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.

I think it's a great idea to invest in infrastructure.

But I do think lumping London and the south together means people think the south gets more than it does per head

But regardless of that the northern cities neeed better transport for the benefit of themselves and the whole country. I hate the London centric planning in the uk.

It is not just cities that need infrastructure. I live in a northern market town with a good train link to the nearest two cities (assuming no strikes/landslides/flooding/driver failed to turn up). However, you cannot get to either of the neighbouring towns before 8.45am using public transport- for me, that means I cannot work in those towns, cannot go on a training course, cannot socialise (last bus home 5pm).
My father lives 1 hour away by car along one horizontal A road. To do the journey to him on public transport involves either four or five changes and takes 3.5-4.5 hours. Those men in Lycra could cycle there quicker! Except that the A road is absolutely treacherous for bikes as it carries all the heavy traffic east-west in spite of being a single carriage, windy country road.
The whole set-up is deeply inadequate.

3rd runway at Heathrow has nothing to do with enabling more Brits to travel. It’s about grabbing some of the lucrative transfer market from Schipol, and the air passenger duty that goes with it. The vast majority of passengers that the increase in capacity that the third runway brings will never set foot outside of the airport.

You’re right about the last bit, even as it stands a high percentage of passengers who route via LHR don’t enter the UK.

However don’t forget as it stands someone transferring at Heathrow, international to international (e.g. US - LHR - Europe) is exempt APD.

The third runway might mean there’s more scope for UK domestic >International but if UK APD stays at it’s current level then places like Schipol will still remain attractive as a place to pick up a longhaul flight for people whose journeys originate in the UK.

There are gaps in train services that need filling, as well as ongoing maintenance.

Most flights are outbound tourism rather than business. There is no need for an additional runway at Heathrow, especially when Birmingham and Manchester are not at capacity.

The elizabeth line was a good investment

North of England. 5 of us need to go to one of the cities today - 2 for shopping, 2 for work, 1 tagging along.
I hate driving in the city but for £12.90 each (*5 = £64.50) on the train, which only runs every hour compared to jumping in the car at our convenience, costing about £20 with fuel and parking, I'll suck it up.
If public transport was cheaper, more frequent and more comfortable we'd use it as we live within walking distance of our station on purpose.
We need more infrastructure, but I think they're targeting the wrong things.

If HS2 doesn’t get finished then they’ll be 11,000 more hgv on the road daily. The congestion from just the HGv s that are already there and another 11,000 will be gridlock.

As someone who lives in London but has a couple of close relatives in the rail industry, trying to improve rail outside of London, I believe a lot of the London Centric thing fir rail is down to legacy and attitude.
London has a population bigger than Wales and Northern Ireland combined and additional workforce of hundreds of thousands commuting in every day. Londoners already have an excellent system (legacy) and use it habitually, as it's the only practical option when you have that many people in such a small area. They accept the downsides of proximity to rail as the price of that convenience, and expect/demand continuous investment in the system to stop it collapsing.
Outside of London, trying to get a new route through public consultation is a totally thankless task. People without a legacy of decent rail nearby have usually already arranged their lives so that they don't need it to function. So the attitude when a line is proposed near their home is far more skewed to the negative. Yes it would be nice to get a train to the nearest big city, but if it means putting a noisy rail line within a mile of their home and adding a level crossing, and possibly affecting the value of that home while the engineering is happening, then no thanks! They'll turn up to the consultation meeting armed with a list of negatives, and add any extra ones they can think of for good measure, because that's human nature.
I'm told that it's amazing how many people will turn up to say that a new station in their town is of course totally necessary but for environmental or social reasons it needs to be routed away from the side of town where they just happen to live... and then start a letter campaign in the local paper, and complain to their MP.

Before you comment on the superb infrastructure the UK has, get yourself to Sheffield at 7:30 am on a weekday and get the Trans Pennine Express to Manchester. Even better, take a suitcase with you.

When you finally recover, come back and report on your experience.

Wow, I didn’t realise that APD was not chargeable on connecting flights when origin and final destination are both outside the UK but you are completely right. Makes it even more incomprehensible that the government are putting so much emphasis on it being somehow the saviour of the economy.

The north needed HS2 far more than the south did its appalling that it's been cancelled

I learned to drive in my 40s because our public transport is so freaking bad

@TunnocksOrDeath good post

We need better rail services out of East Anglia. If I wanted to go to Scotland on a express route I’d have to go into London and back out again. An hour or so the wrong way!

Our bus service is awful and even the bus my daughter gets to school is always late.

No trains here today - again - because of issues with public transport. Then they wonder why the roads are jammed 🙄

better railways would surely spread more housing out too

Labour and Angela Raynor in particular seem to want to build a lot more infrastructure which is great if only to be walking through treacle when it comes to planning
Planning reform is long due

I am in the south east - public transport isn't much better here tbh.

Agreed!!!

Well, you're right about the meetings(ISH), but not so much about anything else.

Our transport is still pretty pants compared to other countries. I do think that it's wider improvements to the network that are more necessary than shaving an extra 10m off getting into London.

There are train stations being put in in my neighbourhood now. These are reinstating train lines that were ripped out ages ago, along with the tram lines on the high street. It's the suburbs-centre routes that need reinvigorating, not the central lines.

This is one of those posts that I assume must be written to be stupidly combative, or written by ChatGPT, as it must be obvious that people use public transport for other reasons than just travelling for work…

As other posters have said, the West Coast mainline is at capacity for passengers and freight, public transport networks in the north of England are poor compared to the south (TransPennine Express, for example), and if we have a great increase in house building, it might be nice for the residents of those new homes to have access to public transport so they don’t have to drive everywhere and increase congestion.

Some of us want to travel, some of us need to travel. Whether hs2 is the right way to expand the railways is a separate question but yes we need better and cheaper public transportation options. I want to be places not Zoom them!!!

But the roads between those two cities are so good! (Joke!)

It’s not always a great system in the SE either at rush times.

HS2 was a £100 billion mistake. Way more if extended beyond Birmingham. The existing lines could have been improved and much more done for the north. It’s a ludicrous idea to suck everything into London at marginally faster rail journeys. The price is horrific. No sensible planning was done regarding what was actually needed. Just big boys and their trains trying to be the same as others. We needed a different approach but few could see it and that included too many in the North!

Yes. Look at Japan. Huge rail networks and houses right up against them. Quality of living? Very different views on this. You do not need high speed in a small country. You need fast enough but above all, you need efficient and reaching all parts.

My friend lives in the north of a county and needed to get to a hospital appointment situated in the south of the same county. There's a railway station where she lives and one where she needed to be, but in order to get there by train it would've needed 35 minutes walking, 3 trains (initially going in the wrong direction!), and taken over 3 hours in total one way. To drive it takes just over an hour with only 5-10 minutes walking. This is in the same county! Patients are having the same issue in other counties too and often have to rely on friends and relatives to drive them if either they don't drive, or can't drive due to the nature of the appointment. Improvements are needed.