Trains and transport
The suggestion that trains should have a 'congestion charge' to try to price people out of using them at peak time is somewhat strange, given I though that was already the case. Anyway the claim is that demand is going to grown so quickly in the next ten years the system will struggle to cope.Pricing, both rail and road, obviously has a part to play. So do more othet demand solutions solutions such as reducing the need for travel (what happened to teleworking? It's mind-numbling boring I suppose). However ultimately the issue is a question of capacity (capcity at the right time, which is the daytime, when most people want to go to work/shop/etc, if you insist). So capacity will have to be increased, i.e new railway lines, new roads etc.
There will be a lot of Nimbyish complaining. But it should be resisted. There is huge amounts of countryside around London, much of it pointless farmland, much of the rest plain ugly (I grew up nr Cambridge which is slightly biasing this, but most of the rest is hardly the Dordogne), and almost all of it totally underused.
posted by Matthew @ 6/22/2005 11:06:00 AM
Comments: 0
