War on the Motorist?

Christian Wolmar, the extreme left wing writer on rail issues has declared himself as a centurion of the war on the motorist.  I imagine he thinks he will stir a frenzy amongst the socialist chattering classes and show how modern and eco friendly he is.  Big mistake.  92% of UK voters travel by road while less than 8% travel by rail.  It ain't helpful to annoy such a huge majority, even if a lot of them are Daily Mail readers.

I am a 50-year veteran of the railway industry and yet I drive every day.  I use rail when it's more efficient than the car, indeed I prefer the train but I usually use the car because I am one of the 40 million people who don't live in London or other very large cities and who therefore don't have an effective rail service for the daily journeys I make.  Come on Christian, get real. Don't make enemies of people we might get to travel by train if the service was available.

Rail Factoids - 8: Light Rail Construction Costs

In a useful and interesting article this week, RAIL Magazine contained a table listing the costs of building various tramway and light rail lines in Britain.  Here are the figures, adjusted for 2010/11 prices:

Project	Date	Cost/mile
Tyne & Wear	1980	£19.8m
Docklands	1987	£20.0m
DLR to Becton	1994	£77.4m
Manchester	1992	£11.7m
Manchester	2000	£41.6m
Sheffield	1994	£19.9m
Midland Metro	1999	£14.6m
T&W to Sunderland	2002	£10.4m
Nottingham	2004	£23.6m
Average		£25.4m

There are some interesting details in this list. The two most expensive projects were the DLR extension to Beckton at £77.4 million a mile and the Manchester Phase 2 project of 2000 at £41.6m a mile. These were both only 5 miles long, the shortest of all the projects. Costs tend to rise swiftly for short routes.

In comparison, the Edinburgh project is expected to cost £100million a mile. RAIL Magazine describes some of the background to the fiasco.