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posted 12-03-2010 10:19
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Weren't there some changes to make planning for big infrastructure projects easier?
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posted 12-03-2010 10:25
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I went on that whizzy new high speed train from Gillingham to Stratford the other week. It was ace. An infinitely more interesting experience than the football match I'd travelled to watch.
But I'm still in the 'sort out the trains from Liverpool to Manchester first' camp
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posted 12-03-2010 10:28
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The problems between Liverpool and Manchester are caused by not enough capacity. High speed rail would solve that.
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posted 12-03-2010 14:12
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E10 Rifle wrote:
I went on that whizzy new high speed train from Gillingham to Stratford the other week. It was ace. An infinitely more interesting experience than the football match I'd travelled to watch.
Used that for the first time this week myself, pretty good but a bleak route and the Stalinist style of Stratford station is a bit upsetting. But wtf, being on a train that doesn't reek of urine and have chewing gum stuck everywhere was quite fab really.
Underground very poorly signposted at St Pancras Int'l too - was desperately following arrows for 10 minutes because of one busted escalator. Noticed on the way back there was a dirty great lift, ahem.
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posted 12-03-2010 14:26
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St Pancras is the architectural acme of New Labour. Great idea, parts wonderfully executed, but the disparity between how, well, it simply doesn't work very well as a passenger jars against one of the causes of that, the pointless variety of commercial shite needed to justify the private finance levied in to build the fucker.
I mean, a pointlessly aggrandising fucking champagne bar and really quite small departure lounge for Eurostar? Talk about fucked up priorities.
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posted 12-03-2010 18:13
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The retail is actually quite good- for a start there's a proper bookshop (Foyle's) not a WHSmith. But yeah, I agree.
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posted 12-03-2010 18:39
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Amor de Cosmos wrote:
E10 Rifle wrote:
Agree about the need to prioritise improving short-distance journeys. It takes an hour to get from Manchester to Liverpool, which is ridiculous and bound to be economically damaging, particularly to the latter. Ditto Leeds-Sheffield. Leeds-Manchester's actually a reasonably swift train journey though, and a lovely one, scenically.
Sheffield — Manchester's very pictureskew too and also rather slow but, y'know, so what? We need a world with more time to reflect and less speed.
Shame there's not enough carriages on the service so you can sit down and enjoy it then.
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posted 12-03-2010 19:00
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Down here we have loads of space. My ipod always gets its own seat.
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posted 15-03-2010 17:36
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Is there any chance of this actually happening?
Could it happen? Might the wondrous Euston Arch, so wrongfully demolished in 1962, return to front the new "super-terminus" planned to send a future generation of 250mph trains scything from London to Birmingham in 49 minutes – and beyond to Merseyside, Manchester and Glasgow? It is just possible.
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posted 15-03-2010 17:43
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this railway is going to go right through the farm of one of my friends, and he is absolutely fucking raging. Particularly as his compensation will be based on the average price of british agricultural land, which to be honest is rather unfair, given how shit a lot of british agricultural land actually is.
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posted 15-03-2010 18:06
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Has he no administrative recourse?
That seems like a fatally flawed manner in which to determine the value of land being seized through eminent domain. Do they average the value of all British urban real estate when doing the same in the City?
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posted 15-03-2010 19:41
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I doubt it. To be honest it's tough on him, but probably good for everyone as a whole. We go to the other extreme in this country, and it's fucking ridiculous.
In ireland the farmer lobby has traditionally been incredibly strong, but british agriculture has been generally speaking very weak. Indeed until the fist world war, vast tracts of the country were hardly farmed at all given that they were so marginal.
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posted 16-03-2010 09:15
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The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
I We go to the other extreme in this country, and it's fucking ridiculous
Just to clarify, do you mean that you pander excessively to the farmer lobby, or that you have even fewer (high speed) rail lines than a small, centralised country needs?
I think you understate the agricultural lobby's influence in Britain. The National Farmers Union must be one of our most successful pressure groups.
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