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Possibly mixing causing and effect here!!! Fast train routes in the north will allow Manchester to become a replacement for most things people go to London for

Possibly mixing causing and effect here!!! Fast train routes in the north will allow Manchester to become a replacement for most things people go to London for.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Possibly mixing causing and effect here!!! This is an unhelpfully abstract way to look at things. It doesn't matter what caused London to be the centre of the universe for UK society. What matters is that it currently is. > Fast train routes in the north will allow Manchester to become a replacement for most things people go to London for. The problem you're missing is that you don't need fast routes in the north, you'd need fast routes to the north, from everywhere, as you currently have with London, if you want to compete. You don't one new train line to Manchester, you need the thirteen or so routes in London has. And then you also need a serious airport.
- rjsw 6y ago
  > And then you also need a serious airport. What is wrong with Manchester Airport ? It is the next busiest after Heathrow and Gatwick and already has two runways.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > What is wrong with Manchester Airport ? It's a joke. Cramped, dirty, unprofessional. I'm embarrassed when I ask colleagues to fly into it. The terminals are packed with bloody fruit machines. Massive smoking areas blocking all the entrances. Weird half-shut-down roads to the terminals. No decent dining or bar options. The security screening seems to be done in a dungeon about three stories underground. The terminals were cut in half in a strange way to accomodate changes to international I think so they're now a depressing maze and you have to go down steps into a basement to go from one side of the corridor to the other. Most of the terminals don't have a proper business lounge. I don't think there's a BA first-class lounge at all! The flag carrier has no first lounge! It's not even very useful - few serious international routes. It doesn't have direct flights to essential business destinations like San Francisco. There's not even a flight to Washington DC anymore as far as I know! It just isn't a serious international airport. I fly to all these incredible places around the world and come back into Manchester (via somewhere else as nothing is direct) and every time I think 'wow what a grimy, amateur operation - how embarrassing is it that this is all we can achieve'. Not joking - I sometimes recommend colleagues fly into Heathrow and take the train so they don't get this first impression. I guess maybe it's third in the UK, but it's like 1% of what Heathrow is.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      BA doesn't have a first class lounge because their only route out of Manchester is to London airports.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > BA doesn't have a first class lounge because their only route out of Manchester is to London airports. Says it all, really! Even BA can't really be bothered with Manchester Airport. But wouldn't you be entitled to use a First lounge if you were connecting via Heathrow in First?
    - peteretep 6y ago
      > I don't think there's a BA first-class lounge at all BA doesn’t sell any first-class seats out of Manchester, and hence there’s no F lounge there?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Normally if you are connecting onward from a hub airport with a First ticket you can use the First lounge from your starting point if your first flight only has Business seats. And since Manchester is so terrible that you can hardly fly anywhere useful directly, lots of people are doing this.
        peteretep 6y ago
        Sure, that’s true, but I can’t think of First class lounges anywhere that the provider isn’t providing F seats from. I mean it’s pretty rare to have a dedicated F lounge outside of a hub airport in general for a carrier. QR — who are known for their luxury — only have an F lounge in Doha.
vidarh 6y ago
As someone living in London, I wish the government would stop spending money on transport to/in central London, and instead would invest elsewhere, such as the Leeds-Sheffield-Manchester triangle, and expanding the region around Birmingham to create better counterweights to London. And to the extent any investment is done in the Greater London region that it gets limited to better connecting the circle of towns on the outer rim of London. A bit self serving, as I live in Croydon, but one of my pet examples is that Croydon, Guildford, Woking and towns in between are all within easy commuting distance by train and there's track between them, but there's either no direct trains or nothing suitable. Committing to a commuter time-table between groups of towns in that situation for enough years to allow companies to risk opting for these towns instead of the centre of London would do far more to alleviate London of commuter traffic than the same amount spent on line upgrades. But all of the upgrades in London just draw in more traffic until things are just as bad again, but even more expensive to fix.

Possibly mixing causing and effect here!!! Fast train routes in the north will allow Manchester to become a replacement for most things people go to London for.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Possibly mixing causing and effect here!!! This is an unhelpfully abstract way to look at things. It doesn't matter what caused London to be the centre of the universe for UK society. What matters is that it currently is. > Fast train routes in the north will allow Manchester to become a replacement for most things people go to London for. The problem you're missing is that you don't need fast routes in the north, you'd need fast routes to the north, from everywhere, as you currently have with London, if you want to compete. You don't one new train line to Manchester, you need the thirteen or so routes in London has. And then you also need a serious airport.

rjsw 6y ago
> And then you also need a serious airport. What is wrong with Manchester Airport ? It is the next busiest after Heathrow and Gatwick and already has two runways.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > What is wrong with Manchester Airport ? It's a joke. Cramped, dirty, unprofessional. I'm embarrassed when I ask colleagues to fly into it. The terminals are packed with bloody fruit machines. Massive smoking areas blocking all the entrances. Weird half-shut-down roads to the terminals. No decent dining or bar options. The security screening seems to be done in a dungeon about three stories underground. The terminals were cut in half in a strange way to accomodate changes to international I think so they're now a depressing maze and you have to go down steps into a basement to go from one side of the corridor to the other. Most of the terminals don't have a proper business lounge. I don't think there's a BA first-class lounge at all! The flag carrier has no first lounge! It's not even very useful - few serious international routes. It doesn't have direct flights to essential business destinations like San Francisco. There's not even a flight to Washington DC anymore as far as I know! It just isn't a serious international airport. I fly to all these incredible places around the world and come back into Manchester (via somewhere else as nothing is direct) and every time I think 'wow what a grimy, amateur operation - how embarrassing is it that this is all we can achieve'. Not joking - I sometimes recommend colleagues fly into Heathrow and take the train so they don't get this first impression. I guess maybe it's third in the UK, but it's like 1% of what Heathrow is.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    BA doesn't have a first class lounge because their only route out of Manchester is to London airports.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > BA doesn't have a first class lounge because their only route out of Manchester is to London airports. Says it all, really! Even BA can't really be bothered with Manchester Airport. But wouldn't you be entitled to use a First lounge if you were connecting via Heathrow in First?
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > I don't think there's a BA first-class lounge at all BA doesn’t sell any first-class seats out of Manchester, and hence there’s no F lounge there?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Normally if you are connecting onward from a hub airport with a First ticket you can use the First lounge from your starting point if your first flight only has Business seats. And since Manchester is so terrible that you can hardly fly anywhere useful directly, lots of people are doing this.
      - peteretep 6y ago
        Sure, that’s true, but I can’t think of First class lounges anywhere that the provider isn’t providing F seats from. I mean it’s pretty rare to have a dedicated F lounge outside of a hub airport in general for a carrier. QR — who are known for their luxury — only have an F lounge in Doha.

vidarh 6y ago

As someone living in London, I wish the government would stop spending money on transport to/in central London, and instead would invest elsewhere, such as the Leeds-Sheffield-Manchester triangle, and expanding the region around Birmingham to create better counterweights to London. And to the extent any investment is done in the Greater London region that it gets limited to better connecting the circle of towns on the outer rim of London. A bit self serving, as I live in Croydon, but one of my pet examples is that Croydon, Guildford, Woking and towns in between are all within easy commuting distance by train and there's track between them, but there's either no direct trains or nothing suitable. Committing to a commuter time-table between groups of towns in that situation for enough years to allow companies to risk opting for these towns instead of the centre of London would do far more to alleviate London of commuter traffic than the same amount spent on line upgrades. But all of the upgrades in London just draw in more traffic until things are just as bad again, but even more expensive to fix.