Tag Archives: Crossrail

The UK, the country that uses its brightest minds to solve problems other developed nations don’t even have

Man scratching head - CC / Flickr

Man scratching head - CC / Flickr

The upgrade of the West Coast Main Line cost between £8 and £10 billion and trains have a maximum speed of 200km/h, and it’s a fiendishly complex mixed traffic railway. France’s LGV Est cost €4 billion and the service speed is 320km/h. Why did the UK not go for a High Speed Line instead? Belgium knows the Jonction Nord-Sud will be at capacity by 2020 and is making plans now for what to do about the problem, while east-west journeys in London have been a nightmare for at least a decade building still has not properly started for Crossrail, due to open in 2017 – if the horribly complex finances hold. Or the PPP system for the London Underground…

But it’s not just transport. What do you do about anti-social behaviour? Getting to grips with the heart of the problem – inequality – would be too tough, so ASBOs are thought up. An unenlightened population wants to see bobbies on the beat (even though they don’t actually stop much crime), so the government dreams up Police Community Support Officers that look like Police but are cheaper, rather than having a proper discourse about crime and society. On environment the UK government is waking up to the need to take some practical steps – a pay as you save scheme – while Danish and German firms have at least a decade head start on proper development of renewables technologies and have leading firms in the renewables sector. The UK has a witty word for opposition to windfarms – NIMBY – but still has far too few windfarms.

It even applies to government – where else would anyone dream up a messy fudge where the parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have different powers devolved in different ways, and live with an anomaly like the West Lothian Question? That’s even before dealing with unitary authorities, London and directly elected mayors.

Yet the one thing that does function are the UK’s unversities – with between 2 and 4 of the world’s top universities in the UK (depends how you calculate), and no other European universities in sight.

So in short the UK should have plenty of fine minds to help it solve any sort of problem but, at a governmental level at least, lots of the problems – from ASBOs to the West Coast Main Line – are issues that other countries just don’t have. Why?

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Crossrail and multi level governance

RER at Châtelet-Les Halles, CC / Flickr

RER at Châtelet-Les Halles, CC / Flickr

Rumours of tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson rumble on, as covered today by Alex at Labour List. I don’t want to comment on Boris vs. Cameron as such; others are better placed to debate that. I just have 2 small remarks.

First, Britain has had more than a decade of devolution now, a little less for London. Yet why do we still assume that parties at each level have to stand for the same things? It’s implicit in the way Boris vs. Cameron is reported that they must eventually agree. Why? It might not be very stiff-upper-lip British to air conflicts in public, but if Boris reckons he has London-wide Tory support for what he stands for then he would be negligent to not stand up for those views. I also wonder how this sits with Cameron’s claim to devolve power to local communities? I assume he reckons no conflict with a parish council is going to end up tarnishing his image, while a conflict with Boris will. It’s post-modern smooth over political substance – typical of Cameron.

Second, why, oh why, would anyone seriously want to oppose Crossrail as Next Left alleges that Cameron does? OK, the line does not serve too many Tory constituencies, but London is projected to grow over the next few decades and the London transport network is already horribly saturated. Why can we not even manage to get behind one high speed, high capacity line? After all Paris has just five similar lines (RER), each with 10 carriage trains, some of them even double-decker. The hub station alone – Châtelet-Les Halles – handles almost half a million passengers a day on its RER platforms. Anyone who has ever tried to take the Central Line at peak times must clearly see that more east-west capacity is vital.

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