On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:57:17 +0000 (UTC), Martin Petrov
wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:36:08 +0000, Bruce wrote:

If OOC is going to include interchanges with all those lines, there's
precious little point going on to Euston where interchange opportunities
will be far fewer. That will also save the not inconsiderable cost of
rebuilding Euston.

(I actually believe that there should be a NW London interchange (like
OOC), AND tunnelling all the way through to somewhere useful in the South/
East such as London Bridge or L'pool St so that it's not a pain to get to
from the other side of London....of course, I'll take it stopping at OOC
if it will just get built!)


I think that is a further indication of just how half-baked this whole
idea is. It simply isn't possible to come up with a properly planned
and costed proposal for a mega project like this in such a short time.
Above all, what is missing is a truly strategic view of how high speed
rail would sit alongside, and be integrated with, the classic network,
and how the two together would best serve passengers.

But we have seen this before with IEP. The balkanisation of BR means
that there is no overall strategic direction for the railway. The SRA
provided it to some extent under Alistair Morton, but the disastrous
appointment of Richard Bowker brought that to an end, and began the
era of micro-managing the railway that has been very damaging.

When the Department for Transport saw the complete mess Bowker was
making, they quickly realised that they could do the micro-managing
themselves without any need for a separate agency. So they disbanded
the SRA because it wasn't doing any good, rather than fire Bowker and
appoint someone to head it who was capable of strategic thinking.

With a properly managed SRA in place, the IEP and High Speed 2
mistakes would have been much less likely to occur.