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Isn't it a shock that two city mayors aren't able to come up with an option any meaningfully different than hundreds of civil engineers at Mott MacDonald Scott Wilson Grimshaw were more than a decade ago? The real world of geology and geography and railway engineering doesn't care about the...

As the network develops, it will become increasingly clear that the solution is really just to build more tram lines. The aim of the game is to get people moving into and around the city. Trams are generally better than buses and absolutely better than cars and taxis at doing that. Making life...

There isn't a vast amount of point going to Stockport. Unless you're willing to smash a new viaduct in alongside the existing one, you'll be building a tunnel under the suburbs of Manchester to Piccadilly. And, if you're going to have a second station at Manchester, building it on greenfield...

We are in this mess because of the laws that we have in place. The owner of the hotel was, as far as I can tell, doing everything perfectly legally and indeed rationally from his perspective. If we don't want this situation to happen again, then we are going to have to change the laws. The...

Yes, it is. The point of insurance as a distinct financial product is to cover you in the unlikely case you win the reverse lottery and end up owing someone huge sums of money. Since these events are rare, the most efficient thing for people to do is to pool together. A million people paying a...

Eurostar acts as a painful reminder that the UK is in fact only 20 miles from France and the rest of Europe. Flights from France can be mixed in and processed the same as those from the US or India or China but with Eurostar we have a totally dedicated transport mode for travel to the EU. So...

Any money or services you get during airline disruption is also paid for through insurance. The airlines would charge less for tickets if compensation etc wasn't required. It might not be explicitly marked as insurance but that's just because most airlines are large enough that they can...

As Crossrail demonstrates pretty well, the civil engineering can be easy but the electrical and mechanical fit out can be a lot harder. Without photogenic events like TBM breakthroughs it's much harder to judge progress.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the same construction inflation that is obliterating infrastructure schemes up and down the country will also make maintenance or any alternative improvements unviable as well. I'd hate to see the cost of any HS2 alternative scheme now. The fundamental...

Yes, it's car-unfriendly in the way that public transport and LTNs are car-unfriendly. Being so means that they are better for everything else. If we want Oxford to grow it would be much, much better for us to build out local public transport infrastructure than for us to attempt much more road...

The only reason that Oxford and Cambridge aren't developing into cities today is that government policy prevents them from doing so. If that policy changes (which it may well do, given that it's the lowest-hanging fruit available for economic growth today) then quite a lot of other policies will...

Compulsory purchase and demolition of a limited number of properties along the route of a strategic rail project is not impossible. If there's a solid case for a line to be built, and the alternative route options are sufficiently expensive and/or problematic, then CPO is the right thing to do...

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/cost-to-build-a-station-car-parking-space.253126/ This appears to be a relevant thread. The problem is the cost. If you think it's a good idea, that's fine. But, the council/Edinburgh Trams don't have an unlimited budget. Since it's unlikely a car park...

The fact the station is underneath the road bridge means there's a fairly hard limit to how high you can raise it out of the harm of any flood water. In principle, the station might have been able to be built fully north of the bridge so that it could be raised up. But, that would have meant it...

The line isn't ever going to be extended for passenger use. That freight extension, maybe, but not for passengers. It's really not the end of the world if the station floods once every two years so long as it's predictable. The alternative is that there's no station here at all.

Without any structures in the way there's no real reason not to wire up the bit beyond the station. Those few hundred metres of wire and a few OHLE supports aren't what makes or breaks the financial viability of an electrification scheme. I am also curious about where they'll wire up next...

That bypass line idea is unlikely to happen unless we get back to a world where the railway is capacity constrained and electrification is no longer the top priority. Partial electrification using BEMUs should simplify the Fife electrification by quite a bit. With traditional electrification...

Fields which are about to be developed into 6 storey buildings. Go and look at the plans for the IBG and West Town and then tell me that the land nearby is worthless. From the city's perspective it would be better if people didn't drive to Ingliston and instead took the bus or train from where...

Extending the P&R costs money. Why is the council going to spend that money on an extended P&R vs any other travel investment? The business case is poor. The land around Ingliston is very valuable for other purposes; buying it would be expensive, and even if the council already owns it, the...

With those developments south of the airport, the council already know it has to go up to 16tph. The very expensive infrastructure they built is capable of much, much higher frequency than it is currently being used for. The limit on frequency has, until now, been the awkward single track...