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One factor is that London is so much larger than the next biggest city (approx 9million vs 1.1 million). It's much harder to justify (and pay for) these kind o

by agd 4y ago

One factor is that London is so much larger than the next biggest city (approx 9million vs 1.1 million). It's much harder to justify (and pay for) these kind of infrastructure projects in small cities.

laputan_machine 4y ago
That results in a self-fulfilling prophecy though, doesn't it.
- stormdennis 4y ago
  Absolutely. Germany, by contrast, has several cities that you regard as of on a par.
- itsthejb 4y ago
  Yes. Frankly, the continued over centralisation of the country around London seems to me to be the single greatest threat to the future prosperity of the country
lbriner 4y ago
Not just harder to justify but the length of time (approx 10 years?) that it can take between the initial investment and people adjusting their lifestyle/moving to take advantage of the new infrastructure. That said, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham (I'm sure others that I don't know about) have all done an enormous amount of work in the last 10-20 years to modernise. Transport is hardest of all, of course, since you don't have the space usually to create greener systems without removing something else like a road and not everyone can simply swap easily. That said, I wish they would take some bold decisions across the UK and, like the Hague, make whole town centres pedestrianised during the day to try and force it a bit.
marmarama 4y ago
For some reason, for population, we always count the Greater London conurbation as just 'London' when we don't do the same for other cities. This creates the perception that London is an order of magnitude larger, when in fact it's not. A more accurate comparison is with the total conurbation size of other cities. For example, Manchester is listed as having a population of about 550000, but the Greater Manchester conurbation (the equivalent of Greater London) has a total population of 2.8 million. Birmingham is 1.1 million, but the contiguous West Midlands conurbation is about 2.9 million. The Liverpool to Leeds cross-Pennine urban axis (which is nearly contiguous) has a population of nearly 7 million. Yes, these are smaller than Greater London, but not by the amount you think.
- smcl 4y ago
  I think this is what "Northern Powerhouse Rail" was supposed to address, but I don't know if it's going to get as much love as a London project, if it goes ahead at all :( For any non-UK people who aren't familiar, here's here's a simple map showing pop. density to give you a rough idea what we're dealing with: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-density-based-on-the-UK-census-at-the-5-km-5-km-grid-spatial_fig2_292189735 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-de... You can clearly see the areas in question - London being the big red/purple blob in the far south-east, and the cities/conurbations marmarama described are to the north and north-west of that. They're not individually on the scale of London, but they're substantial population centres that would see real benefits from this kind of public transport infrastructure investment.

by agd 4y ago

laputan_machine 4y ago

That results in a self-fulfilling prophecy though, doesn't it.

stormdennis 4y ago
Absolutely. Germany, by contrast, has several cities that you regard as of on a par.
itsthejb 4y ago
Yes. Frankly, the continued over centralisation of the country around London seems to me to be the single greatest threat to the future prosperity of the country

lbriner 4y ago

Not just harder to justify but the length of time (approx 10 years?) that it can take between the initial investment and people adjusting their lifestyle/moving to take advantage of the new infrastructure. That said, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham (I'm sure others that I don't know about) have all done an enormous amount of work in the last 10-20 years to modernise. Transport is hardest of all, of course, since you don't have the space usually to create greener systems without removing something else like a road and not everyone can simply swap easily. That said, I wish they would take some bold decisions across the UK and, like the Hague, make whole town centres pedestrianised during the day to try and force it a bit.

marmarama 4y ago

For some reason, for population, we always count the Greater London conurbation as just 'London' when we don't do the same for other cities. This creates the perception that London is an order of magnitude larger, when in fact it's not. A more accurate comparison is with the total conurbation size of other cities. For example, Manchester is listed as having a population of about 550000, but the Greater Manchester conurbation (the equivalent of Greater London) has a total population of 2.8 million. Birmingham is 1.1 million, but the contiguous West Midlands conurbation is about 2.9 million. The Liverpool to Leeds cross-Pennine urban axis (which is nearly contiguous) has a population of nearly 7 million. Yes, these are smaller than Greater London, but not by the amount you think.

smcl 4y ago
I think this is what "Northern Powerhouse Rail" was supposed to address, but I don't know if it's going to get as much love as a London project, if it goes ahead at all :( For any non-UK people who aren't familiar, here's here's a simple map showing pop. density to give you a rough idea what we're dealing with: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-density-based-on-the-UK-census-at-the-5-km-5-km-grid-spatial_fig2_292189735 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-de... You can clearly see the areas in question - London being the big red/purple blob in the far south-east, and the cities/conurbations marmarama described are to the north and north-west of that. They're not individually on the scale of London, but they're substantial population centres that would see real benefits from this kind of public transport infrastructure investment.