Badger
Member
Forgive this for sounding like an anti-HS2 thread, far from it. However it's an interesting road to travel down.
Imagine the government scraped up £32bn from somewhere. What could be done with the railway network with that kind of money, high speed lines aside?
According to Wikipedia, the Beeching act saved the government on (in today's money) £24bn needed to upgrade every line from steam to electric or deisel.
Surely, therefore, £32bn would at least cover all of the rolling stock desperately needed.
Money could be spent on the infrastructure and/or technology needed to run Pendelinos at 140mph. (In car signalling?)
Nottingham Express Transit could be paid for 160 times over, creating an amazing tram network in every major town/city.
How many buses are there in the UK at the moment? There are ~7000 in London; 1.4bn would replace every bus with a brand new one. The whole country could have brand new buses - imagine the jobs that would create.
I know, if HS2 wasn't done, the capacity problems wouldn't be solved. How much would HS2 cost if it was "classical" and not high speed? It must be less than £32bn. I don't believe that the trains have to be faster to solve capacity issues. The saved money could be spent on further capacity raising measures.
Now I am a noob when it comes to trains, I don't know how they work or anything, so my question is more this: what's the best thing that could be done, with £32bn, rather than High Speed 2?
Imagine the government scraped up £32bn from somewhere. What could be done with the railway network with that kind of money, high speed lines aside?
According to Wikipedia, the Beeching act saved the government on (in today's money) £24bn needed to upgrade every line from steam to electric or deisel.
Surely, therefore, £32bn would at least cover all of the rolling stock desperately needed.
Money could be spent on the infrastructure and/or technology needed to run Pendelinos at 140mph. (In car signalling?)
Nottingham Express Transit could be paid for 160 times over, creating an amazing tram network in every major town/city.
How many buses are there in the UK at the moment? There are ~7000 in London; 1.4bn would replace every bus with a brand new one. The whole country could have brand new buses - imagine the jobs that would create.
I know, if HS2 wasn't done, the capacity problems wouldn't be solved. How much would HS2 cost if it was "classical" and not high speed? It must be less than £32bn. I don't believe that the trains have to be faster to solve capacity issues. The saved money could be spent on further capacity raising measures.
Now I am a noob when it comes to trains, I don't know how they work or anything, so my question is more this: what's the best thing that could be done, with £32bn, rather than High Speed 2?
hock:
