There were other modernisations which took place - except they didn't entail large scale electrification - which made sense at that time.
A "modernisation" scheme that doesn't electrify the line is not (in my opinion) worthy of the name. I prefer to call these "mitigation" schemes, since all they're doing is attempting to mitigate the worst effects of chronic underinvestment.
Apart from semantics, the "experience" gained from such mitigation schemes isn't going to be much help for a true modernisation project...
The HSTs on the GW and MML were about 15 years old when the ECML was electrified, so there was little justification for replacing them which is what would have happened.
I wasn't suggesting that the GWML should have been modernised in the 1980s/90s (although if it were, the cascaded rolling stock would have more-or-less eliminated the need for Voyagers/Meridians)... I was suggesting that the recent modernisation schemes should have been done in a different order (smallest to largest) so as to gain experience and allow more realistic specification.
You are deliberately conflating "modernisation" and "electrification"
Correct. There is no such thing (in my opinion) as a "modern" railway that isn't electrified. As my signature says, electrification is a core requirement for any modern railway.
The only road tolls I could find any record of being scrapped were / are the Servern Bridge ones - and there's a very good reason why they should now be discontinued:
"Severn Crossings plc was given the right to collect payments for 25 years as part of deal to build a second crossing in 1992. The two bridges will be operated by Highways England when they return to public ownership next year. "
In other words the tolls were in place to recoup the cost of building the second Severn crossing - the second crossing offered a shorter journey to those travelling from south of Bristol and into south Wales so both economies benefited.
Tolls discourage driving. Driving petrol/diesel vehicles is responsible for some 15% of all CO2 emissions. They also release other toxic chemicals (especially diesels) which contribute to respiratory illness, cancer, etc. Such an environmentally disastrous activity should (in my opinion) never be encouraged.
The tolls may have been politically justified by the "recover construction costs" argument, but they serve an important environmental purpose, not to mention providing government revenue, and therefore should be kept.
It is not environmentally sane to run a half-empty train at the same time as allowing road congestion to balloon.
Which is all the more reason (in my opinion) to discourage driving and provide a modern, fast, reliable and affordable rail service...
It is not environmentally sane to electrify miles of railway when your main way of generating electricity is by burning oil - the only practical alternative is nuclear - which the environmental left in the UK oppose at every turn.
Huh? Even if the electricity is provided by burning oil (which in the UK it isn't; our energy mix is roughly 30% Gas, 25% Renewables, 22% Coal, 21% Nuclear, 2% Other including oil) it's
much more efficient to burn that oil in a central power station than do it on every individual train (fact).
Not to mention that a modern train will run perfectly well on electricity from any source, so will immediately benefit from the movement towards renewables, whereas a diesel can only burn diesel fuel; something that quite apart from its environmental impact is only going to become more expensive as time goes on...
). Would Bulgaria or even New Zealand have a need for more stock?
