Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 1:05 pm  

Good to see them up in Manchester buying off the North. Will they succeed?

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 2:11 pm  

The might be saying that they'll be building "high speed rail link" between Liverpool and Hull, but I think its just the foundations for a wall.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 5:16 pm  

I agree in principle about the need for better transport infrastructure between the major cities in the north. But I don't think just an HS3 between Leeds & Manchester will do that.
If it ran from Hull to Leeds to Manchester to Liverpool that'd be better in my opinion, but it has to be backed up with better and faster branch line services, much better road connectivity and, crucially, better road infrastructure within cities themselves.
Leeds certainly needs a "proper" ring road for instance. I'm sure other cities are the same, even Manchester borrows part of the M62 for its ring road.

All of which is more important than shaving 20 minutes or so off a train journey to London in my opinion.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:31 pm  

I just dont understand the dash for a high speed service, unless the politicians have a "personal" interest of course - what is needed NOW is a service of dedicated lines between major cities that can use existing stock but wont be subject to delays caused by slower local services using the same lines and platforms.

As a for instance I have in the past been a frequent user of the Leeds/Birmingham x-country service, its good, was always on time give or take a handful of minutes, and took exactly 2 hours, which is fast enough for anyone who needs to attend meetings etc, in fact it gives you 2 hours of preperation time for whatever business reason & most people on the 8.11 service that I used to use worked on laptops for the whole trip, uninterrupted.

Im down here for a while now but I drive it simply for the fact that its cheaper for the company to pay me 45p a mile than it is to buy me a train ticket, its a ridiculous state of affairs because it takes me at least 50% longer and Im one person in a car burning deisel, the up side is that it only cost me £12 worth of deisel each way - I'll let you do the maths.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:32 pm  

Double post.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:41 pm  

Him wrote:

I agree in principle about the need for better transport infrastructure between the major cities in the north. But I don't think just an HS3 between Leeds & Manchester will do that.
If it ran from Hull to Leeds to Manchester to Liverpool that'd be better in my opinion, but it has to be backed up with better and faster branch line services, much better road connectivity and, crucially, better road infrastructure within cities themselves.
Leeds certainly needs a "proper" ring road for instance. I'm sure other cities are the same, even Manchester borrows part of the M62 for its ring road.

All of which is more important than shaving 20 minutes or so off a train journey to London in my opinion.

I'd like to see more motorway links across the Pennines. Make the M65 go all the way to Bradford past Keighley and give Shipley a by-pass. Also take the M67 all the way across past Sheffield and link it onto the M1. The M6 through Staffordshire and Cheshire desperatley needs widening too.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 7:01 pm  

wigan_rlfc wrote:

I'd like to see more motorway links across the Pennines. Make the M65 go all the way to Bradford past Keighley and give Shipley a by-pass. Also take the M67 all the way across past Sheffield and link it onto the M1. The M6 through Staffordshire and Cheshire desperatley needs widening too.

Yep, there are plenty of links to the "smaller" cities and areas that are needed too alongside by-passes and ring roads. Where I live in York is in desperate need of an improved ring road.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:28 pm  

A couple of posh blokes hoping to woo the natives with promises of an iron horse to solve all the problems. I'm surprised they didn't bring some brightly coloured beads and bottles of firewater to give away.

How about releasing capital to build a few thousand council houses that could be let at truly affordable rents? That would do more to help "the North" than HS3

Re: Tories plan for North? : Tue Jun 24, 2014 9:57 am  

Osborne must have just discovered BBC iPlayer. There was a programme a few months back called Mind the Gap: London v the Rest which touched on the subject of connecting Leeds and Manchester to make one big super city.

Re: Tories plan for North? : Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:30 pm  

Whilst touching on the subject of infrastructure, where I live on the outskirts of York, City of York Council are planning to allow large amounts of house building. Which would be fine were it not for there being no planned infrastructure improvements whatsoever.
They are looking to increase the size of the town by approx 30-40% without any transport, education or health improvements. The town centre is already packed full on a daily basis, the roads are packed at rush hour and the schools are oversubscribed, partly due to the council closing a school a few years ago.

It's just ridiculous.