this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
74 points (98.7% liked)

United Kingdom

4082 readers
292 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] byroon@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They should have started building in the north. Starting building in the south now seems like a deliberate move to get extra lines around London under the guise of something that would benefit the whole country

[–] hobovision@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

California HSR did this technique and honestly it isn't going a whole ton better. Hopefully they connect Los Angeles and San Francisco with the central valley high speed line eventually, but it would have served a lot of people better to start in the cities and connect them through the valley later. Those lines in the cities could have been used for regional rail services while the valley line was completed. Specifically it would have been great to see a new SF to Sacramento line via San Jose and the LA to Lancaster line via Burbank.

[–] byroon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have no idea what you're talking about

[–] hobovision@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sorry I'm too used to transit communities where everyone is in the know about big international projects.

In California they are building the first phase of the high speed rail project through the middle of the state where there is relatively little demand for rail. So we will end up with a high speed line that won't get nearly as much use if they end up canceling the project. In California San Francisco and Los Angeles both are nearly equally as large and ridership will probably be dominated by trips to or between one of those cities.

I guess the difference in UK is the North has quite a few large cities that are each much smaller than London, so it doesn't have that same "bi-pole" setup. Building starting in the north would improve connectivity between those cities. But I guess my question is, would there be much demand for travel between the northern cities as compared to demand between the north and London?

[–] byroon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If you only ever invest in the southeast, then of course there will be more people and productivity there. That doesn't mean it's a good idea

[–] fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

That demand is already there - hundreds of thousands of people already attempt to commute by rail between cities in the North every day - but we're cramming 400 people onto a train with capacity for 200, and it's taking an hour to travel 50 miles, and most days there'll be random cancellations scattered about, so it... umm... could do with a bit of work :)