Revealed: The 36 rail projects at risk of being scrapped to plug Labour’s £22bn black hole and related issues

[yorksrob]

To be fair parking would be an excellent Labour idea. The same effect is achieved by adding £800 to road tax, but by having a separate scheme you can employ more administrators.

The £22bn is a complete fallacy. Whatever the rights, wrongs, and otherwise, the decisions made by governments are typically ideological and then sold to the public. Note how
the % of the economy controlled by the government changes so little. Further, it was actually the Conservatives who were in power for the most recent rise in the government %.

This is very off-topic though. Investment for infrastructure is one of the more viable things to fund by borrowing, borrowing being exactly what a private enterprise does to invest in capacity.

In essence, it would be great if these projects (and others) could genuinely be assessed on their true merits and some spades be put into the ground.


Just for reference, charging overseas students council tax is the most stupid idea on here for getting funding.

Overseas students already subsidise domestic students so anything that makes being an overseas student more difficult has major ramifications. We need to work out a better university funding model, but until we do it is only overseas students keeping the sector viable. Without the £bns generated by higher education we would really have a black hole.

Overseas students need taking out of immigration figures, not being given more burden to support our failure to control wasteful spending elsewhere.

It is very silly including overseas students in the immigration figures. It's just an unnecessary stick for the country to beat itself with.

If they choose to settle here after graduating, then put them in the migration figures

I suppose that those going home will be counted in the emigration figures, so it should even itself out over time.

 

[YorksLad12]

I'm lacking in understanding where the 22 billion black hole comes from, the public sector borrowed 13 billion in August alone, so the black hole for August was 13 billion.

As I understand it, it’s a black hole of promised funding for projects, but with no actual capital set aside.

Ah - I only see it from the rail side, so the rest of it may be unfinished.

As for Cottingley, surely just chain up a barrier in front of it and a sign saying its closed ? There's no need to demolish everything.

I think you'd have to at least remove the Morley-bound platform for which there is level access, plus the footbridge, lighting (distraction to drivers), totem, information boards. Might as well pull out the Leeds-bound platform at the same time

Time it right, and you could do it when TRU passes through.

 

[66701GBRF]

What's the total value that the £22Bn has been used for so far?

Anyway, easy thing to fix really. Just add VAT to all council services like parking permits and on-street parking, along with an annual £800 tax on residential off-street parking, along with an annual tax of £800 per year for an on-street parking permit - all going straight to the treasury.

The latter two tick all the boxes for Labour voters demanding "sticks" to promote active travel, and punishment of car drivers.

Why should I have to pay for parking on my own or otherwise private property?

 

[yorksrob]

As I understand it, it’s a black hole of promised funding for projects, but with no actual capital set aside.


I think you'd have to at least remove the Morley-bound platform for which there is level access, plus the footbridge, lighting (distraction to drivers), totem, information boards. Might as well pull out the Leeds-bound platform at the same time

Time it right, and you could do it when TRU passes through.

By all means turn the lamp posts off, but we never used to need this scorched earth policy. Another case of regulation creep perhaps.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Anyway, easy thing to fix really. Just add VAT to all council services like parking permits and on-street parking, along with an annual £800 tax on residential off-street parking, along with an annual tax of £800 per year for an on-street parking permit - all going straight to the treasury.

The latter two tick all the boxes for Labour voters demanding "sticks" to promote active travel, and punishment of car drivers.

I have four Labour voters that I have known for many years who are all living near to me, all car drivers, who would be amongst the first to be making appointments with their local MP to formally complain about the proposals mentioned above. Has anything resembling these ideals been contained in the Labour manifesto and been spoken about in the media by any Labour MPs?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

It’s all DafT with the pro road bias. Cut all the pothole spending nonsense and all road bypasses etc, and redistribute the funds to rail.

At the very least, if the DfT is going to make a big song and dance about fixing potholes it would be nice to see some actual results! At the moment most non-trunked A-roads remind me of footage of the seige of Sarajevo in the 1990s!

 

[cinders&ashes]

Good luck getting a rail ambulance next time you are ill

To be fair, good luck getting ANY sort of ambulance these days if you're ill - or a hospital bed if you manage to get there somehow.

 

[stuu]

To be fair, good luck getting ANY sort of ambulance these days if you're ill - or a hospital bed if you manage to get there somehow.

The average response time for a life-threatening condition in England and Wales was just over 8 minutes last month, so maybe take your nose out of the Daily Mail before commenting

 

[Uncle Buck]

A pet peeve of mine is people who support rail and other public transport investment saying “of course we never built X because we decided to spend it all on roads instead”. In fact we have simply not invested in transport at all, whether public or road. As well as the pothole situation, which is emblematic of the state of this country at the present time, there are huge gaps in our trunk road network where major routes are served by windy country roads. In most Western countries both the public transport and the roads are better.

 

[The exile]

As I understand it, it’s a black hole of promised funding for projects, but with no actual capital set aside.


I think you'd have to at least remove the Morley-bound platform for which there is level access, plus the footbridge, lighting (distraction to drivers), totem, information boards. Might as well pull out the Leeds-bound platform at the same time

Time it right, and you could do it when TRU passes through.

Why is lighting at a closed station a serious distraction to drivers, but lighting at a station that is only rarely served (eg Ardwick) not? Clearly it makes sense to turn off the lights to save energy but other than that, surely all that is needed initially is to seal up the entrances.

 

[mikeb42]

Why is lighting at a closed station a serious distraction to drivers... (etc)

Moreover, how can lighting at a closed station be a distraction to drivers when lighting at open stations is not?

They seem to have no trouble going through fully lit Didcot or Slough at 124.37mph or whatever ridiculously precise limit is now being enforced by technological means.

Surely an abandoned station is just another feature in the comprehensive route knowledge that partly explains the barriers to entry and consequent generous remuneration that goes with the job?

Turn the lights off, board it up, do the minimum necessary to make it physically safe for the time being and get on with it.

Part of the problem with this country is the combination of far too little primary economic activity combined with finding 1,001 ways to make doing anything at all will-sappingly expensive and inconvenient.

Any minuscule risk reductions arising from most of the fretting are completely obliterated by the harms caused by the wider systemic costs incurred. As that's all more diffuse and nobody is directly held responsible for it, it all just gets overlooked.

 

[BlueLeanie]

Why should I have to pay for parking on my own or otherwise private property?

Why shouldn't you?

It's already Labour, Green, SNP, and LibDem policy to introduce a workplace parking levy of around £600 a month. Annual on-street Residential Parking permits in Edinburgh can be £700 for the first, and £900 for the second.

Off-street parking is a very valuable resource, a dropped kerb means that the Council is unable to earn income from on-street parking outside your premises, or income from wayleave for poles or Openreach cabinets. Some UK towns and cities now charge £30 for 2 hours on-street parking, your dropped kerb could mean your Council is potentially losing out on £44,000 of income per annum.

Historically, until Thatcher ended the scheme in the 1980s, people paid rates on domestic garages. So there is a definite precedent, and Labour are always keen on reversing Thatcher's cuts.

 

[stuu]

Why shouldn't you?

It's already Labour, Green, SNP, and LibDem policy to introduce a workplace parking levy of around £600 a month. Annual on-street Residential Parking permits in Edinburgh can be £700 for the first, and £900 for the second.

Off-street parking is a very valuable resource, a dropped kerb means that the Council is unable to earn income from on-street parking outside your premises, or income from wayleave for poles or Openreach cabinets. Some UK towns and cities now charge £30 for 2 hours on-street parking, your dropped kerb could mean your Council is potentially losing out on £44,000 of income per annum.

Historically, until Thatcher ended the scheme in the 1980s, people paid rates on domestic garages. So there is a definite precedent, and Labour are always keen on reversing Thatcher's cuts.

Good luck getting re-elected

 

[Topological]

Why shouldn't you?

It's already Labour, Green, SNP, and LibDem policy to introduce a workplace parking levy of around £600 a month. Annual on-street Residential Parking permits in Edinburgh can be £700 for the first, and £900 for the second.

Off-street parking is a very valuable resource, a dropped kerb means that the Council is unable to earn income from on-street parking outside your premises, or income from wayleave for poles or Openreach cabinets. Some UK towns and cities now charge £30 for 2 hours on-street parking, your dropped kerb could mean your Council is potentially losing out on £44,000 of income per annum.

Historically, until Thatcher ended the scheme in the 1980s, people paid rates on domestic garages. So there is a definite precedent, and Labour are always keen on reversing Thatcher's cuts.

Who wants to park outside my house?

The premise that the council could make money if there was no drop kerb is not universal. Yes, there are areas with parking demand, but most residential streets are not such areas. The only person who wants to park at my house is me. So why not let me put the car on a drive so that it is not obstructing the road in the event that a neighbour requires a larger vehicle to access their house.

IF they are determined then the only road charge should be via road tax. There is no reason to keep adding so many little additional charges.

The fact that we are discussing all of this on a thread that is actually about re-opening railway lines is very confusing.

All that said there is a railway nearby that could be re-opened. Indeed if they put the old village station back then maybe my house could be a car park after all...

 

[Mat17]

What about doctors, nurses and other shift workers who don't have public transport for night shifts etc are you going to penalize them?

Are you suggesting 22 miles is a sensible distance for me to get to work via Active transport or should I spend 2 hours getting multiple trains and buses to and from work?

When there is a sensible public transport option to work I will take it but there isn't

Not to mention the public transport workers themselves. How do the bus drivers and rail staff get to work? All wait for the first bus or train always worked by the staff that live near the depot?

 

[Magdalia]

Who wants to park outside my house?

If you live within ten minutes walk of a railway station, anyone who wants to avoid paying to use the station car park.

If you live near shops, anyone who wants to use the shops.

I could go on....

IF they are determined then the only road charge should be via road tax. There is no reason to keep adding so many little additional charges.

Each method of raising tax revenue introduces distortions into economic behaviour. Lots of little taxes are better than one big tax because each little tax has a different distortion and the result is lots of little distortions instead of one big distortion.

The fact that we are discussing all of this on a thread that is actually about re-opening railway lines is very confusing.

Blame the previous Prime Minister. It was he who promised to use some of the money "saved" by cancelling HS2 to repair pot holes.

 

[Krokodil]

The people in Bristol who want an underground or perhaps even a cable car are looking even sillier than before, though. I'd personally love to see trams like the Swiss manage, there's even a nice turning loop on something called Tramway Road, but it's not going to happen unless we start charging overseas students council tax or something.

Suddenly you've put an image of San Francisco-style cable cars going up Park Street into my head and I want it!

Since when is fixing potholes nonsense?

Road maintenance isn't nonsense. In itself.

Stripping Manchester of capital funding for new rail infrastructure in order to spend it on maintenance is nonsense. Maintenance should come from current expenditure, not from robbing capital projects. If a county council tried to circumvent the usual budgetary rules in this way their feet wouldn't touch.

Lot more voting drivers than voting rail users.

As Churchill never said, the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter

I'm lacking in understanding where the 22 billion black hole comes from, the public sector borrowed 13 billion in August alone, so the black hole for August was 13 billion.

The black hole is the unfunded commitments. A certain amount of borrowing was already planned for, this is extra.

 

[slowroad]

Suddenly you've put an image of San Francisco-style cable cars going up Park Street into my head and I want it!


Road maintenance isn't nonsense. In itself.

Stripping Manchester of capital funding for new rail infrastructure in order to spend it on maintenance is nonsense. Maintenance should come from current expenditure, not from robbing capital projects. If a county council tried to circumvent the usual budgetary rules in this way their feet wouldn't touch.


As Churchill never said, the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter


The black hole is the unfunded commitments. A certain amount of borrowing was already planned for, this is extra.

There a risk that if you neglect the interests and concerns of the large majority in a democracy you may not have a democracy for very long. And as I think Churchill also said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest.

 

[43066]

The answer to your query concerning having decent infrastructure is surely the NHS service as that organisation must treat an inordinate number of patients of all age ranges from birth to old age every single day.

The NHS certainly doesn’t work properly, delivers poor outcomes, and needs to be reformed. Of course the last government had 15 years to do that and singularly failed.

None of that changes the fact that smaller economies than ours on the near continent seem to manage to have decent roads, better healthcare systems, and to invest in their transport infrastructure.

When there is a sensible public transport option to work I will take it but there isn't

Well there won’t be a sensible public transport option unless and until someone is willing to pay for it, yet you also appear to be against measures that might enable that.

 

[Topological]

If you live within ten minutes walk of a railway station, anyone who wants to avoid paying to use the station car park.

If you live near shops, anyone who wants to use the shops.

I could go on....


Each method of raising tax revenue introduces distortions into economic behaviour. Lots of little taxes are better than one big tax because each little tax has a different distortion and the result is lots of little distortions instead of one big distortion.


Blame the previous Prime Minister. It was he who promised to use some of the money "saved" by cancelling HS2 to repair pot holes.

And if you do not live in any of those locations? I reiterate that unless some major re-opening goes on there is absolutely no demand for parking at my house.

What "behaviour" does a £800 parking charge for EVERYONE change? This is even assuming that these taxes to change behaviour are a desirable system of government (I am not convinced). If only those who actually lived in areas where there was parking demand paid the £800, then the rest of us would not have to pay. It would influence car demand in the areas where parking demand existed. But, that was not the proposal put forward in the post I quoted. It may also encourage people to buy houses in areas where there was no £800 charge as well. So you could change behaviour with parking charges at private houses.

I actually blame Gordon Brown for the economic overconfidence ahead of the financial crisis. The economic signals of a crash are there in 2005/06 and the economy should have been deflated slowly at that point instead of spending continuing to rise. Anyone who says they ended the economic cycle is a liar on the scale Boris Johnson could only dream of. (Blaming Gordon Brown alone is a little harsh, the systems both sides of the pond were going on about the "Third Way" and how great life was with credit cards buying everything. It was Gordon Brown who said he had ended "Boom and Bust", whether he genuinely believed it or not).

So back to the thread? Aside from the obvious stupidity of using funds to support higher current spending, what else is stopping the 36 investment projects going ahead.

 

[Magdalia]

This is even assuming that these taxes to change behaviour are a desirable system of government (I am not convinced).

All governments do this all the time, get used to it.

I actually blame Gordon Brown for the economic overconfidence ahead of the financial crisis.

Famously only 3 people in the UK saw the financial crisis coming: Gillian Tett at the Financial Times, Vince Cable, and someone else that I've forgotten. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So back to the thread? Aside from the obvious stupidity of using funds to support higher current spending, what else is stopping the 36 investment projects going ahead.

It doesn't much matter who is to blame, this government can only start from where it is now, with public sector debt at 100% of annual GDP. What stops these projects going ahead is very constrained capacity to borrow and other investments having higher priority.

 

[Halifaxlad]

But even if there was funding to finish White Rose, you'd still need some dosh to decommission Cottingley...

I wonder if WYCA will kybosh LBA Parkway or Elland to fund completing White Rose ?

LBA Parkway is a waste of money and as for Elland its in the wrong place!

 

[YorksLad12]

Moreover, how can lighting at a closed station be a distraction to drivers when lighting at open stations is not?

They seem to have no trouble going through fully lit Didcot or Slough at 124.37mph or whatever ridiculously precise limit is now being enforced by technological means.

Surely an abandoned station is just another feature in the comprehensive route knowledge that partly explains the barriers to entry and consequent generous remuneration that goes with the job?

Turn the lights off, board it up, do the minimum necessary to make it physically safe for the time being and get on with it.

Part of the problem with this country is the combination of far too little primary economic activity combined with finding 1,001 ways to make doing anything at all will-sappingly expensive and inconvenient.

Any minuscule risk reductions arising from most of the fretting are completely obliterated by the harms caused by the wider systemic costs incurred. As that's all more diffuse and nobody is directly held responsible for it, it all just gets overlooked.

By all means turn the lamp posts off, but we never used to need this scorched earth policy. Another case of regulation creep perhaps.

Why is lighting at a closed station a serious distraction to drivers, but lighting at a station that is only rarely served (eg Ardwick) not? Clearly it makes sense to turn off the lights to save energy but other than that, surely all that is needed initially is to seal up the entrances.

Okay. I had assumed that it would have been a distraction to drivers - clearly you drivers know better than I.

However; I'd still advocate for the complete removal of the station. You can close off the platform entrances, but that won't stop people vaulting the low fencing. You could put up barriers along the length of the platforms, but they would get graffitied - on both sides. And, knowing the locals, if the station was closed now its wooden platforms would get lifted for the nearest bonfire next month.

Many moons ago there was an op to tidy up Burley Park, another inner city station. Walls were repainted, platforms tidied up, then everyone went home. BTP had a presence until 4am. When they came back at 6am, the station had been trashed. NR will come under pressure to remove Cottingley when it gets trashed as well, so why not get ahead of the curve?

 

[Topological]

All governments do this all the time, get used to it.


Famously only 3 people in the UK saw the financial crisis coming: Gillian Tett at the Financial Times, Vince Cable, and someone else that I've forgotten. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.




It doesn't much matter who is to blame, this government can only start from where it is now, with public sector debt at 100% of annual GDP. What stops these projects going ahead is very constrained capacity to borrow and other investments having higher priority.

If you think that fine. It would be like claiming that planners are the only people who could see the Castlefield Corridor timetable being unreliable, or saying no-one expected Operation Princess to create difficulties. I can say with 100% knowledge that me, and all my fellow economists could see the data pointing to recession for years. It was just a matter of how long the national credit card (PFI etc) could keep the other indicators saying we were growing. In the end the shock was a banking one and there was nothing the government could do to hide the problem any longer.

All decisions made by the government are political. Thinking anything either side says has any value is fallacy. The decision on these 36 projects is based upon the government's politics and it is absolutely right to hold them to account accordingly.

 

[stevieinselby]

LBA Parkway is a waste of money and as for Elland its in the wrong place!

Completely agree that LBA Parkway is pointless, but what's wrong with Elland? Given the constraint that the railway station has to be somewhere along the railway, I'm not sure where else you could put it, and it's only half a mile from the town centre which is hardly an unmanageable distance (and is closer than Batley or Morley!)

 

[fishwomp]

Completely agree that LBA Parkway is pointless, but what's wrong with Elland? Given the constraint that the railway station has to be somewhere along the railway, I'm not sure where else you could put it, and it's only half a mile from the town centre which is hardly an unmanageable distance (and is closer than Batley or Morley!)

There's an apocryphal(?) tale that the engineers/planners building Dent were asked why they did not build the station closer to village.. The response was something like "we prefer to build the station nearer to the railway".

 

[NORTHERNSOUL]

To be fair parking would be an excellent Labour idea. The same effect is achieved by adding £800 to road tax, but by having a separate scheme you can employ more administrators.

The £22bn is a complete fallacy. Whatever the rights, wrongs, and otherwise, the decisions made by governments are typically ideological and then sold to the public. Note how the % of the economy controlled by the government changes so little. Further, it was actually the Conservatives who were in power for the most recent rise in the government %.

This is very off-topic though. Investment for infrastructure is one of the more viable things to fund by borrowing, borrowing being exactly what a private enterprise does to invest in capacity.

In essence, it would be great if these projects (and others) could genuinely be assessed on their true merits and some spades be put into the ground.


Just for reference, charging overseas students council tax is the most stupid idea on here for getting funding.

Overseas students already subsidise domestic students so anything that makes being an overseas student more difficult has major ramifications. We need to work out a better university funding model, but until we do it is only overseas students keeping the sector viable. Without the £bns generated by higher education we would really have a black hole.

Overseas students need taking out of immigration figures, not being given more burden to support our failure to control wasteful spending elsewhere.

Whether the 22m hole actually exists or is just an excuse to justify actions like removing the pensioners money is of course open to argument.

But if it does you don't need to be the brain of Britain to work out ways or recovering it. Lets start with the money they pay Serco for housing the illegals Firstly tell them what theyre going to be paid will be cut by 25% and then tell them to end single room occupancy in the hotels effectively halving the budget needed to house them.

Then lets move on to the overseas aid budget, simple action here is to just tell them all that any country who wont accept repatriations doesnt get another penny of aid not now not ever. Which makes this a no lose option. We either get destinations to which we can return hundreds of thousands of illegals or we get to save the cash off the overseas budget

Those two actions alone would produce between a third and a half of the 22 billion deficit, and its not hard to find other imaginative ways of recovering the rest of it without resorting to adding vat to everyday expenses which is just another way of getting Joe Public to pay it.

 

[Magdalia]

I can say with 100% knowledge that me, and all my fellow economists could see the data pointing to recession for years.

All economists have never agreed on anything and no economist would suggest that they had.

There is a lot of difference between some economists predicting a UK recession and the global financial crisis, which had very little to do with UK domestic economic policy.

All decisions made by the government are political. Thinking anything either side says has any value is fallacy.

The first statement is correct, but the second does not follow from the first.

The decision on these 36 projects is based upon the government's politics and it is absolutely right to hold them to account accordingly.

You say that you are an economist. You will therefore know better than most that a government with debt at 100% of annual GDP can't do everything it wants. Those 36 projects only exist because they were promoted by a government unable to come to terms with that uncomfortable reality.

 

[yorkie]

If we can try to stick to discussing the projects themselves, and any associated transport matters, in this thread, and to discuss politics in the other thread in General Discussion, that would be great.

The General Discussion thread, which covers the political aspect of this, can be found at the link below:

The Times: Labour considering cuts to Restoring Your Railway and dropping HS2 Euston

Labour did not promise to reverse Beeching in its 1964 manifesto: I was misled at the time, then, by the reported words on a number of occasions of, amongst others, the Rt. Hon. Barbara Castle (at the time shadow transport minister), local prospective Labour candidates at public meetings...

www.railforums.co.uk

Thanks.

 

[Topological]

You say that you are an economist. You will therefore know better than most that a government with debt at 100% of annual GDP can't do everything it wants. Those 36 projects only exist because they were promoted by a government unable to come to terms with that uncomfortable reality.

In light of @yorkie post I have deleted my response. I will not be responding in the general forum.

The 36 projects can be paid for. The question now is whether they will be. We will soon find out.