mjr wrote:Are you sure about that? The TGV approaches to Lille and Lyon seem to be fenced in the countryside and often lined with big walls in urban areas, except where they're on viaducts so high up it would be an achievement to climb up there. Even the regular lines seem to have at least post-and-wire fencing most of the way, which many of our rural lines don't.
I thought most of our mainlines had minimum basic wire fencing, or a hedge serving the same purpose, it's helpful to keep livestock out.
It's been a while since I've been on a tgv but I was browsing through Google photos and there's certainly fencing but it's no where near the stark dystopian style fortifications on at least parts of hs1.
Steady rider wrote:https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/611185/road-lengths-in-great-britain-2016.pdf
29100 miles of A roads,
Assuming £30 billion was spent on cycle paths instead of HS2, should be sufficient to provide a cycle path along side all A Road Paths (ARP) in the UK. How would the cost benefit analysis compare for HS 2 v ARP ?
Would it? That's the same kind of thinking that suggests hyperloop is the next awesome thing. It's easy to think of such things as adding a bit of path to a bit of a road where there's space. The expense comes, as it does with all these things, when you deal with all the tricky bits. The bridges and tunnels that aren't wide enough, all the properties, a fair few of which are almost certainly listed or otherwise protected right on the roadside. The arguments with residents in villages where you're suddenly 'stealing their parking spot'. Or just the many junctions, that many a roads are under local authority control. Or you ignore all that and end up with farcilities where nothing's joined up.
Also the benefits from long distance cycle paths are not going to get close to the kind of return that you can get in urban areas where CB is basing his claims on.
Even in the Netherlands, long distance commuting and other non leisure bike travel is pretty niche and the new built long distance paths came after the city cycling culture was (re) established.
As for local schemes, there's plenty of more immediately available money being wasted chasing tails adding motor capacity to local roads that could be repurposed were there the political will to do so. There isn't because our system encourages short term populism over long term pragmatism.
Re gcr, there seem to be conflicting opinions on this particularly the loading gauge. It seems to be not quite European guage and the catesbury tunnel would still need widening.
old_windbag wrote:So why not with HS2( if it has to happen? ) create it to be fully underground in prefabricated tunnel sections laid like a pipe then covered so we don't see any of it, other than perhaps the odd tunnel access point. It could be made very safe, perhaps even running in a sealed low pressure system to allow high speed with pressurised train cabins as with an airliner.
Prefab works where it's flat, you still have to dig down to where the tunnel will be, in undulating land ( much of the UK) it's not going to be cheaper than using boring techniques and if you want very high speeds things need to be pretty straight unless you want sick passengers, it's transport, not a rollercoaster. And tunnelling is very expensive, one of the reasons hs2 is more expensive per km than other countries lines.