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| Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail (488186) | |||
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Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Sun Sep 9 10:02:33 2007, in response to Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Sun Sep 9 01:33:01 2007. Urban area populations 158,195; 166,840; 264,601; and 95,521 respectively. So they're fairly reasonable. And Preston is the junction point for Blackpool (142,283) and Blackburn (136,695).Like I said, pissant towns. Bother me when they have minimum, 500K urban areas, and then maybe they might be "reasonable". Congratulations. You have now reduced the number of reasonable urban areas in England to nine: K60200 Greater London Urban Area - - - 8,278,251 G90700 West Midlands Urban Area - - - 2,284,093 D90200 Greater Manchester Urban Area - - - 2,240,230 (erroneously published as 2,244,931 (the Helsby error); still the definitions are a bit suspect compared to other Urban Areas -- I believe the true figure to be around 1,530,746) D41300 West Yorkshire Urban Area - - - 1,499,465 . G90708 Birmingham (Urban Area Subdivision) - - - 970,892 B81100 Tyneside - - - 879,996 D84100 Liverpool Urban Area - - - 816,216 F90800 Nottingham Urban Area - - - 666,358 E17000 Sheffield Urban Area - - - 640,720 K24600 Bristol Urban Area - - - 551,066 This would suggest an HSR network like this:  As the caption suggests, it's impossible. This includes factors like the basic fact that getting in and out of Birmingham would kill all the time savings of HSR between London and Liverpool/Manchester; and that an East Coast HSR via Nottingham, Sheffield, and Leeds would struggle to beat those non-stop conventional London to York runs. But it is a nice basic network shape. It largely just lacks a lot of the detail. 100K Urban Areas are small, IMHO, and don't deserve anything beyonf regional service. Depends on the sort of 100k Urban Area. Erie, PA, (102,036) probably deserves an HSR stop. Lowell, MA, (103,229) probably doesn't. OTOH, I'm probably jaded as an American living in a city where 8M people live, an metropolitan area of 20M people, and a suburban township with more residents than Manchester... LOL!!! "But the HSL would have to go somewhere. It's 175 miles of horrendous terrain from Lancaster to Glasgow (170 to Edinburgh), with Carlisle the largest intermediate settlement." It's an HSL. It doesn't need to be designed to the same standards that regular lines must undertake. If the French and Spaniards can cross the Pyrenees, your engineers can certainly cross Pennines... The only Scottish urban area with a population of over 500,000 is Greater Glasgow (1,168,270). That is much smaller than the Barcelona Urban Region (5,327,872). And that 175 miles is from Lancaster. If you exclude "pissant towns", Glasgow is 218 miles from Manchester. Building an HSL to Glasgow is just about halfway to proposing non-stop Denver - Salt Lake City HSLs. "especially with Scotland increasingly turning inward" Build this as a project of national unity and as a fun way of employing some people in the North. If anything, reducing the 5 hr trip to Scotland into a 3 hr ordeal would certainly reduce the need for little shitports around the country, and make Scotland more accessible. I don't think either side cares much for national unity. A third of Scots voted for a party that believes in independence at their last election, whilst opinion polls show that most English are so pissed off with Scots trying to run England that they would be all too glad to kick the Scots out. Oh, and all Scottish settlements bar one are little shitports by your definition. ;-) Interestingly, if one is bored, one can encourage commutes from cheaper areas in the North to London... More significantly, as land is severely limited in London, it would essentially make a central Birmingham location as good for business as being shunted out to the Isle of Dogs. |
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