To think that spending billions on UK transport infrastructure is crazy?

[YarkYark]

God, my AIBU sounds like I'm a journalist (I'm not) but this drives me crazy.

During and after the pandemic this country proved pretty adequately that business can carry on pretty much as usual without endess face to face meetings. I used to go to many of these, both in the UK and abroad, inevitably it meant hours or days of travel and associated costs, often all for the sake of a few hours where little would be decided - except the date of the next jolly. Actual decisons would likely be done over the phone the next day.

So why, why, why does this country need to be investing is super high cost projects like HS2 and a third runway for Heathrow. Why will there continue to be a need for people to travel to do business when we shoud be investing in a world leading internet infrastructure and cut out all the travel nonsense and associated issues?

What am I missing?

YABU: Of course UK needs to improve its transport links, otherwise we'll never grow as a country.

YANBU: You're right, we're thinking like its the 1990s, get with the future, Britain.

Are you saying that because you don't want to travel, other people shouldn't have the ability to travel?

Due to the cost of housing many people live in cheaper areas and commute. Meeting people is conducive to good working relationships.

It was not true that business thrived in the pandemic. It clobbered business. Yes, we need far better East to West rail in the North. Some cities are cut off from faster lines altogether. We need seemless connections and flowing motorways. Business is often about components and shipping out goods. Time is money and efficiency is key. We have serious issues with parts of our infrastructure and it’s not solved by the ludicrous HS2. If we want a northern powerhouse, we need better infrastructure and that’s not just IT!

Um, what? I know everyone on Mumsnet works from home but the majority of people in this country have to travel to work.

And public transport at the moment is abysmal. Not to mention that public transport is not only for getting to work.

Well, just off the top of my head:

• tourism is a thing
• WFH is decreasing and people who were WFH are moving to hybrid
• infrastructure projects have always been used as a means to boost the economy - since medieval times. The money paid for the project circulates, paying for labour and goods, which get taxed, and also are used to pay for secondary labour and goods

Did you not notice most of HS2 got cancelled in a shameless fire sale by the outgoing sunak govt? It's why our rail infrastructure will remain abysmal

Transport isn't just for people, it's for goods too.

We should have railways that are the best in the world, like Japan's bullet train.

There are improvements happening to existing railways and stations too - DD is an infrastructure civil engineer and all of her projects are rail or London Underground.

Because if we don’t spend it on our own infrastructure the fucking nobs will spend it on arms for Ukraine.

France has managed high speed trains. Why does the uk find it so difficult to invest in itself.

Going green alone means far more investment in public transport is needed. Trains, buses, trams all need to become a viable alternative to driving, and for that they need to be more available, faster, up to date with technology, reliable and cover a much greater area. All things that are currently lacking.

And as others pointed out, it's not just business, either. The population in this country has exploded in recent years, so far more infrastructure is needed simply to accommodate all the extra people here, let alone keep up with the rest of the world when it comes to the transport of goods.

If we want to get people out of their cars then we need better public transport. Also I am getting older now and can foresee a time when I will no longer want to/be able to drive and with our ageing population I will not be alone.

Most people can't work from home so need to travel there and back. We also need to move goods.

The problem is that we have a smaller track size to France, because our railway predated theirs and we still have some of the OG tracks. hence why the Eurostar needs its own line and can't go past London. Whereas France can just run the TGVs on its existing network

Um....because "going to meetings" isn't the ONLY reason people use public transport?
Lots of work cant be done remotely and people still need to, you know, get there

Not to mention work not being the only reason you leave the house and travel to a different place.

Yabu. Have you ever tried to use public transport in the north of England outside large city centres? It's terrible. Funding it to even half the level per head of the south east would dramatically improve productivity and quality of life for many. I live 40 miles from Manchester in the suburbs of a northern city. It would take me over 1 hour 40 minutes to get there by public transport on Monday morning.

Obviously you're missing a lot, as has already been pointed out. There's a lot more to life than the sort of business that can be done from home and/or via the Internet. I have that sort of job, I'm not knocking it - I haven't had to travel much for work since about 1995. But I have a life outside of work.
We need a lot spending on transport infrastructure, but the right things not the wrong things. HS2 seemed to focus on one of the stretches of railway that was already fast enough and reasonable capacity, I think - should probably have increased tracks on the section above Birmingham instead and put a lot into east west lines, urban systems outside of London etc.

I don't know the rationale for a third runway at Heathrow but I'd have thought enabling more flights to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow might be a lot more valuable.

Ah yes. Work is the only reason to travel and all Work can be done at home 😒

I think you've misunderstood the situation if you think they're investing in this kind of project solely to enable some business types to have some meetings...turns out there's quite a few other reasons why people and things need to traverse the country.

Also, whether or not business thrived during lockdown/working from home is debatable. If business had thrived I don't think we'd be seeing quite so many big companies ordering people back to the office. There is a lot to be said for the social capital that comes from face to face meetings, even if they do seem pointless in the moment.

A huge reason for HS2 was that the West Coast Mainline is at capacity for freight and passenger trains. The stretch that was built achieves the sum total of fuck all for the north and it still takes an hour to get from Manchester to Sheffield, an hour from Sheffield to Leeds, again an hour for Leeds to Manchester. They're all less than 40 miles apart. Manchester to Liverpool is 32 miles and 50 minutes by train. We were still running Pacers built in 1985 until 2021 and they only went due to the fact they couldn't be adapted to make them wheelchair accessible and were no longer legal. Look at how bad accessibility is on trains and tubes too

Leeds still doesn't have any mass transit, it's a city with a huge geographical area and is the biggest city not just in the UK but in Europe without one.

Yes it needs investment, we can't go on stuffing people into cars and goods into lorries to sit on the roads in traffic jams. When rail does work it's so much more efficient. My train journey to work is 17 miles and takes between 17 and 23 minutes (which is on a slower diesel line). To drive it would be 32 minutes in non rush hour. It would be nonsense to drive in and pay to park then drive home again. Rail despite lower numbers is still used by millions. If it was more reliable then probably even more people would consider it

The track gauge is standard in most European countries including Great Britain. It's 4ft 8½in or 1435mm. It's perfectly possible in the engineering sense to run the older Eurostar units on the conventional UK network. They operated on classic lines between Folkestone and Waterloo for years before the new line was opened to St Pancras, and some sets (originally procured for Glasgow or Manchester to Paris services) were hired to GNER for use on Leeds services before ending up on SNCF domestic trains.

The main problem we have is that we've been very good at squeezing a quart into a pint pot and using up every last bit of capacity. Things are now full. The West Coast Main Line south of Crewe is the busiest mixed-traffic trunk route in Europe. One of the reasons that Avanti has such appalling punctuality (apart from its management finding new and ingenious ways to piss off the staff each week) is that there is absolutely no room for things to go wrong. A slight issue in the morning keeps causing knock-on delays for the rest of the day.

Want to know why your tickets are so expensive? It's because governments over many decades have told operators (dating back to BR) to solve overcrowding by pricing traffic off. Millions of journeys are made between London and Manchester every year (despite the OP thinking that no one has had any need to leave their house since March 2020) and there is no more room - trains are as long and frequent as the infrastructure can possibly allow. That's why Manchester to London tickets are among the most expensive. We need a new line built to the latest standards. I.e. HS2

because people don’t just travel for pointless meetings like in your company. I have teams across the UK and there’s a lot of value in face to face contact. We survived in the pandemic, and we are now seeing many companies realise that their staff working at home all week isn’t what they want. Also of course, business isn’t the only reason people travel across the UK. Your view is pretty narrow minded, good job the people who make these decisions are sitting in their bedroom all week with a distorted view of reality.

Public transport in the north (Newcastke aside) is shit.

Really, really shit.

If you live n the south you might not realise how shit.

It really does need improving.

Government investment in infrastructure creates a lot of jobs which pay taxes. This is a good way of kick starting an economy.

I agree. It makes me laugh when people talk about hiw good our 'network'is when they normally mean London.
i live in the NE of England and I dont think it'll make much difference to us 'up here' . I taught at a village primary school before I learned to drive. It's an 8 mile drive and would takes 15mins by car. By public transport it was 2½ hrs, it was in same county as my home but I couldn't get a pass because it was 2 bus companies without any form of integrated pass/ ticket. Luckily for many yrs I got lifts part of way there and back by a family member who went a similar direction.
Since then bus timetables have become even worse so God knows how long it would take now (dur to major cuts in funding from the Conservative government)

We can't drive to Scotland on a dual carriageway, for many miles it single carriageway. We have been promised it br dualled for decades, postponed 3 times under the conservatives, cancelled under labour due to spiralling costs, more than doubling in a decade to a now expected +£500million. £68million has already been spent on it without so much of a blade of grass being cut!

HS2 Was pie in the sky before it was started and we knew it would never reach the North, because things NEVER do.