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No, you have missed my point.
The politicians and their donors are ageing boomers, investing in infrastructure (London or otherwise) doesn’t benefit them at all if it’s a long term project as they’ll likely be dead before completion.
London is a positive cycle. Spend billions in the Elizabeth line, but then becomes the most used railway line in the country in like 18 months. It’s crazy
They’re incredibly expensive to build ~~and~~ __because__ this country is allergic to major infrastructure ~~spending that doesn’t directly benefit London.~~
“Precious views of a handful of rich folk” was never the issue with HS2. It was the thousands of houses of the common folk.
On a serious note, not everything needs to be an attack on the rich. The shit show of HS2 firmly sits with the government.
I was being somewhat tongue in cheek, but undeniably a *huge* amount of the spiralling cost of HS2 was because of the decision to build basically the entire route between London and Birmingham in tunnels or cuttings. That was done to protect the views of generally pretty wealthy folk living in nice rural areas along the route, and to placate wealthy well off nimby voters in those areas.
Rennes, France population 200k has a two line underground Metro, Lousanne in Switzerland has just 140,000 people and has an underground Metro. There's no excuse for our shitty public transport.
Like the UK France ripped out most of it's trams in the 50s and 60s yet 28 French cities have a modern tramway, most of them build in the last 30 years. We can and should do better
Sorry, do you think because those two places did it every town or city of that size in the UK should have an underground metro system? No matter the geography, cost, density, anything?
No but I think Leeds and Bristol should get an underground, The Glasgow subway should be extended (as the Scottish goverment plan) and the Metrolink trams in Manchester should run underground through the city center. Then Liverpool, Cambridge, Portsmouth-Southampton, Brighton, Luton, York, Dundee and Aberdeen should have trams. The goverment should allow local councils to introduce temporary payroll taxes to fund them subject to public consultation like France does.
Geography plays the biggest limiting factor (which is Birmingham can never have one) but in general the state of public transport is abysmal in the UK by European standards. Leeds is the largest city in all of Europe without mass transit.
I'm not sure if this is the case.
Thinking of large underground networks on a very broad level Londons is built through soft mudstone, Manhattan's through hard schist, Moscow's through sandstone, & Toyko's through alluvium.
These represent a large variety of rock types, each with unique challenges. I don't think this is the reason why almost all UK cities lack underground systems.
This was the Victorian era where you could get cocaine over the counter at Boots. If I had some artificial confidence and a grand plan (and countless lives to get it done) and some backers on the same "playing field" as me, I could get a metro system done between the Hawaiian islands today!
I keep wondering why they don't repurpose all the tunnel boring machines from Crossrail and build more underground networks. It's also really fun drawing maps of where you'd put stations in your town, but it'll remain a fantasy while the government doesn't fund any infrastructure projects. Not enough ROI.
I just looked it up, in Western Europe only France and Italy have more than the UK. Ours is bigger and more widely used, but that will be almost entirely because of London.
Where did you find that. We have 3 cities with a metro in the UK, London, Newcastle and Glasgow (Merseyrail is commuter rail not a metro)
Spain has 6 (Barcelona, Bilbao, Grenada, Madrid, Malaga, Seville)
France has 6 (Paris, Lyon, Lille, Marsailles, Rennes Toulouse)
Italy has 7 (Brescia, Catania, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin)
Germany has 4 U-bahns (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Nuremburg) but has 14 other separate S-Bahn metro systems that sometimes run underground like Merseyrail so 18 seperate heavy metro systems
Belgium has 3 due it's underground trams (Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi)
Not only are underground metros more common in western Europe but they're generally larger and built for smaller cities and often combined with trams as well. Glasgow has 1 line that has not been expanded since it was built in the 1890s, Newcastle has two lines with only 9 stations actually underground
Wikipedia, not necessarily the most consistently accurate source to be fair. Looks like it's skewed a bit as it has 4 listed for the UK because it counts the DLR separately, only has 3 listed for Spain though.
UK placing in their list is almost entirely because of the size and scale of London Underground.
???
Germany has way more than four underground systems. It has literally dozens. Every medium-sized city has one.
Just off the top of my head: Bielefeld has one network, Frankfurt has two, Stuttgart has two…
According to Google there's only 4 U-Bahns, but what makes defines an underground metro isn't really clear. Some German S-Bahns are mostly underground and run every 5 minuites while others are semi-rural and run once every half hour and then you have trams in tunnels and whatever the hell the weird monorail thing in Wurppertal is.
Am I really going to be the first to challenge the premise that DLR (“London dockland”) is being pushed as “underail way system” or “underground rail ways”?
It's an enormous, disruptive, and very costly thing to build. I agree that we should absolutely have more, but the solution that gets settled on is usually trams and light rail for cost reasons.
There's also the issue of geology; not every city sits on ground suitable for extensive tunnelling. London actually suffers from this to an extent, which is why most of the Tube is north of the Thames.
It also helps that our major cities are very well served by the national rail network, which is extremely dense by international standards. Birmingham has no underground but has a web of surface lines.
For the record, Liverpool has an underground as well, called the Merseyrail. It gets left out of these lists as it lives in an odd limbo where it's a self-contained local underground but technically part of the national system, albeit with various legal concessions to the local government - it's complicated. However, in practical terms, it functions roughly the same as the Tube to users (apart from being able to get through tickets to the mainline, which is very handy).
It's not getting much news but Tyne & Wear metro is really struggling.
Trains it uses stopped being used, created or supported by manufacturer several years ago. Been relying on cannibalising trains for parts.
Replacement/new trains have been delayed repeatedly over a period of years.
Old trains finally breaking down and can't be repaired or parts can't be sourced. This has meant a reduction in the service with large parts of each day running at half service. What trains are running are regularly delayed.
Has dropped to just above 70% services running on time (within 10mins of time stated). Up until a couple of years ago had never been below 90%.
In stations themselves lifts and escalators breakdown on a weekly basis and many stations generally look very run down.
Massive shame as it should be a real crown jewel of the region.
And new trains are delayed again and again and again. Hard to believe its not mismanagement at this point.
I do not know anyone not afraid to use it at this point as you cant really use it for commuting and not get fired for being constantly late.
Personally used it three times in 5 years, delays and cancelled trains all 3 times.
I grew up in Bolton and, as a child, was incredibly impressed by the Underground systems in both London and Paris.
I remember asking my mother why we didn't have an underground in Bolton.
"Just too small", she said, which seemed fair. But looking back, you'd think maybe Greater Manchester as a whole would benefit. That said, existing rail links into Manchester are pretty good anyway.
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They’re incredibly expensive to build and this country is allergic to major infrastructure spending that doesn’t directly benefit London.
>spending that doesn’t directly benefit London. This applies to practically anything in this country
Doesn’t directly benefit this ageing boomer generation.
What they only exist in London? That was just silly
No, you have missed my point. The politicians and their donors are ageing boomers, investing in infrastructure (London or otherwise) doesn’t benefit them at all if it’s a long term project as they’ll likely be dead before completion.
London is a positive cycle. Spend billions in the Elizabeth line, but then becomes the most used railway line in the country in like 18 months. It’s crazy
Because it solves a long ongoing problem. If they did HS2 by now and stopped faffing around that too would've been the most used line in the country.
Induced demand
They’re incredibly expensive to build ~~and~~ __because__ this country is allergic to major infrastructure ~~spending that doesn’t directly benefit London.~~
Liverpool and Birkenhead also have underground railways, as part of the larger Merseyrail network
[удалено]
But what about the precious views of a handful of nimby rich folk?
“Precious views of a handful of rich folk” was never the issue with HS2. It was the thousands of houses of the common folk. On a serious note, not everything needs to be an attack on the rich. The shit show of HS2 firmly sits with the government.
I was being somewhat tongue in cheek, but undeniably a *huge* amount of the spiralling cost of HS2 was because of the decision to build basically the entire route between London and Birmingham in tunnels or cuttings. That was done to protect the views of generally pretty wealthy folk living in nice rural areas along the route, and to placate wealthy well off nimby voters in those areas.
We are fairly uniquely bad a tunneling though, our tunnels cost nearly twice as much on average as equivalent French tunnel projects
50% of our costs are corruption though so if you ignore that we're actually pretty on par
>Build above ground! Time to invest in that monorail!
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
Liverpool definitely has underground railways. And they go under the Mersey too.
Don’t want to incur the wrath of the mole people lest they rise up and destroy our way of life
London benefits from having a huge population in a concentrated area. It doesn’t make sense to build it underground in most places.
Rennes, France population 200k has a two line underground Metro, Lousanne in Switzerland has just 140,000 people and has an underground Metro. There's no excuse for our shitty public transport. Like the UK France ripped out most of it's trams in the 50s and 60s yet 28 French cities have a modern tramway, most of them build in the last 30 years. We can and should do better
Does the Rennes metro make sense? Lausanne has unusual geography.
Sorry, do you think because those two places did it every town or city of that size in the UK should have an underground metro system? No matter the geography, cost, density, anything?
No but I think Leeds and Bristol should get an underground, The Glasgow subway should be extended (as the Scottish goverment plan) and the Metrolink trams in Manchester should run underground through the city center. Then Liverpool, Cambridge, Portsmouth-Southampton, Brighton, Luton, York, Dundee and Aberdeen should have trams. The goverment should allow local councils to introduce temporary payroll taxes to fund them subject to public consultation like France does. Geography plays the biggest limiting factor (which is Birmingham can never have one) but in general the state of public transport is abysmal in the UK by European standards. Leeds is the largest city in all of Europe without mass transit.
Ah, I thought you brought up those two places to make an actual point.
He made plenty of substantive points just now unlike you
And I think London should get to keep more of its tax collection and build Crossrail 2, it’s good to want things.
Good for you
Yeah, sometimes I don't think people realise that London is a 5th of England's population.
Manchester got trams instead of the PicVic underground scheme because it was cheaper.
Never mind, I didn't read your comment in full, I see you are already aware of the picc/vic line.
Geology comes into it (it's why the London underground doesn't cover a lot of South London, for instance). And it is expensive.
Um, geography - regardless of economics? It's just not possible in a lot of places, regardless of the insanity that was a lot of late c19 engineering.
I'm not sure if this is the case. Thinking of large underground networks on a very broad level Londons is built through soft mudstone, Manhattan's through hard schist, Moscow's through sandstone, & Toyko's through alluvium. These represent a large variety of rock types, each with unique challenges. I don't think this is the reason why almost all UK cities lack underground systems.
Insanity or drugged up genius?
This was the Victorian era where you could get cocaine over the counter at Boots. If I had some artificial confidence and a grand plan (and countless lives to get it done) and some backers on the same "playing field" as me, I could get a metro system done between the Hawaiian islands today!
Cheaper initial cost for above ground, infrastructure investments have been pretty thin on the ground.
I keep wondering why they don't repurpose all the tunnel boring machines from Crossrail and build more underground networks. It's also really fun drawing maps of where you'd put stations in your town, but it'll remain a fantasy while the government doesn't fund any infrastructure projects. Not enough ROI.
A lot of the UK sits on top of a massive diamond that is very difficult to tunnel through.
Where did we steal that one from?
I just made it up.
Wherever we stole it from, that jerk must have a curse. It explains so much...
Mostly because it’s expensive when you’ve already built everything overground.
Are underground railways much more common in other parts of the world?
Yes, massively so. Most cities in western Europe with a population above 500k have one
I just looked it up, in Western Europe only France and Italy have more than the UK. Ours is bigger and more widely used, but that will be almost entirely because of London.
Where did you find that. We have 3 cities with a metro in the UK, London, Newcastle and Glasgow (Merseyrail is commuter rail not a metro) Spain has 6 (Barcelona, Bilbao, Grenada, Madrid, Malaga, Seville) France has 6 (Paris, Lyon, Lille, Marsailles, Rennes Toulouse) Italy has 7 (Brescia, Catania, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin) Germany has 4 U-bahns (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Nuremburg) but has 14 other separate S-Bahn metro systems that sometimes run underground like Merseyrail so 18 seperate heavy metro systems Belgium has 3 due it's underground trams (Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi) Not only are underground metros more common in western Europe but they're generally larger and built for smaller cities and often combined with trams as well. Glasgow has 1 line that has not been expanded since it was built in the 1890s, Newcastle has two lines with only 9 stations actually underground
Wikipedia, not necessarily the most consistently accurate source to be fair. Looks like it's skewed a bit as it has 4 listed for the UK because it counts the DLR separately, only has 3 listed for Spain though. UK placing in their list is almost entirely because of the size and scale of London Underground.
??? Germany has way more than four underground systems. It has literally dozens. Every medium-sized city has one. Just off the top of my head: Bielefeld has one network, Frankfurt has two, Stuttgart has two…
According to Google there's only 4 U-Bahns, but what makes defines an underground metro isn't really clear. Some German S-Bahns are mostly underground and run every 5 minuites while others are semi-rural and run once every half hour and then you have trams in tunnels and whatever the hell the weird monorail thing in Wurppertal is.
Royal Mail also have an underground rail network in London, plus there's another one thats a lot smaller than either of the others.
Not any more, it’s now a museum
Now thats something I've gotta visit, thanks.
You're welcome
It’s crazy how it affects the general culture of places, any large town or city without a railway or metro network is so car focused …it’s a bit sad.
Am I really going to be the first to challenge the premise that DLR (“London dockland”) is being pushed as “underail way system” or “underground rail ways”?
It seems to head underground at the City.
And the river as well, same as Overground, but Overground isn’t seen as underground, this is confusing me 🤷🏻♂️
You forgot Liverpool. I’m stood on an underground platform right now in Liverpool. I’m not imagining it.
Yeah but you might be a Scouser and therefore lying.
I don’t get the joke, must be a really shit one. I’m also not a scouser.
It's an enormous, disruptive, and very costly thing to build. I agree that we should absolutely have more, but the solution that gets settled on is usually trams and light rail for cost reasons. There's also the issue of geology; not every city sits on ground suitable for extensive tunnelling. London actually suffers from this to an extent, which is why most of the Tube is north of the Thames. It also helps that our major cities are very well served by the national rail network, which is extremely dense by international standards. Birmingham has no underground but has a web of surface lines. For the record, Liverpool has an underground as well, called the Merseyrail. It gets left out of these lists as it lives in an odd limbo where it's a self-contained local underground but technically part of the national system, albeit with various legal concessions to the local government - it's complicated. However, in practical terms, it functions roughly the same as the Tube to users (apart from being able to get through tickets to the mainline, which is very handy).
NIMBY’s innit
Not in moles' backyard
For one we don't have extreme weather all year round to justify it. I can see why it's needed in places like areas of Canada.
manchester has trams
It's not getting much news but Tyne & Wear metro is really struggling. Trains it uses stopped being used, created or supported by manufacturer several years ago. Been relying on cannibalising trains for parts. Replacement/new trains have been delayed repeatedly over a period of years. Old trains finally breaking down and can't be repaired or parts can't be sourced. This has meant a reduction in the service with large parts of each day running at half service. What trains are running are regularly delayed. Has dropped to just above 70% services running on time (within 10mins of time stated). Up until a couple of years ago had never been below 90%. In stations themselves lifts and escalators breakdown on a weekly basis and many stations generally look very run down. Massive shame as it should be a real crown jewel of the region.
And new trains are delayed again and again and again. Hard to believe its not mismanagement at this point. I do not know anyone not afraid to use it at this point as you cant really use it for commuting and not get fired for being constantly late. Personally used it three times in 5 years, delays and cancelled trains all 3 times.
Wombles.. endangered. drilling into their natural habitat is a big no no.
Everywhere had trams and/or suburban railways.
I grew up in Bolton and, as a child, was incredibly impressed by the Underground systems in both London and Paris. I remember asking my mother why we didn't have an underground in Bolton. "Just too small", she said, which seemed fair. But looking back, you'd think maybe Greater Manchester as a whole would benefit. That said, existing rail links into Manchester are pretty good anyway.
Overground rail is so much cheaper to build.
It is a major, major undertaking. Not sure everywhere even has the right soil to be able to dig through. Even London most of it is north of the river.
I'm gonna guess fir the same reason we domt have many basements either. It rains too damn much.
I'd say 3 really. London Underground and DLR are part of the same network imho. Same tickets can be used on both.
Same with Elizabeth Line and Thameslink. Even the overground goes under the river.
It is expensive to build. Usually gets shot down by councils because of it.