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Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

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Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#41

Post by JohnCClarke »

Neil44 wrote: post #24

For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, t…

Be careful when getting irate about aledged "Health & Safety" or "Ecological" oe other money wasting. The facts are often different than they first appear: https://jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/01/31/no-the-hs2-bat-tunnel-...

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#42

Post by linuxftw »

> Well, first up, they'd have spotted that our major cities need more frequent and faster rail connections from suburbs to centres and that these are prevented at the moment by insufficient platform capacity in stations like Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street. So we need more station capacity in our city centres.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Build new cities, don't keep shuffling people into the existing ones. When you keep building new infrastructure to shuffle people into the same cities, the property values at the tail end of the infrastructure rise, pushing people further out, increasing the demand for new infrastructure.

The property prices inside the city stay inflated, wages stagnate, the working class loses.

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#43

Post by ur-whale »

dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote: post #5

The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit…

> and GDP per capita is twice as high.

And why do you think that is?

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#44

Post by JackFr »

Neil44 wrote: post #24

For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, t…

> Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue.

That is an issue with many projects in the US. Reasonable and well-intentioned environmental regulations are created, but then used as political cudgels in bad faith to derail projects for NIMBY or other reasons of self interest.

It’s not an easy problem to solve.

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#45

Post by markus_zhang »

throw0101a wrote: post #33
Neil44 wrote: post #24

For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, t…

> For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says […] That someone is Natural England, who is tasked, by law, with enforcing laws that protect wildlife and the environment and needs to sign off on disruptive work: > A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said "multiple options" had been considered, including green bridges and restoring habitats, to "comply with laws protecting vulnerable species". > It sa…

There is definitely a long gap between "Don't care about env at all" and "Preventing everything being built because it hassles some small animal". I'm afraid and you and many people are biasing towards the other end even if you believe you are a white knight.

Anyway, I'm not in UK so I don't care. Good luck.

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#46

Post by calpaterson »

JohnCClarke wrote: post #41
Neil44 wrote: post #24

For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, t…

Be careful when getting irate about aledged "Health & Safety" or "Ecological" oe other money wasting. The facts are often different than they first appear: https://jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/01/31/no-the-hs2-bat-tunnel-...

I read your link and it does not support your view that the facts are different than they appear. He calculates a bit differently (including not just currently living bats but those bats yet unborn) but still I feel the tunnel was not necessary

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#48

Post by ChocolateGod »

gadders wrote: post #3

I think the Lower Thames Crossing will make HS2 look like a model of efficiency by the time it is completed. £1.2bn spent without even a shovel of dirt being removed. [1] Instead they have spent money on shite like this [2] (which may be admirable in themselves, but bribes to shut local communities and charities up shouldn't be part of the project). [1] https://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/1-2bn-spent-on-l...…

Nimbyism needs to be shut down at the earliest opportunity when a project is mandatory for the economic growth of the country, people moan about their energy prices but also moan when a wind turbine is within viewing distance of their house.

I have seen the current Labour government start to override councils putting up fusses, too early to see if it makes any meaningful effect though.

I watched this video from TLDR last year and found it easy to understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPFlDGQah4

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#49

Post by inglor_cz »

I wonder how much of this difference is attributable to Swiss direct democracy, which teaches people to participate in the decision-making process, but it also teaches them that losing in a vote is natural, and that you in fact should have at least some position towards bigger projects, instead of ignoring 99 per cent of what is going on, because your position actually matters when the ballot is being counted.

NIMBYs and other special interest groups are usually non-majority, but used to getting their way over the wish (or, more often, tired indifference) of the majority, which the Swiss system makes a bit harder.

Re: Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

#50

Post by ta1243 »

zabzonk wrote: post #32

But of course the British did create one of the greatest transport projects - the country-wide railway system, only to have it destroyed by the Conservatives. I used to live in North London, and it made me so sad that each branch-line I walked over on bridge, now allotments, or simply overgrown, could have taken me int the City far faster and more efficiently than the tube (I like the tube, as much as anyone can). Th…

The majority of railway miles closed under Labour

And your branch line wouldn't take you into the city - there isn't the terminal capacity.

However new lines, like the Victoria, Jubilee, and Crossrail will.

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