View Single Post
  #10   Report Post  
Old July 9th 09, 10:45 PM posted to misc.transport.urban-transit,uk.transport.london,uk.railway
Mizter T Mizter T is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity at LondonBanter: May 2005
Posts: 6,077
Default HS1 Domestic trains are a bit busy


On Jul 9, 10:09*pm, "Willms" wrote:

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 20:39:37 UTC, *schrieb Mizter T
*auf uk.railway :

If someone offered you an extra 2 hours (approx?) every day to spend
with your kids or playing 5-a-side or lying in bed in the morning (or
whatever the hell you do with your spare time....), and all it cost
you was £8 (approx?) a day, you'd do it, right? Who wouldn't?


Just £4.40 for an extra hour in bed every day? Priceless.


Agreed - but it's worth bearing in mind that the HS1 line cost
something like £5 billion, which was basically covered by government
loan guarantees to the company that built it, L&CR
I don't quite think the market is prepared to pay the true costs of
such a development


* hey, man! Do you really suggest that 2 hours extra time for a family
man should be subject to "market forces"?

* And what, if the "market forces" decide that the re-introduction of
slavery would help to increase the profits of the big banks, what
then?

* Should "the market" prevail over human beings?

* Is this the dragon which ruled over the town and who asked a virgin
sacrified to it every year in order not to destroy town and castle?


Luko, did you even read my whole post? I was suggesting that I don't
think people are really going to be willing to subsidise the
construction of very expensive new high-speed lines which benefit
already affluent commuters so as to enable them to make 100 mile plus
daily journeys. Of course, inevitably any new high-speed line would
increase the incidence of long-distance commuting , it's an inevitable
by-product - but specifically designing and constructing such lines
for commuting purposes isn't on (and of course is never going to
happen). Instead I'd be in favour of spending some of that money to
help all the family men and women who already live in towns and
cities, and to encourage families to live in the towns and cities in
which members of that family work, etc etc etc.

Before blundering in and criticising my comments, I suggest you
acquaint yourself with some of the basics with regards to the
Southeastern Highspeed service (which I've abbreviated as SE HS, and
also is/ has been called "CTRL-DS", "Kent domestics" and other
permutations thereof - and is sometimes erroneously called "Javelin")
- there's some information on the Southeastern website he
http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk....php/highspeed

Some of the people using SE HS could indeed have 2 or more extra hours
of family time if they (a) lived in London or (b) worked nearer where
they live and earnt less. That's simplifying things dramatically of
course, and there's an awful lot of different factors at play here
with regards to careers, lifestyles, quality of life (or at least
perceived quality of life), schooling etc etc - but people already
make these decisions, and one of the things on their calculus is
family time and to what extent they are prepared to play that off
against other factors such as career building or earning potential.

I'm not making massive definitive judgements on all these various
factors one way or the other, though I do have some thoughts on them -
but if someone was to propose an expensive new high-speed line from
Brighton to London (again a distance of about 50 miles) just to make
life easier for commuters, I'm not going to be there at the front of
the line campaigning in favour of it!

(Come to think of it, didn't the Brighton mainline RUS recently
pondered on some fairly radical/ 'way-out' ideas about tunnels to take
fast trains from Croydon under built up south London into central
London... not quite the same thing as a new high-speed line, but not
totally disconnected either.)