I like to have no bias on different methods of transport, but it is stupid to play the environmental game. The airline industry is striving to invest in even more efficient planes, the very latest lightweight polymer materials and higher capacity planes.
My local train company is cleverly advertising that if i can fit 4 or 5 people into a car i'm more environmental than apparently efficient than the 7 coach intercity services with the prized mark 3 stock. We are also stabbed in the back by voyagers which are been proven to be less environmental than cars in many cases.
How can we justify charging environmental taxes on planes on routes we can't even be bothered to electrify?
To begin with I was a great supporter of the CTRL. I was expecting a new mainline that could take so much stress off existing lines. Now we're getting a new "mainline" that will run a pityful amount of trains. The Javelins will not come for years, and Maidstone, right next to the line, will not have a branch off for trains from canterbury, dover and folkstone via ashford to serve Maidstone. Serving stratford seemed so much sense for interchange with the GEML to Kent, which could half the journey time for East Anglia to Kent journeys. A journey I do often. Yet they built a seperate station in stratford, reversing the trend of the central line, nll and dlr....
Finally the whole point of st pancras was to allow services to use the mainlines north of london, avoiding the Kenny O bottleneck. Yet so far there are no promises of services that will do this. I find it disgraceful that so much money was invested for the sole purpose of shaving about 20 minutes off journeys, when the huge amount of money could have been invested throughout england on lines used by so many more people. A new tube line would probably have helped the economy more, as would investment throughout the network on necessary schemes.
It's not too late to change UK policy but until then the CTRL is a huge white elephant.
For the last time it is NOT JUST about saving 20 minutes off a journey, it is about additional high quality rail capacity which hasn’t been added in the south east since Victorian times. There are side benefits as a catalyst for billions of pounds worth of new office and residential benefits en route in some of the most depressed areas of England. ANY new transport capacity costs £billions at current prices, new lanes for the M6 will be costing £60 million per mile, more than CTRL stage one.
The use of St Pancras makes it much easier for passengers to get to from the other main lines extending from London. Those on the East and outer sides can use Ebbsfleet, so I don't think I buy your argument about it benefits relatively few.
Now more faulty logic you have expressed:
One of the chief criticisms of more environmentally friendly planes is the low cost airlines merely reduce ticket prices, inducing demand, thereby creating more pollution. In economic terms this is called ‘Jevon’s paradox’. The airlines are the fastest growing emitter of greenhouses gases, with no fossil fuel substitute on the horizon and 27 times more damaging per passenger than Eurostar. We need to break free from fossil fuels altogether, not creating market conditions which use more! Clearly planes are the 'only game in town' which is comes to journeys over 500 miles and the main player over 300 miles. But 45% flights are under 400 miles, and some the the busiest routes of of London airports are to places like Edinburgh, Paris and Amsterdam which compete directly with rail. Sure we could expand Heathrow, and add yet more lanes to the supporting transport infrastructure at cost to the tax payer, but currently the only other solution is to reduce journeys altogether OR add additional rail capacity.
Next, no train company would advertise to use cars because 1) it reduces business for them 2) it creates additional pollution. The train will run anyway. 3) Reduces load factor and all train company stats are based on a relatively low load of 35%., the mean average throughout the day.
The CTRL is not a white elephant, with an increasing number of passengers using its services. It is badly need additional rail capacity is a very overcrowded portion of this country. One of the chief reasons we don’t get improved public transport in this country is even the people that are supposed to be informed think up just about every reason possible on why it shouldn’t be. What a short sighted, negative, loser country we are if that's our attitudes to one of the greatest engineering feats for the last 100 years. This is not about an anti air or road argument, this just happens to be one of those flows that rail does rather well, and should be supported by all because there is currently no other plan B.
(the HEx op' was going to be a semi fast stopping at hayes and ealing broadway to st pancras)
