| The North/South divide 08:11 - May 4 with 4065 views | DJR |
My trip to Barnsley involved diesel-powered trains on both the St Pancras-Sheffield line and the Sheffield-Barnsley line.
By way of contrast in terms of investment, my trip to the Exeter game on Saturday took in part of the brand-spanking new Elizabeth Line, which cost around £20 billion.
No wonder many people in the North are not happy with the state of affairs, especially given all the other large public investment projects concentrated in the South East (eg. the Olympics, Channel Tunnel rail link etc). [Post edited 4 May 2023 8:24]
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| The North/South divide on 17:30 - May 4 with 345 views | StokieBlue |
| The North/South divide on 17:15 - May 4 by jontysnut |
Liverpool has got a bit of an underground where Merseyrail services make it fairly easy to get about the city. Birmingham has extended its tram system. Leeds is one of the biggest cities in Europe without a tram/light railway. It's too expensive, of course. No HST either. 2 hours to get to Birmingham, same to Liverpool. The cross country trains that eventually turn up are short, cramped and crowded. Want to get a quick train or tram from Leeds station to the airport? forget it. Get on a bus and queue in traffic. I was in Zaragoza recently. Probably smaller than Leeds but with a quick, cheap and frequent tram line linking key parts of the city, including the football ground. Transport ministers of every stripe should be embarrassed. |
Is it too expensive though?
Perhaps someone should give Boris a call and ask him where the 350m a week is - the total cost of the Zaragoza system was approximately the same as that so we could fund one new tram system a week with the money he claimed we were getting.
That's not even factoring in that half the funding for the Zaragoza system was via EIB loans and we are still receiving payments from them until 2030 which could be used.
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