London Banter - View Single Post - So what's going wrong with the Jubilee line?

Roland Perry · April 23rd 11, 10:54 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 10:16:06 on Sat, 23 Apr
2011, d remarked:
I wonder if the law should get involved at some point over this given
how much less re-opening the railway would have cost and how much more
useful it would have been.

The sort of problems involved in making the route fit for a bus would
have applied even more so for a train. There's no chance the route could
have been used for a train instead at anything like this price.

Umm, you are apparently unaware that almost all of the route actually was an
old mothballed railway line with most of the track and stations still in situ
up until the point that they ripped it up to build this busway.

I am perfectly aware of that. What you seem unaware of, however, is what
a poor state it was in ("mothballed" is a bit optimistic), and how much
work was required on ancillary aspects. I don't think any of the
stations were re-openable, for example, all the level crossings were
missing, and several large items like a viaduct over the river were
beyond repair.

Unless you can some to terms with that, you'll never understand why
reopening as a railway would have been very costly.

I'm not convinced that it's best as a busway, a tram would be by
preferred option. But the Nottingham tramway extensions are costing
vastly more than the guided bus, even though one of the extensions is
again mainly on an old railway line.

One of the objections in Nottingham is that the railway line is now a
nature trail, and the Cambridge busway would have been much more
difficult to justify had they not been able to accommodate walkers and
cycles (and some horse crossings) into the design.
--
Roland Perry