Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
We should just get on an build it.
It's become embarrassing in this country, we can't get sod all done.
Last year China built 3000km of high speed rail, to add to the 6300km they already had
http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2013/jan/china-rail.cfm
And we're arguing about a few hundred miles and it'll take over a decade before work starts.
You can see quite clearly what a 'can do' attitude can do for your economy.
Cut the red tape, give the environmentalists the finger, and get these projects going. |
Well we got the Olympics 'done' quite nicely to be fair.
As prestigious an engineering feat as it would be, I can't see how HS2 can really work to drive the economy except during its construction phase. It's going to be massively expensive to build and unless it's heavily subsidised it'll be underused. I've yet to see a convincing commercial argument about how cutting journey times by train by, IIRC, a hour between London and Manchester is going to generate a significant amount of new jobs and wealth.
Right now I think the money would be far better spent on building things we really need like housing and improving the infrastructure we already have, including roads and railways. We could also try generating some jobs and avoiding the huge costs of disruption and destruction due to severe weather by improving basic things like our flood defences.