61–70 of 161 posts
Somehow following the rabbit hole led me to this list of infra megaprojects around the world [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects
> "megaprojects, which may be defined as projects that cost more than US$1 billion" At our current pace a public toilet will soon qualify as a megaproject.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
You're looking at someone saying "look at this tiny pothole and how awful it is on a road" when 50 yards further down there's a massive chasm. It's a distraction technique as old as the hills, and implies the blame for the missing 100b is because of bat boxes, while others run off with the remaining 99b.
The agile way. You end up getting nothing you really wanted done but everything is on time vs the method where you get everything you want at some unknown point in time.
What if it was done waterfall style where you put in as much in the time frame and released at random marketing moments.
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…
The fact that there is a law saying this drag must be applied does not make it right. I'm fully aware we need to protect natural species, not create fire risks, etc, etc, but the idea that every project must incur cost to prove up front that it is complete is an asinine drag on everything, especially seeing as like 99.9% of projects are effectively compliant from the get go and the bulk of the time wasting consists of circulating correspondance and nit picking to this effect.
I think this sounds a little like it's viewed through a lens of survivor bias. If the UK had made a success of HS2 (difficult to imagine with governments in much of living memory, but let's sidestep all of that) then it could have been claimed, perhaps with some merit, that the UK was able to do something with rail infrastructure that the Swiss could never because they were hamstrung by their approach.
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.
> 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…
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…
If you're gonna be anti-progress, fine, but it should cost you, not others
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Unfortunately, for those laws to be effective, they have to be strong enough to beat the various legal shenanigans / loopholes which can be used by developers to effortlessly leapfrog them.
Finally, if the laws are strong enough, they might be effortlessly wielded to prevent even reasonable developments from occurring.
The law lands somewhere in the middle and I think there are always people at either extreme trying to take advantage.