I daresay only Scotland could receive news of a potentially revolutionary high speed rail network, fuelling our imagination with talk of 200mph trains and 2 hour trips to London, and almost immediately boil the debate down to whether it should be called 'the Union Railway' or 'the Independence Railway'.
Tom Harris and Bill Wilson, take a bow.
Anyway, the mischief and nonsense to one side, it is a hugely inspiring proposition and regardless of the prohibitive cost, we have to ask ourselves whether in 50 years time we want to be flying to London and beyond or getting the train.
With the environment very much in mind, it is surely the latter that is vastly preferable and although it may appear unaffordable, we should look at other projects that are in the pipeline in order to concentrate our minds on what is needed and what is not.
The Forth Road Bridge, the 3rd bridge to link Edinburgh to Fife, is due to be financed and built over the next decade with a cost expected to exceed £3.4bn.
The cost of high speed rail is reported to be £34bn.
Scotland's population is some 10% of the UK's total population which would suggest that our share of the cost for these trains would be roughly £3.4bn. Exactly the same cost as the new Forth Road bridge. What are the chances!? (Pretty high given my creative accounting but let's move on shall we....)
The gist of my point is this, we probably can't afford to build a new Forth Road Bridge and start on high speed rail. Some would say we can afford neither but given we already have two bridges spanning the Forth between Edinburgh and Fife and only a pedestrian train service down to London, it is surely the latter that is a priority.
There is a suggestion that the reason for the third bridge is that the SNP could use it as an expensive leverage when pushing for fiscal autonomy and borrowing powers. A means to a constitutional end. Honestly? I have a lot of sympathy for that suspicion.
How many stretches of water around the world have 3 transport bridges sitting side by side with each other? Not many I reckon.
The official reason for the third bridge is that the existing road crossing is seeing its cables weaken at such a rate that the bridge will be too dangerous to travel on some time next decade. However, through a mix of new technology (dehumdification) and engineers' confidence in the strength of the current cables, there is now no reason why the existing bridge cannot be merely upgraded to extend its useful life, possibly forever, as has been the case with similar bridges facing similar issues around the world.
The Forthright Alliance is a group that is fiercely opposing the building of the new bridge and I thoroughly recommend reading their website.
Tom Harris, when he's not poking the SNP beast with talk of 'Union Railways' has suggested that the SNP is too disciplined and does not generate enough debate within the party.
Tom may well be right but for my money (and my share of that £3.4bn is a serious chunk of cash), I think the SNP are flat out wrong on the need for another Forth crossing and the money should be invested in transport that fires the imagination and will deliver a truly sustainable network, a long-lasting testimony to the green future that we should all be striving towards.
We need high-speed trains for the centuries to come, not a bridge for diesel-powered lorries and cars to break the back of over the next few decades as an expensive quick fix to a very difficult problem.
EDIT: That said, if we're going to have this bridge, and while we're talking about names, I still think the Irn-Bru Bridge (made from girders) is a winner.
Merkel, the great Eurosceptic
1 minute ago
23 comments:
Damn Westminster! Always picking fights with the Nationalist government at Holyrood! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I must disagree about the party not allowing debate; I would wager that we have a helluva lot more scope of input from normal members than some of the other members.. We've got our conferences, and councils and assemblies throughout the year; do the other parties let lay members help formulate the manifesto?
As for the bridge, I don't know enough to call either way. If I had to choose though, I'd choose the train option? It would be ridiculous though, for it to take me almost as long to get from Edinburgh from Dundee as it would for me to get from Edinburgh to London!!
I don't think though, you could say that Scotland should pay a tenth - I'm sure the costings would be a bit less simplistic than that hehe
Tom Harris is the MP whose reaction to seeing the SNP win Glasgow South at the euro election was to call for Gordon Brown to stand down.
Some of his local party members tried (unsuccessfully) to move a motion of no confidence in him, led by Bob Gillespie (ancient nats will recall that Bob was the Labour candidate at the 1988 Govan by-election).
So whatever TH has to say regarding party discipline has to be seen thru that filter - he is clearly at odds with his large chunks of own party both nationally and locally.
Hmm, I'd like to make a couple of points that generally get forgotten in these arguments about which method of transport is greenest.
1. There is nothing inherently wrong with flying! The problem we have today is simply that the method of propulsion relies on fossil fuels. That's all. If (and I accept this is a big if!) we can find an alternative fuel then flying is much quicker than rail (queues for security aside!), and is also much more flexible, requiring only a runway at either end of the journey rather than a continuous track...
2. ...speaking of which, constructing a railway is not exactly the greenest of endeavours. Dig up the metal ore, process it to extract the metal, mix the metal to get the correct blend of steel, shape it into hundreds of miles of rails, transport it to the site, lay the track. And then there are the sleepers - most likely concrete in this day and age. The production of cement (the main ingredient of concrete) is estimated (by the cement industry themselves) to account for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, twice as much as aviation. Is rail really the long-term answer?
The key question then is this: will we see enough benefit from the £34 billion investment in the railway before an environmentally benign aviation fuel is developed? Given a payback period of several decades, I wouldn't bet on it myself.
If this happens after independence (they are saying 20 years) then won't we pay for the actual track and infrastructure from the border upwards? Surely, that will be more than a 10th?
Jeff, I do hope the high heedjins are listening to you.
How many angels can dance on the end of a pin?
At 34Bn quid - before it overruns 4 times its budget - its a non starter. So why do we bother even talking about it?
Trains are history. This is a crowded little island. Land is at a premium here. It costs too much to do that blue sky stuff. The age of the train was over before that slogan was even written.
Now, the angels on a pin question, lets discuss.....
The irony:
It costs too much to do that blue sky stuff.
It costs too much, in climate terms, to use the sky. Unless you go for airships..
Jeff
The high speed train project may or may not ever happen. I hope it does.
Whilst the UK Government has been talking about a high speed route for the last 20 years, other European countries - Spain, France etc, have just got on with it.
I was interested to hear the UK Tory shadow transport minister on Radio 5 yesterday. I am sure she said that the Conservatives supported the proposed project - but only from London to York, as going "as far North" as Scotland may be cost prohibitive. A possible Cameron bargaining chip with talks with Salmond next year?
In any event, with a 20 year delivery timescale, this will soon enough be a matter for an independent Scotland to decide. Let's hope there's co-ordination on track gauges!
This will never come to pass. Improvements to London-Scotland rail have been spoken about all my life. Result? Nothing.
Now if Scotland decided we should have one and we started to build south (as Tom Harris suggested) do you honestly think the London government would build up to meet us at the border? No chance, any high speed will stop at Birmingham.
I'm with forfar-loon on this about the green issue. Railway building isn't green.
Numbers, please, if you want to dispute our host's logic.
Here's some from Transport Scotland (remember, they build the roads, they're not some dreadlocked hippies).
"For example, on a journey from Edinburgh to London, travel by rail results in a reduction in CO2 emissions of around 88 per cent compared to air travel and around 83 per cent compared to the private car."
See: http://tr.im/xgP4
What is it with the SNP (or most of the SNP anyway, sorry Jeff) and their pure counterfactual opposition to public transport?
This is a project that should have been started years ago already. If only London had not got to host the Olympics!
I agree with much of what Jeff says. I took time yesterday evening to look through the entire official proposal.
Some elements of the project as a business proposal are interesting and I posted some comments on the Scotsman article about it as there were so many stupid comments from all sides.
eg. Scottish cities were never in the initial scope but when examined it emerged as the best business case.
-Regarding finance the project makes most sense when both Glasgow and Edinburgh are included.
-Regarding the environment the project ONLY makes sense when G and E are included
-Regarding economic and side benifits the project again makes most sense with G and E.
The project might never even get started but IF a scaled down project gets the green light it will almost certainly be for Political and not economic reasons.
This would be a huge UK infrastructure project and can only be financed by the government. If the full project gets a go ahead then construction needs to start at all end points at more or less the same time in order that the benifts can be met soon enough and to reduce overall cost.
If Scotland were able to get its own international loans then we could finance the bridge as well. It would be a tall order. I think it is doable though. UK finances UK project. Scotland finances Scottish project. We have already financed Chunnel, cross rail, London ring etc etc and how much benifit did we get?
The fact is no major infrastucture project has been done North of the South of England in the last 50 years which is why we are in such dire straights in the first place. Can any politician explain why in 2010 there still want be a full section of Motorway between G and E or why our infrastructure is still so bad? Who has been in power in Scotland during those years?
I think too often we think about these things and try to appreciate the benefit in the space of 5 years, 10 years or so.
For £34bn, centuries of fast travel will pay itself back through increased business and tourism reasonably quickly.
Not to mention the environmental savings.
Fine points from Forfar-Loon, don't have much an answer to that (the cost to actually build railway lines) but surely any environmental cost would even itself out over the long term to the extent that the average train trip vs the average flight vs the average car journey is the important factor.
Solve clean air travel though and you have a winner. Don't see it happening anytime soon though...
Come on Subrosa. No high speed transport is green. High speed rail is about the greenest.
It removes passengers from road and air. More importantly this proposal adds freight capacity and the only thing better for moving freight than by train is by boat.
Indeed it may never happen, the establishment politicians just don't have the will. However Spain and France are currently building towards each other as we post.
The benefits of this scheme are huge even if Scotland is independent. We need to think of this as a business case. The case is well made and does not require that Scotland is within the UK.
There are big advantages to the SE of England to enable this line to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Of course half of the total length of a high speed rail link will be there to link to Scotland. A purely English system would end at Manchester. That would mean that an independent Scotland would need to pay half the cost of the line. Upgrading existing tracks with improved trains and better signalling could make a high speed link to the North of England a very marginal project with savings to Manchester of only about 20 minutes. So, perhaps all the cost would fall on Scotland. Better stick to the planes; or forget the idea of independence!
That's a deeply cynical view of the SNP's reasons for supporting the bridge, and it's mince. All the main parties have looked at all the evidence, how come only the greens and their campaigning buddies have come to the conclusion that there's no need for it? I daresay the Cabinet Secretary could do without the funding headache it causes.
Engineers who've examined the project aren't saying there is no reason to build a new bridge.
Cable strength investigations are more optimistic but it is still deteriorating. The rate of deterioration leaves a risk of weight restrictions being required by 2010-2014 but now more likely to be 2017-2021. The cables could feasibly be replaced, but this would require partial closures for 7-9 years or full closures for 3-4 years. This would have an unacceptable impact on the economy and be a huge retrograde transport step for Scotland. Would cause a hell of a lot of congestion too.
The results of de-humidification are not known until 2010/2011, although it is promising.
There are a whole range of other maintenance problems with the existing bridge. For example, without reduced loads the expansion joints would need replaced, causing major disruption.The deck structure needs re-surfacing on a 7 year cycle. Plus there is no windshielding, meaning regular closures and congestion.
Taking the traffic load off the bridge allows it to stay open. It reduces the severity of the maintenance issues, the strengthening work will not be required, and general maintenance will be far more manageable - avoiding traffic delays/congestion.
We need to get people out of cars but we also need to be realistic. The railways need major investment, but they aren't anywhere near able to cope with the passenger load that currently uses the bridge every day (70,000 vehicles).
The new bridge plan gives us a less congested road crossing (without increasing capacity for cars) and a free flowing public transport corridor.
What is it with the SNP (or most of the SNP anyway, sorry Jeff) and their pure counterfactual opposition to public transport?
Not sure if you're comment is aimed at me James, but if so I'm not in the SNP (but being pro-independence I vote for them).
I'm all in favour of public transport (except possibly for certain tram schemes!), and at a minimum I'd love to see good, fast rail links connecting Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness. Maybe the odd shinkansen could even stop at Forfar too ;o)
But as distances get greater (e.g. Glasgow to London distance or beyond) air travel becomes the only realistic option. For £34 billion we'll have a railway that is still slower than flying, and time is crucial for the business market that will be expected to pay for this line.
I wouldn't dispute the TS CO2 figures, except to say that it very much depends how one does the measuring (e.g. Which model of train/plane/car is used? Are the emissions from vehicle manufacture and construction of railtrack/airport/road included?). Furthermore, at best these figures give a sense of the situation today, but as Jeff has pointed out we need to be thinking rather further ahead than that for an investment of £34 billion.
And if it's numbers you want how about this: not only is cement production estimated to account for 5% of greenhouse gas emissions, demand for it is estimated to be growing at 5% annually (or at least it was in this Economist article from December 2007). Perhaps our addiction to cement is rather more deserving of the green lobby's attention than our addiction to air travel?
That's not the cynical reason for the Nats and Labour both backing the bridge - the real one is they saw the Dunfermline West byelection and thought a spurious new bridge would be vital to holding seats in Fife.
There's no evidence that the current dehumidification approach won't work. Even if it doesn't, though, recabling would cost a maximum of about (IIRR) £122m.
Rob Edwards got sight of Transport Scotland's private admissions that
a) It's never been planned as a "replacement bridge";
b) That the process may be open to legal challenge;
c) That some insiders even believe the decision to press on was premature;
d) That without tolls congestion will not be reduced;
e) And that most likely there'd still be substantial queues if this white elephant gets built.
Full story:
http://tr.im/xh7W
"How many stretches of water around the world have 3 transport bridges sitting side by side with each other? Not many I reckon."
I can't answer that but I happen to know that my home city in the US, Portland, Oregon, has FOUR.
I suspect you may be incorrect in the not many. But I haven't done a poll. If the city is divided by a waterway, crossing it is important and worth spending funds on.
Whether it's the best choice there, I can't say. Just pointing out a possible fallacy in your comments. Best not to go on "suspicions" but facts.
Portland, Oregon is my undoing, thanks for putting me right Jeanne. Facts are always better but even Google was complaining at how many times I was putting 'bridge' into it. Prob not so uncommon after all but, to be fair, the Forth is no Thames or Seine.
Laura, some very, very convincing points there. You know your stuff and certainly more than I. But as James points out, there are key concerns and alternatives that deserve a closer look before such a massive amount of money should be spent.
I would absolutely love it to be proven that we could dump the new bridge and stick it all into rail, but the arguments I've seen so far have not convinced me at all.
James, your cynical reason is even worse than Jeff's! Do you really think the SNP Government would be prepared to commit £3.4billion unnecessarily because of a by-election?
The cost of cable replacement is cheaper, I wouldn't dispute that - but it's the long term closures that would be required that's the unresolved problem.
I see nothing very new in Rob Edwards' article. Transport Scotland were thoroughly examining all potential risks, as they should. The prognosis for the old bridge improved, so it's right that questions were asked about whether the decision was premature. Hardly a 'secret plot', when the new strategy was finalised and unveiled a few months later. The name change decision was a communications matter - in my view they should have changed it but that's just window-dressing. The need to consider legal challenges from environmentalists and landowners? Not exactly surprising.
I take the point about tolls, they shouldn't have been abolished, but the new design will cut emissions in other ways, by ending wind closures and using intelligent transport systems to minimise stop and start traffic (a pilot scheme of the system being proposed was very successful on M42). The bottom line is, try closing the current bridge for a few years to see what congestion you get.
Nope, not for one byelection, but for misplaced fear over the whole of Fife, sure, I do think that's possible.
As for the likelihood of the current dehumidification working, FETA are quoted in a Parliament briefing as saying:
"We are confident that by being pro-active in our investigations after being alerted to the potential problems, we have caught the corrosion at a time when we
can do something about it."
See:
http://tr.im/xkDI
Also, FETA's research also shows that Option C for recabling (Augmentation to the side) requires no complete closure at all, with one lane out for a year and two lanes out for less than that.
That's disruptive, of course, but it's not £3.4bn worth of disruption. Bear in mind that they're lobbying for this big shiny gee-gaw too: this ain't the environmental movement's data.
See point 3.4 here
http://tr.im/xkCU (Word document)
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