0925 GMT
London
Thursday
04 February 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
A slightly [two words] edited [04 February 2010] version of the texts published in September 2009 as a comment on the Financial Times blog:
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Crossrail is not a going concern. It is a slogan. So please stop referring to it as if it is already there. What you and others in the main media have done is to talk up a very small number of business persons who have not shown any valid economic case for this. Sure, a handful of companies will get to construct any project and in the process pocket loads of public money. But what is the economics of the thing? Look at the 'news' of the past five years, since February 2005 when Alistair Darling first put the Crossrail Bill in the House of Commons. What has led the way in the 'Crossrail news'? Hype, hype and even more hype. There is no need for Crossrail. Far more sensible is to improve the standard of service and the physical state of the existing tube lines and bus routes in London. Whatever the Tories may say or do is less important than what the economy needs and what the economic capacity is for funding such a luxury. What is so wrong in being prudent in the ordinary, pre-GB [Gordon Brown] sense of the behaviour? Unless someone has a secret plan waiting for a line of the description of ‘Crossrail’ which plan will be magically brought into play - delivering goodies and benefits that the world of transport has not heard of or experienced so far - as soon as there is operational line called Crossrail, there is no point in wasting breath on it. Let alone wasting scarce £Billions on it. And we knew why the scheme has had to be shelved in various forms before there has never been any economic justification for it. No wonder the official promoter of the Crossrail Bill ensured that neither MPs nor Peers could be allowed to really question anyone about the hundreds of iffy, suspect aspects of the scheme. Not least of which has been its costs. As opposed to unproved economic or environmental benefits in the overall context.
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