NotATrainspott
Established Member
- Joined
- 2 Feb 2013
- Messages
- 3,224
Agree with the above two posts. No point in losing a second one.
I am often flummoxed though by the business case point on reopenings. This seems to have become the exclusive measure of the value of a railway scheme. Social case, ease of operation and so on are all secondary to how much money this will make someone or cost.
At lease half the railways in Scotland would be shut if business case was the exclusive measure.
Too much reading of Ian Whalmsley!
A better way to think about it is that the Scottish Government only has a limited amount of money to spend every year and they need to find the schemes which deserve the money most. Spending another X million reopening to Hawick might be a lovely idea but then that X million isn't available to spend on upgrading Aberdeen to Inverness or suchlike. Cutting away the existing rail network to fund improvements to the rest isn't feasible either, meaning that there's really no choice but to delay reopenings until they are the best possible use of money at that time.
I don't agree with the premise that there will be no reopenings at all in the next 15 years, as Leven would tie in extremely well with the electrification of the Fife Circle, would not have an enormous cost attached and would then provide the benefits of Edinburgh employment to a deprived area of the country.