Michael Bell wrote:
wrote:
Michael Bell wrote:
[snip]

Capital cities are big because governments want them to be, think how
Ankara grew from a small town to a metropolis when it was made the Turkish
capital, how Moscow grew when it became capital after St Petersburg.

But how much of that is because they want them to be? And how much
because they're THERE????

Look at the attitudes, people say that Rome is a "failed capital"
because it has not attracted the fashion industry (though it tried to pay it
to come to Rome, and Italian scandal of some years ago) and pull in the
financial centre from Turin.

People are likely to regard any city that tries and fails to attract
business as a failure, regardless of whether or not it's the capital.

How could Combine that with tourism and - I know I keep banging on
about this, but it's an important point - London's role as one of the
world's great financial centres, and the result is the London not only has
a GDP on par with any other part of the country with a similar work force;
it probably actually has GDP exceeding it, because of all the international
finance sloshing about there. That's a pretty important structural factor -
you can't just one day decide those workers should all be dispersed around
the country (take note Gordon Brown), because the world doesn't work like
that. No other city in Britain - hell, no other city in Europe, really -
can compete with London on an economic score, not because of prejudiced
policies, but because of demographics and financial structures. I don't
think that's showing prejudice - I actually think that's stating the bloody
obvious, so am half expecting to be told I'm being patronizing any post
now.

Apart from cancer, the real world does not "run away". There are
always feedbacks which control.

Indeed there are, and they do have some controlling effects on the
current situation. But negative feedback is not always desirable.

A large city has economies of scale, but
also diseconomies of scale, eg, it cannot pay for the transport needed to
be *unitedly* so big - it would confer no benefits to live near others but
never to travel to meet them. The extra costs are offset by transport
subsidies and "London weighting". Think of the squeals if these were
withdrawn and the real costs had to be paid!

The reality is again rather different from your theory - transport is
heavily subsidized in other cities and rural areas, often to a greater
extent than in London.

The UK (in the 80s and 90s) has had far more experience than most
countries at cutting transport subsidies. London bus subsidies were cut
until for one financial year the network broke even, but the quality of
services suffered so much that afterwards it was generally accepted that
the subsidies are a price worth paying. Train fares rose much faster
than inflation, but that resulted in London house prices skyrocketting
as long distance commuting became less attractive.

As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid
for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate
themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it.

How exactly have they done that? Manchester airport has had another
runway added, despite being far less busy. And while the government
are currently keen on some misguided policies that would keep Heathrow
dominant, they don't involve holding back the development of Northern
airports.

You are simply wrong there.

How? And why do you think there will be the same demand for
international travel to Manchester as there is to London?

Heathrow cannot cope.

That's what they want you to think, but the truth is that Heathrow can
cope just fine.

The locals don't want to overspill it to Stansted or Gatwick.

Which is quite understandable considering the extra noise it would cause
- and considering the number of disused and underused runways that could
be developed into London airports...

Manchester airport put adverts in the papers 2 or 3 years ago
showing an eagle filling a parrot cage with a caption saying roughly "Let
us fly. Let us have a second runway"

And I won't be at all surprised if Stansted tries the same tactic.

Hang on... 2 or 3 years ago??? Then it WAS Stansted! Manchester had
already got its second runway by then!!!

The difference between one runway and two runways is as great as the
difference between single track and double track.

Sorry, but that statement is absolutely ridiculous! Gatwick is one of
the world's 20 busiest airports [by 2003 passenger numbers, as newer
figures are not yet available AFAIK] but only has a single runway.
Single track has less than half the capacity of double track because a
train travelling in the other direction will completely occupy the
section to the next passing loop. This doesn't apply to runway capacity
as aircraft normally both take off and land into the wind. Furthermore,
Manchester Airport's second runway is a staggered close parallel runway,
so can't be used in independent mixed mode operation - it has to be
takeoffs on one runway and landings on the other, so air traffic
movements have to be further apart because of the turbulence that each
aircraft creates.

[snip]

Relocating economic activity from London to elsewhere would cost a
fortune.

I'm not asking for that. I am simply asking for conditions to be
created which allow the North to flourish. For the North not be held back.

But what conditions do you think would allow the North to flourish? You
keep trying to claim London's holding the North back, but you've yet to
post any evidence of this.

The Manchester airport affair is simply the best documented example of it.

I've seen documents claiming that the economic benefits of Manchester's
new runway were vastly overstated. The arguments seemed pretty
convincing, but they were from one of the organizations that had (before
the new runway was constructed) opposed it on environmental grounds. You
seem to be implying that the opposition was a conspiracy from London to
hold back The North, but in reality there were genuine environmental
concerns. And yet it still got built!

There must be plenty of others.

Developing another city on the scale of London - if you could ever get past
the nimby factor - would be fine with me; you're right, it would be a huge
boon to the economy if successful (once again, I think of Dubai).

I'm glad you agree that "It would be fine". But actually, all I am suggesting
is that Birmingham - Manchester - Leeds be made EFFECTIVELY "one city" by
high-speed links. It is quite crazy that the links between them are judged
and prioritised "cross-country".

You included London on its route, so Birmingham would be more likely to
become "one city" with London!

The "gravity model" of traffic is modelled on Newton's gravity
equation and it suggests that traffic between 2 towns is proportional to the
product of the two populations divided by the square of the distance.

A very interesting theory, but a flawed one (and not only because it
fails to include a cost variable).

So, traffic on the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester, near and large
towns is the heaviest in the country, and more than between Birmingham and
London, a rather larger town, but much further away.

ITYF that's got more to fact that the M6 is the ONLY high capacity road
route from Birmingham to Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland etc., whereas
Birmingham to London also has the M40. Similarly there are three rail
routes from London to Birmingham.

It would surely justify the most lavish of Shinkansens.

....to connect it to Humberside :-)