AIBU Train Electrification

[TrueBlueYorkshire]

AIBU to think this government is incompetent with its transport strategy. So the inside story is:

1. Government wants to electrify routes
2. electrification is running late/over budget due to not spending upfront on surveys and engineering, and relying heavily on commercial departments to estimate costs rather than real engineering firms.
3. commercial department decides they will buy more expensive diesel/electric trains to cover the period they are running late for.
4. use the diesel electrical trains as an excuse to cancel the electrification
5. a few days later announce a transport policy that will see fossil fuel vehicles phased out by 2040. The new diesel trains have a 40+ year life span till around 2060....

They literally can't follow through with a consistent agenda and are appointing incompetent people to the posts who oversea these infrastructure spending as part of their political portfolio. This is our money they are wasting.

It's like they have no joined up plan, for anything, ever.

I agree. I think if they've gone so overbudget with electrification they may as well say fuck it and get it done. Then we can benefit from lighter, faster, bigger and cleaner electric trains.
IMO, if you're going to abandon almost at the end, then you may as well have burnt all trust money and not bothered in the first place.
It's akin to spending £5m on building an amazing house but not spending the last £100k to insulate & roof the fucking thing. I know my figures are off, but you get my sentiment.
It makes me furious that the government/transport networks never do anything coherently and I think point 4 is what makes me most mad, an awful excuse to have the worst of both worlds...

The thing is, Britain is perfect for rail. Not too big, pretty flat, right density.

I am wondering if it is another case of not London? Hs2 rumbles on, even with the excuse that it increases capacity it doesn't make sense.

Oh but look, it goes to Euston.

The thing is, Britain is perfect for rail. Not too big, pretty flat, right density

I thought that the UK is the second highest densely populated country in Europe I think after the Netherlands.

It's much easier to build railway lines and the like in France where there genuinely is plenty of open space.

However, electrification does not depend on plenty of space and it is just a nonsense that the project has been so badly managed.