Quote:
Originally Posted by richard1960
Not quite Hugh this driver obviously drives over large sections of rail infrastructure and i do not think you can dismiss his views so easily where speed restrictons apply,i travel on the Norwich section of line and can tell you the train on that line has lots of speed restrictions alone.
Its is anknowledged that rail investment is not what it should be,by upgrading the current infrastructure it may be possible to shave 20 mins off the journey times now without the need for a posssible white elephant.
Has a review been done to find out if upgrading of the current network would do the trick i wonder.
Or is this a project to leave a "legacy" for the government minister concerned.
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Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well.
I would expect the train driver/bus driver to know the tactical impact of issues (slow trains, hold-ups and delays), but not the strategic reasons for them (major infrastructure refreshes required, the difference in costs between upgrading/making do/completely rebuilding), or the political, economic, and social impact of any of those options, and the prioritisation of those.
It can often cost more to try and upgrade existing lines, with the impact on services whilst those upgrades are happening, than to build new. For instance, we just had to decide between refreshing/upgrading a 12 year old datacentre, or outsource, or build new (we actually built new, and it was cheaper than refreshing, without the risk of the centre upgrade negatively affecting existing systems and services - now we have implemented this, we can refresh the old one for Disaster Recovery).
I see the HS2 as the equivalent of the Motorway system - most people said we didn't need it, but where would we be without it now?