So, more than HS2 is getting then. How does this deal with perceived ‘high costs’?
How?
Which?
How and when would this be done?
And if they can’t agree who decides?
How would these schemes be consented? Who would decide that?
And how would these be enforced?
No, there are lots of projects that can be cancelled or tinkered with - and by far more meddlers than today.
Much like they do now, then.
Specifically?
What and why?
How?
Who are these people?
Today they can fill out a one page form and submit a compensation claim to the relevant undertaker. The compensation is then either agreed between them or determined by the Lands Tribunal.
How would this be made more ‘direct’?
You sound like a right laugh....
The point is that HS2 was a single grand project which delivered a very expensive but limited piece of infrastructure, everyone could see that they were paying a lot of money for and it wasn't obvious that they were going to get anything out of it. More than half of it was cancelled without consultation by a single stroke of a pen. The solution to what to do with HS2 isn't just to say bring it back.
Framing the project as a long term vision means that most people can see that their area will get something out of it at some point in time. 0.5% of central government spending until the project is finished is also not particularly scary. The term for all this is constructive ambiguity. Set an overall strategic direction, set up or modify bodies to deliver it and create a legal obligation for this to happen. There are plenty of examples of government legislation which create obligations for bodies to do something but do not lay out out a project or provide budget.
What you are describing is the consultation process, it takes hundreds of participants and thousands of hours of work. Metro mayor's would be a good place to put responsibility to work with GBR/NR to make things happen they'd need new powers to do it but again I think there's some level of impetus to give them those powers.
There are plenty of methods to find railways by capturing land value uplift. Everything from direct land grants, to leavies on business rates to municipal borrowing against future tax take. Cross Rail was partially funded by London businesses so it has been done recently.
The key bit around capturing land value uplift is that it partially deals with the political problems of funding railway building purely with Treasury money. Those who benefit more provide more of the funds, again there is no need to be prescriptive as to what method is used to capture the value, the local authorities could decide themselves and the more successful they are in cofunding the project could be part of the decision as to which parts of the plan are completed first and how fast the project goes.
It also means that at the start of the project you can be creatively ambiguous because we don't know how long the plan will take to finish because we don't know how much the local authorities are going to put in and what complimentary things they are going to do such as transit hubs and property development around the stations.
And how would a multitude of small projects be more efficient than focusing resources and attention on one large project at a time?
That's not the way to think about it, a better way to think about it is a "rolling programme". So rather than big projects providing famine and feast there would always be someone building a piece of high speed rail, a station, a substation etc.
As a result the organisation would get very good at it. Contractors could invest in skills and in capital equipment that would take years to payoff rather than just throwing hastily trained labour at problems. More items could procured as minimum change variations or exact copies of existing designs rather than reinventing the wheel every time when the design team moves on to other projects.
Ultimately there is massive evidence across multiple industries that rolling programs are more efficient than mega projects every time.
The UKs motorways were built in a single generation as a rolling programme using both central and local authority planning and engineering capabilities.
