In article , Solar Penguin
[snip]

But at least our overseas posters don't claim to actively hate London,
or insist that they want as little to do with it as possible. And then
*still* read and post here.

:-)
I must admit to some mixed thinking here. I am in favour of
efficiency and doing things well, and transport in London (and elsewhere)
being done as well as possible in the interests of the inhabitants.

That's why I have posted on the benefits of belts (rather suitable
for buiding as part of new developments such as the Barbican, as well as
distributing passengers from the big south bank stations like Waterloo to the
city centre) and linking between routes which cross without interchange, such
as the North London Line and the Northern Line.

But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like
Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less
than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be
viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified
in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into
London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to
abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South
- East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too.
Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their
countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French =
"municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to
serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think
hard!

Michael Bell

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