Damien

France by the way is also doing the Grand Paris Express, an outer loop rail for Paris to connect the suburbs and reduce the need to travel through the city to get to the other side.

Not saying we need something like that for London but it's a sign that some countries just do things rather than spend decades debating it, and start building it before canceling it and framing it as a 'brave decision'.

I am not even especially bothered about HS2. It's not something I would use much. I was just happy we were actually building something for once.

I.E They've been talking of a new crossing in Dartford for about 10 years now. Maybe more. The Dartford Crossing always has long delays now because it simply cannot cope and the idea was to alleviate the fright traffic from Dover/Folkstone by creating a new crossing they would use without having to hit the M25 until they were north of the river. It's always 'out for consultation'.

We measure infrastructure projects in human lifetimes at this rate. Our ancestors used to do that for cathedrals they were building by hand, we do that to build a poxy bridge.

That's also why all this talk of alternative projects is just talk. He will get applauded from the true believers but those people will never, ever, see those projects because the same thing will happen again. They will consult, which will take years, then there will be legal challenges because somebody's allotment is in the way or the hypothetical noise from construction bothers some NIMBYs in a village two miles away from the construction site, 10-20 years later construction might start at 5x the proposed budget before some twerp who is currently a 17-year-old aspiring SPAD has become PM and cancels the whole thing.