George Osborne's Autumn Statement

[Class 170101]

Is theer not the big problem that the railway has not learnt that the Treasury expects stringent control of railway costs including on projects and yet again the railway has failed to deliver (NW electrification stages 1 and 2 late and GW electrification well over budget) so it gets no money from the Treasury as the railway cannot be trusted to spend it wisely?

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

tbtc. The 500 times funding figure was reported by BBC less then a year ago, I'll get the story tonight. You say some areas don't have as many employed and therefor don't raise tax, surely these are the areas most needing of investment to ensure job opportunities.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
'The Institute of Public Policy Research says transport infrastructure spending is £2,500 per head in London compared with £5 per head in the North East.'

This was from a BBC story from June.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27675069

 

[edwin_m]

That's true in part but the metro option is £7BN cheaper and frankly I as a Londoner would rather settle for that rather than pay more to benefit others who would pay nothing....
https://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/med...funding-and-financing-options-for-crossrail-2

The extra benefits of the Regional option accrue almost totally to people commuting into and visiting London who will have more capacity on the suburban network and in some cases will not need to change to a Tube at the terminus. So although some of the extra money is spent outside the London boundary there are wider benefits to London from a larger workforce, more visitors, and a slight reduction in pressure on inner-city house prices.

 

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Originally Posted by HowardGWR View Post
Let them queue. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Just a few days per year - see Bison Fute in France

See also Okehampton, England?

Couldn't help but chuckle!

'The Institute of Public Policy Research says transport infrastructure spending is £2,500 per head in London compared with £5 per head in the North East.'

This was from a BBC story from June.

How accurate are the BBC figures? Their reporting is frequently somewhat adrift...and in any case, London and the Home Counties need a lot more money to be spent than elsewhere. Isn't that obvious?

 

[Kettledrum]

Updated national infrastructure plan published by HM Treasury this morning:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...902895_NationalInfrastructurePlan2014_acc.pdf

Plenty of updates on a number of Railforum favourite topics
Rail projects from Page 41 onwards

Nothing about the Brighton Main Line 2 then, and the Bakerloo line extension might scupper some of the ideas about the BML2 anyway, so that's a double whammy. However, there's plenty of positive noises about other initiatives though.

Does anyone remember the days of John Prescott's 10 year transport plan? Surely we don't want to go back there?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8465383.stm

 

[LateThanNever]

Couldn't help but chuckle!



How accurate are the BBC figures? Their reporting is frequently somewhat adrift...and in any case, London and the Home Counties need a lot more money to be spent than elsewhere. Isn't that obvious?

Originally Posted by HowardGWR
Let them queue. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Just a few days per year - see bison futé in France

Quite. It is.

See also Okehampton, England?

But they might be queuing on the rails for a day or two - or even weeks at Dawlish!
Of course there is no proof that that connectivity is required for the commercial prosperity of Plymouth or Cornwall but it is highly likely.
Who is volunteering to cut off London from all its connections for - shall we say - an experimental week?
It seems to be called connectivity but the great commercial/economic irony is that, desirable though a place may be, its ultimate desirability will be the transport to get out of it...
Seems to me this is why the South East England transport subsidy given from the other regions of England is remarkable and rather reprehensible...

 

[34104]

True!

At least this thread has evolved from "The Big Bad Government Never Spend Any Money On Railways; It's All Spent On Roads" to "The Big Bad Government Never Spend Any Money On My Local Railway; It's All Spent On London" which I suppose shows a progress of sorts...



It was a secondary route, compared to the main line through Dawlish - a branch line in my opinion.
The fact that even those supporting it concede that it'll have to have large chunks of single track suggests that even they accept this.



This!

It's a local issue and really not near the top hundred problems that the national railway currently has.



::must resist rhetorical question::

This is the five year announcement for roads, like the five year CP5 announcement for rail a couple of years ago.

There wasn't anything in the CP5 announcement about new roads, so I wouldn't feel too hard done by if the Highways Agency's five year strategic business plan doesn't include lots of railway announcements.

Essentially, if the Government announce nothing in rail investment then people on here are going to complain...

...if the Government announce only a few bits of rail investment then people on here are going to roll their eyes and complain about only those areas getting some investment...

...and if the Government announce rail investment everywhere then people are going to say "ah, but it's six months before an election, they are just trying to bribe voters"



Totally agreed.

After we spent previous little on railway investment in the good years, I'm amazed that we are seeing so much now.

(I'm not amazed that people are still complaining one way or the other, of course!)



See also Okehampton, England?



In fairness, it'd take many years to build a railway line there.

The Busway is a success by most people's criteria (when I say most people, I don't mean rail enthusiasts who want to solve everything by building railway lines, obviously)



You and your facts ruin the received wisdom that London gets everything it wants straight away (and never sees investments delayed/ cancelled)!



True re Manchester.

Yet most of the complaining about London biased funding seems to come from around Manchester...



Who pays for the million pounds a day needed to subsidised Northern, out of interest?



Evening out funding so that everywhere gets the same is different from spending money on the areas that need it most though, very different.



You are assuming that employment rates are the same across the country and that income distribution is the same across the country (so that every area sees the same tax paid per head of the population)?

But, more importantly, what's the data for the "500 times more"? What period are you basing it on? Rail or all transport funding? Investment or all subsidy?



It was never a passenger line to Stocksbridge - it followed the valley from Deeper up to Penistone.

And you're never going to serve Stocksbridge without re-opening Sheffield Victoria, which you aren't going to do for the sake of one or two trains an hour.

Plus a railway station at Stockbridge is going to be a long way from where people live (vertically and horizontally!), meaning you'd need a feeder bus (like the Stagecoach service every ten minutes that currently connects with Supertram for journeys into Sheffield city centre).

There are many bigger priorities, sorry.

The LSWR line was built as a mainline and stayed that way until it's closure. A line which ran 7 through trains per day from Plymouth to Waterloo and another one to Brighton, with a similar number coming the other way, cannot be described as a branch line, unless you have a rather strange definition of the phrase. For sure the system was run down after the Western region took over and from 1964 onwards it was mostly local traffic but even so through services were still being run to Brighton up until the very day of the lines closure. Sounds a pretty long and extensive branch line to me.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Couldn't help but chuckle!



How accurate are the BBC figures? Their reporting is frequently somewhat adrift...and in any case, London and the Home Counties need a lot more money to be spent than elsewhere. Isn't that obvious?

So you're saying it's obvious that EACH Londoner needs 500 times the investment as someone in Newcastle? Why do they? Are Londoners more important? Are they unable to use altrnatives or are poorer??

 

[Goatboy]

With the constant attempts to encourage car use instead of rail use by constantly increasing fares, I guess it makes sense to ensure that the infrastructure used by people who might have caught the train had it offered any semblance of value for money is fit for purpose.

Despite my enthusiasm for rail I find myself using my car more and more these days because it's simply cheaper (as I already own and couldn't not have it, so journeys I'd make by rail are costed for car use on a marginal cost basis) therefore it's good to see money is being spent on better roads.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Everyone pays income tax at the same rate depending on earnings.
London still gets 500 times the transport investment per head than the North East. So you could say the North is paying for London.

However I would argue that tax receipts are higher in the South East than they are in the North. On that basis London and the South East are funding the North to a large degree.

 

[LLivery]

In fairness, it'd take many years to build a railway line there.

The Busway is a success by most people's criteria (when I say most people, I don't mean rail enthusiasts who want to solve everything by building railway lines, obviously)

Oh I'm not saying build a railway or that the busway isn't successful. I just don't think building 10,000 homes relying on a bus and on one of the most clogged A roads in the country (the A14) is a good idea. Yes I would have built it near a railway line, but also near a road that is not regularly in chaos.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Nothing about the Brighton Main Line 2 then, and the Bakerloo line extension might scupper some of the ideas about the BML2 anyway, so that's a double whammy. However, there's plenty of positive noises about other initiatives though.

Does anyone remember the days of John Prescott's 10 year transport plan? Surely we don't want to go back there?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8465383.stm

I never saw BML 2 as a serious possibility as it was clear that no one down here wanted to know. I do think that it could of really worked if it went underground from Lewisham to Stratford via Canary Wharf, connecting to the West Anglia to Cambridge - far better than the Bakerloo Line taking over the Hayes Line nonsense.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Despite my enthusiasm for rail I find myself using my car more and more these days because it's simply cheaper (as I already own and couldn't not have it, so journeys I'd make by rail are costed for car use on a marginal cost basis) therefore it's good to see money is being spent on better roads.

I completely agree with you on this. I find it incredulous that some posters on this forum seem to be of the opinion that train travel is cheap when clearly it isn't! Walk on fares to London during the peak are ridiculously expensive.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The disused line to Stocksbridge is still gathering dust.

As far as I know it's not disused. It's used by freight.

 

[LLivery]

Everyone pays income tax at the same rate depending on earnings.
London still gets 500 times the transport investment per head than the North East. So you could say the North is paying for London.

Last time I checked us Londoners pay more than what we get back. If we kept all the tax money we put in (like a lot of Londoners want) we would spend even more per head. The North has been let down by successive governments and to an extent your own MPs. We should all want more spending for everywhere not take away from London to fund Newcastle.

 

[LateThanNever]

However I would argue that tax receipts are higher in the South East than they are in the North. On that basis London and the South East are funding the North to a large degree.

They probably are. But that means little if every time I buy a half pound of butter in Great Wallop in the Myre all the profits go to Sainsbury in London WC. Just because their buyers/directors are in London doesn't prove owt (as they'd say in Bradford, which is where they would go if I bought it in - the much smaller - Morrisons!) so really, as most Head Offices and most of the Government are in the South East, it's an automatic subsidy I fear.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

However I would argue that tax receipts are higher in the South East than they are in the North. On that basis London and the South East are funding the North to a large degree.

So because more tax is raised in London per person, the North and Southwest have to have no new investment? Nothing will ever get better or change unless new investment is made. This will eventual lead to London being first class but some areas miles behind, wait.. it's already like that!

My local station for example is under used because no trains can stop there at night as there's no lighting and there's only a train every 2 hours with changing needed a few miles away to get anywhere. There's no suitable waiting area either. Yet across the road they are six tower blocks a comercial area and a football stadium.
With little investment it could be useful.

 

[LLivery]

So you're saying it's obvious that EACH Londoner needs 500 times the investment as someone in Newcastle? Why do they? Are Londoners more important? Are they unable to use altrnatives or are poorer??

Alternatives? More than 3 billion people use London Buses a year! What other alternatives are there? And a single tube journey costs £2.50!

 

[RichmondCommu]

So because more tax is raised in London per person, the North and Southwest have to have no new investment? Nothing will ever get better or change unless new investment is made. This will eventual lead to London being first class but some areas miles behind, wait.. it's already like that!

Your point was that London was not helping to fund the rest of the country. Surely the higher tax receipts prove that it is.

Having been born and raised in the East Midlands and my wife being from the East Lancs I would agree that the North and other areas need investment. But lets not pretend that the SE is doing nothing to help.

Londoners and London based businesses will no doubt make a considerable contribution to the cost of Crossrail 2. Could the same be said of the North and its rail projects?

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Alternatives? More than 3 billion people use London Buses a year! What other alternatives are there? And a single tube journey costs £2.50!

£2.50 doesn't sound bad compared to the vast majority of trains fares. I'll happily pay that for the service. Yes it may be full but another will come in a minute. It costs me £1.50 for the bus going to the station. But trains are better than buses, even Pacers as they have more seats.

 

[RichmondCommu]

They probably are. But that means little if every time I buy a half pound of butter in Great Wallop in the Myre all the profits go to Sainsbury in London WC. Just because their buyers/directors are in London doesn't prove owt (as they'd say in Bradford, which is where they would go if I bought it in - the much smaller - Morrisons!) so really, as most Head Offices and most of the Government are in the South East, it's an automatic subsidy I fear.

So why do you think all those headquarters / head offices are in the South East?

 

[muddythefish]

So why do you think all those headquarters / head offices are in the South East?

... because they feel they have to be, probably not because they want to be.

Out of the 100 FTSE 100 companies, only 6 are based in the midlands and north.

Don't you think that is wrong ?

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Last time I checked us Londoners pay more than what we get back. If we kept all the tax money we put in (like a lot of Londoners want) we would spend even more per head. The North has been let down by successive governments and to an extent your own MPs. We should all want more spending for everywhere not take away from London to fund Newcastle.

I never said London should lose its funding. All I'm saying is some areas need it urgently. All MPs care about Lobdon transport because they use it to get to work. No MP cares about a distant constituancy.

All areas get less money back than what they spend on taxes as the government uses it for debt reduction and other blackholes.

But why can't Newcastle get just half per head of Loncon funding? That's what I'm saying. It's the industrial North that made this country important in the past and now it's been neglected. I believe that it can become successful again like what happened in Scotland.

 

[RichmondCommu]

... because they feel they have to be, probably not because they want to be.

Out of the 100 FTSE 100 companies, only 6 are based in the midlands and north.

Don't you think that is wrong ?

So who is making those companies stay in the South East? Surely office space (in fact it is) is cheaper outside of the SE so why isn't there a huge stampede north?

 

[LLivery]

£2.50 doesn't sound bad compared to the vast majority of trains fares. I'll happily pay that for the service. Yes it may be full but another will come in a minute. It costs me £1.50 for the bus going to the station. But trains are better than buses, even Pacers as they have more seats.

£1.50 is the bus fare in London also and £2.50 to the next station is a lot to half of London which are struggling to provide food on the table because of our insane rents, disgraceful lack of housing and c**p pay. The railways in London are normally cheaper than the Tube.

 

[RichmondCommu]

But why can't Newcastle get just half per head of Loncon funding? That's what I'm saying. It's the industrial North that made this country important in the past and now it's been neglected. I believe that it can become successful again like what happened in Scotland.

So why did some of the manufacturing plants disappear. Is it perhaps because it was cheaper to make things in the Far East. Or perhaps its because Labour militants ruined everything. Please note that I'm a life long Labour voter.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Your point was that London was not helping to fund the rest of the country. Surely the higher tax receipts prove that it is.

Having been born and raised in the East Midlands and my wife being from the East Lancs I would agree that the North and other areas need investment. But lets not pretend that the SE is doing nothing to help.

Londoners and London based businesses will no doubt make a considerable contribution to the cost of Crossrail 2. Could the same be said of the North and its rail projects?

Look at how much these Northern schemes cost when all combined.
I never mentioned nor heard of Cross Rail 2. It most be easy to get corporate funding when all the banks are there.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Look at how much these Northern schemes cost when all combined.
I never mentioned nor heard of Cross Rail 2. It most be easy to get corporate funding when all the banks are there.

So you agree that the South East is helping to pay for the rest of the nations infrastructure projects?

And it's not just the banks, there are many other organisations based down here.

However, there are also plenty of employers in the North and of course taxpayers. So why are they not being asked to pay for improvements?

 

[muddythefish]

So who is making those companies stay in the South East? Surely office space (in fact it is) is cheaper outside of the SE so why isn't there a huge stampede north?

They stay because of the centralised London-centric nature of govt and commerce in this country.

It didn't used to be this way - economic activity was fairly evenly spread across the country until about 40 years ago but has accelerated towards the SE over the past 20 years.

I don't need to to remind you of the causes but the so-called "rebalancing" that everyone says is desirable won't be helped by chucking yet more public infrastructure money at the SE.

 

[LLivery]

I never said London should lose its funding. All I'm saying is some areas need it urgently. All MPs care about Lobdon transport because they use it to get to work. No MP cares about a distant constituancy.

All areas get less money back than what they spend on taxes as the government uses it for debt reduction and other blackholes.

But why can't Newcastle get just half per head of Loncon funding? That's what I'm saying. It's the industrial North that made this country important in the past and now it's been neglected. I believe that it can become successful again like what happened in Scotland.

Although I want major spending in the North, Newcastle-upon-Tyne just isn't as important mainly because of its population and decline in economy. London has 8 million people living there. Tyneside has under 900,000. Yes the decline in the economy should be the catalyst for regeneration, but unless devolution happens like what happened in London (which most of England seems to be against) I just don't see it happening. Centralised government has caused this - look that countries that are federal. All major cities in Australia for example have a decent suburban rail network, buses and a trams. You mention Scotland - that further backs up the stupid way the government works here but regional devolution seem to be a hated idea.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

So why did some of the manufacturing plants disappear. Is it perhaps because it was cheaper to make things in the Far East. Or perhaps its because Labour militants ruined everything. Please note that I'm a life long Labour voter.

The Tories are the ones you want to blame then.
Shutting coalfields and selling off other nationsl infrastructure like Steel, Electricity, water and gas. All are essential for factories and became more expensive. The cheaper labour overseas has little to do with it, Germany has been increasing exports since the 50s. Also many a great many industries were state owned before being shut down through ideology.

 

[RichmondCommu]

They stay because of the centralised London-centric nature of govt and commerce in this country.

It didn't used to be this way - economic activity was fairly evenly spread across the country until about 40 years ago but has accelerated towards the SE over the past 20 years.

I don't need to to remind you of the causes but the so-called "rebalancing" that everyone says is desirable won't be helped by chucking yet more public infrastructure money at the SE.

So why in your opinion has economic wealth moved to the South East? I would argue that it has nothing to do with the Government as the Palace of Westminster has existed for hundreds of years.