Tories to scrap crossrail?

[the sniper]

The Crossrail project is one big smokescreen. It is designed purely to suggest that the current government has any interest in investing in the broken railways of the UK. I mean, who exactly is going to use it? If I understand the proposed route of Crossrail, it is going to run from Shenfield through the West End of London, ending up in Maidenhead? Why do the government think that such a route is going to be a success? It won't, mark my words. It's an expensive way of giving the UK another route which will lead to the same old problems of overcrowding.
The Tories should scrap Crossrail, and HS2 for that matter, and focus on the existing lines and improve their respective services. I fear this will not be the case with an uninspiring performance from a leader hell bent on becoming the UK's answer to Jimmy Carter.

Isn't Crossrail all about relieving pressure off London Underground? HS2 is definitely about relieving pressure off the West Coast Mainline. It's all about capacity, the reasoning for building new lines instead of modifying old ones at massive expense has been explained on this forum many times now, so I shan't justify the argument again.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Stuart, the difference from those three examples, is that Crossrail is needed urgently, whereas those developments were speculative

Oh dont get me wrong, Im sure there is a utility for the project. But lets not forget that something similar happened in this country before, when the Heath Government were going to build a giant airport on the east coast on reclaimed land connected by a high speed rail link. That got binned because of the country's financial state, and updating Heathrow has been a thorn in the side ever since. Admittedly there was a slight downturn in air traffic in the late 70s used to justify it, but looking at all the trouble they are having putting in a 3rd runway, its a pity they didnt go with it. It would have been a cheap time to do it.

Ultimately the difference between Britain and Japan is that when the Japanese get a downturn, they start building infrastructure to try to get out of it. When we get a downturn, we usually hide behind the sofa.

 

[Moog_1984]

So how can it be scrapped? Unless you just leave a load of partially completed building works and parts of London a construction site forever more. And presumably pay back the contractors £Millions?

Absolutely, there will undoubtedly be penalty terms for cessation of contract!

Looks like the tories are going to win: just wait for more dogmatic privitisation, cuts in public spending ( apart from highly expensive cancer drugs who's manufacturers have a good lobby group and a willing ear now) and if you thought Labour were in the pockets of big business......just you wait!

12 leading economists wrote that the proposed cuts by the Tories would pin the UK economy to a longer recession. I mean the two gulf wars, the US bails outs after the financial crash and the whole green thing are the biggest examples of Keynsian economics in the last 30 years.

After this volcano though, and the whole Nostradamus 2012 thang, I reckon there will be money flowing into high speed rail from patient institutional investers.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nostradamus predicted high speed rail? What a forward thinking chap he was.hock: