On Jul 9, 10:09*pm, "Willms" wrote:

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 20:39:37 UTC, *schrieb Mizter T
*auf uk.railway :

If someone offered you an extra 2 hours (approx?) every day to spend
with your kids or playing 5-a-side or lying in bed in the morning (or
whatever the hell you do with your spare time....), and all it cost
you was £8 (approx?) a day, you'd do it, right? Who wouldn't?

Just £4.40 for an extra hour in bed every day? Priceless.

Agreed - but it's worth bearing in mind that the HS1 line cost
something like £5 billion, which was basically covered by government
loan guarantees to the company that built it, L&CR
I don't quite think the market is prepared to pay the true costs of
such a development

* hey, man! Do you really suggest that 2 hours extra time for a family
man should be subject to "market forces"?

* And what, if the "market forces" decide that the re-introduction of
slavery would help to increase the profits of the big banks, what
then?

* Should "the market" prevail over human beings?

* Is this the dragon which ruled over the town and who asked a virgin
sacrified to it every year in order not to destroy town and castle?

Luko, did you even read my whole post? I was suggesting that I don't
think people are really going to be willing to subsidise the
construction of very expensive new high-speed lines which benefit
already affluent commuters so as to enable them to make 100 mile plus
daily journeys. Of course, inevitably any new high-speed line would
increase the incidence of long-distance commuting , it's an inevitable
by-product - but specifically designing and constructing such lines
for commuting purposes isn't on (and of course is never going to
happen). Instead I'd be in favour of spending some of that money to
help all the family men and women who already live in towns and
cities, and to encourage families to live in the towns and cities in
which members of that family work, etc etc etc.

Before blundering in and criticising my comments, I suggest you
acquaint yourself with some of the basics with regards to the
Southeastern Highspeed service (which I've abbreviated as SE HS, and
also is/ has been called "CTRL-DS", "Kent domestics" and other
permutations thereof - and is sometimes erroneously called "Javelin")
- there's some information on the Southeastern website he
http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk....php/highspeed

Some of the people using SE HS could indeed have 2 or more extra hours
of family time if they (a) lived in London or (b) worked nearer where
they live and earnt less. That's simplifying things dramatically of
course, and there's an awful lot of different factors at play here
with regards to careers, lifestyles, quality of life (or at least
perceived quality of life), schooling etc etc - but people already
make these decisions, and one of the things on their calculus is
family time and to what extent they are prepared to play that off
against other factors such as career building or earning potential.

I'm not making massive definitive judgements on all these various
factors one way or the other, though I do have some thoughts on them -
but if someone was to propose an expensive new high-speed line from
Brighton to London (again a distance of about 50 miles) just to make
life easier for commuters, I'm not going to be there at the front of
the line campaigning in favour of it!

(Come to think of it, didn't the Brighton mainline RUS recently
pondered on some fairly radical/ 'way-out' ideas about tunnels to take
fast trains from Croydon under built up south London into central
London... not quite the same thing as a new high-speed line, but not
totally disconnected either.)

Mizter T wrote:

I was suggesting that I don't
think people are really going to be willing to subsidise the
construction of very expensive new high-speed lines which benefit
already affluent commuters so as to enable them to make 100 mile plus
daily journeys. Of course, inevitably any new high-speed line would
increase the incidence of long-distance commuting , it's an inevitable
by-product - but specifically designing and constructing such lines
for commuting purposes isn't on (and of course is never going to
happen). Instead I'd be in favour of spending some of that money to
help all the family men and women who already live in towns and
cities, and to encourage families to live in the towns and cities in
which members of that family work, etc etc etc.


There's a problem here. There will be a lot of opposition to the
construction of high speed lines that cause a lot of noise and
disruption during construction and a lot of noise in operation, if
people along the route don't benefit in some tangible way from the
services that run on those lines.

I think, if they go ahead at all, we'll have to end up with four track
routes that carry freight and more "local" services as well as up to 350
km/h long distance services. And that will only encourage long distance
commuting.

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability of
using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums than the
already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise professional people's
long distance daily commute. I agree that this makes no sense at all,
and that long distance commuting should be discouraged.

Tony Polson wrote:


and a lot of noise in operation,

In that case, copy foreign lines. Problem solved.



--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

In message , at
07:54:39 on Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
Tony Polson wrote:

and a lot of noise in operation,

In that case, copy foreign lines. Problem solved.

How do they reduce the operating noise? Is it by running mainly through
open countryside, tunnelling under towns, or what?
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
07:54:39 on Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
Tony Polson wrote:

and a lot of noise in operation,

In that case, copy foreign lines. Problem solved.

How do they reduce the operating noise? Is it by running mainly through
open countryside, tunnelling under towns, or what?

The Stuttgart-Ulm project in Germany contains a staggering amount of
tunnel - it's virtually a long-distance Tube line. The bits that aren't
in tunnel are alongside an autobahn.

Tom

In message , at 09:29:53 on Fri, 10
Jul 2009, Tom Barry remarked:
Tony Polson wrote:

and a lot of noise in operation,

In that case, copy foreign lines. Problem solved.
How do they reduce the operating noise? Is it by running mainly
through open countryside, tunnelling under towns, or what?

The Stuttgart-Ulm project in Germany contains a staggering amount of
tunnel - it's virtually a long-distance Tube line.

Weren't we also trying to work out why the UK spent twice as much as any
foreigners on new lines. Are we spending twice as much as that line?

The bits that aren't in tunnel are alongside an autobahn.

--
Roland Perry

Tom Barry writes:
How do they reduce the operating noise? Is it by running mainly
through open countryside, tunnelling under towns, or what?

The Stuttgart-Ulm project in Germany contains a staggering amount of
tunnel - it's virtually a long-distance Tube line. The bits that aren't
in tunnel are alongside an autobahn.

The Chuo (maglev) Shinkansen (now in planning stage) is supposedly going
to be 60% underground. The chosen route is 286km long, and very
mountainous.

...
The primary reason for the project's huge expense is that it is
planned to run in a tunnel for more than 60% of the entire line, and
40 m underground (deep underground) for a total of 100 km in the
Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka areas.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chū�_Shinkansen)

From what I understand, one big reason for constructing the new line,
instead of trying to increase speeds on the existing tokaido line, is
aerodynamic noise in populated areas. I guess building 40m underground
through sparsely populated areas should give them a bit of relief from
that problem; sure it costs 50 billion dollars, but...

-Miles

--
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without
individual responsibility.

On Jul 10, 12:57*am, Tony Polson wrote:
You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability of
using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums than the
already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise professional people's
long distance daily commute. *I agree that this makes no sense at all,
and that long distance commuting should be discouraged.

....although there's an entirely plausible argument that the large
amounts of money earned by, and hence taxed from, professional people
working in London on long commutes easily offset the subsidy that
their commute is given (compared to a scenario where they live in
countrysideyness and take the kind of lower-paying job that's
generally available outside global financial centres).


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

On Jul 10, 9:44*am, John B wrote:

On Jul 10, 12:57*am, Tony Polson wrote:

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability of
using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums than the
already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise professional people's
long distance daily commute. *I agree that this makes no sense at all,
and that long distance commuting should be discouraged.

...although there's an entirely plausible argument that the large
amounts of money earned by, and hence taxed from, professional people
working in London on long commutes easily offset the subsidy that
their commute is given (compared to a scenario where they live in
countrysideyness and take the kind of lower-paying job that's
generally available outside global financial centres).

That's a fair point, at least for some such commuters. In which case
one could argue that they should simply directly pay more for their
journeys instead of having their commute subsidised (and one could
argue that London might benefit from their presence... one could also
argue it might not as well - higher house prices etc!). Though the
notion that these folk should pay more of the full cost of their
commute might conflict to a certain extent with the notion that
subsidising shorter distance commutes is a legitimate thing to do,
because it means people have access to more reasonably priced property
- or the flip-side of the coin, employers in the centre have access to
a larger pool of potential employees.

I do comprehend it's a rather complex overall picture to say the
least, with a great number of arguments that can be made in favour of
taking all manner of various stances.

On Jul 10, 12:57*am, Tony Polson wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

I was suggesting that I don't
think people are really going to be willing to subsidise the
construction of very expensive new high-speed lines which benefit
already affluent commuters so as to enable them to make 100 mile plus
daily journeys. Of course, inevitably any new high-speed line would
increase the incidence of long-distance commuting , it's an inevitable
by-product - but specifically designing and constructing such lines
for commuting purposes isn't on (and of course is never going to
happen). Instead I'd be in favour of spending some of that money to
help all the family men and women who already live in towns and
cities, and to encourage families to live in the towns and cities in
which members of that family work, etc etc etc.

There's a problem here. *There will be a lot of opposition to the
construction of high speed lines that cause a lot of noise and
disruption during construction and a lot of noise in operation, if
people along the route don't benefit in some tangible way from the
services that run on those lines.

I think, if they go ahead at all, we'll have to end up with four track
routes that carry freight and more "local" services as well as up to 350
km/h long distance services. *And that will only encourage long distance
commuting.

Interesting point. The land take would obviously be that much greater,
as would the cost, but nonetheless I can see your point - if a right-
of-way is being constructed, one might as well put in the extra work
and get four tracks out of it rather than two.


You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability of
using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums than the
already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise professional people's
long distance daily commute. *I agree that this makes no sense at all,
and that long distance commuting should be discouraged.

That said, I am in favour (I think!) of the massively expensive
Crossrail project... for a long time I didn't really have any properly
considered thoughts on it because I thought it was unlikely to ever
happen, but it seems it is now happening (as ever there's some
uncertainty of course). Though Crossrail won't facilitate long-
distance commuting per-se directly, but inevitably that will be a side-
effect.

I should just add that I'm not anti-professional people (whatever that
means!), nor anti-commuting as such. I certainly appreciate the
complex and multi-layered reasoning at play behind the decision of
people to do more lengthy commutes. Though I (obviously) do take some
issue with long-distance daily commuting (FSVO "long-distance", which
is of course debatable!).

And sometimes I think I might implode under the mass of my own
internal contradictions... and then just propose that everyone should
go off and live off the land, being crofters and woodsmen, where the
big journey is into the next town but one! But the genie of travel is
of course out of the bottle.