zlacker

>>breve+(OP)
Contrapoint to the naysayers: building infrastructure is good actually, and in this specific case, has had the added side benefit of unearthing these cool artifacts that would otherwise still be decaying in some peat bog.

British NIMBYs seem unusually strong, even in a world of NIMBYism. Best wishes to the British in defeating the Midsomer Historical Society of Bat-Loving Cranks, which apparently controls the deep state over there.

>>troad+ws
UK is so densely populated that something like this affects a LOT of people. Also people's "back yards" are tiny enough as it is. Small changes have a big impact and people living in such cramped spaces are living in constant fear of that.

If you happen to come across any part of HS2 in some random village you've never heard of it's quite incredible the impact it's having on the locals. Locals who live miles away from the nearest station and therefore unable to use the line, by the way.

We also have very little wildlife left and we don't really want to live in concrete jungles.

Suffice to say, it's not difficult to see why it's like this in the UK if you actually come and see.

>>globul+DS
>> If you happen to come across any part of HS2 in some random village you've never heard of it's quite incredible the impact it's having on the locals. Locals who live miles away from the nearest station and therefore unable to use the line, by the way.

Because people inherently misunderstand the benefit of HS2, and how could they not if it's constantly being misrepresented by our media and politicians.

UK has one of the highest proportion of freight transported by road in Europe. That is fundamentally because our rail infrastructure is overloaded and unable to take any more freight. All non-perishable stuff that in other countries just goes on rail, in the UK is moved by trucks on our roads. Which as you can imagine, is causing tens of billions of pounds worth of damage to our roads, which we - taxpayers - pay for. All of these locals that live miles away from the train station are already affected by the lack of rail infrastructure - because every time they drive somewhere they have to contend with massive potholes and insane amount of heavy cargo traffic anywhere they go. If HS2 is ever finished, it will reduce congestion and our roads and reduce the wear and tear which again, is costing us billions in upkeep every year.

But according to our media, it's all about saving london commuters 2 minutes on a train from Birmingham, so every Dick and Harry is against it, because like you said - they live miles from the nearest station, why would they care?

>>gambit+J21
Yes, most people cannot think beyond first-order effects, but this can be equally applied to HS2 proponents. There are other solutions to cut the amount of cargo traffic, but most of them involve just consuming less stuff.

Building more and more infrastructure is not sustainable. It's been shown time and time again that more infrastructure only leads to more usage of said infrastructure. The number of lorries on the road will not decrease, we'll just start carting around even more stuff than before.

> because every time they drive somewhere they have to contend with massive potholes and insane amount of heavy cargo traffic anywhere they go

I don't buy that. The potholes are in residential and country roads. No amount of railways is going to do anything about that. The cargo traffic which could go via rail is on the motorways.

I'm all for more rail and less roads. But to stop the road usage we need to tax it more heavily, especially for heavier vehicles, and not just lorries. So far I haven't seen any evidence of replacing roads with rail, it's just more, more, more.

>>globul+771
Consuming less is simply not a solution that anybody would ever agree to. Anything that you cut out would just be replaced with other consumption. Maybe consumtion can be slightly more local, but the idea that most consumption can be replaced with something that is local a pipedream. And even if you did that, to produce all that stuff locally the inputs for that production would still need to be transported.

The only way to reduce consumption is people getting poorer or people increasing their savings. And that's just future consumption.

Building more and more infrastructure is actually sustainable. And arguably we are not even building more and more as things like rail infrastructure is less now then it was in many places.

> It's been shown time and time again that more infrastructure only leads to more usage of said infrastructure.

And that is actually good if the infrastructure usage does not have massive negative externalizes, like ... trains. It actually reduces externalizes because it takes away from car and air traffic.

> The number of lorries on the road will not decrease, we'll just start carting around even more stuff than before.

Switzerland is prove that you can reduce the amount of lorries. But even if you don't, it will at least reduce the growth. And it makes it so you don't have to invest in highway expansion.

You might be against that anyway, but most people would demand it if existing highways are always full of lorries.

> But to stop the road usage we need to tax it more heavily, especially for heavier vehicles, and not just lorries. So far I haven't seen any evidence of replacing roads with rail, it's just more, more, more.

If you tax heavy transport without providing an alternative you simply drive up cost of living and make peoples live worse.

But you are right, taxing lorries and putting that into a fund that helps rail expansion is exactly what Switzerland did.