KingEdwardII

Is there a housing shortage? Yes - there are government figures, but perhaps this BBC briefing gives a better picture of the overall problem: https://news.files.bbci.co.uk/include/newsspec/pdfs/bbc-briefing-housing-newsspec-26534.pdf The 1 million + on council house waiting lists is just the tip of the problem. Vacant homes - sure, the government figures here quote about ~600K homes vacant currently: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-dwelling-stock-including-vacants Even if all 600K were occupied, it would not solve the housing problem, as the BBC stats show. However, part of these numbers are homes that require work before they can be occupied and others are in the process of being let/sold. I remember that my father's house stood empty for over 6 months after he died, while the process of probate and sale took place. Such places are included in the stats. My own personal experience of the problem is based on the struggles my own children faced in getting homes, even though they had well-paid jobs - they would not qualify for "council housing". Yours, Mike.

Aye, and we might not like that when it comes to places we know and love, but the basic fact remains that we are well short of housing in the UK. It is a shame that the government needs to force the issue onto local authorities, but if they did not, nimbyism would ensure an even worse housing situation. I prefer the case where everyone can get a home. Yours, Mike.

I suspect that a lot of airlines and passengers would have opted for Gatwick... I never use Luton or Stansted for the same kind of reasons - too damn difficult and slow to get to/from. The advantage of Heathrow is the location. I remember thinking things over when Boris proposed his "island in the North Sea" alternative airport and taking the view that if that came to pass and Heathrow closed, my natural international airport would probably end up as either Schiphol in Amsterdam or CDG in Paris, connecting via Southampton Airport, with Gatwick for some shorter European flights. Yours, Mike.

I think that now, the political situation with respect to the North of England transport situation means that an expensive project in the south like Crossrail 2 cannot make progress until some serious improvements have been made there. Probably right too - the route from Liverpool via Manchester to Leeds and other parts of Yorkshire is pretty dire. Yours, Mike.

I tend to disagree with the idea that being late isn't negative. It is a failure somewhere along the line - often in the project planning and estimation stages. Although my understanding is that political pressures may have had a hand in things. The lateness and the huge cost overruns have probably killed off CrossRail 2, so there are consequences.

Which reminds me of another recent experience. We had a vacation based in Kenilworth near Warwick. One day we decided to pay a visit to Birmingham by train and first thought of using Warwick Parkway station. Until we discovered that quite a few trains stopping at Warwick station (in the town centre) don't stop at Warwick Parkway - i.e. Parkway had a poorer service. So we travelled via Warwick station and Parkway didn't get a look-in. I was surprised by this. So cost certainly isn't the only factor. Yours, Mike.

It was a discussion relating to costs/fares, which are always relevant, so I provided examples which I know personally. Sorry that I don't live on the MML, although I have travelled it on several occasions. On the other hand I am 100% supportive of any project for electrification. I think that the UK is extraordinarily backward with respect to electrification. As for station locations, I can see the point of "Parkway" type stations away from city centres, if they are well served by roads. It can be troublesome to use city centre stations, both with congestion getting to them and the expense of parking once you're there. But as griffgriff mentioned - if the costs of using such a station are higher than easily available alternatives, people will go elsewhere. Yours, Mike.

Yes - painfully late. Worse, it seems gated as much by software debugging as anything - my profession. Not very impressive that the software is still being updated and tested this late in the project. I get the impression that the real issue is that of over-complexity of the whole system - perhaps this is the item to address for future projects. Yours, Mike.

When my wife & I go to London, we drive to the outskirts at Richmond (usually), park up and get either the train or the tube depending on where we're going. Way cheaper than parking at Winchester and using the train from there and not much slower. Once you're within the London zones, travel becomes much more affordable and parking @ Winchester is not much cheaper than in Richmond. Cost is always a factor. Where I always used rail was when travelling on business to meetings and events in London. The faster journeys and the ability to work on the train counted for more than the cost, paid for by work expenses in any case. Eye wateringly expensive to use the early morning trains - £76.80 for a return Winchester - Waterloo. £41.90 if arriving after 10.00am. But if there are 2 of you and you're travelling on your own cash - and retired now, in our case - even £83.80 is pretty steep for a trip to London. So car it is - not a hard calculation. Yours, Mike.

Put a station there with nice fast electric trains and the next week there will be a plan for a new town with 50,000 population...

Well, things generally are going to get a *lot* more expensive with the current set of policies. I wonder how far ordinary folk can get pushed down this road before they react - no-one likes getting poorer. The current steep rises in energy prices are only the start. Yours, Mike.

Guard your chips and your ice creams, then! Them's a set of pirates out to loot you. A problem not unknown in Sydney, such as the restaurants and cafes around Darling Harbour. Water sprays to hand on every table to defend your food! Yours, Mike.

The Jacarandas in bloom are one enduring memory of our vacation in Oz. Flying in to Sydney airport over the suburbs, there seemed to be thousands of them throughout the neighbourhoods. We have some great pictures of them in bloom downtown. Yours, Mike.

Probably, assuming that you have a means of mechanically aligning the two baseboards accurately. My preferred means is to use Cam Dowels, long a favourite of flat pack furniture companies ;-). The dowels can give very good alignment as long as you make the holes to receive them a tight fit. The Cams lock everything in place with a quick twist of a screwdriver. They can be released fairly quickly. Track crossing other than at right angles is a bit of a pain. Yours is straight. In this case, one thing to consider is to "dog leg" the edge of the baseboard just where this track goes - so that the edges of the two baseboards are at 90 degrees where this track crosses. So you end up with a triangular section sticking out on one side and an equivalent triangular notch on the other side. Simply run your track up to the edge of the triangular sections. No messing about with the track if you do it this way. The main thing to avoid like the plague is having a curve cross between the baseboards. It is misery trying to get this well aligned enough to avoid derailments. The sharper the curve, the worse it gets. Yours, Mike.

I may live in rural parts, but things are not so benighted here that we are unaware of what's happening outside Little Snoring Although the shock result of the annual cake baking contest dominates headlines here at the moment. When they (eventually) get Crossrail finished and working to design, it will be interesting to see the impact on Heathrow traffic - it cannot but increase traffic, you'd think. That 70% of car/bus folks is a big target. Interestingly, City Airport gets a high proportion of its passengers via the DLR, so people clearly will use public transport if it is convenient and easy. It's a big deal that The Elizabeth Line goes via the city and Canary Wharf, plus connecting with Liverpool Street and Stratford. I hope to use it before I die... Yes, that's what's wanted. It's still only at pre-application stage. The schedule keeps moving to the right faster than Crossrail, which is quite an achievement. "I'll believe it when I see it" is my position - but it is basically the right kind of scheme. Can't see it being open before 2026 at the earliest, unfortunately. If it does come about, it will be interesting to see whether there are any service changes to serve Hampshire and the South West as well as Cardiff/Bristol/Oxford. Changing at Reading should be OK, but they need to ensure enough services and capacity - the current Cross Country trains via Reading are not frequent enough and too often standing room only. Yours, Mike.

Yes, but the damning statistic in there is that >60% of passengers travel by car/taxi and only 10.6% travel by rail and 18.8% by tube (2019). Gatwick had 44.2% arrive by rail. Birmingham 18.4% by rail. So rail could be doing a much better job at Heathrow than it does currently - and this is despite the well known "car park" characteristics of the M4 and M25 routes to Heathrow. Interestingly, coach/bus accounts for almost as many passengers as rail at Heathrow. If the thinking is that passengers are happy to travel into a London terminus and then out again from Paddington, this is truly wrong-headed. Myself and my colleagues refused to do this for the best part of 40 years - we were part of the 60% in cars. It's too slow and too much hassle. One of the other interesting numbers buried in the stats for Heathrow is just how few passengers arrive/depart by plane from other UK airports - only 6%. This includes both folk travelling to the London area itself and also those making international connections. Yours, Mike.

I can agree with that. France points out another thing - having a HS line that bypasses the city centre of Paris altogether. At least they have a comprehensive plan - something sadly absent in the UK.

Returning to the topic of HS2 - shouldn't the HS line from the Midlands actually go via Heathrow before going to Central London? CDG airport in Paris sits on a TGV station and you can get high speed connections both to the north and south of France direct from the airport station. Schiphol has Thalys and other high speed services stopping there. Yours, Mike.

I find that an extraordinary and wrongheaded idea - indeed it seems part of the rigid type of thinking that bedevils transport policy in this country. "You can only take a train to the airport that is dedicated solely to serving the airport"! In many other countries, they have main lines running through the airport stations and the stations are treated in many ways just like any other station. Schiphol is the classic example - close to the UK and a superb example of integration. We also have Gatwick and Birmingham International in the UK - not quite as seamless as Schiphol since the rail tracks and the station are off to one side of the air terminal(s) in both cases rather than underneath the terminal, but pretty good nevertheless. Heathrow is miles away from these examples, even though it is the premier airport in the UK. Yours, Mike.

The other thread on this subject was notably light on any discussion of costs. There seemed to be a lot of wishful thinking that somehow using "excess" renewable energy would make it affordable. Very little in terms of actual costs was presented. The idea that renewable energy is in some way "cheap" is a fallacy. It always has to be paid for. Add in the inevitable inefficiency of the Hydrogen production process and the hassles of transporting and storing the stuff means that it is always likely to be on the expensive side. I'm happy to see the trialling of the technology, but whether the outcome will prove its viability is very much an open question at the moment. Yours, Mike.

Well, this is a railway discussion, but frankly I totally disagree with that statement.

Just don't ask how much they will cost to operate...

One simple approach is to have a T5 station and then a T2/T3 station as at present - various other airports around the world have a pair of stations like this. T4 would have to be via some kind of shuttle, but T4 is relatively small. With the arrangement on a loop, the extra time is fairly small. It is also possible to choose which trains go via Heathrow and which do not - they don't all have to go there. The presence of the major interchange at Reading just to the west offers flexibility since people can change trains there if necessary. As with many of these reports, it is often a case of drawing out a desired conclusion*. I treat any report prepared by a politician with a high degree of skepticism. The real question is whether you want an integrated transport system and whether you are committed to getting more people to travel by train rather than by car. I am sure that a lot of people travel to Heathrow by car because the alternatives are simply slow and inconvenient - I certainly did. Yours, Mike. * A certain "Beeching Report" comes to mind - remember that one?

Have you travelled on the high speed lines in other countries, like France, Germany, Spain, etc? What's your view of those? I've been on quite a few of them over the years and in my opinion they are the future of travel - speedy connections between major cities. I think the UK has been left way behind. But then again, we still have not even electrified many of our main lines. It's simply pathetic. Yours, Mike.

That was what I was referring to, not some link to the suburban lines around Staines. It should have been part of CrossRail 1. Insane that it was not included. Now it is going to be far easier to access Heathrow from Essex than it will be from Reading (let alone places further west & south west). In my ideal world (otherwise well known as la la land), there would be a loop off the GWML to the west of the M25 diving into a tunnel taking the line into T5 at Heathrow, then back through the current link to the east. Make the Heathrow stations into full mainline stations - min 4 platforms, like Schiphol, and then you can start to think about services running via Heathrow from Paddington (& places east) and from Reading (& places west, south west and north west). That is what has been needed these past 40 years and more but the dolts in government can't get their heads around the obvious. Want people to use cars less and public transport more? Then make sure the public transport gets folk where they want to go quickly and easily... It's not rocket science. Yours, Mike.