On Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:09:58 +0000
Anthony Polson wrote:
I am bitterly disappointed that the extension of the Northern Line to
Battersea will be funded using taxpayers' money.

Why? There are other people living there already you know, it won't just be
for the new estate.

developers to paying £1 billion for the extension of the Northern
Line, one has to wonder whether the outlay of taxpayers' money will
ever be recouped.

Has the money spent on the JLE been recouped? Or any tube line? How do you
propose to measure it?

B2003

d wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:09:58 +0000
Anthony Polson wrote:
I am bitterly disappointed that the extension of the Northern Line to
Battersea will be funded using taxpayers' money.

Why? There are other people living there already you know, it won't just be
for the new estate.


Apparently the new estate would be unviable without the Northern Line.
So the developers should pay, or at least make a significant
contribution. Not to do so suggests either that the development is
only marginally viable (I think we can probably discount that) or some
grubby deal has been done in which political representatives and/or
their party(ies) will benefit in some way.


developers to paying £1 billion for the extension of the Northern
Line, one has to wonder whether the outlay of taxpayers' money will
ever be recouped.

Has the money spent on the JLE been recouped? Or any tube line?


The developers of Canary Wharf made a very substantial contribution to
the cost of the JLE. I'd like to know why the Battersea developers
are not going to do that. The thing has a nasty stench about it.


How do you propose to measure it?


There is a huge variety of methods of valuing planning gain and
discounting it back to current values, then comparing it to the
capital costs to derive rates of return. Such calculations will be
relatively routine.

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 03:09:58PM +0000, Anthony Polson wrote:

If you take into account all the Government help, from derelict land
grants for cleaning up the subsoil through all the sweeteners for
developers to paying £1 billion for the extension of the Northern
Line, one has to wonder whether the outlay of taxpayers' money will
ever be recouped.

Does it have to be recouped? Government isn't meant to be about making
a profit, and especially not about making a profit on every project.
IMO government should exist solely to correct the failures of the free
market. Law and order, for example, can't be left to the free market
for obvious reasons. Nor can most large scale infrastructure projects,
either because the capital requirement is too great, or it's too
difficult to get the necessary rights of way, or the pay-off is too far
in the future.

I can think of only one railway in this country that was built without
government help, that being the Snowdon Mountain Railway. All the
others were either funded partially by government, or were at least
helped on their way with private acts of parliament which granted the
companies various powers.

None of which, of course, says that the Battersea extension is actually
worth building :-)

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

You are so cynical. And by "cynical", of course, I mean "correct".
-- Kurt Starsinic

The already-rich people of Battersea must be laughing their rainbow-coloured 5-toed socks off at this free addition to their house value.