Hi all,

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough. But in London Crossrail
has made essentially no progress in twenty years, the Chelsea and
Hackney line remains entirely theoretical after longer, and Thameslink
2000 has become a joke.

I know there are exceptions - the DLR being the obvious one, but also
the JLEx; and that London isn't alone (New York has been waiting a long
time for the 2nd avenue subway line).

But is there a reason why it should be so hard to get new underground
lines built in London? Is it finance? Planning regulations? The
political process?

Just wondering,

Jonn

wrote:
Hi all,

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough. But in London Crossrail
has made essentially no progress in twenty years, the Chelsea and
Hackney line remains entirely theoretical after longer, and Thameslink
2000 has become a joke.

I know there are exceptions - the DLR being the obvious one, but also
the JLEx; and that London isn't alone (New York has been waiting a long
time for the 2nd avenue subway line).

But is there a reason why it should be so hard to get new underground
lines built in London? Is it finance? Planning regulations? The
political process?

Just wondering,

Jonn
The original DLR was hardly new either using existing routes. I doubt
it would have been built if they had started from scratch.

Kevin

wrote:

Hi all,

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough. But in London Crossrail
has made essentially no progress in twenty years, the Chelsea and
Hackney line remains entirely theoretical after longer, and Thameslink
2000 has become a joke.

I know there are exceptions - the DLR being the obvious one, but also
the JLEx; and that London isn't alone (New York has been waiting a long
time for the 2nd avenue subway line).

But is there a reason why it should be so hard to get new underground
lines built in London? Is it finance? Planning regulations? The
political process?

Just wondering,

Jonn

Don't forget our East London Line ext - now coming our way (on existing
track). What a joke it's taken so long. The reason is simple - our
political climate has been poisoned against enviromental improvements for
many years.

M.

wrote:
Hi all,

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough.

Not sure about this.

Line 14 is the only new Metro line in 20 years (not counting 3bis and
7bis, since they're just administrative changes), and it's only 7.9km
long. The only other post-1990 Metro work is the the Line 1 extension
to La Defense (1992) and the Line 13 extension to St Denis Universite,
both of which are tiny branches.

The RER has seen more impressive progress - in the last 20 years,
they've built lines D and E plus some suburban extensions across the
network (many of which have been nicked from SNCF, although some are
new - the lack of parallel suburban extensions in London reflects the
much denser BR network than Paris's SNCF network).

Nonetheles, the effective construction in central Paris is 7.9km of
urban tube and perhaps 20km of mainline-ish railway in tunnel.

But in London Crossrail
has made essentially no progress in twenty years, the Chelsea and
Hackney line remains entirely theoretical after longer, and Thameslink
2000 has become a joke.

True (and frustrating) for Crossrail and Chelney. The northern
infrastructure for T2K+n has largely been built as part of CTRL2. I'm
told by someone who /really/ ought to know that T2k+n is the next major
project, and that (subject to the planning enquiry reporting
favourably) the money for the rest of it will be found ASAP, possibly
in phases.

I know there are exceptions - the DLR being the obvious one, but also
the JLEx; and that London isn't alone (New York has been waiting a long
time for the 2nd avenue subway line).

Don't forget CTRL2. It's not quite the same kind of project, but in
terms of the skills and disruption and money required, it consumes many
of the same resources, and the end product is pretty similar (we've
20km of urban electrified tunnel mainline railway - it's just a shame
this goes from St Pancras to the Thames estuary, rather than from
Paddington to Stratford). Also ELLX, which is directly comparable to an
RER project.

But is there a reason why it should be so hard to get new underground
lines built in London? Is it finance? Planning regulations? The
political process?

All of the above, especially each of them. But I'm sceptical that
London is unique among developed western cities here.

To the extent that we are behind, the main reason is likely to be the
massive culture of mistrust between the Treasury and delivery
organisations - especially following the JLE farce and the Channel
Tunnel farce, mandarins generally assume that any plan they receive
contains massively overinflated benefit assumptions and massively
understated cost assumptions.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

In message .com,
writes

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough.

There is an entirely different philosophy towards public transport in
France. State funding is virtually guaranteed for big infrastructure
projects, and is supported by almost draconian compulsory purchase
powers and other legal powers to ensure that work proceeds quickly.

RATP is responsible for much of the transport system around Paris, and
is essentially a government agency. In addition to a high level of
public subsidy at a national level, there is a long tradition of
required contributions from those expected to benefit from better
transport (businesses and local people, via regional authorities).

Its an altogether different system - it works well in a country that has
had a couple of centuries of very centralised political control, but its
perhaps not a system that would be politically acceptable in the UK.

Also, the Paris situation is not all that marvellous - Line 14 was the
first new metro line since the 1930s and is relatively short. There has
been good investment in modernising the system, though, and the RER has
brought welcome improvements.

--
Paul Terry

On 23 May 2006 07:02:45 -0700, wrote:


Hi all,

I'm curious - is there some institutional or legal reason why it's so
hard to get new transport built in London?

Money is the first issue. A distrust in public transport is probably
second - the only reason anything gets spent on it is because London and
the South East would cease to function without trains and the Tube and
there are too many votes at risk elsewhere for trains to be abandoned
completely. It will be interesting to see how much of a hammering, if
any, Labour gets for "betraying" the residents of several large Northern
cities by scrapping plans for trams. Thirdly you get into what passes
for a planning system in this country - this again is stacked against
transport investment (IMO) and there is far too much nimbyism as well.

The Parisians seem to manage it easily enough.

As another has said it is true to say they "did" manage it. There's been
little progress of late in terms of new lines - planned extensions to
Line 14 and to RER E have not been pursued. Trams seem to be the "in
vogue" item for Paris with new lines and extensions being built. There
is also the possibility of some orbital lines seeing passenger services
again.

But in London Crossrail
has made essentially no progress in twenty years, the Chelsea and
Hackney line remains entirely theoretical after longer, and Thameslink
2000 has become a joke.

I think there are two important factors here - Network Rail and the LU
PPP. Neither set up is really designed to take on huge new build
schemes. There is simply too much to do in terms of getting the existing
networks up to scratch and there is also seemingly too much risk in
doing that for any huge enterprise to be taken on. The fact that CTRL
is being delivered by a completely separate organisation and then handed
to NR for maintenance and operation says it all. Both NR and PPP are
subject to 5 or 7½ reviews of charges / performance and large scale
projects would cut across these statutory "rebidding" processes.

Franchising on the National network also does not help as there is not a
consistent operator in place to allow new railways to be constructed to
a fixed specification. I have real doubts as to whether any of the
schemes you mention will ever be built.

I know there are exceptions - the DLR being the obvious one, but also
the JLEx; and that London isn't alone (New York has been waiting a long
time for the 2nd avenue subway line).

DLR started cheap, got a pseudo private sector injection of cash for the
Bank extension and has since sucked in cash for constant expansion. If
government had had a clue as to the actual costs and scale of expansion
it would never have built the initial network. It simply goes against
the Treasury's view of "transport investment". The only saving grace is
that we have Ken at the moment who is going all out to get as much
started as possible. The fact that he won the Mayoralty for Labour is
key to the ongoing levels of support for transport in London. Change the
Mayor and I imagine the money will get turned off.

But is there a reason why it should be so hard to get new underground
lines built in London? Is it finance? Planning regulations? The
political process?

I've pondered a bit above but I'm sure others will have plenty to add.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I we adopted a Hong Kong or Tokyo style financing system, we'd get
things built again. The problem with London is that there is a
philosophy of recouping the investment from ticket sales alone, which
is rarely lucrative enough. In Hong Kong revenues from real estate near
newly built train stations flows back into the transport system. In
London they don't.