More delays for Euston's HS2 station

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartaria

With the exception of Paddington (where presumably most services will stop at OOC), it's going to be easier to connect to any of the other London terminals from Euston than from Old Oak Common. Liverpool St about the same. Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge direct tube from Euston vs two from OOC. Kings Cross / St Pancras walkable from Euston vs two changes.

East/West connections in the UK are often pretty dire, so often the fastest way to get anywhere in the South East from the North West will be to travel via London. Flexible off peak returns are often only £1 more than an off peak single so after I moved abroad, when visiting family and friends around England I would usually find returns from London the cheapest somewhat flexible option to visit everyone.

> But walking with a suitcase from Euston to KGSP isn’t exactly easy anyway.

I've done this and found that 10 minute walk on the flat much easier than taking a suitcase up three lifts to Liverpool Street mainline station from the Crossrail platform...

> Only benefits to Euston are easy to get to the Victoria and northern lines. Whether that outweighs crossrail is a septye wuruain, maybe for north-south journeys, but probably not for “to London”.

When I lived in Manchester I used to take the train down to London quite often. Being able to change at Old Oak Common to Crossrail would probably have made about 1/3rd of my trips easier (great for going west, Heathrow or Canary Wharf), but would have made more than half more difficult (most of central, north or south London, South East England outside of London), with the remainder much the same (the City, possibly Clapham.)

So I definitely don't think being able to change to Crossrail at OOC would be useless, just less useful than changing at Euston.

Upgrading stations in-place is extremely expensive, far more so than building them in the first place. (In theory opening the railway without the station and then closing it for months to add the station might be better all round, but in practice passengers throw a fit if you try to do that).

> for example with crossrail you could have aimed to open Liverpool Street to Whitechapel, then add in Tottenham Court Road, etc. etc.

So you'd have to build a bunch of extra turnback facilities, resignal everything repeatedly, use those expensive TBMs for longer, and to what benefit?

They did build one station early to prove things out and understand any problems (Canary Wharf). Not a lot of value in doing more than that.

> As much as I love the Elizabeth line I’m pretty sure it is crazy over specified, the stations and tunnels are all gargantuan and they probably could have made everything 20% smaller IMO which would have saved them quite bit.

No it wouldn't, that's exactly the sort of backwards shortsighted thinking that messed up HS2 (if we make the charitable assumption that Sunak wasn't just deliberately wrecking it). The most expensive part of building the Elizabeth line was demolishing and digging up a bunch of buildings in central London. Rebuilding an existing underground railway in London to be bigger is literally impossible to do economically, the size they built it was the size it will be forever, and even if building it to tube size had been a good idea (it isn't) it would have been illegal under accessibility regulations. Making the stations 20% smaller would have been penny-wise and pound-foolish in the extreme.

> I often think the politicians egos are the biggest pitfall for most infrastructure projects.

Well, yes, but the way that manifests is politicians thinking they can tell the people building it to just do x y and z and that will save money, rather than accepting that actually the experts know what they're doing. The same thinking as your comment, in other words.

No, the people who are currently forced off the road are the people who are worse off than that, the people who can't afford cars at all. The mass of cars choking the streets makes life difficult or impossible for those who have to rely on cycling or buses, which is what being actually unprivileged looks like. To say nothing of the people literally dying from air pollution.

> The only people who _won't_ be forced off of the road, are the privileged.

There are simply too many vehicles on the roads. Some of them need to go. Either we charge a fair price and then at least the wealthy are contributing something that can be spent on helping the rest of us. Or we do something else, and the wealthy will still find a way round it but won't pay anything towards the public good.

> the infrastructure continues to suffer after all of the public funds have been pocketed by the privileged for improved transport that was never delivered, while the roads are lined with processions of Chelsea tractors ignoring 20mph limits.

So if investing in transport improvements is no good and taking cars off the road is no good, what do you actually want? Other than to complain on the internet, which will still be allowed in any scenario.