Should Infrastructure Spending be stopped?

[WestRiding]

Given the distinct lack of passengers, and uncertainty as the whether or not they will return, should we stop investing in the railways until we know if the passengers that were there before Covid 19 ever come back?
Its a genuinely worrying time for the railway. I came back from Brighton to St Pancras last week on Thameslink, it left Brighton with a handful of people on it at around 16:45. Even more worrying, the 19:02 from St Pancras to Sheffield left with 17 people on it. The railway now seems unsustainable.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

No

With the exception of sending a BT engineer out to your house to disconnect your internet. You can have the thin end of the wedge first.

 

[WestRiding]

No

With the exception of sending a BT engineer out to your house to disconnect your internet. You can have the thin end of the wedge first.

I respect your opinion, but who is the investment for? Take the Transpennine Project, there is nobody on the existing trains as it is. To clarify, i would hate to see the money pipe shut, but it will happen if people do not go back to work.

 

[Legolash2o]

Rail spending was already behind. It'll also be that typical thing where in a few years time when demand is back to normal, the same people will be complaining that money wasn't spent whilst the network was running at less capacity (lack of forward thinking).

 

[AJW12]

I can see the argument, particularly around big spending like HS2 - I was never won over by the speed argument, it was based on capacity and significantly boosting capacity for commuter trains - an argument I now find harder to justify £100bn+ on when I just don't see the peak time demand coming back like it once was.

That said though, I work for a large tech company and nearly everyone I work with wants to be back into the office, and whilst it doesn't seem so, this will pass. Plus, rail infrastructure spending is designed to benefit into the future - example - by the time the ECML upgrade is completed the pandemic will be well and truly done, and we can't assume otherwise and put spending on hold or it'll be too late.

Plus, many peak time routes into London were already over capacity, so a reduction might provide buffer for an increase in population through the future.

 

[squizzler]

No. The U.K. is generally regarded as having poor infrastructure compared to the EU and its other competitors, and buying infrastructure is a good economic stimulus.

 

[The Planner]

Does the infrastructure suddenly disappear 5 years after it is built, or does it stay there for 20 times that long? It has taken a global pandemic to get to the position everyone thought we would be in when the Internet was in its infancy 20 years ago.

 

[Purple Orange]

Should long term investment be stopped due to a short term global pandemic? No. I don’t think the question deserves an explanation as to why it should not be stopped either.

 

[Class 170101]

The problem is more of a political one. Low use NOW why spend money on railways (or anything else) NOW for politicans who are here TODAY and gone tomorrow.

 

[bramling]

Given the distinct lack of passengers, and uncertainty as the whether or not they will return, should we stop investing in the railways until we know if the passengers that were there before Covid 19 ever come back?
Its a genuinely worrying time for the railway. I came back from Brighton to St Pancras last week on Thameslink, it left Brighton with a handful of people on it at around 16:45. Even more worrying, the 19:02 from St Pancras to Sheffield left with 17 people on it. The railway now seems unsustainable.

The 1980s is a cautionary lesson in this respect. Falling passenger numbers resulted in rationalisations, which when numbers rose again ended up having to be undone - in some cases at considerable cost.

There's no way current trends will last long-term.

 

[Yew]

Over the next few years, we will face a depression that will be driven due to a lack of demand. Keynsian economic theory recommends that the government take up the slack by investing in projects that will pay back in the long run, given that there is less competition for the available labour labour supply, the cost of a given project could also be lower than in more prosperous times.

 

[WestRiding]

Should long term investment be stopped due to a short term global pandemic? No. I don’t think the question deserves an explanation as to why it should not be stopped either.

But the office workers delight in telling the world how good it is to work from home, and how much money they save. Why would they come back if they didn't want to?

 

[squizzler]

There is more to rail travel than white collar commuting.

As I said in other threads, it is to the passenger railway what coal traffic used to be to the freight railway. Probably better off without it. Winning new traffics will need their own infrastructure upgrades.

 

[bluenoxid]

But the office workers delight in telling the world how good it is to work from home, and how much money they save. Why would they come back if they didn't want to?

My management teams ego!

Unfortunately not everyone has the appropriate space to WFH and the set up of commuting enables people to end their working day the moment they walk out of the door. This is less likely to happen with Microsoft Teams

 

[Ianno87]

But the office workers delight in telling the world how good it is to work from home, and how much money they save. Why would they come back if they didn't want to?

It is good, but office collaboration is good as well.

However the band of office workers who think they'll *never* go to the office again will soon realise the opportunities they miss out on by being out of casual office conversations ("Have you seen that Mike is advertising that promotion?")

 

[class26]

But the office workers delight in telling the world how good it is to work from home, and how much money they save. Why would they come back if they didn't want to?

At the moment. You might have noticed there is a virus lurking out there. I know for sure the boss of the company I work for will want everyone in as soon as safe.

 

[WestRiding]

At the moment. You might have noticed there is a virus lurking out there. I know for sure the boss of the company I work for will want everyone in as soon as safe.

Yes. There's a virus. And the whole attitude to said virus is becoming rather tiresome. But thats for a different discussion.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

A good time to unbuild some roads, bypasses, car parks

 

[43096]

For those people saying “no”, there is the small matter of paying for this pandemic. We are going to be paying for it for years. That money has to come from somewhere: unless you all believe in the magic money tree?

 

[PTR 444]

For those people saying “no”, there is the small matter of paying for this pandemic. We are going to be paying for it for years. That money has to come from somewhere: unless you all believe in the magic money tree?

Or that magic money tree is ticket revenue from HS2

 

[deltic]

Depends what the infrastructure spending is on- electrification works, new lines and stations yes - removing single track bottlenecks yes

Adding capacity to deal with peak period only demand no which probably means the later stages of HS2

Peak period demand is unlikely to recover - as people increasingly work from home 2-3 days a week. While business travel will collapse as firms reduce costs and it is recogonised it is no longer necessary to travel the length of the country for an hour long meeting that can be done on line

 

[43096]

Or that magic money tree is ticket revenue from HS2

Which will be needed to pay for HS2.

 

[PTR 444]

Which will be needed to pay for HS2.

Which can be resolved by raising fuel and aviation taxes in the meantime.

 

[Purple Orange]

But the office workers delight in telling the world how good it is to work from home, and how much money they save. Why would they come back if they didn't want to?

Really? I’m an office worker and the vast majority of people I work with want to strike a happy balance. If 1 day a week was the norm before, it will probably be 2 days a week going forward. Many people need to meet clients (often for the first time) and people will still need to show their face in the office too.

Peak period demand is unlikely to recover - as people increasingly work from home 2-3 days a week. While business travel will collapse as firms reduce costs and it is recogonised it is no longer necessary to travel the length of the country for an hour long meeting that can be done on line

Yes wfh will increase compared to before, but I’m not sure about the prevalence of travelling just for a 1 hour meeting was that great before hand either. Video conferencing at work is very common. E.g. 3 or 4 meeting rooms at offices around the country join together for an hour meeting using a reliable connection. Each office may have 3 or 4 people in it, with a couple dialling in from home. However replicating that with 12-16 connections to people’s laptops on their own WiFi lines is not as reliable.

The other side of this argument about reduced travel is also reduced car journeys? I don’t hear much about that, in fact the opposite, which tells me that people are travelling.

 

[deltic]

The other side of this argument about reduced travel is also reduced car journeys? I don’t hear much about that, in fact the opposite, which tells me that people are travelling.

Morning peak period car travel seems to be around 10-20% less than usual depending where you are but with traffic levels during the rest of the day equal or higher than before. More people working from home/furloughed means more local trips, sometrips that previously were on public transport have switched to road and holiday/day out trips in the UK are higher due to collapse in foreign holidays/breaks.

 

[A0wen]

No. The U.K. is generally regarded as having poor infrastructure compared to the EU and its other competitors, and buying infrastructure is a good economic stimulus.

On the first part - that tends to be by alot of 'armchair experts' - less so when genuine experts do the analysis. On the second part, it depends - it's a good economic stimulus IF it then adds something of value to the economy. Now if, for the sake of argument, rail usage doesn't recover to pre-Covid levels then there is absolutely a legitimate question as to whether large-scale investment will generate the economic return which justifies it.

The other side of this argument about reduced travel is also reduced car journeys? I don’t hear much about that, in fact the opposite, which tells me that people are travelling.

No - but there's a few, key differences. Rail tends to be for longer commutes into city centres - those are the office based jobs which are currently working from home. Road commutes tend to be shorter, more local in their nature and often to places that rail couldn't reach - how many industrial areas, retail parks or warehouse developments have a passenger rail link close at hand ?

So yes, people are travelling, but they tend to be to jobs which cannot practically be done remotely. The rail network was heavily used by office based staff heading into London, Birmingham, Manchester et al - what we don't know is the extent to which that traffic will return post Covid.

 

[Ianno87]

A good time to unbuild some roads, bypasses, car parks

Which has been done through a number of local sustainable travel schemes (e.g. road closures to cars)

 

[The Planner]

A good time to unbuild some roads, bypasses, car parks

I have no doubt you were being flippant, but the cost of "unbuilding" would probably cover the cost of their maintenance for decades to come.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

No, I am serious. Many roads are too wide, there is a three-lane one near me for example it could be converted to two lanes plus a segregated cycle way so one could cycle faster from A to B instead of taking the beautiful but slow, circuitous, hard to find way through the country. This particular one would enable me to cycle to the next station and get a cheaper ticket into town.

 

[The Planner]

No, I am serious. Many roads are too wide, there is a three-lane one near me for example it could be converted to two lanes plus a segregated cycle way so one could cycle faster from A to B instead of taking the beautiful but slow, circuitous, hard to find way through the country. This particular one would enable me to cycle to the next station and get a cheaper ticket into town.

That isn't un-building though is it, that is just alteration and still has a cost.