I worked to help build One Canada Square as an electrician and later after switching jobs to a company that manufactured lights in the UK won the contract to fit out the whole building... The first set of people to move into One Canada Square then refitted their area and replaced the lights that we supplied with lights from us again but a bit different - so we end up supplying lights for almost the full building twice over
I thought this was the crazy norm with open office plan sales. I've seen it happen in the shard, standard lighting layout while it is empty, it gets leased out and the tenant has it fitted out to their layout.
Two things that really skew transport investment decisions in the uk: 1- insisting on prioritising Return on Investment funnels funds into areas that are already doing well, rather than areas that need the transport to unlock growth and regeneration. 2- the "Headquarters effect"- Lots of companies have their head offices in London, so it looks like all their tax receipts and economic activity are concentrated in that one location, reinforcing decisions taken on the basis of (1).
Additionally there is the brain drain effect that London has on the rest of the country. People spend their childhoods and schooling (funded locally) around the country. Move to London for their productive years when they generate tax receipts, and then retire out to the regions again for the latter part of their life, where social care is also locally funded. London gets to have people during their productive years and the rest of the country get them when they cost money.
@@stewartellinson8846 It has 1/5th of the UK population, yet London contains over half of all railways in the UK. London's rail network is great and completely necessary for such a huge city. However, the rest of the country is in desperate need of solutions to the ever-worsening road congestion and inefficiency of transit. Cities like Birmingham and Manchester are more than big enough to have their own underground / metro systems, and it's utterly bizarre that they don't. The tram networks in these cities are far too underdeveloped for their size, even if they were integrated with a hypothetical larger metro system. Even much smaller cities and towns could at least have tram systems and more national rail stations in the suburbs rather than just one in the centre. Of course, the quality and frequency of national rail services needs to be improved as well, with electrification of lines at every opportunity. In order for that to be possible, high speed lines must be built to increase capacity on local networks. I don't know exactly how funding could be directed towards these projects in the future, but I do know they need to be built not with immediate profit as the goal (this approach is why the railways are currently so awful), but rather with the goal of a long-term transformation of the UK's economy and society into one far less dysfunctional and incompetent than it currently is.
@@stewartellinson8846 which means 4/5 do not though. On bus transport 60% of the DfT bus budget is spent in the TfL fares area. Now I only got GCSE B in mathematics but that two thirds of budget spent on one fifth of population. I accept that need is there but isn't it pointless building projects like HS2, Elizabeth Line (and planned projects that may get cancelled like Crossrail 2) if you're going to have to access the outer stations by private vehicle? I always wish we had the Dutch style payment card that's valid nationally not Oyster or Key Cards that are only valid in their representative cities and actually funded public transport before 0700, after 1800 and at weekends.
@idot Well, London got their special Crossrail, and we got the Eastern Leg of HS2 scrapped. They really need to invest in the north. Cities like Leeds have campaigned for decades for a light rail or metro system and still don't have one, but London gets tons. Leeds & West Yorkshire is one of the largest UK cities outside London.
Platform 13 and 14 at Manchester Picadilly is busier than any Platform I have ever seen in my life and I haven't even seen it at it's busiest. As someone living in the North West, It feels very much that politicians don't use the ones up North so they don't care about them and will actively curb development even just an extra Platform, because they just think it must be people moaning as railways are fine where they are, around London and if the people up north get one, why didn't the people in the south get one or maybe a few on top of that as well.
Platforms 13 and 14 at MAN are, I believe, the ONLY platforms I've ever been on where I felt like I was at serious risk of being accidentally pushed onto the tracks.
100% agree with the build it and they will come. A high capacity fast intercity link from Hull to Liverpool (the M62 cities) with spurs north and south would be a game changer.
...or we could use the capitalists' version of that mantra: "don't build it and let them die." I'd make a pithy comment regarding one of the parties in our so-called democracy, but no matter what party's "in charge" in parliament, *money is always in charge.* If we want better outcomes for the poor (in not just rail but all matters), we must abandon capitalism.
@@iainwall Who's going to build it? When an overclass of dictating barons makes it so the only things that get funded are things that help themselves, I'm not sure how you're getting the funding or permission for it. If you're advocating worker control divorced from the capitalist regime, however... I'm listening.
I was very glad to hear your own views at the end. As a Tube nerd and fan of your channel I am awkwardly aware that my area (South West Wales) gets peanuts in terms of transport funding. In many cases the rails are there but the trains (apart from those to London!) aren't. And even the much vaunted South Wales Metro is taking an age to arrive and won't reach anywhere west of Bridgend. No one thinks London is necessarily over served by rail - without it the city would seize up - just that almost everywhere else gets a raw deal.
The South Wales Metro is a funny one. A lack of funding has meant that the project has been de-scoped pretty significantly, when it finally launches it will essentially be a upgraded, modernised version of the Valley Lines - a lot of the street running expansions (the reason they ordered tram-trains to begin with) will come at a later date. At least that part hasn’t been outright cancelled, thankfully. It’ll still be a huge upgrade from the existing system - but it’s a shame knowing what it could have been if the money was there. Meanwhile the UK government deliberately labels HS2 as a “England and Wales” project so that they don’t have to give a bunch of extra rail funding to Wales like they have to do for Scotland and NI.
I couldn't agree more about "build it and they will come." It's happening here in Canada as well. The new tram line in Kitchener and Waterloo is sure making both places a lot busier with new businesses and so forth. Combined, both cities are smaller than Brighton. It isn't always Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal that get the money for such projects. One light rail project is under construction in Mississauga, the suburb just west of Toronto and another one is coming to Hamilton.
Even in Toronto, they originally thought the Subway would be able to run two-carriage trains in off-peak service, and within a couple of years it was eight carriages all the time.
Canada has space. It doesn't have Medieval culverts, antiquities or bronze age and Roman tombs getting in the way. When you try to build things through a country with years of history it presents challenges. One genuine reason why Elizabeth Line was a challenge. Sadly our new towns were built around the car and from my experience outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal transport in Canada is massively car based.
The opposite is true, in Australia during the 1980s services were run down and ran less than daily making it inconvenient for passengers, then the railways department point to the poor patronage as an excuse to close the line. For example the Bluebird ran daily from Mt Gambier, when it was made to run three times a week, patronage fell. However the line only closed when the main line at Wolseley was converted to SG isolating the BG branch. The passenger service had been closed years ago by that time.
In the spirit of Jago's recommendation to build more Rail links, I would like to propose a direct link between my house and my place of work. I live in London so I feel my chances are better than most, and to minimise costs - I will only have two trains a day, one to take me to work and one to bring me home. I'm also happy to have a DLR type setup so that there is no driver - I will happily turn the key myself 😁 And with only one carriage needed - I won't be requiring extended platforms either.
I literally answered an A Level Economics question on this. 46% of capital spending was in London. I live near Newcastle, and they are taking 5 years to relay some tracks and add some signalling up to Blyth and Ashington. It's rediculous the extent of the focus onLondon
Ashington* station (in the centre of the place!) has been available for years and the track is used by freight. Investment around there is sorely needed.** * I visited the town ten years ago and even one of the charity shops was having a 'half-price sale' that day! ** Battery factory maybe . . . ? SENRUG - The South East Northumberland Rail User Group - has done excellent work for years now, promoting the re-opening of the line to passengers.
When the PM or the Royals comes to places like Middlesbrough they wear a red fur hat. Because when they say where they are going, someone always says "Wear the fox hat."
I believe Beeching has a lot to answer for. Many rural areas across the country were cut off and many of them had good rail links to towns and cities. Roads today are clogged up with traffic as there are no other alternatives for people to get to work or to do their shopping. It wouldn't be a bad idea to look at re-opening these old lines as villages around where I live would benefit greatly especially as many lines in Britain have indeed re-opened. London and other cities across the UK have proven that good rail links are the answer.
Beeching did essentially what he was told to do by Government, cut expenditure irrespective of outcomes. Seems very similar to the way Government treats rail today - constant cutting of funding and curtailment of projects - so nothing changes.
@@WillKemp In the case of Dr Beeching it was more the construction companies and in particular the road building company that Minister of Transport Ernest Marples had significant family interests in that was the demise of the railways.
Many of the lines closed before, during and after Beeching aren't actually routes that served their communities well or went where today's residents want to go. You just end up with trainspottery demands for silly services (like Barton-on-Humber - Brigg - Worksop - Nottingham) which have little justification beyond "serving local authority areas X, Y and Z" and trainspottery "But I think there's a real demand for an hourly service to Thornton Abbey* from Shirebrook**" or fantasy demands to reopen a branch line which would require knocking down three housing estates, a major distribution centre, an industrial estate or two and an out-of-town shopping park to end up taking twice as long to get to the nearby big city as driving does even in the rush hour. I wish I was joking. :( *(population approximately zero, commercial attractions also approximately zero) **(economically deprived former mining town, population rather more than Thornton Abbey, who look towards Mansfield, Nottingham and Sheffield - in that order - for their needs and wouldn't know where North Lincolnshire is!) [Edit: Shireoaks corrected to Shirebrook (on the Robin Hood Line)]
@@atraindriver Has someone actually suggested a Barton-on-Humber - Brigg - Worksop - Nottingham route? I would suggest that Shireoaks look towards Sheffield (City and Meadowhall) before Mansfield, and even Mansfield is doubtful. As for Nottingham I just can't believe anyone bothers with going there from the north of the County. I certainly don't, by road or rail. BTW the Worksop Nottingham rail route was closed to passengers as a result of the Beeching report but was reopened in 1998 - no doubt to satisfy the Nottingham mandarins vanity down in County Hall.
Sometimes it isn't even about the infrastructure itself, but the ability to access it. In rural Lincolnshire, there seems to be no chance that the old branch lines between the towns and villages will be restored, but they could at least provide a decent bus service to towns nearby that do have them. In the car, it takes me half an hour to get to Grantham and an hour to get to Lincoln. Were I to take the same journey on public transport (which I would love to be able to) both journeys would be at least twice as long. Nobody's expecting a swanky new railway going to every little village in the county. But please make it possible to access what little infrastructure we do have.
Here in Norfolk, we’d be lucky to get another rail line or even another station apart from maybe another one in Norwich. But I’m doing my bit. I’m restoring an old station in the hope that we can get the line back
Tbh i don't think another station in norwich is a priority, land around the railway is mostly undeveloped, people have posited about Dussindale but it's a bit of a niche market. If someone decides to do some serious housebuilding along the railway to connect the urban sprawl to Salhouse or Wymondham than a station would do well. I'd say better to put the time and effort into a couple tramlines - norwich is such a good size for a small tram system. Otherwise a central norfolk railway idea linking majot towns like fakeneham, dereham, swaffham and Kings Lynn would be good (not that can be done in one alignment though). Low cost projects could be to incorporate the heritage lines back into the mainline - dereham trains to norwich is a must as is Aylsham to norwich via wroxham.
@Alex oh cool! I heard about that in the news recently, honestly i misread the title at first and got all excited thinking that the service was getting restored as like a shuttle or something
Great explanation, Jago, thank you. Could one also perhaps make a case that the Metropolitan Railway was an early champion of the “build it and they will come” strategy of rail investment coupled with commercial investment (in that case, housing)?
For me, as a Mancunian (living abroad now), the thing about infrastructure investment in London isn't the fact that most of the money is spent there - I get why that is, but that literally EVERYBODY I know from London and the South East is constantly moaning about how terrible their public transport is, even now. It's infinitely better than it was in the 80s and 90s and the Elizabeth line is a true game-changer yet they always want more more more... (oooh I had to wait a whole 5 minutes for my tube. I had to stand up for 10 minutes etc. etc.) and can't see that they already have a world-class system of transport infrastructure. Of course it's not perfect, but whenever I visit London I always find it so reliable, really practical and such a pleasure to use the underground, train, buses etc. It's also some of the cheapest public transport in the country, but still they complain about the cost! The problem is, the better the infrastructure becomes, the more people are attracted to use it and it will ALWAYS be overcrowded until, as you say Jago, the government SERIOSULY commit to developing the rest of the country and spreading out the population and wealth. When my friends complain, I tell them to move north, but they don't want to lose the lifestyle of London - the entertainment etc. and they don't want the lower wages. Talk about having your cake and eating it - if you want London wages and the benefits of living in a true world-metropolis, you have to put up with crowded rush hour services. There are people who hate the Elizabeth line because it's pushing up house prices in the suburbs it serves and making it impossible for most people to buy. OK, the answer is: Buy a 3 bed detached house in Yorkshire for the cost of a bedsit in Stratford and have a nice 20 minute commute into Leeds each morning instead. You can't have it both ways!
"literally EVERYBODY I know from London and the South East is constantly moaning about how terrible their public transport is" This. I live in a town not all that far north of the London commuter belt, and we have almost no buses after 6 p.m. or on Sundays, we've only recently started getting trains after 7 p.m. on a Saturday (and still don't have Sunday trains on 50% of routes), and our daytime trains are hourly at best. When someone starts crying on here because it's awful that they've had to wait a whole 20 minutes at 11 p.m. to go to some small town an hour outside London that's half the size of the place I live in, I'm afraid that I find it incredibly hard to even pretend to be sympathetic.
Worth pointing out that Crossrail 2 is on hold and that the East-West rail link is being built. This will reconnect Cambridge with Oxford but also increase freight capacity. It should also remove freight from the ECML and WCML that shouldn't have to be there at all. We have freight that travels to London just to come back out!
Whilst I completely applaud brining back lines that should never have been closed, this line is far from complete, and there are more than enough problems at the Cambridge end to make it likely that it won't be completed.
@@paulhaynes8045 it's about building needed lines not nostalgia. one of the problems is that the UK spends too much time regretting the slow victorian railways we closed and not enough building the quick modern ones we need. Do you know how many level crossings there are between Bletchley and bedford?
@@stewartellinson8846 my understanding is that it's more or less complete, just a lot if hassle at the Cambridge end (not universally popular with Cambridgites...)
@@paulhaynes8045 there's nothing between Bedford and Cambridge - they haven't even decided on a route. There's lots of consultations (and NIMBYism) but nothing remotely like a rail anywhere.
Under current progress (as I understand it), work to Bletchley is near enough complete to see itself through. There is a lot of work needed to integrate the Marston Vale line, which does already exist, but has the issue that it has many very short stations very close together, none of them particularly heavily used, and current trackbed conditions limit linespeed to 60 mph. All of this makes integrated operation difficult; most of the stations require rebuilding or rationalization, and the trackbed needs significant improvement work. This is not impossible, and in my opinion should be done, else they are left with an odd stub branch that requires rolling stock unique from the surrounding areas and many little-used stations. The section to Cambridge, however, faces a decent amount of political opposition, requires a sizable amount of eminent domain purchasing, and would be rather expensive in comparison to previous segments; therefore, I don’t think that section has much of a chance, in the current climate, of being built.
Absolutely rail development encourages other investments alongside it. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. The city didn't have any local transport on rail for many years. A decade and a half ago, a light rail line was opened, and later extended. Ever since then, multiple apartment buildings and businesses have been built alongside the Blue Line.
7.30 sums it up perfectly. You only have to look across the channel to see how the European countries that have invested in high speed rail links and cheap fares over the last 20-30 years are now storming ahead of UK economically.
Was the same for the London Overground extension to Barking Riverside - a chunk of money for that came from the housing development nearby, as one of the conditions for building that much housing in one go was that they had to partially fund transport links to the area.
It’s kind of a shame to think about how Canary Wharf could’ve all been (relatively) affordable flats, and Thamesmead could’ve had a tube line! Reinvestment has been a success in Glasgow too, where a lot of the local lines cut by Beeching have been reopened and are thriving. The rolling stock is a bit old but honestly I like that, now that so many have been replaced elsewhere in the country it’s nice to still have the sights and sounds of the old motors. Tons of residential communities in Glasgow have excellent train service, almost metro-like in timetabling, to shops and hospitals and the city centre. People go to work elsewhere in the city on the train without a second thought, but most of them couldn’t a few decades ago.
I guess there is a bit of disappointment over what could have been when it comes to urban transport outside of London. There was a time in the 70's and early 80's, when serious proposals were being floated for underground systems in cities like Birmingham and Manchester. Then major shifts in the economy and politics pulled so much investment jobs and people into London and many cities in the Midlands and North stagnated or declined. Things began to improve in the 90's, but by then London was so massive and so hungry for investment progress was slow as there were limited resources. Manchester has a fairly decent light rail system, but it's not something that really befits a city of its size and importance. Birmingham has barely anything, for the second largest city in the UK it's quite frankly pathetic. If we imagine things had gone differently, if those underground systems had been built in the 70's and 80's, could that have allowed a more equitable spread of the post industrial service economy around the UK? Would Manchester and Birmingham have a million more people, and London two million fewer? Would our politics be more federalist, with regional cities commanding more political power? Who knows.
You have to take some of the post war talk of underground systems in Manchester and Birmingham with a pinch of salt as some of it was cover for Cold War bunker construction in the cities (for example the Anchor and Guardian telephone exchanges). The talk came to nothing because it was only ever designed to be talk by the people who started doing the talking.
@@GreenJimll That doesn't really make too much sense to me, the amount of excavation for a bomb shelter and an underground system is larger by several orders of magnitude. You wouldn't need such an elaborate cover for something on that scale.
@@Croz89 Bear in mind how big Guardian and Anchor are. They aren't some tiny concrete box buried under a hill. Just one of Anchor's completed operational tunnels is about 1.2km long, and would have been 2.2km long if they'd finished the abandoned tunnel out through Jewellry Quarter to Hockley.
@@GreenJimll Even then, that sort of excavation is not unusual for say, a new sewer or culvert. No need to be so elaborate with pretending you're building an underground system which people would take _way_ more interest in so would necessitate more efforts to cover up your true intentions. Besides, almost none of these plans actually got to break ground, the Picc-Vicc tunnel being the one that got the furthest.
So far the most sensible thing to happen has been the "restoring our railways" thing. Exeter-Okehampton has been very successful after it's reopened. Personally I'd like to see a much improved connection for Somerset/Wiltshire, there's a string of towns which could be deserving of a rail service (Marlborough, Devizes, Shepton Mallet, Wells, Glastonbury). Even our existing services aren't up to scratch as GWR has such a shortage of diesel units.
As a long fan of the channel and a proud Mackem, I would like to inform you that the so called “Newcastle Metro” is infact called the “Tyne & Wear Metro” as it goes to Gateshead (not Newcastle), South Shields and Sunderland.
@@rufusfromjohto7515 north Tyneside doesn’t have a great deal of Tyne and Wear metro stations but most of them are a reasonable walking distance from the population centres
@@geocachingwomble Apart from Wallsend, Hadrian Road, Percy Main, Meadow well, North Shields, Tynemouth, Cullercoats, Whitley bay, Monkseaton, West Monkseaton, Shiremoor, Northumberland Park and Palmersville
Interesting video as always. You mentioned the Tyne & Wear Metro briefly. If you have a visit to the North East it is a system that would be a good subject for one (or more) of your videos. Like parts of the TfL routes, it shares a section from Sunderland to Heworth with Northern Rail trains. But hurry if you want to feature the Metro Cammell units that have operated since the 1980s. Or you could do that then come back for the new trains, due soon!
As a former chair of a planning committee, its quite easy to say that developers will try anything to reduce the amount of affordable housing there is. Sometimes its for legitimate reasons, - having unexpected expenses to clean up a site (asbestos or former gasworks) or not wanting to create a ghetto of affordable housing. More usually its about getting out of building something they'd basically have to sell at cost. Sometimes a developer will get paid however much it costs to build something - a waste incinerator, say, paid for by a county council - whereas other times their profit is solely from what they can sell from what they've built. Scummy moves are all the rage. Since I've left, the government seem to have made it easier to perpetrate scummy moves. Why would they do that?
Shame we've got to rely on them so heavily. If only there was a tried and proven way of providing low cost housing to those who need it without being beholden to investment funds...
@@xr6lad Mixed income housing development reduces these vague 'social problems' you mention. National government policy restricts councils from building housing so rely on private developers.
@@SouthLondonRailwayPhotography this is a big part of Helsinki's policy and I think scandi countries generally-you set aside district/block level income targets so you avoid any one area being "the affordable housing Bad Zone." The other interesting thing that's done (Vienna is best known for this) is letting people who qualify for a subsidized unit stay in without rent increases after their income goes up so you have a lot more stability and a lot more e.g. people who qualify initially as broke young ppl and then stay in as they become more established.
@@douglasgraebner1831 How is that a good thing? If you have more income you should be expected to pay your fair share. Why should people with plenty of money get their rent subsidised by others by force?
@@SouthLondonRailwayPhotography That way would be for central government to a) allow local councils to build affordable housing b) provide financial support for them to do so.
We went on a school geography trip in the late 1980's to Canary Wharf and it was totally deserted. The DLR looked like Sci-fi and it was hard to believe our teacher who said it was going to be an important business centre in the future.
Another excellent report Mr H. The big snag of course is that in modern Britain, we do not have a government that is "serious about improving the country outside London and the South-East" - would that it were so! Apart from that, I would like to see a video examining the schemes that have been built in the Midlands and the North, and perhaps suggesting more that could be built in the future - apart from the 'phantom' HS2. Perhaps there already is one? Get some more shots of Newcastle etc anyway! ;)
But half the problem there is with people complaining about disruption and costs... there were supposed to be two new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly along with/after/for use by the Ordsall Chord (and, presumably some other measures to make it all useable without moving the freight depot?) but it all got cancelled for some combination of the above!
@@rockerjim8045 The half near the University is fine, that area is mostly going to be torn down in the next few years anyway since that part of the campus has been moved south. The other half near Oxford road is more tricky.
Take Northamptonshire as an example: The whole county has 5 railway stations (excepting heritage lines). Look at a map of its closed lines and it resembles a Tube map. Oh, oh, oh that some of these could be reopened - including the former Great Central main line. I suppose that the nearby Varsity Line project (Cambridge-Oxford) is an encouraging sign of what may be achieved one day.
Like NSW, Australia, where I've lived for a while now (used to be near Herne Hill in London). Sydney, and its environs get the major rail links. The rest of the state gets one train a day if they're very lucky, one train a week if they're unlucky, and bugger all if they're totally ignored. At election times there's talk of high speed rail, but that turns out to be for Sydney and its environs too. Not that that matters, because it never gets built anyway.
I live in Derby - the most central place in the UK and responsible for much of the creation of railways. We have barely anything here, our local transport is awful and they tore the tram lines out in the 90s. Nottingham nearby has a full tram system which we look upon with envy.
There is Northern Powerhouse Rail but under Rishi Sunak there has been no mention of this project and Sunak has shown no intention in building the project. HS2 is under construction but delayed and then there is the Transpennine Route Upgrade but that isn't a new line just a much needed upgrade. London meanwhile is considering Crossrail 2 and then there has been Thameslink 2/Crossrail 3 which was a rumored line. But there are now, after the Elizabeth Line, no major transit projects in the UK bar HS2 and if it ever happens, Northern Powerhouse Rail.
HS2 has been massively cut too, along with more and more bits being thrown in the bin. There was a rather important bit near Carlisle that would have allowed fast link ups to the line up to Glasgow but a Tory MP used it as leverage to get it removed because of the NIMBY's in his constituency to vote for Boris in the no confidence vote, which was all for nought anyway. There's something of a bottleneck in the network in that part of the world and HS2 was going to remove it. No longer. Also the Trans Pennine upgrade and electrification thing has been promised for close to a century at this point. I'll only believe it's happened when I'm actually on a nice new electric train on the upgraded route lol. The whole area between Liverpool and Hull really needs a fully integrated mass transit system like the Tube and Overground. Manchester ABSOLUTELY NEEDS a subway system if it wants to be able to function. The population in the city itself is set to double in the next decade alone, never mind the rest of the region which has been growing for the last 3 decades since the influx of investment after the IRA bombing.
After Crossrail has been finished though, since Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo extension have both been mothballed (NB only mothballed - I concede outside London it would probably have been straight up cancelled) London doesn't really have anything on the go except HS2, and that doesn't count so much either since it also counts for Birmingham, etc. Basically, by the sounds of it current policy for non-HS rail projects is "everyone is equal when nobody gets anything", which is arguably worse than "only this place gets transit" overall, although less unfair.
I think NPR, which at its latest iteration, was mainly a bunch of improvements to existing lines, was effectively going to be the replacement for HS3. I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 Manchester leg is mothballed by the time the Birmingham leg eventually opens, so leaving the new track terminating at Crewe and the East Midlands Hub. Unsurprisingly, there's a conspiracy that the unstated main reason for the line is to extend the London commuter belt to Birmingham and beyond, thus relieving housing pressure on London authorities as paying for Midlands housing and a rail season ticket would be cheaper than building at home. The flip side is, of course, more pressure on Midlands authorities to vastly increase their housing provision. A few years back, the residents of Warwick District were appalled at an allocation for 11,000 houses in the draft Local Plan, stating it was far more than necessary, only around 6,000 were needed. The Planning Inspectorate, however, argued they needed to increase housing allocation to 14,000 - at least partially due to overspill from nrighbouring Coventry, which didn't have enough land to build for anticipated demand. So over the next 20 years, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of greenfield (but not greenbelt) land gets allocated for housing, regardless of the predictable local opposition.
HS2 is also just designed around funneling money towards London and is used as a money making scheme for the contractors as it's costing almost 10 times that of a railway in France.
You'd be very welcome to come up and get some more shots of the Tyne and Wear Metro - it's a great example of focused transport investment and has some beautiful historic stations to boot
It's a kind of dog biting its own tail situation. Infrastructure follows money, and yet money follow infrastructure. You neglect infrastructure in an area for too long, it becomes less palatable for investors.
It's really about the money too. Almost every major city in Bavaria or BaWü, the richtest states here in germany, is able to maintain an massive train based public transport service. On the other side, similar cities in poorer states still have to rely on buses. So there's cities like Heidelberg with 30km of tram lines and also Münster or Lübeck which may be much bigger, but have less € for fancy Bombardier trains.
I'd really love for you to dig into the history and current state of the Tyne and Wear Metro a bit, it's such a clear example of an area desparate for rail investment and an absolute unwillingness for anything to be given to it by central government. It's especially annoying when there are so many really obvious improvements that could be made. You've got the obvious extension down to washington on the old Leamside line from Pelaw, as well as the alignment from South Hylton that meets up with it near Penshaw monument. That whole area is desparate for a link, Washington has always been notoriously difficult to get to thanks to the total lack of any rail transport, and it's insane that the whole line was mothballed in the early 90s instead of intergrated into the metro. You've got the *blindingly* obvious extension from Gateshead Stadium up across the quayside and round through Dunston to the Metrocentre (that's right - the metrocentre doesn't have a metro link!), which is literally the second biggest shopping centre in the country. As it is now getting a train to the Metro Centre is extremely awkward, with direct trains from Heworth going via newcastle central station and the best route most of the time being taking the metro to central station and then doubling back on yourself to the metro centre. It's ridiculous just how awkward and difficult it is to get there via rail, especially when all of the track is there. This route also gives the possibility for a station on the corner, right next to the Sage, Gateshead College, and the soon to be built arena and exhibition centre. There's an alignment that runs from between Northumberland Park and Shiremoor down past the Silverlink to Percy Main, which would both bisect the loop on North Tyneside as well as give access to the big retail park over there. There's another existing alignment from Chillingham Road to Benton and Palmersville, which could further bisect the north tyneside loop and make it a lot less of a pain to get anywhere there. And those are just the really obvious low hanging fruit! No tunnels, no demolitions, heck not even any land acquisition since all of it is existing alignments and track. Still, at least we're finally getting new trains this year if we're lucky, finally getting rid of the nearly 50 year old trains. (Although to have a minor gripe, the new trains have a full width cab so they no longer have a front window seat. I've got many memories of when I was little sitting staring out of the front, it was always a delight.)
Completely agree with your proposition that railways lead to development as demonstrated in the early part of the twentieth century with the creation of Metroland and the other suburbs built after the extensions of the underground railways. The same thing happened south of the river when the pre-grouping railways extended and which the Southern continued. Even electrifying existing lines improves traffic.
More rail makes sense in London because the underground means there is a lot of rail to connect to enhancing the benefits. Outside of London road transp is king be it bus, coach or taxi. In the West Midlands the Metro is expanding connecting places to realistically one other place at a time and being above ground is hopelessly slow and cracks apart for the fun of it. Busses on the other hand enjoy a larger more versatile network.
*1)* One third of Liverpool's metro, Merseyrail, was binned by Thatcher - men ordered off site. Miles of trackbed & tunnels still await trains. They were to build inferior street trams as a booby prize, the lines were delivered, but HMG cancelled it; *2)* Manchester had its underground metro cancelled in the 70s. They have uncomfortable street running trams to compensate; *3)* Leeds only has buses; *4)* Bristol only has buses; *5)* Birmingham is the largest city in Europe without a rapid-transit network. They are giving them cut down street running trams; *6)* Edinburgh has a few street running trams, same with Sheffield and Nottingham; *7)* Southampton & Portsmouth were to have street running trams, but cancelled. The above cities can only drool at having a tiny fraction of the mass/rapid-transit rail London has.
You could also argue the Borders Railway in Scotland, and potentially the Levenmouth Rail Link (now being built) - as well as the Colne-Skipton link that SELRAP want to rebuild. The Borders Railway certainly demonstrated the principle that if you build it, they will come - predicted to have marginal passenger usage, it more than doubled the passenger use in the first 5 months.
The Colne-Skipton link would pay for itself in about two years, based *solely* on the reduction in delays due to there being a fourth east-west route available to operators.
I played my part in the construction and handover of the Millenium Dome and the year-long exhibition that was soon forgotten. I was privy at the time to a lot of behind the scenes planning and I remember one of the Themes , sponsored by BT, had a model of London redevelopment with Canary Wharf only part of it. People probably didn't realise at the time what they would be looking at- but I can tell you, the plan was vast compared with the original DS1 and Cabot Square.
I proposed to my wife at the Millennium Dome. I planned on doing it elsewhere but the best laid plans…. The good thing about proposing there is that it was only there for one year and she couldn’t drag me back to the spot for sentimental reasons. :/.
Another great tube history video! As a visitor, I enjoyed the new developments at Canary Wharf and Battersea Power Station! I also recently experienced Metrolink in Manchester and found it very useful. Coming from the airport the approach along Castlefield Viaduct to Deansgate station was amazing.
I've been in Barcelona this week. Being on the trains/Metro there has made me appreciate just how (despite its flaws) decent they are in the UK. We have regular, comfortable trains and open spaces. To me those in Barcelona felt darker and in need of a facelift. Maybe that's me just being used to comfort? 🤷♀️ They were fine to get about and easy enough to understand even in English but getting the train home late last night while half asleep, at least I was doing so in relative comfort.
I'm surprised there was no mention of the ability that London has that no other city in the UK has (at least to same extent): The ability to raise money and, crucially, get loans against future potential earnings. The government doesn't give TFL any extra money. The TFL just has the ability to raise its own funds, through fares but also through taxes. The TFL also is able to arrange loans against future ticket and development revenue (something councils can't do without going through central government as i understand). TFL is further expanding this by now actually building the flats and such above/around their new lines themselves which is giving them additional income streams, something unattainable for other cities in the UK. Setting up organisations with similar rules to TFL would have a big impact.
Also, TfL's powers are unlike any other transport authority in the country. It can connect transport systems together. It can insist that things are done its way. Being an authority with authority makes all the difference.
Many years ago, an old Beeching-era line was reinstated (in single track form) from Cardiff to Ebbw Vale. Prediction: 30,000 passengers per year. Actual number: 252,000. Include every station on the line and you have 750,000 ticket sales a year since. Now, if only they could see the benefit of all the other old lines that made east-west connections, more fun would be had by all and Cardiff Central would stop being a hub. The only slight problem is a few bridges and viaducts have been demolished and some cycle routes may have to be shifted a bit to the left...
In suburban Washington DC they extended the Metro into Virginia. When it was being built I watched an interview with an urban planner who was asked why they would build it through an area of car dealerships and low rise buildings. He said wait 10 years and get back to me. I visited that area last month. All the car dealerships and low rise buildings have been replaced with high rise office and residential. I didn’t recognize the area from my last visit several years ago.
It comes to a lot of talks and nothing gets done. Where I live there is a couple of projects that get talked about. Coventry to Leicester used to run direct but the rails were pulled up now they say they will have to put them back. The same goes for Leicester to Burton this was proposed to be established by British Rail and we are still painting. It is like that all over the country, especially the North. Oh yes, we are still waiting for the electrification of the St Pancras to Nottingham/Sheffield. It's all on the books to be done. Let's have a seance with Charles Yerkes to get things moving.
Right about Yerkes ... he was an expert at getting money out of investors for transport infrastructure that would never actually pay but would be very useful for future generations (and of course making him some short term money). Hence the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern lines and District electrification in a few years 1905-7, before people actually saw what the balance sheets would look like ...
Re the Coventry to Leicester route, I think in recent years it used to go in and reverse out of Nuneaton station, crossing the WCML lines in the process. But at some point this proved too disruptive to Virgin trains etc. so it was stopped, now passengers have to change. But perhaps you're alluding to an older track that used to tunnel right under the WCML although that one avoided Nuneaton station altogether... Is there a plan to reinstate that?
@@stephenholt4670 I am only referring to what I have read. When I was a kid I lived at Hinckley prior to 1965 the trains went from Birmingham NS - Nuneaton Abbey Street but that is gone. I spent most of my life in Australia before returning. I can't remember the train going from Leicester to Coventry. There is an old flyover over the WCML that could be resurrected but looking at the latest that is no longer a proposal. Not stopping at Nuneaton would be nonsense. If the line is going under the WCML then give it a platform. I know more nonsense. They have been talking about building a new station near the A5 Nuneaton Parkway which could be used except passengers would have to change.
@@stephenholt4670 Yes, there were various stages. In the 1970s there was no service from Coventry to Nuneaton and you had to go all the way round through Birmingham or catch a bus. In the 1980s the very useful Coventry-Nuneaton-Leicester service was introduced. There is a flyover at Nuneaton giving direct Birmingham-Leicester transit for goods trains but it misses the platforms so is no good for passenger trains. Kenilworth also got added at some point before the service sadly got split into the two halves as you describe.
@@iankemp1131 That flyover was reopened for passenger use back in 2004, along with platforms 6 & 7 being built at Nuneaton for trains coming off the flyover; that was also when the Coventry - Nuneaton - Leicester/Nottingham/Lincoln service was split at Nuneaton because of the impact of those trains crossing the WCML at the south end of Nuneaton station. For clarity, the flyover was reopened to stop Birmingham - Leicester/Anglia trains crossing the layout and impeding Virgin West Coast trains; it certainly wasn't done for the benefit of the regional passengers! Despite lots of hot air, it's highly unlikely the Coventry Leicester service will be reintroduced. It's simply going to cost too much and offers no benefit to London-bound services. The only way I can see it happening is the number of WCML trains through Nuneaton drastically reduces after HS2 opens, thus allowing paths to be found for CovLeics trains to cross the layout, but I doubt that'll happen.
What annoys is where London based projects are partially paid for by those of us who live hundreds of miles away when we ourselves have no rail within 30 miles
Even within London there is a lot of disparity when it comes to investment in infrastructure in general, particularly with regards to South London. Apologies, this will be quite an essay for a YT comment. Despite numerous opportunities, public transport in the area is still quite poor - despite the significant demand. . The Bakerloo Line Extension is a perfect example of this disparity, even within London. While the results of the public consultation showed overwhelming support for an extension via Camberwell Green, a route via Old Kent Road was chosen instead. Why? Developers. Building yet more generic "luxury" flats, with more on the way - oh, great joy! Routing the extension via Camberwell Green would have taken far more buses off the roads, reducing congestion and green gas emissions significantly, as well as potentially allowing the buses to be deployed elsewhere to improve other services. Now it seems even the extension via Old Kent Road is unlikely to happen anytime in the near future. The rolling stock on the line is the oldest on the Underground I believe and is expected to continue soldiering on for the foreseeable future, while other lines receive new stock. In my opinion , the council's of London (and to be honest, the entirety of the UK) are not fit for purpose. They're not interested in serving the needs of their constituents, they're only interested in lining their pockets as much as possible before their corruption is exposed and they quietly disappear.
"If you built it, they will come" These words are very true in my case, as I have no car, I only visit places in London or outside that are served by rail.
I would love to see more rail connections especially in parts like the south west where transport seems to get forgotten about. The London to Penzance train is so long and expensive it's so much easier to fly or drive down. It's also not electrified.
A return to pre Beeching level rail would be a dream come true, and much of the alignment and engineering works are there for a lot of it. Ok, I know it's not as simple as relaying tracks, tunnels, bridges, embankments, cuttings, all would require large redevelopment, and of course swathes of urban regeneration in towns and cities across the country have effectively built houses and roads over old lines and stations that would need to be expanded to accommodate the increase in traffic. Still, I think that there is a genuine interest in expandoing our railways in such a way that all towns over 10,000 people are connected to a railway.
One of the MOST important things that governments can do is to undertake large public infrastructure projects that are beyond the reach of most organisations. Investments in public transport are in my opinion a no-brainer because they almost always make people's lives better and places better to live in. The problem we all face is that ALL governments are driven by self-interest. Rather than undertaking projects that benefit the public at large, they do things that make them look good, that "cement their legacy" (ghastly phrase) or that improve their chances of re-election. It is very rare that projects are chosen for the improvement they will bring to the lives of ordinary people. My particular bete-noir is HS2. Not only is it trashing the rural area where I grew up, but a miniscule fraction of its' cost would have made massive improvements to the rail networks in the Midlands and the North, improvements which would benefit ten times the number of people that might ever benefit from HS2.
This happens pretty much everywhere. In my native Netherlands, the people in the north first wanted a high-speed railway line (which, arguably, in a country as small as the Netherlands and with the relatively low population density in the north, might have been a bit of overkill), and are now asking for just, you know, a better connection to the Dutch equivalent of London: the Randstad. The ironic part, though, is that investment in less affluent areas _still_ benefits the more affluent more. How this works, I can't say, but every 10 €/£/$ you put in one of the peripheral regions still has more benefits for the economic centre. With this sort of discussion, I think it's also important to know beforehand what the economic effects of new infrastructure will be, instead of to assume it.
Interesting point about 'if you build it, they will come' - but the issue is, a lot of transport planning (especially outside of London) lacks context, and is rarely conducted in tandem with land-use planning. Look at the Sheffield Supertram, for example - built to run through some of the most impoverished areas of the city, in the hopes it would bring regeneration to these areas, but even almost 30 years later, this has yet to happen, mostly because local authorities had no say in developing the areas that the network served. That's where TOD (Transit orientated developments) come in, but these have their own issues with gentrification (such as Battersea, Kings Cross etc).
I think another bit needs to be added to the statment "If you build it, they will come!", just for Irish Rail. That statment should read "If you build it, and open it, they will come." Irish Rail built a station between Clondalkin Fonthill and Adamstown Stations, but did not open the station, as the planned houseing did not get built. But if they did open the station, they would have still have got enough people using it. As there is a business park within a 10 minute walk from the enterance to the station, and there is other houseing estates within 15 minute or less walk to the station. Not forgetting there is a bus route which passes by the station, with the new TFI 90 Minute fare, would bring more people to the station. The TFI 90 Minute fare allows unlimit travel on all buses, trains and trams within Dublin touching on within 90 minutes from when you first touch your Leap card on the leap card reader. It is going to cost more money to do up the station, before they can open it.
Excellent video as always Jago. However, whilst I do of course take on board that yes, London has more population and is a major player in the financial markets yadda yadda yadda.... When you come a lot north of Watford, you see entire rail projects that would MASSIVELY regenerate whole areas, not being taken forward for the sake of literally ten or twenty million quid. And yet for example on the Elizabeth Line, Bond Street station's overspend was £570 million. And that's not the cost, but just the ADDITIONAL cost of just ONE station. Whilst I am in no way saying that Londoner's shouldn't have a good transport network, you can perhaps see when you get inconsistency like that, where we are literally getting NOTHING, that we stop throwing our spears, stop covering each other in woad and then after we've built a wicker man in the shape of the Rail Minister, we then get a bit annoyed. Also, I recently saw someone just miss their tube train and the next one was three minutes away. Three minutes!! He went absolutely INSANE!! I said... "Whoa whoa whoa mate. Three minutes? Come live up where I'm from pal Ours are one an HOUR, if it even decides to turn up!!" Honestly, they don't know they are born down there. And yet they want more and faster and better and.... whatever!! Not saying you shouldn't have EVERYTHING you need and want and you seem to usually get it too. Just let us have some of it too. And maybe it can be powered by that new fangled Electric trickery we keep hearing about. That would be nice.
If whole communities would be transformed by ten or twenty million pounds, it is open to the local councils to introduce a £12.50 a day congestion charge, as London has, and spend the first one or two million of those on the project. If only 1,000 people drive five days a week, the traffic of a medium or large town, the thing can be paid for in 4 or 8 years. If the population covered is of any real size, it could be done in a year or two. But of course the only part of the UK that thinks it’s transport problems are serious enough, and important enough to the population, to impose a congestion charge like that in London. Everywhere else doesn’t think it is worth taking the steps London does.
@@DanielsPolitics1 You do realise that outside London (where TfL has its own powers which can't easily be interfered with) a congestion charge can only be applied with the agreement of central government, don't you? And that central government basically goes out of its way to refuse to allow local authorities to do anything for themselves? The only place I know of which has successfully managed to get any sort of charging agreed by central government and introduced is Nottingham - but that's a workplace parking levy, not congestion charging, and they had to jump through so many hoops to get that agreed by Whitehall that most local authorities would just have given up.
'I don't know if it comes across in my videos, but I'm a little bit pro rail'. Well, 'no sh!t Jago', that's why I'm here and watching your channel and have been for ages, I love your other stuff too, but rail, London and the Underground is just my thing too. Keep up the good work!
I think a core aspect of what causes these issues is that politicians in this country outright refuse to spend money on anything that doesn't directly benefit themselves or fit into their worldview. Current mob are the absolute extreme of that example. I was speaking to a member of the House of Lords who runs a campaign group on General Aviation not so long ago, and something that he explained to me was how much of a nightmare it was to get ministers to think outside of their insular little bubble. Despite himself, multiple lords and MPs trying to explain that GA is a very diverse sector of aviation, with a lot of SME engagement, that it provides a source of skilled labourers, and that many private aircraft are owned by co-operative groups, they just don't listen. Ministers in the Department for Transport are stuck in the 1930s, believing that GA is just some rich toff's hobby, and thus any major issues, such as a serious lack of mechanics and difficulties funding airfields, can just be solved by getting those old boys to just throw a load of money into the sector. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for funding public transport. Expanding on that point, the government may be made to see... alternative approaches, if a group of very, *very* wealthy individuals or corporations raise their concerns. Hence why Crossrail was able to escape planning hell in the first place, as it runs through both of London's financial districts. Meanwhile, a southwards Bakerloo line extension has been canned, because it runs through poor, ethnically diverse and politically left-leaning communities (read: "Won't vote Tory"). Applying this kind of logic to the UK as a whole, it becomes much clearer as to why so many communities have been left behind by the government, especially in urban or industrialised areas, where locals are unlikely to sympathise with a staunchly right-wing British political system beyond isolated issues.
I live in West Cumbria, where trains run about once an hour and get cancelled with no notice, replacement or genuine alternative. Buses are about the same for timings, but then take an age to actually get anywhere. Having been in Manchester at the weekend and used the trams while there it shows if you build it they will come. Back in Cumbria it's a treat for our kids to go on public transport because of how inconvenient it is to use for 90% of trips. Everything has to be planned out and there's no just waiting at the bus stop because another bus will be along in 5 minutes, miss the bus and it can be a minimum of an hour for the next one. Anyhow, rant over, great video, even if it is about London (again)😉.
Jago - us brummies are willing to wager that our cross-city line is the best the uk has outside of the london area; 6tph before the pandemic. we have the midlands rail hub plan too - if not making a video on it, i think you might find it interesting! some great ideas and a few that might leave you scratching your head.
One thing that bugs me is that when the government goes on about "the north", they either mean Scotland (although usually they'll say Scotland in that case), or they mean Manchester or Leeds, possibly Liverpool. The North East barely gets a say in anything, let alone the north west (such as the cutback on HS2), but at least eventually the MetCam built Class 599/994 (it's unclear which they are) metrocars from 1978-1981 are being replaced by the new Stadler class 555s, as well as the Ashington line reopening soon, and the Durham Coast line being resignalled. It's still weird that Heaton depot now has 158s instead of 142s; a much needed upgrade from 1985-7 built units to 1989-1992 built units which was only a thing because of disability access.
The Ashington line isn't going to bring benefits, it'll be slower and more expensive than the bus to get into the city centre. Also it's progressing at an absolute snails pace to build A platform and make the car park A BIT bigger in Ashington. But it's better than nothing and opens up potential improvements.
Manchester and Liverpool are trendy as far as government are concerned, but otherwise pretty much anywhere more than about 50 miles away from the M25 is stuffed. In the East Midlands we're supposed to be grateful because the single 153s we suffered for decades are being replaced by "new" (actually 20-year-old) 170s, and we don't even get a sprinkling of brand-new trains on our regional services (at least in Northern-land you might see a 195!) We still don't get decent service levels, though, with low frequencies, random gaps (still blamed on Covid) and early finishes. The people in London who moan about their "poor" public transport really don't know how lucky they are, do they?
It's worth remembering that London's railways serve a massive population, when you add in all the people from the home counties who work in London or are economically dependant on it, even after the recent WfH developments. Thus I suspect that the London investment bias looks less dramatic, if you pool the southeast all together.
I seem to remember that Bob Hoskins' gangster character in the 1980 movie the 'The Long Good Friday' foresaw great things for the Docklands, I do remember thinking at the time "Oh! Yer, pull the other one it's got bells on". Shame he got murdered by James Bond for killing Charlie from Casualty.
6:26 Personally it annoys me when anyone says the Newcastle metro, as it serves much more than just Newcastle, it goes round the coast and down into the City of Sunderland and South Shields
I have long argued that the reason why HS2 is being built is to provide London commuters with access to "cheap" housing in the West Midlands (as compared with house prices in the South-East). The fact that the extensions to both Leeds and Manchester are now cancelled, I believe, proves my point. Commuting to London from these two Northern cities on a daily basis is probable exhausting. Whereas, HS2 should get you from the West Midlands to central London in 40-45 mins. Existing journey times are as little as 65 mins, providing you catch the "right" train. Birmingham has long been starved of transport investment (as has most of 'North of Watford'). The West Midlands Metro is a bit of a joke. The service has only recently restarted after its latest hiatus and goes no-where near the airport. I challenge any non-local to realise that the tram has stopped at New Street Station. So reliability and transport interconnection are real issues. Will further investment come once HS2 is up and running? ... We shall see.
It's the same problem in Massachusetts. There's a lot of economy centred around Boston, as well as the political centre, which causes politicians to keep investing foremost in Boston instead of the rest of the Commonwealth.
From one of your cousins from across the pond, you are SOOOOOOOO lucky to be able to compromise. I wish politicians here would learn that. Great video as always.
Spain has a large collection of airports all sitting idle, with no planes arriving or departing - they were built because EU regional development money was available, not because there was any belief that they might attract passengers.
On a recent enforced-layover [ thankyou freezing-fog, and then snow ], I found myself ensconsced in a 'Dockside Road' hotel [ adjacent to the 'Royal Albert Dock' ]. With my fifth-floor room, came a wonderful view, westwards, of a snowy London, and what clearly were three distinct high-rise clusters - [ from left to right ] Canary Wharf, The City, and [ now, as I latterly figured-out ] Stratford. This view [ and after having ridden the 'Elizabeth Line' from Heathrow T5 to 'Custom House', for my rebooked LCY outbound ] got me to thinking that in the last 3 decades, the centre-of-gravity of London has most definitely shifted to the east, and away from its more traditional 'West-End' focal-point.
Nice view of Northumberland at the end. You did go further than Newcastle!, But in the tradition of Get Carter, we see you going south on the King Edward Bridge and then you end up further north! Now not a lot of people know that?
London's missing links still - Thamesmead ( why oh why Lizzie Line not to that location ). Barking - likewise a DLR across Creekmouth, and it took forever to get the Goblin electricfied
When I was in the Army I was stationed in Heidelberg, which at the time was USAREUR HQ, and it was notoriously a posh duty station because it was where the top brass lived. I suspect there is a similar motive here.
I love how Corporations , and by extension their shareholders , who have to work and produce to earn their "money" are looked down upon for not putting more into "so called" affordable housing . While the civic government is just a junior relative of the entity that "PRINTS THE STUFF"
As someone quite keen on rail, I'm sure you have some thoughts on the fantastically ill conceived Silvertown Tunnel scheme (oops did I give away my bias...) - and Sian Berry's suggestion to scrap the road and use it for a DLR extension south of the river? Almost worth a vote...
My toddlers feedback on this one is that 'the trains should move more' which is as insightful commentary on transport planning I've ever seen
I worked to help build One Canada Square as an electrician and later after switching jobs to a company that manufactured lights in the UK won the contract to fit out the whole building... The first set of people to move into One Canada Square then refitted their area and replaced the lights that we supplied with lights from us again but a bit different - so we end up supplying lights for almost the full building twice over
Which disproves the adage that 'lighting never strikes the same place twice'.
@@stephensaines7100 Pfft
How mad was Canary Wharf back then! No one would believe how empty it was!
Whaaaaat!?
I thought this was the crazy norm with open office plan sales. I've seen it happen in the shard, standard lighting layout while it is empty, it gets leased out and the tenant has it fitted out to their layout.
Two things that really skew transport investment decisions in the uk:
1- insisting on prioritising Return on Investment funnels funds into areas that are already doing well, rather than areas that need the transport to unlock growth and regeneration.
2- the "Headquarters effect"- Lots of companies have their head offices in London, so it looks like all their tax receipts and economic activity are concentrated in that one location, reinforcing decisions taken on the basis of (1).
1/5th of the UK popultion lives in greater london - that's a big chunk of people to move
Additionally there is the brain drain effect that London has on the rest of the country.
People spend their childhoods and schooling (funded locally) around the country. Move to London for their productive years when they generate tax receipts, and then retire out to the regions again for the latter part of their life, where social care is also locally funded.
London gets to have people during their productive years and the rest of the country get them when they cost money.
@@stewartellinson8846 It has 1/5th of the UK population, yet London contains over half of all railways in the UK. London's rail network is great and completely necessary for such a huge city. However, the rest of the country is in desperate need of solutions to the ever-worsening road congestion and inefficiency of transit. Cities like Birmingham and Manchester are more than big enough to have their own underground / metro systems, and it's utterly bizarre that they don't. The tram networks in these cities are far too underdeveloped for their size, even if they were integrated with a hypothetical larger metro system. Even much smaller cities and towns could at least have tram systems and more national rail stations in the suburbs rather than just one in the centre. Of course, the quality and frequency of national rail services needs to be improved as well, with electrification of lines at every opportunity. In order for that to be possible, high speed lines must be built to increase capacity on local networks. I don't know exactly how funding could be directed towards these projects in the future, but I do know they need to be built not with immediate profit as the goal (this approach is why the railways are currently so awful), but rather with the goal of a long-term transformation of the UK's economy and society into one far less dysfunctional and incompetent than it currently is.
@@stewartellinson8846 which means 4/5 do not though.
On bus transport 60% of the DfT bus budget is spent in the TfL fares area. Now I only got GCSE B in mathematics but that two thirds of budget spent on one fifth of population.
I accept that need is there but isn't it pointless building projects like HS2, Elizabeth Line (and planned projects that may get cancelled like Crossrail 2) if you're going to have to access the outer stations by private vehicle? I always wish we had the Dutch style payment card that's valid nationally not Oyster or Key Cards that are only valid in their representative cities and actually funded public transport before 0700, after 1800 and at weekends.
@idot Well, London got their special Crossrail, and we got the Eastern Leg of HS2 scrapped. They really need to invest in the north. Cities like Leeds have campaigned for decades for a light rail or metro system and still don't have one, but London gets tons. Leeds & West Yorkshire is one of the largest UK cities outside London.
Platform 13 and 14 at Manchester Picadilly is busier than any Platform I have ever seen in my life and I haven't even seen it at it's busiest. As someone living in the North West, It feels very much that politicians don't use the ones up North so they don't care about them and will actively curb development even just an extra Platform, because they just think it must be people moaning as railways are fine where they are, around London and if the people up north get one, why didn't the people in the south get one or maybe a few on top of that as well.
Platform 13 is literally hell on earth
Platforms 13 and 14 at MAN are, I believe, the ONLY platforms I've ever been on where I felt like I was at serious risk of being accidentally pushed onto the tracks.
Alex,
You are correct.
Pl. 13&14 should be duplicated with a new island platform, 15&16.
Its grim, and makes the Ordsall chord pretty pointless. They needed to widen the Deansgate - Piccadilly corridor at the same time.
@@marsdeat Not a perfect solution, but that waiting area above the platforms seems to work pretty well in controlling passenger numbers down below.
100% agree with the build it and they will come.
A high capacity fast intercity link from Hull to Liverpool (the M62 cities) with spurs north and south would be a game changer.
...or we could use the capitalists' version of that mantra: "don't build it and let them die."
I'd make a pithy comment regarding one of the parties in our so-called democracy, but no matter what party's "in charge" in parliament, *money is always in charge.*
If we want better outcomes for the poor (in not just rail but all matters), we must abandon capitalism.
@@caramelldansen2204 maybe we could build a few more train lines first and see how we get on
@@iainwall Who's going to build it? When an overclass of dictating barons makes it so the only things that get funded are things that help themselves, I'm not sure how you're getting the funding or permission for it.
If you're advocating worker control divorced from the capitalist regime, however... I'm listening.
I was very glad to hear your own views at the end. As a Tube nerd and fan of your channel I am awkwardly aware that my area (South West Wales) gets peanuts in terms of transport funding. In many cases the rails are there but the trains (apart from those to London!) aren't. And even the much vaunted South Wales Metro is taking an age to arrive and won't reach anywhere west of Bridgend. No one thinks London is necessarily over served by rail - without it the city would seize up - just that almost everywhere else gets a raw deal.
The South Wales Metro is a funny one. A lack of funding has meant that the project has been de-scoped pretty significantly, when it finally launches it will essentially be a upgraded, modernised version of the Valley Lines - a lot of the street running expansions (the reason they ordered tram-trains to begin with) will come at a later date. At least that part hasn’t been outright cancelled, thankfully.
It’ll still be a huge upgrade from the existing system - but it’s a shame knowing what it could have been if the money was there. Meanwhile the UK government deliberately labels HS2 as a “England and Wales” project so that they don’t have to give a bunch of extra rail funding to Wales like they have to do for Scotland and NI.
Try South West England. It's like the dark ages. Ironically before Beeching pretty good network and I guess thriving communities and tourism.
I couldn't agree more about "build it and they will come." It's happening here in Canada as well. The new tram line in Kitchener and Waterloo is sure making both places a lot busier with new businesses and so forth. Combined, both cities are smaller than Brighton. It isn't always Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal that get the money for such projects. One light rail project is under construction in Mississauga, the suburb just west of Toronto and another one is coming to Hamilton.
Even in Toronto, they originally thought the Subway would be able to run two-carriage trains in off-peak service, and within a couple of years it was eight carriages all the time.
Hope Hamilton will get their "Street Railway" back. It's in their system's name
@@videonut1988 I would have settled for new trolley buses. Too bad that Toronto junked theirs 30 years ago.
Canada has space. It doesn't have Medieval culverts, antiquities or bronze age and Roman tombs getting in the way.
When you try to build things through a country with years of history it presents challenges. One genuine reason why Elizabeth Line was a challenge.
Sadly our new towns were built around the car and from my experience outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal transport in Canada is massively car based.
The opposite is true, in Australia during the 1980s services were run down and ran less than daily making it inconvenient for passengers, then the railways department point to the poor patronage as an excuse to close the line. For example the Bluebird ran daily from Mt Gambier, when it was made to run three times a week, patronage fell. However the line only closed when the main line at Wolseley was converted to SG isolating the BG branch. The passenger service had been closed years ago by that time.
In the spirit of Jago's recommendation to build more Rail links, I would like to propose a direct link between my house and my place of work. I live in London so I feel my chances are better than most, and to minimise costs - I will only have two trains a day, one to take me to work and one to bring me home. I'm also happy to have a DLR type setup so that there is no driver - I will happily turn the key myself 😁 And with only one carriage needed - I won't be requiring extended platforms either.
I literally answered an A Level Economics question on this. 46% of capital spending was in London. I live near Newcastle, and they are taking 5 years to relay some tracks and add some signalling up to Blyth and Ashington. It's rediculous the extent of the focus onLondon
See my post on the economics.
Ashington* station (in the centre of the place!) has been available for years and the track is used by freight. Investment around there is sorely needed.**
* I visited the town ten years ago and even one of the charity shops was having a 'half-price sale' that day! ** Battery factory maybe . . . ?
SENRUG - The South East Northumberland Rail User Group - has done excellent work for years now, promoting the re-opening of the line to passengers.
When the PM or the Royals comes to places like Middlesbrough they wear a red fur hat. Because when they say where they are going, someone always says "Wear the fox hat."
Took me a moment to get that one…
Clever! 😂😂
Ah yes, "Middlesbrough on Tyne", as I believe one politician put it...
@@theenigmaticst7572 that's the one.
I believe Beeching has a lot to answer for. Many rural areas across the country were cut off and many of them had good rail links to towns and cities. Roads today are clogged up with traffic as there are no other alternatives for people to get to work or to do their shopping. It wouldn't be a bad idea to look at re-opening these old lines as villages around where I live would benefit greatly especially as many lines in Britain have indeed re-opened. London and other cities across the UK have proven that good rail links are the answer.
Beeching did essentially what he was told to do by Government, cut expenditure irrespective of outcomes. Seems very similar to the way Government treats rail today - constant cutting of funding and curtailment of projects - so nothing changes.
@@barrieshepherd7694 The government is owned by the oil industry - and public transport is bad for their profits
@@WillKemp In the case of Dr Beeching it was more the construction companies and in particular the road building company that Minister of Transport Ernest Marples had significant family interests in that was the demise of the railways.
Many of the lines closed before, during and after Beeching aren't actually routes that served their communities well or went where today's residents want to go.
You just end up with trainspottery demands for silly services (like Barton-on-Humber - Brigg - Worksop - Nottingham) which have little justification beyond "serving local authority areas X, Y and Z" and trainspottery "But I think there's a real demand for an hourly service to Thornton Abbey* from Shirebrook**" or fantasy demands to reopen a branch line which would require knocking down three housing estates, a major distribution centre, an industrial estate or two and an out-of-town shopping park to end up taking twice as long to get to the nearby big city as driving does even in the rush hour.
I wish I was joking. :(
*(population approximately zero, commercial attractions also approximately zero)
**(economically deprived former mining town, population rather more than Thornton Abbey, who look towards Mansfield, Nottingham and Sheffield - in that order - for their needs and wouldn't know where North Lincolnshire is!)
[Edit: Shireoaks corrected to Shirebrook (on the Robin Hood Line)]
@@atraindriver Has someone actually suggested a Barton-on-Humber - Brigg - Worksop - Nottingham route?
I would suggest that Shireoaks look towards Sheffield (City and Meadowhall) before Mansfield, and even Mansfield is doubtful. As for Nottingham I just can't believe anyone bothers with going there from the north of the County. I certainly don't, by road or rail.
BTW the Worksop Nottingham rail route was closed to passengers as a result of the Beeching report but was reopened in 1998 - no doubt to satisfy the Nottingham mandarins vanity down in County Hall.
Sometimes it isn't even about the infrastructure itself, but the ability to access it. In rural Lincolnshire, there seems to be no chance that the old branch lines between the towns and villages will be restored, but they could at least provide a decent bus service to towns nearby that do have them.
In the car, it takes me half an hour to get to Grantham and an hour to get to Lincoln. Were I to take the same journey on public transport (which I would love to be able to) both journeys would be at least twice as long.
Nobody's expecting a swanky new railway going to every little village in the county. But please make it possible to access what little infrastructure we do have.
Here in Norfolk, we’d be lucky to get another rail line or even another station apart from maybe another one in Norwich.
But I’m doing my bit. I’m restoring an old station in the hope that we can get the line back
Do yew keep a troshin' buh!😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀🙂🙂🙂
@@fenlinescouser4105 I was born in Cambridge, so I don’t have a Norfolk accent 😅
Tbh i don't think another station in norwich is a priority, land around the railway is mostly undeveloped, people have posited about Dussindale but it's a bit of a niche market. If someone decides to do some serious housebuilding along the railway to connect the urban sprawl to Salhouse or Wymondham than a station would do well. I'd say better to put the time and effort into a couple tramlines - norwich is such a good size for a small tram system. Otherwise a central norfolk railway idea linking majot towns like fakeneham, dereham, swaffham and Kings Lynn would be good (not that can be done in one alignment though). Low cost projects could be to incorporate the heritage lines back into the mainline - dereham trains to norwich is a must as is Aylsham to norwich via wroxham.
@@contrapunctusmammalia3993 Lynn to Dereham, yes please. I’m restoring Middleton Towers which was on the line
@Alex oh cool! I heard about that in the news recently, honestly i misread the title at first and got all excited thinking that the service was getting restored as like a shuttle or something
Great explanation, Jago, thank you. Could one also perhaps make a case that the Metropolitan Railway was an early champion of the “build it and they will come” strategy of rail investment coupled with commercial investment (in that case, housing)?
For me, as a Mancunian (living abroad now), the thing about infrastructure investment in London isn't the fact that most of the money is spent there - I get why that is, but that literally EVERYBODY I know from London and the South East is constantly moaning about how terrible their public transport is, even now. It's infinitely better than it was in the 80s and 90s and the Elizabeth line is a true game-changer yet they always want more more more... (oooh I had to wait a whole 5 minutes for my tube. I had to stand up for 10 minutes etc. etc.) and can't see that they already have a world-class system of transport infrastructure. Of course it's not perfect, but whenever I visit London I always find it so reliable, really practical and such a pleasure to use the underground, train, buses etc. It's also some of the cheapest public transport in the country, but still they complain about the cost!
The problem is, the better the infrastructure becomes, the more people are attracted to use it and it will ALWAYS be overcrowded until, as you say Jago, the government SERIOSULY commit to developing the rest of the country and spreading out the population and wealth. When my friends complain, I tell them to move north, but they don't want to lose the lifestyle of London - the entertainment etc. and they don't want the lower wages. Talk about having your cake and eating it - if you want London wages and the benefits of living in a true world-metropolis, you have to put up with crowded rush hour services.
There are people who hate the Elizabeth line because it's pushing up house prices in the suburbs it serves and making it impossible for most people to buy. OK, the answer is: Buy a 3 bed detached house in Yorkshire for the cost of a bedsit in Stratford and have a nice 20 minute commute into Leeds each morning instead. You can't have it both ways!
"literally EVERYBODY I know from London and the South East is constantly moaning about how terrible their public transport is"
This.
I live in a town not all that far north of the London commuter belt, and we have almost no buses after 6 p.m. or on Sundays, we've only recently started getting trains after 7 p.m. on a Saturday (and still don't have Sunday trains on 50% of routes), and our daytime trains are hourly at best. When someone starts crying on here because it's awful that they've had to wait a whole 20 minutes at 11 p.m. to go to some small town an hour outside London that's half the size of the place I live in, I'm afraid that I find it incredibly hard to even pretend to be sympathetic.
Worth pointing out that Crossrail 2 is on hold and that the East-West rail link is being built. This will reconnect Cambridge with Oxford but also increase freight capacity. It should also remove freight from the ECML and WCML that shouldn't have to be there at all. We have freight that travels to London just to come back out!
Whilst I completely applaud brining back lines that should never have been closed, this line is far from complete, and there are more than enough problems at the Cambridge end to make it likely that it won't be completed.
@@paulhaynes8045 it's about building needed lines not nostalgia. one of the problems is that the UK spends too much time regretting the slow victorian railways we closed and not enough building the quick modern ones we need. Do you know how many level crossings there are between Bletchley and bedford?
@@stewartellinson8846 my understanding is that it's more or less complete, just a lot if hassle at the Cambridge end (not universally popular with Cambridgites...)
@@paulhaynes8045 there's nothing between Bedford and Cambridge - they haven't even decided on a route. There's lots of consultations (and NIMBYism) but nothing remotely like a rail anywhere.
Under current progress (as I understand it), work to Bletchley is near enough complete to see itself through. There is a lot of work needed to integrate the Marston Vale line, which does already exist, but has the issue that it has many very short stations very close together, none of them particularly heavily used, and current trackbed conditions limit linespeed to 60 mph. All of this makes integrated operation difficult; most of the stations require rebuilding or rationalization, and the trackbed needs significant improvement work. This is not impossible, and in my opinion should be done, else they are left with an odd stub branch that requires rolling stock unique from the surrounding areas and many little-used stations.
The section to Cambridge, however, faces a decent amount of political opposition, requires a sizable amount of eminent domain purchasing, and would be rather expensive in comparison to previous segments; therefore, I don’t think that section has much of a chance, in the current climate, of being built.
Absolutely rail development encourages other investments alongside it. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. The city didn't have any local transport on rail for many years. A decade and a half ago, a light rail line was opened, and later extended. Ever since then, multiple apartment buildings and businesses have been built alongside the Blue Line.
Yep. The Metropolitan Line went from London right out into the fields. Whole towns sprang up around the stations.
7.30 sums it up perfectly. You only have to look across the channel to see how the European countries that have invested in high speed rail links and cheap fares over the last 20-30 years are now storming ahead of UK economically.
Was the same for the London Overground extension to Barking Riverside - a chunk of money for that came from the housing development nearby, as one of the conditions for building that much housing in one go was that they had to partially fund transport links to the area.
It’s kind of a shame to think about how Canary Wharf could’ve all been (relatively) affordable flats, and Thamesmead could’ve had a tube line!
Reinvestment has been a success in Glasgow too, where a lot of the local lines cut by Beeching have been reopened and are thriving. The rolling stock is a bit old but honestly I like that, now that so many have been replaced elsewhere in the country it’s nice to still have the sights and sounds of the old motors. Tons of residential communities in Glasgow have excellent train service, almost metro-like in timetabling, to shops and hospitals and the city centre. People go to work elsewhere in the city on the train without a second thought, but most of them couldn’t a few decades ago.
And let's not forget the Glasgow Subway is due to get new rolling stock - if rumour is to be believed!
I guess there is a bit of disappointment over what could have been when it comes to urban transport outside of London. There was a time in the 70's and early 80's, when serious proposals were being floated for underground systems in cities like Birmingham and Manchester. Then major shifts in the economy and politics pulled so much investment jobs and people into London and many cities in the Midlands and North stagnated or declined. Things began to improve in the 90's, but by then London was so massive and so hungry for investment progress was slow as there were limited resources. Manchester has a fairly decent light rail system, but it's not something that really befits a city of its size and importance. Birmingham has barely anything, for the second largest city in the UK it's quite frankly pathetic.
If we imagine things had gone differently, if those underground systems had been built in the 70's and 80's, could that have allowed a more equitable spread of the post industrial service economy around the UK? Would Manchester and Birmingham have a million more people, and London two million fewer? Would our politics be more federalist, with regional cities commanding more political power? Who knows.
Excellent, well thought through, post. Deserves far more likes and comments than it has at the moment (1 and 0!).
You have to take some of the post war talk of underground systems in Manchester and Birmingham with a pinch of salt as some of it was cover for Cold War bunker construction in the cities (for example the Anchor and Guardian telephone exchanges). The talk came to nothing because it was only ever designed to be talk by the people who started doing the talking.
@@GreenJimll That doesn't really make too much sense to me, the amount of excavation for a bomb shelter and an underground system is larger by several orders of magnitude. You wouldn't need such an elaborate cover for something on that scale.
@@Croz89 Bear in mind how big Guardian and Anchor are. They aren't some tiny concrete box buried under a hill. Just one of Anchor's completed operational tunnels is about 1.2km long, and would have been 2.2km long if they'd finished the abandoned tunnel out through Jewellry Quarter to Hockley.
@@GreenJimll Even then, that sort of excavation is not unusual for say, a new sewer or culvert. No need to be so elaborate with pretending you're building an underground system which people would take _way_ more interest in so would necessitate more efforts to cover up your true intentions.
Besides, almost none of these plans actually got to break ground, the Picc-Vicc tunnel being the one that got the furthest.
Amen. Preach it, brother! I'm with you, 'Not Just Bikes', 'Adam Something', and 'City Beautiful' all the way!
So far the most sensible thing to happen has been the "restoring our railways" thing. Exeter-Okehampton has been very successful after it's reopened. Personally I'd like to see a much improved connection for Somerset/Wiltshire, there's a string of towns which could be deserving of a rail service (Marlborough, Devizes, Shepton Mallet, Wells, Glastonbury). Even our existing services aren't up to scratch as GWR has such a shortage of diesel units.
As a long fan of the channel and a proud Mackem, I would like to inform you that the so called “Newcastle Metro” is infact called the “Tyne & Wear Metro” as it goes to Gateshead (not Newcastle), South Shields and Sunderland.
Cries in North Tyneside
I'm from the South East but well remember some of these lines as the Jesmond Loop back in the 1970's.
@@rufusfromjohto7515 north Tyneside doesn’t have a great deal of Tyne and Wear metro stations but most of them are a reasonable walking distance from the population centres
The Tyne & Wear metro also goes to Newcastle, the airport and most of North Tyneside
@@geocachingwomble Apart from Wallsend, Hadrian Road, Percy Main, Meadow well, North Shields, Tynemouth, Cullercoats, Whitley bay, Monkseaton, West Monkseaton, Shiremoor, Northumberland Park and Palmersville
Interesting video as always. You mentioned the Tyne & Wear Metro briefly. If you have a visit to the North East it is a system that would be a good subject for one (or more) of your videos. Like parts of the TfL routes, it shares a section from Sunderland to Heworth with Northern Rail trains. But hurry if you want to feature the Metro Cammell units that have operated since the 1980s. Or you could do that then come back for the new trains, due soon!
As a former chair of a planning committee, its quite easy to say that developers will try anything to reduce the amount of affordable housing there is. Sometimes its for legitimate reasons, - having unexpected expenses to clean up a site (asbestos or former gasworks) or not wanting to create a ghetto of affordable housing. More usually its about getting out of building something they'd basically have to sell at cost. Sometimes a developer will get paid however much it costs to build something - a waste incinerator, say, paid for by a county council - whereas other times their profit is solely from what they can sell from what they've built. Scummy moves are all the rage.
Since I've left, the government seem to have made it easier to perpetrate scummy moves. Why would they do that?
Shame we've got to rely on them so heavily. If only there was a tried and proven way of providing low cost housing to those who need it without being beholden to investment funds...
@@xr6lad Mixed income housing development reduces these vague 'social problems' you mention. National government policy restricts councils from building housing so rely on private developers.
@@SouthLondonRailwayPhotography this is a big part of Helsinki's policy and I think scandi countries generally-you set aside district/block level income targets so you avoid any one area being "the affordable housing Bad Zone." The other interesting thing that's done (Vienna is best known for this) is letting people who qualify for a subsidized unit stay in without rent increases after their income goes up so you have a lot more stability and a lot more e.g. people who qualify initially as broke young ppl and then stay in as they become more established.
@@douglasgraebner1831 How is that a good thing? If you have more income you should be expected to pay your fair share. Why should people with plenty of money get their rent subsidised by others by force?
@@SouthLondonRailwayPhotography That way would be for central government to a) allow local councils to build affordable housing b) provide financial support for them to do so.
We went on a school geography trip in the late 1980's to Canary Wharf and it was totally deserted. The DLR looked like Sci-fi and it was hard to believe our teacher who said it was going to be an important business centre in the future.
Another excellent report Mr H. The big snag of course is that in modern Britain, we do not have a government that is "serious about improving the country outside London and the South-East" - would that it were so!
Apart from that, I would like to see a video examining the schemes that have been built in the Midlands and the North, and perhaps suggesting more that could be built in the future - apart from the 'phantom' HS2. Perhaps there already is one? Get some more shots of Newcastle etc anyway! ;)
You realise Labour at this point is basically just the London People's Party don't you?
Certainly the Central Manchester Castlefield Corridor deserves a big upgrade given how busy and over capacity it currently is.
Sadly lots of buildings in the way
But half the problem there is with people complaining about disruption and costs... there were supposed to be two new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly along with/after/for use by the Ordsall Chord (and, presumably some other measures to make it all useable without moving the freight depot?) but it all got cancelled for some combination of the above!
@@rockerjim8045 There is a plan ready to go but it was pulled by the Government.
@@rockerjim8045 The half near the University is fine, that area is mostly going to be torn down in the next few years anyway since that part of the campus has been moved south. The other half near Oxford road is more tricky.
I would absolutely love it if a London Underground type network was built in the Yorkshire Dales
Loved this! Thank you for the introspective on London Rail development. I think railway links are crucial to sustainable development
Take Northamptonshire as an example: The whole county has 5 railway stations (excepting heritage lines). Look at a map of its closed lines and it resembles a Tube map. Oh, oh, oh that some of these could be reopened - including the former Great Central main line. I suppose that the nearby Varsity Line project (Cambridge-Oxford) is an encouraging sign of what may be achieved one day.
Like NSW, Australia, where I've lived for a while now (used to be near Herne Hill in London). Sydney, and its environs get the major rail links. The rest of the state gets one train a day if they're very lucky, one train a week if they're unlucky, and bugger all if they're totally ignored. At election times there's talk of high speed rail, but that turns out to be for Sydney and its environs too. Not that that matters, because it never gets built anyway.
I live in Derby - the most central place in the UK and responsible for much of the creation of railways. We have barely anything here, our local transport is awful and they tore the tram lines out in the 90s. Nottingham nearby has a full tram system which we look upon with envy.
There is Northern Powerhouse Rail but under Rishi Sunak there has been no mention of this project and Sunak has shown no intention in building the project. HS2 is under construction but delayed and then there is the Transpennine Route Upgrade but that isn't a new line just a much needed upgrade. London meanwhile is considering Crossrail 2 and then there has been Thameslink 2/Crossrail 3 which was a rumored line. But there are now, after the Elizabeth Line, no major transit projects in the UK bar HS2 and if it ever happens, Northern Powerhouse Rail.
HS2 has been massively cut too, along with more and more bits being thrown in the bin. There was a rather important bit near Carlisle that would have allowed fast link ups to the line up to Glasgow but a Tory MP used it as leverage to get it removed because of the NIMBY's in his constituency to vote for Boris in the no confidence vote, which was all for nought anyway. There's something of a bottleneck in the network in that part of the world and HS2 was going to remove it. No longer.
Also the Trans Pennine upgrade and electrification thing has been promised for close to a century at this point. I'll only believe it's happened when I'm actually on a nice new electric train on the upgraded route lol.
The whole area between Liverpool and Hull really needs a fully integrated mass transit system like the Tube and Overground. Manchester ABSOLUTELY NEEDS a subway system if it wants to be able to function. The population in the city itself is set to double in the next decade alone, never mind the rest of the region which has been growing for the last 3 decades since the influx of investment after the IRA bombing.
East/West Rail?
After Crossrail has been finished though, since Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo extension have both been mothballed (NB only mothballed - I concede outside London it would probably have been straight up cancelled) London doesn't really have anything on the go except HS2, and that doesn't count so much either since it also counts for Birmingham, etc. Basically, by the sounds of it current policy for non-HS rail projects is "everyone is equal when nobody gets anything", which is arguably worse than "only this place gets transit" overall, although less unfair.
I think NPR, which at its latest iteration, was mainly a bunch of improvements to existing lines, was effectively going to be the replacement for HS3.
I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 Manchester leg is mothballed by the time the Birmingham leg eventually opens, so leaving the new track terminating at Crewe and the East Midlands Hub.
Unsurprisingly, there's a conspiracy that the unstated main reason for the line is to extend the London commuter belt to Birmingham and beyond, thus relieving housing pressure on London authorities as paying for Midlands housing and a rail season ticket would be cheaper than building at home.
The flip side is, of course, more pressure on Midlands authorities to vastly increase their housing provision. A few years back, the residents of Warwick District were appalled at an allocation for 11,000 houses in the draft Local Plan, stating it was far more than necessary, only around 6,000 were needed. The Planning Inspectorate, however, argued they needed to increase housing allocation to 14,000 - at least partially due to overspill from nrighbouring Coventry, which didn't have enough land to build for anticipated demand.
So over the next 20 years, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of greenfield (but not greenbelt) land gets allocated for housing, regardless of the predictable local opposition.
HS2 is also just designed around funneling money towards London and is used as a money making scheme for the contractors as it's costing almost 10 times that of a railway in France.
You'd be very welcome to come up and get some more shots of the Tyne and Wear Metro - it's a great example of focused transport investment and has some beautiful historic stations to boot
He'd find some humour too, like the Gateshead Stadium station which is a very long way from the actual stadium . . .
I think it’s a dilemma in every country where some territories or regions get more prominence with respect to infrastructure than the others.
In the US, the East Coast gets more transit projects than the Midwest or West Coast.
It's a kind of dog biting its own tail situation.
Infrastructure follows money, and yet money follow infrastructure.
You neglect infrastructure in an area for too long, it becomes less palatable for investors.
wow so profound and definitely needed to be commented
@@henreereeman8529 what is?
It's really about the money too.
Almost every major city in Bavaria or BaWü, the richtest states here in germany, is able to maintain an massive train based public transport service. On the other side, similar cities in poorer states still have to rely on buses. So there's cities like Heidelberg with 30km of tram lines and also Münster or Lübeck which may be much bigger, but have less € for fancy Bombardier trains.
I'd really love for you to dig into the history and current state of the Tyne and Wear Metro a bit, it's such a clear example of an area desparate for rail investment and an absolute unwillingness for anything to be given to it by central government. It's especially annoying when there are so many really obvious improvements that could be made.
You've got the obvious extension down to washington on the old Leamside line from Pelaw, as well as the alignment from South Hylton that meets up with it near Penshaw monument. That whole area is desparate for a link, Washington has always been notoriously difficult to get to thanks to the total lack of any rail transport, and it's insane that the whole line was mothballed in the early 90s instead of intergrated into the metro.
You've got the *blindingly* obvious extension from Gateshead Stadium up across the quayside and round through Dunston to the Metrocentre (that's right - the metrocentre doesn't have a metro link!), which is literally the second biggest shopping centre in the country. As it is now getting a train to the Metro Centre is extremely awkward, with direct trains from Heworth going via newcastle central station and the best route most of the time being taking the metro to central station and then doubling back on yourself to the metro centre. It's ridiculous just how awkward and difficult it is to get there via rail, especially when all of the track is there. This route also gives the possibility for a station on the corner, right next to the Sage, Gateshead College, and the soon to be built arena and exhibition centre.
There's an alignment that runs from between Northumberland Park and Shiremoor down past the Silverlink to Percy Main, which would both bisect the loop on North Tyneside as well as give access to the big retail park over there.
There's another existing alignment from Chillingham Road to Benton and Palmersville, which could further bisect the north tyneside loop and make it a lot less of a pain to get anywhere there.
And those are just the really obvious low hanging fruit! No tunnels, no demolitions, heck not even any land acquisition since all of it is existing alignments and track. Still, at least we're finally getting new trains this year if we're lucky, finally getting rid of the nearly 50 year old trains. (Although to have a minor gripe, the new trains have a full width cab so they no longer have a front window seat. I've got many memories of when I was little sitting staring out of the front, it was always a delight.)
Completely agree with your proposition that railways lead to development as demonstrated in the early part of the twentieth century with the creation of Metroland and the other suburbs built after the extensions of the underground railways. The same thing happened south of the river when the pre-grouping railways extended and which the Southern continued. Even electrifying existing lines improves traffic.
More rail makes sense in London because the underground means there is a lot of rail to connect to enhancing the benefits.
Outside of London road transp is king be it bus, coach or taxi. In the West Midlands the Metro is expanding connecting places to realistically one other place at a time and being above ground is hopelessly slow and cracks apart for the fun of it.
Busses on the other hand enjoy a larger more versatile network.
*1)* One third of Liverpool's metro, Merseyrail, was binned by Thatcher - men ordered off site. Miles of trackbed & tunnels still await trains. They were to build inferior street trams as a booby prize, the lines were delivered, but HMG cancelled it;
*2)* Manchester had its underground metro cancelled in the 70s. They have uncomfortable street running trams to compensate;
*3)* Leeds only has buses;
*4)* Bristol only has buses;
*5)* Birmingham is the largest city in Europe without a rapid-transit network. They are giving them cut down street running trams;
*6)* Edinburgh has a few street running trams, same with Sheffield and Nottingham;
*7)* Southampton & Portsmouth were to have street running trams, but cancelled.
The above cities can only drool at having a tiny fraction of the mass/rapid-transit rail London has.
Very good timing that this was suggested to me just after the government cancelled half of HS2.
"A Few Dilapidated Lines Hanging On", Yep sounds about right at my age.
You could also argue the Borders Railway in Scotland, and potentially the Levenmouth Rail Link (now being built) - as well as the Colne-Skipton link that SELRAP want to rebuild. The Borders Railway certainly demonstrated the principle that if you build it, they will come - predicted to have marginal passenger usage, it more than doubled the passenger use in the first 5 months.
The Colne-Skipton link would pay for itself in about two years, based *solely* on the reduction in delays due to there being a fourth east-west route available to operators.
I played my part in the construction and handover of the Millenium Dome and the year-long exhibition that was soon forgotten. I was privy at the time to a lot of behind the scenes planning and I remember one of the Themes , sponsored by BT, had a model of London redevelopment with Canary Wharf only part of it. People probably didn't realise at the time what they would be looking at- but I can tell you, the plan was vast compared with the original DS1 and Cabot Square.
Only the very wealthy can afford to live in Canary Wharf, there would be no customers for any further development.
I proposed to my wife at the Millennium Dome. I planned on doing it elsewhere but the best laid plans…. The good thing about proposing there is that it was only there for one year and she couldn’t drag me back to the spot for sentimental reasons. :/.
Another great video joolz thanks 👍
Another great tube history video! As a visitor, I enjoyed the new developments at Canary Wharf and Battersea Power Station! I also recently experienced Metrolink in Manchester and found it very useful. Coming from the airport the approach along Castlefield Viaduct to Deansgate station was amazing.
I've been in Barcelona this week. Being on the trains/Metro there has made me appreciate just how (despite its flaws) decent they are in the UK. We have regular, comfortable trains and open spaces. To me those in Barcelona felt darker and in need of a facelift. Maybe that's me just being used to comfort? 🤷♀️ They were fine to get about and easy enough to understand even in English but getting the train home late last night while half asleep, at least I was doing so in relative comfort.
Loved this one, as usual! 'Let sleeping Dogs lie' was a good one.
1:00 The Canary Wharf could've been built on the *"Cheep"!*
I'm surprised there was no mention of the ability that London has that no other city in the UK has (at least to same extent): The ability to raise money and, crucially, get loans against future potential earnings.
The government doesn't give TFL any extra money. The TFL just has the ability to raise its own funds, through fares but also through taxes. The TFL also is able to arrange loans against future ticket and development revenue (something councils can't do without going through central government as i understand). TFL is further expanding this by now actually building the flats and such above/around their new lines themselves which is giving them additional income streams, something unattainable for other cities in the UK.
Setting up organisations with similar rules to TFL would have a big impact.
Also, TfL's powers are unlike any other transport authority in the country. It can connect transport systems together. It can insist that things are done its way. Being an authority with authority makes all the difference.
Many years ago, an old Beeching-era line was reinstated (in single track form) from Cardiff to Ebbw Vale. Prediction: 30,000 passengers per year. Actual number: 252,000. Include every station on the line and you have 750,000 ticket sales a year since.
Now, if only they could see the benefit of all the other old lines that made east-west connections, more fun would be had by all and Cardiff Central would stop being a hub. The only slight problem is a few bridges and viaducts have been demolished and some cycle routes may have to be shifted a bit to the left...
They seem to HATE East/West connections
In suburban Washington DC they extended the Metro into Virginia. When it was being built I watched an interview with an urban planner who was asked why they would build it through an area of car dealerships and low rise buildings. He said wait 10 years and get back to me. I visited that area last month. All the car dealerships and low rise buildings have been replaced with high rise office and residential. I didn’t recognize the area from my last visit several years ago.
@4:03 - so that's why the Jubilee Line went by Waterloo and not Ludgate Hill...
It comes to a lot of talks and nothing gets done. Where I live there is a couple of projects that get talked about. Coventry to Leicester used to run direct but the rails were pulled up now they say they will have to put them back. The same goes for Leicester to Burton this was proposed to be established by British Rail and we are still painting. It is like that all over the country, especially the North. Oh yes, we are still waiting for the electrification of the St Pancras to Nottingham/Sheffield. It's all on the books to be done. Let's have a seance with Charles Yerkes to get things moving.
Right about Yerkes ... he was an expert at getting money out of investors for transport infrastructure that would never actually pay but would be very useful for future generations (and of course making him some short term money). Hence the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern lines and District electrification in a few years 1905-7, before people actually saw what the balance sheets would look like ...
Re the Coventry to Leicester route, I think in recent years it used to go in and reverse out of Nuneaton station, crossing the WCML lines in the process. But at some point this proved too disruptive to Virgin trains etc. so it was stopped, now passengers have to change. But perhaps you're alluding to an older track that used to tunnel right under the WCML although that one avoided Nuneaton station altogether... Is there a plan to reinstate that?
@@stephenholt4670 I am only referring to what I have read. When I was a kid I lived at Hinckley prior to 1965 the trains went from Birmingham NS - Nuneaton Abbey Street but that is gone. I spent most of my life in Australia before returning. I can't remember the train going from Leicester to Coventry. There is an old flyover over the WCML that could be resurrected but looking at the latest that is no longer a proposal. Not stopping at Nuneaton would be nonsense. If the line is going under the WCML then give it a platform. I know more nonsense. They have been talking about building a new station near the A5 Nuneaton Parkway which could be used except passengers would have to change.
@@stephenholt4670 Yes, there were various stages. In the 1970s there was no service from Coventry to Nuneaton and you had to go all the way round through Birmingham or catch a bus. In the 1980s the very useful Coventry-Nuneaton-Leicester service was introduced. There is a flyover at Nuneaton giving direct Birmingham-Leicester transit for goods trains but it misses the platforms so is no good for passenger trains. Kenilworth also got added at some point before the service sadly got split into the two halves as you describe.
@@iankemp1131 That flyover was reopened for passenger use back in 2004, along with platforms 6 & 7 being built at Nuneaton for trains coming off the flyover; that was also when the Coventry - Nuneaton - Leicester/Nottingham/Lincoln service was split at Nuneaton because of the impact of those trains crossing the WCML at the south end of Nuneaton station.
For clarity, the flyover was reopened to stop Birmingham - Leicester/Anglia trains crossing the layout and impeding Virgin West Coast trains; it certainly wasn't done for the benefit of the regional passengers!
Despite lots of hot air, it's highly unlikely the Coventry Leicester service will be reintroduced. It's simply going to cost too much and offers no benefit to London-bound services. The only way I can see it happening is the number of WCML trains through Nuneaton drastically reduces after HS2 opens, thus allowing paths to be found for CovLeics trains to cross the layout, but I doubt that'll happen.
Great video. ☺️
What annoys is where London based projects are partially paid for by those of us who live hundreds of miles away when we ourselves have no rail within 30 miles
Even within London there is a lot of disparity when it comes to investment in infrastructure in general, particularly with regards to South London. Apologies, this will be quite an essay for a YT comment.
Despite numerous opportunities, public transport in the area is still quite poor - despite the significant demand. . The Bakerloo Line Extension is a perfect example of this disparity, even within London.
While the results of the public consultation showed overwhelming support for an extension via Camberwell Green, a route via Old Kent Road was chosen instead. Why? Developers. Building yet more generic "luxury" flats, with more on the way - oh, great joy!
Routing the extension via Camberwell Green would have taken far more buses off the roads, reducing congestion and green gas emissions significantly, as well as potentially allowing the buses to be deployed elsewhere to improve other services.
Now it seems even the extension via Old Kent Road is unlikely to happen anytime in the near future. The rolling stock on the line is the oldest on the Underground I believe and is expected to continue soldiering on for the foreseeable future, while other lines receive new stock.
In my opinion , the council's of London (and to be honest, the entirety of the UK) are not fit for purpose. They're not interested in serving the needs of their constituents, they're only interested in lining their pockets as much as possible before their corruption is exposed and they quietly disappear.
"If you built it, they will come" These words are very true in my case, as I have no car, I only visit places in London or outside that are served by rail.
The new residents at Beam park are getting shafted! Hopefully the station gets built.
I would love to see more rail connections especially in parts like the south west where transport seems to get forgotten about. The London to Penzance train is so long and expensive it's so much easier to fly or drive down. It's also not electrified.
Interesting and thought provoking video Jago
A return to pre Beeching level rail would be a dream come true, and much of the alignment and engineering works are there for a lot of it. Ok, I know it's not as simple as relaying tracks, tunnels, bridges, embankments, cuttings, all would require large redevelopment, and of course swathes of urban regeneration in towns and cities across the country have effectively built houses and roads over old lines and stations that would need to be expanded to accommodate the increase in traffic.
Still, I think that there is a genuine interest in expandoing our railways in such a way that all towns over 10,000 people are connected to a railway.
One of the MOST important things that governments can do is to undertake large public infrastructure projects that are beyond the reach of most organisations. Investments in public transport are in my opinion a no-brainer because they almost always make people's lives better and places better to live in.
The problem we all face is that ALL governments are driven by self-interest. Rather than undertaking projects that benefit the public at large, they do things that make them look good, that "cement their legacy" (ghastly phrase) or that improve their chances of re-election. It is very rare that projects are chosen for the improvement they will bring to the lives of ordinary people. My particular bete-noir is HS2. Not only is it trashing the rural area where I grew up, but a miniscule fraction of its' cost would have made massive improvements to the rail networks in the Midlands and the North, improvements which would benefit ten times the number of people that might ever benefit from HS2.
This happens pretty much everywhere. In my native Netherlands, the people in the north first wanted a high-speed railway line (which, arguably, in a country as small as the Netherlands and with the relatively low population density in the north, might have been a bit of overkill), and are now asking for just, you know, a better connection to the Dutch equivalent of London: the Randstad.
The ironic part, though, is that investment in less affluent areas _still_ benefits the more affluent more. How this works, I can't say, but every 10 €/£/$ you put in one of the peripheral regions still has more benefits for the economic centre.
With this sort of discussion, I think it's also important to know beforehand what the economic effects of new infrastructure will be, instead of to assume it.
Interesting point about 'if you build it, they will come' - but the issue is, a lot of transport planning (especially outside of London) lacks context, and is rarely conducted in tandem with land-use planning. Look at the Sheffield Supertram, for example - built to run through some of the most impoverished areas of the city, in the hopes it would bring regeneration to these areas, but even almost 30 years later, this has yet to happen, mostly because local authorities had no say in developing the areas that the network served. That's where TOD (Transit orientated developments) come in, but these have their own issues with gentrification (such as Battersea, Kings Cross etc).
Thanks for this Jago; I hope the planners listen in our neck of the woods; North Wales south west of Bangor.😇
I think another bit needs to be added to the statment "If you build it, they will come!", just for Irish Rail. That statment should read "If you build it, and open it, they will come." Irish Rail built a station between Clondalkin Fonthill and Adamstown Stations, but did not open the station, as the planned houseing did not get built. But if they did open the station, they would have still have got enough people using it. As there is a business park within a 10 minute walk from the enterance to the station, and there is other houseing estates within 15 minute or less walk to the station. Not forgetting there is a bus route which passes by the station, with the new TFI 90 Minute fare, would bring more people to the station. The TFI 90 Minute fare allows unlimit travel on all buses, trains and trams within Dublin touching on within 90 minutes from when you first touch your Leap card on the leap card reader. It is going to cost more money to do up the station, before they can open it.
London isn't a sponge. It's a bunch of worm tunnels. The trains are the worms. :P
For a look at the pre-skyscraper era, allow me to recommend the excellent photography book 'Isle Of Dogs: Before The Big Money' from Hoxton Mini Press
I should look that out, I love the docks.
Can you imagine if they had seceded? French soldiers wandering here and there patrolling the border.
Excellent video as always Jago.
However, whilst I do of course take on board that yes, London has more population and is a major player in the financial markets yadda yadda yadda....
When you come a lot north of Watford, you see entire rail projects that would MASSIVELY regenerate whole areas, not being taken forward for the sake of literally ten or twenty million quid.
And yet for example on the Elizabeth Line, Bond Street station's overspend was £570 million.
And that's not the cost, but just the ADDITIONAL cost of just ONE station.
Whilst I am in no way saying that Londoner's shouldn't have a good transport network, you can perhaps see when you get inconsistency like that, where we are literally getting NOTHING, that we stop throwing our spears, stop covering each other in woad and then after we've built a wicker man in the shape of the Rail Minister, we then get a bit annoyed.
Also, I recently saw someone just miss their tube train and the next one was three minutes away. Three minutes!!
He went absolutely INSANE!!
I said... "Whoa whoa whoa mate. Three minutes?
Come live up where I'm from pal
Ours are one an HOUR, if it even decides to turn up!!"
Honestly, they don't know they are born down there.
And yet they want more and faster and better and.... whatever!!
Not saying you shouldn't have EVERYTHING you need and want and you seem to usually get it too.
Just let us have some of it too.
And maybe it can be powered by that new fangled Electric trickery we keep hearing about.
That would be nice.
If whole communities would be transformed by ten or twenty million pounds, it is open to the local councils to introduce a £12.50 a day congestion charge, as London has, and spend the first one or two million of those on the project. If only 1,000 people drive five days a week, the traffic of a medium or large town, the thing can be paid for in 4 or 8 years. If the population covered is of any real size, it could be done in a year or two.
But of course the only part of the UK that thinks it’s transport problems are serious enough, and important enough to the population, to impose a congestion charge like that in London. Everywhere else doesn’t think it is worth taking the steps London does.
@@DanielsPolitics1 You do realise that outside London (where TfL has its own powers which can't easily be interfered with) a congestion charge can only be applied with the agreement of central government, don't you? And that central government basically goes out of its way to refuse to allow local authorities to do anything for themselves?
The only place I know of which has successfully managed to get any sort of charging agreed by central government and introduced is Nottingham - but that's a workplace parking levy, not congestion charging, and they had to jump through so many hoops to get that agreed by Whitehall that most local authorities would just have given up.
Good one Jago! 👍
Thanks!
'I don't know if it comes across in my videos, but I'm a little bit pro rail'.
Well, 'no sh!t Jago', that's why I'm here and watching your channel and have been for ages, I love your other stuff too, but rail, London and the Underground is just my thing too.
Keep up the good work!
Loved the video buddy :-).
Investment in rail improves quality of life, period.
I think a core aspect of what causes these issues is that politicians in this country outright refuse to spend money on anything that doesn't directly benefit themselves or fit into their worldview. Current mob are the absolute extreme of that example. I was speaking to a member of the House of Lords who runs a campaign group on General Aviation not so long ago, and something that he explained to me was how much of a nightmare it was to get ministers to think outside of their insular little bubble. Despite himself, multiple lords and MPs trying to explain that GA is a very diverse sector of aviation, with a lot of SME engagement, that it provides a source of skilled labourers, and that many private aircraft are owned by co-operative groups, they just don't listen. Ministers in the Department for Transport are stuck in the 1930s, believing that GA is just some rich toff's hobby, and thus any major issues, such as a serious lack of mechanics and difficulties funding airfields, can just be solved by getting those old boys to just throw a load of money into the sector. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for funding public transport.
Expanding on that point, the government may be made to see... alternative approaches, if a group of very, *very* wealthy individuals or corporations raise their concerns. Hence why Crossrail was able to escape planning hell in the first place, as it runs through both of London's financial districts. Meanwhile, a southwards Bakerloo line extension has been canned, because it runs through poor, ethnically diverse and politically left-leaning communities (read: "Won't vote Tory"). Applying this kind of logic to the UK as a whole, it becomes much clearer as to why so many communities have been left behind by the government, especially in urban or industrialised areas, where locals are unlikely to sympathise with a staunchly right-wing British political system beyond isolated issues.
I live in West Cumbria, where trains run about once an hour and get cancelled with no notice, replacement or genuine alternative. Buses are about the same for timings, but then take an age to actually get anywhere. Having been in Manchester at the weekend and used the trams while there it shows if you build it they will come. Back in Cumbria it's a treat for our kids to go on public transport because of how inconvenient it is to use for 90% of trips. Everything has to be planned out and there's no just waiting at the bus stop because another bus will be along in 5 minutes, miss the bus and it can be a minimum of an hour for the next one. Anyhow, rant over, great video, even if it is about London (again)😉.
Jago - us brummies are willing to wager that our cross-city line is the best the uk has outside of the london area; 6tph before the pandemic. we have the midlands rail hub plan too - if not making a video on it, i think you might find it interesting! some great ideas and a few that might leave you scratching your head.
One thing that bugs me is that when the government goes on about "the north", they either mean Scotland (although usually they'll say Scotland in that case), or they mean Manchester or Leeds, possibly Liverpool. The North East barely gets a say in anything, let alone the north west (such as the cutback on HS2), but at least eventually the MetCam built Class 599/994 (it's unclear which they are) metrocars from 1978-1981 are being replaced by the new Stadler class 555s, as well as the Ashington line reopening soon, and the Durham Coast line being resignalled.
It's still weird that Heaton depot now has 158s instead of 142s; a much needed upgrade from 1985-7 built units to 1989-1992 built units which was only a thing because of disability access.
The Ashington line isn't going to bring benefits, it'll be slower and more expensive than the bus to get into the city centre. Also it's progressing at an absolute snails pace to build A platform and make the car park A BIT bigger in Ashington. But it's better than nothing and opens up potential improvements.
Manchester and Liverpool are trendy as far as government are concerned, but otherwise pretty much anywhere more than about 50 miles away from the M25 is stuffed.
In the East Midlands we're supposed to be grateful because the single 153s we suffered for decades are being replaced by "new" (actually 20-year-old) 170s, and we don't even get a sprinkling of brand-new trains on our regional services (at least in Northern-land you might see a 195!) We still don't get decent service levels, though, with low frequencies, random gaps (still blamed on Covid) and early finishes. The people in London who moan about their "poor" public transport really don't know how lucky they are, do they?
It's worth remembering that London's railways serve a massive population, when you add in all the people from the home counties who work in London or are economically dependant on it, even after the recent WfH developments. Thus I suspect that the London investment bias looks less dramatic, if you pool the southeast all together.
Well said sir
I seem to remember that Bob Hoskins' gangster character in the 1980 movie the 'The Long Good Friday' foresaw great things for the Docklands, I do remember thinking at the time "Oh! Yer, pull the other one it's got bells on".
Shame he got murdered by James Bond for killing Charlie from Casualty.
6:26 Personally it annoys me when anyone says the Newcastle metro, as it serves much more than just Newcastle, it goes round the coast and down into the City of Sunderland and South Shields
Great video Jago, always love those "Calls itself" quotes. 👍
On the note of Crossrail/Elizabeth Line, I believe Woolwich station only ended up where it is because the developer there (co)funded it
I have long argued that the reason why HS2 is being built is to provide London commuters with access to "cheap" housing in the West Midlands (as compared with house prices in the South-East). The fact that the extensions to both Leeds and Manchester are now cancelled, I believe, proves my point. Commuting to London from these two Northern cities on a daily basis is probable exhausting. Whereas, HS2 should get you from the West Midlands to central London in 40-45 mins. Existing journey times are as little as 65 mins, providing you catch the "right" train. Birmingham has long been starved of transport investment (as has most of 'North of Watford'). The West Midlands Metro is a bit of a joke. The service has only recently restarted after its latest hiatus and goes no-where near the airport. I challenge any non-local to realise that the tram has stopped at New Street Station. So reliability and transport interconnection are real issues. Will further investment come once HS2 is up and running? ... We shall see.
It's the same problem in Massachusetts. There's a lot of economy centred around Boston, as well as the political centre, which causes politicians to keep investing foremost in Boston instead of the rest of the Commonwealth.
From one of your cousins from across the pond, you are SOOOOOOOO lucky to be able to compromise. I wish politicians here would learn that. Great video as always.
We have a tram line to nowhere here in portugal due to similar decision making 😊
Spain has a large collection of airports all sitting idle, with no planes arriving or departing - they were built because EU regional development money was available, not because there was any belief that they might attract passengers.
On a recent enforced-layover [ thankyou freezing-fog, and then snow ], I found myself ensconsced in a 'Dockside Road' hotel [ adjacent to the 'Royal Albert Dock' ]. With my fifth-floor room, came a wonderful view, westwards, of a snowy London, and what clearly were three distinct high-rise clusters - [ from left to right ] Canary Wharf, The City, and [ now, as I latterly figured-out ] Stratford. This view [ and after having ridden the 'Elizabeth Line' from Heathrow T5 to 'Custom House', for my rebooked LCY outbound ] got me to thinking that in the last 3 decades, the centre-of-gravity of London has most definitely shifted to the east, and away from its more traditional 'West-End' focal-point.
Interesting video. I hope to visit Canary Wharf again
Nice view of Northumberland at the end. You did go further than Newcastle!, But in the tradition of Get Carter, we see you going south on the King Edward Bridge and then you end up further north! Now not a lot of people know that?
London's missing links still - Thamesmead ( why oh why Lizzie Line not to that location ). Barking - likewise a DLR across Creekmouth, and it took forever to get the Goblin electricfied
When I was in the Army I was stationed in Heidelberg, which at the time was USAREUR HQ, and it was notoriously a posh duty station because it was where the top brass lived. I suspect there is a similar motive here.
Nice!
I love how Corporations , and by extension their shareholders , who have to work and produce to earn their "money" are looked down upon for not putting more into "so called" affordable housing . While the civic government is just a junior relative of the entity that "PRINTS THE STUFF"
As someone quite keen on rail, I'm sure you have some thoughts on the fantastically ill conceived Silvertown Tunnel scheme (oops did I give away my bias...) - and Sian Berry's suggestion to scrap the road and use it for a DLR extension south of the river? Almost worth a vote...
Thats not the Tyne & Wear Metro the metro goes on the "blue" bridge not the BR bridges
You’re right , more rails !