One thing intrigues me about transport spending: It's always deemed to be a 'good thing' because people supposedly need to move around. If that's the case, why does the taxpayer have to subsidise it? Surely, if it's so economically necessary, the users would be prepared to pay.
My suspicion is that if people and organisations had to pay the real cost of transport (including paying the owners - usually taxpayers - a return on the asset value) then we might just find that moving things and people around so much might just be deemed less desirable. Companies might suddenly find that it would make more sense for employees to work from home or satellite offices. Video- and tele-conferencing might just become more attractive than travelling. Supermarkets might find that local distribution centres are cheaper than centralised ones.
The IEA has an interesting piece on funding infrastructure projects like crossrail without involving the public purse:
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp...ype=news&
ID=436
hopefully the council tax payers of slough etc will be forced to pay for it.
I think not though; the residents of London, even far from the line, are to be fleeced again
Go take a look at the Channel Tunnel Rail Link's finances. (Its now called High Speed One, and is expecting to be operational right into St Pancras by Mid November.) The developers are absolutely certain that it is on time and WITHIN BUDGET, as well as triggering an unexpectedly large amount of regeneration finance. How did they do it? Can Crossrail benefit from their experience?
But even I can see that one third of the Crossrail £16bn current total from one source and one third from another and a few hundred million here and there doesn't add up to £16bn. What will fill the gap? We wait to see if we hear that by Tuesday evening.
The reason the total jumped from £10b to £16b is that they decided to include a contingency fund for any overspend. AFAIK its the first time they have done this and it makes the final figure even more gargantuan that it was originally.
Commenting by HaloScan
