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Add more tracks. We have 8 lane highways but a 4 track train line is unthinkable?

• luckylion 7y ago
  That might work in the US but it won't in Europe where cities are generally densely packed. You can't just tear down a few rows of houses/dig new tunnles/turn the city into one big construction project to add more space for tracks.
• isostatic 7y ago
  That's what we're doing with the WCML. Adding two new tracks to the existing 4. Obviously they can't go through the middle of towns - demolishing that many buildings would be unthinkable even without the cost, so they bypass the towns they don't serve (currently half the high speed trains run non stop through places like Harrow, Watford, Hemel, Bletchly and Milton Keynes) Building new tracks (and indeed building new highways), even in the countryside where land is cheap, is very expensive and has massive amounts of opposition. In London, crossrail is adding two new underground tracks to the central line. It's running years behind schedule and costs billions. And underground is crowded too -- there's one point on crossrail where they had a 30cm margin of error between existing tunnels. Free public transport in London would cost £5b a year. This would mean those who travel a lot on expensive services (like city workers on the tube) will be being subsidised by those who don't travel (like people who walk to work in the local school).