High speed silliness for £30 billion
Tuesday 24th August 2010, 8:15AM BST.
The proposed high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham is madness, writes Peter Rhodes.
It involves a bankrupt country spending £30,000 million in order that passengers may arrive in Brum at noon instead of 20 minutes past noon.
Take it from me, 20 extra minutes in Birmingham is simply not worth the money.
Now we are told this bill will rise as the state starts shelling out for people whose homes may be blighted by the line.
If the Coalition is serious about saving money, it should start by abandoning this monstrously silly project.
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The £30 billion bill won’t come all at once. That’s not how it works, genius. If it were for people like you nothing would ever have been built in this country, and because of the whining from people like you other nations are racing far far ahead of us in their infrastructure. I don’t want Britain to be a backwater. It seems you do.
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I agree. This kind of thinking would leave us as bakward backwater in international terms. IOf you don’t move forward you actually go backwards. Then you’d realise that finding the funding for these projects would become harder when all foreign investment disappears due to our inferior transport infrastructure.
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There’s nothing like a sensational, provocative strap line to get you to click on a link. What I would like to know, and this might take a little investigative journalism rather than smart mouth writing – is how much extra revenue will this generate for the region and in turn the nation? The Express & Star are the first to beat the drum about how Birmingham and the NEC are the hub of the nation, yet rarely utilised as such, maybe a little insight into how this will bring this facility forty minutes closer to our nation’s capital could throw a little positive spotlight onto a region that is suffering worse than most during this recession.
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Dear Peter,
Usually great respect for you over the years BUT how can an intelligent man like you, miss the obvious benefits the new line will bring for our region in the long term.
Surely, the quicker and more direct access to the continent for commerce and tourism the better and for all the tree huggers, reduced carbon footprint which air travellers would normally rack up and of course new incomers from London settling in the area and missing the daily car jams.
Maybe the timing is not right but when would it ever be?
Perhaps you could write an article on all the millions of pounds wasted by the last Labour (credit card) government who wasted just how much on an NHS computer system – failed – and identity card system.
London has done amazingly well from the 2012 Olympics.
It really is time for Birmingham to reap some benefits as generally we have been shafted for any real development since London kindly allowed us to have the NEA.
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Peter, we need major projects like this to keep our economy moving. Cut waste on outfits like the audit commission but capital spend like this keeps people in work. We have 15/20000 men who will be unemployed when the Olympic project finishes and schemes like this can take up the slack.
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Although Peter makes many valid comments in general this is not one of them. The £30b investment will create jobs and wealth in the private sector for all those contractors that will be involved.
While 20 minutes may not sound very much it effectively reduces journey time by a quarter.
If someone does the journey twice in a single day that have saved close on an hour which is a significant saving.
The only way public transport can offer a realistic alternative to car is by offering a much faster service. This will have serious commercial benefits for the whole of the West Midlands not just Birmingham.
I agree with an earlier comment, we need to have a more long sighted view of what this is going to achieve.
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Of course this ignores the fact that a time of recession is exactly the moment to engage in major infrastucture investment. Next week ‘How come Germany and France have fantastic cheap rail travel and we cant?’ Anyway 20 minutes extra in Wolvo will be well worth it for the Cockneys.
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Living in Germany, I would not call German rail travel cheap! However it is relatively quick compared to the UK.
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It’s just not that simple, is it ?
When the Government ‘spends’ money, it tends to spend it on British companies. That keeps companies going and it keeps people in work. In turn, those people pay taxes and they spend money – which keeps other people in work.
The alternative is that a whole bunch of people end up on the dole, so our taxes are spent on them sitting idle.
A functioning economy relies on money circulating. When the money stops flowing, everything grinds to a halt.
In a recession, Governments stepping in and printing money (quantitive easing), or spending money on public works that create employment is basically a good thing.
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Idiot – it’s obviously £100K to get to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker and £29.999,900bn to get out of there sooner
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Clearly Lord Adonis ignored all the evidence when planning this.
The chosen terminus is wholly inappropriate and unless a high speed line links with the existing network it is useless. Worse still this terminus will exacerbate the problems faced by the four neighbouring South Staffordshire boroughs. Blocked in by gridlocked Brum they become increasingly unattractive to investors. This should put the final nail in the coffin. It will not help Brum either.
More money chasing bad. The real case was for a high speed link between London and a point to the North West of Brum i.e. Wton. That way the gridlock can be bypassed.
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