Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Electrification plans only scratch surface

Britain has one of the lowest percentages of electrified line in Europe. It comes after Macedonia and before the Czech Republic. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because lines with light traffic should not be electrified, but some of the busiest lines in Britain are not, such as London to Bristol.

The latter is one of the routes to, which last summer, the government gave the go-ahead for electrification. The plan is for electrification of the lines from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea, and between Liverpool and Manchester. But this only scratches the surface of what needs to be done. There is a long list of lines where electrification would fill in gaps and provide network benefits. These include (in no particular order of priority)
  • Gospel Oak - Barking
  • Ashford - Hastings
  • Lewes - Hurst Green
  • Reading - Basingstoke
  • Basingstoke - Salisbury and possibly Yeovil Junction and Exeter
  • Oxford - Birmingham
  • Leamington - Coventry
  • Marylebone - Banbury
  • Amersham - Aylesbury
  • Leeds - Skipton - Carlisle
  • Manchester - Sheffield via Hope Valley
  • Manchester - Blackburn - Burnley - Halifax - Leeds
  • Manchester - Leeds
  • Sheffield - Leeds
  • Lincoln - Nottingham
  • Bedford - Derby - Sheffield
  • Matlock - Manchester
  • Buxton - Stockport
  • Leeds - York
  • Bristol - Birmingham
  • Birmingham - Shrewsbury
  • Oxford - Bletchley - Bedford - Cambridge
  • Edinburgy - Dundee - Aberdeen
  • Northallerton - Middlesborough and Sunderland
  • Eaglescliffe - Darlington and other main routes in Teeside
  • Glasgow - Perth - Dundee
It is a lot of railway, but most of it consists of connections joining important cities and conurbations. Some of these lines are at present closed. Of course it would be a costly programme, but it would vastly improve the network as a whole. Spread over twenty years or so, is this not better value for money that a couple of high speed lines?

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

The Zombie Train that refuses to die

The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer