly as opposed to routes that cross those radials

 

 

Colin

[Zomboid]

The railway companies built their best main lines linking the major cities in their chosen area. An awful lot of those had London at one end (and often in the name of the company), because London has been a major political and economic centre since long before the industrial revolution.

And the fact is that the non-trunk routes were not built so expensively, or traversed more difficult terrain, and these days speeds suffer because of that.

The main lines simply follow the main trade routes of the Victorian era.

[Dunsignalling]

Never let facts get in the way of a good story

 

Fact 1: EVERYTHING costs more to do in London and the South East. To achieve the same result in London you need to pay double or treble what the same costs elsewhere - particularly where it involves paying people. Housing costs (be it renting or mortgage payments) are far higher than in London than Manchester, etc - which means that you have to pay people more in wages. Labour intensive operations such as staffing costs are way higher in London than Manchester, etc and as such require a grater level of spending simply to maintain the status quo. Similarly if you want to do anything that requires land purchases, Londons sky high property / land values is it will cost you far more than an equivalent project elsewhere so its hardly a surprise that more money is required up front. Complaining that London gets more money per head than Manchester is no different to moaning that it used to cost 14p for a loaf of bread 4 decades ago say rather than £1 today - when considering prices / costs only an idiot ignores the wider context around such prices and they shouldn't be surprised if their moaning is ignored.

 

 

 

Fact 3:- London generates something like a 3rd of the whole of the UKs GDP - thus if you actually look at how much it gets back in transport projects compared to what it pays in London does WORSE than the likes of Manchester, etc. Rather than continually whining about London getting preferential treatment it would be wise for such persons to remember that Londoners are effectively subsiding the rest of the country through their taxes. From a simply selfish point of view you could say if the folk of Manchester want more money spent on them then they should contribute more to HM Treasury in the first place.

 

Ultimately however these are all symptoms a much wider fundamental imbalance in the UK economy. As a general rule it used to be that the north had the heavy industry / manufacturing to generate revenue while London had the service sector to do that. With the demise of the UKs heavy industries and associated manufacturing base and no obvious effort to replace it with anything, it is perhaps natural that the UK has become over reliant on the performance of the City of London to generate funds. Solving this is not simply a case of providing 'better transport links up north' as some like to pretend - as the proverb says "you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink". Unless private business changes its cooperate outlook that everything needs to be 'close' to London to function effectively then nothing will happen - it needs radical changes to tax, business policy plus a change in cooperate and Government mindsets which recognises that relying on 'service industries' to generate the country's wealth is not sustainable.

 

The big snag with Fact 1 that is that it leads to a continual ratchet effect. Having paid more to keep your existing staff in London, that in turn attracts more people into the capital in search of higher rewards, which in turn places supply and demand pressure on housing and transport which in turn makes it more expensive to live/work in London, which in turn means you have to jack up salaries to keep your staff in London..............

 

Fact 3 is an example of "chicken or egg", if out-of-London economic activity is increased (in your example, in Manchester) tax receipts will increase as a result. Achieving that almost always  requires political intervention because private business almost never operates on any basis other than "conventional wisdom" until an outsider makes a pile of money doing something different. 

 

AMEN to your last paragraph.

 

Many businesses have an unnecessarily large (and expensive) presence in London which derives as much from habit as much as anything else. There is probably also a flock interest amongst upper management/executive staff that finds it convenient to have the companies where they might seek their next upward career move on the doorstep. Whether the companies or the personnel involved derive the greater benefit from that is open to debate.

 

If the UK government (present or future) is truly serious about levelling the playing field, they must take a hand in ensuring that regional "water troughs" are sufficiently attractive to stimulate the "horses" to seek new drinking places for themselves. Tax breaks seldom work. They can be abolished as quickly as they were created (but minus the fanfares) and the businesses generally disappear along with them. The need is to make such cities good and profitable places to live in and operate from. To do that, infrastructure provision may need to be skewed in a direction that, on the surface, appears not to match immediate need.

 

In short,  economic imbalance in one direction requires imbalanced investment in the opposite one to correct it.   

 

Infrastructure investment in London further stimulates the forces already at work and every capacity increase will always lead to a commensurate or greater increase in demand. That process cannot continue indefinitely without degrading the quality of life in the capital. The only long term solution, both for the health of the nation and that of London itself, is to find ways to move some of the demand elsewhere.

 

Life for many working in the capital would be more pleasant if activity were to level off or even decrease a bit, the trick will be ensuring that whatever gets diverted, goes to other UK cities rather than abroad. 

 

John

Edited August 28, 2017 by Dunsignalling

[The Johnster]

 

There are too many in the South that forget there is civilisation north of the Watford Gap/outside the M25.

 

Mark Saunders

 

There is? Heavens! I must go and take a look!

 

Only joking, only joking........

 

By the way, I went to Huddersfield once. It was closed....

 

Ian.

 

You were lucky; it's worse when it's open...