London Banter - View Single Post - London Underground 'best metro in Europe'

Ian Jelf · April 29th 09, 09:42 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , writes
On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:53:08 +0100
Paul Corfield wrote:
Only in Belgium could they spend a fortune on tunnels and then not use
them.

Oh they've done better than that - in Charleroi they built an entire
extension to their pre-metro - station and tracks - and never used it!
A monument to the hubris of local government IMO.

I was about to mention Charleroi. A perfect example of the original
point. It's the equivalent of having something on the scale of the
Tyne & Wear Metro inserted into somewhere like Reading.

It was largely built, as Boltar says, for political reasons. The
Flemish North had a light metro (as the Walloons saw it, anyway) in
Antwerp, so the Walloon South had to have something the same.

It's a long trine since I've been but the **vastly** over engineered and
little used infrastructure was incredible. (Mind you, Gent built an
extension for a proposed housing area that never materialised and which
terminated in a no-mans-land beneath a motorway for years. I
understand that it's been abandoned now.)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk