Speeding off into a sadly predictable future

Maurice O'Brien • Published 20 Jan 2012 09:30 1 Comment

SHOULD I ever still feel the need to gaze into the future I reckon the last person from whom I'd seek advice would be a transport planner.It's not just that having lived around Reading forever one recalls the 'ski-jump', where the IDR ended, neglected in mid-air above Mill Lane for years; or the gaping, futuristic chasm beneath what used to be the Prudential building in The Forbury which should have taken six lanes of IDR traffic swinging north but remained a draughty car park until its eventual tumbleweed demise.

And no matter how many follies were dreamed up to confuse Reading's motoring masochists, the northern escape routes remain stubbornly restricted by two river bridges, Caversham's pokey streets and the hostile stance of Oxfordshire nimbys.

Baffling bus lanes, one-way mazes, Picasso-style road markings, they've all come and gone, and even the Cow Lane bottleneck's had its day. The only abominations seemingly with a future, ridiculous mini-roundabouts and speed humps which damage law abiding spinal and steering columns in inverse proportion to the numbers of go-faster tearaways they don't slow down. Then, of course, there are motorways. Probably the only one in England not already out of date when it was opened was the M1, and that wasn't for long. How many false economies were made by building a two-lane M4? And don't even mention the M25.

Or trains.

Having nationalised, de and re-nationalised, carved up and made a total pig's ear of a railway system which, rather eccentrically, once took people where they wanted to go, at a reasonable cost, our cloistered transport planners and schoolboy/girl politicians have now plumped for HS2.

Who knows whether anyone will even want to travel to Birmingham in 2026, or circa 2036 depending on the inevitable over-run? Technology might have rendered travel unnecessary by then, except for those craving intimate human contact. Do you know, when I moved into this seat in 1997, Google wasn't even a pipedream?

Costs of HS2 vary between £15.8bn and £17.4bn. What price the odd billion among spendthrifts when the TaxPayers' Alliance calculates the 40,000 jobs the Government claims HS2 will generate will cost £400,000 each?

Of course cynics might say the aim is to link HS2 to HS1, formerly known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or Continental Main Line, in one big Euro train set via EU Directive 96/48, under which everyone finds themselves on a very expensive high speed ride. Straight into the buffers.

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This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 20 Jan 12

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• 

  Lord Jason
  Unregistered User
  Jan 26, 22:12
  Report comment

  How much do you make from predicting such a sad future chief? As ever there is a profit to be made in being a doomlord.
  
  Recommend?   Yes 1     No 0

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