Thursday, December 30, 2010
50 Scottish Transport Proposals
Our new Scottish Transport Minister clearly does not feel that the effectiveness of any of these are disputable - nor does he have any interest in doing them:
1 - Allow building of the monorail link between Glasgow Airport & Paisley station as offered by Ultra for £20 million.
2 - Build a central, tidal, lane on the Forth Bridge for £10 million max.
3 - Find out why the current Forth Bridge proposal is costed at £2.3 bn while the previous one cost £19.5 million (£320 m in current money) & the rest of the world's are similarly low.
4 - Introduce a bill to remove any of this extra costing that is bureaucracy rather than purely theft for any project declared to be "of importance for national transport needs." Note that UK public projects routinely cost 13 times what they do elsewhere. Difficult to underestimate how much that costs the long term economy.
5 - Hire the people who have been digging the tunnels in Norway at about £5m per km. & let them produce
6 - Gourock-Dunoon tunnel
7 - Cowal - east Rothesay "
8 - West Rothesay - Cowal "
9 - Loch Fyne to Tarbet "
10 - Kintyre - Arran "
11 - Oban - Mull "
12 - Skye - Lewis "
13 - Dunbar Fife "
14 - Tay Estuary " bypassing Dundee; these 2 together make transport from England to Aberdeen much quicker
15 - Kintyre - Islay tunnel
16 - Islay - Jura "
17 - John O' Groats - Orkney " 2/3 paid for by Orkney's oil fund
18 - Ulster - Galloway " "
19 - Isle of Man - Galloway " "
20 - Queensferry "
Note all of those together, even dualled would be about 150 km = £750 m
21 - Recable Forth Bridge. Cost about £10 million.
22 - Cancel replacement Forth Bridge, keeping £2.3 bn for other named projects including 6-20.
23 - Raise a land value capture tax, ringfenced for transport, by charging £10,000 for each new building built in places that were relatively inaccessible before the tunnel project. Thus would be a small part if the increase in land values for housing a hours drive from Glasgow which had previously been almost valueless because ut was day's drive, or sail, away.
24 - Fully automate Glasgow subway.
25 - Fully automate Glasgow - Edinburgh train.
26 - Bring all M8 up to proper motorway standard.
27 - Encourage both Glasgow airports, now within 40 minutes train time of each other to work as a hub e.g. people can check in at each other's sites.
28 - Put up prize for a Road from the Isles hovercraft race - Skye to Dundee. Encourages tourism & the development of commercial hovercraft suitable to Scottish H&I conditions.
29 - Negotiate a Scottish Grand Prix
30 - Get on with Hunterston Deep Water Port Facilities.
31- Ditto Skapa Flo transhipment port.
32 - Build HVDC cables to Russia (possibly via Scandinavia though the whole Baltic is international water), Iceland & Canada where electricity can be bought at 1/4 the price here. (I'm not sure if transporting electricity counts as transport but if you do it it does).
33 - Build a HVDC cable to Germany so we can sell all our cheap renewable power to them. If it doesn't turn out to be cheap (?) sell Canadian/Russian/Icelandic stuff at a good mark up.
- These 2 together would be the start of an international grid - free trade in electricity being as beneficial to the world as free trade in anything else.
34 - Put up a £10 million prize for a Scottish probe soft landing on an asteroid - that is certainly travelling.
35 - £50 million for an experimental Scottish suborbital plane based on the 50 year old British SR53 rocket fighter.
36 - Put up a £400 million prize if the first reusable space plane is built in Scotland.
34 & 36 cost zero if nobody wins it. Note that this prize system has been repeatedly lauded by Alex Salmond in describing the Saltire Prize.
37 - Negotiate with the UK for Ascension Island to be put under Scottish control.
38 - Make Ascension Island a tax free island, improve its infrastructure, make clear the prizes apply to it & encourage it to become the world's premier spaceport.
39 - Build a permanent world space College for Promoting Economically Progressive Space Law in Stirling or Edinburgh. Would naturally get us in on the ground floor of a fast growing industry.
40 -.Lay down plans for Tarbet/St Helena to be the bases of the world's first paired space elevator.
41 - Gradually fully automate all Scottish rail transport with modern rolling stock based on (& weighing no more than) buses.
42 - Introduce a law to allow quick & easy building of & provide set per km subsidies for automated overhead monorails.
43 - Work with providers of automated travel to encourage through ticketing so that it is possible to but a ticket on the monorail, on the way to the station for intercity train travel & then the monorail to within a few hundred yards of your destination.
44 - Encourage an automatic parcel delivery system for large new buildings.
45 - Increase the subsidy of H & I airports to 100% of running costs, remove those security rules applying to all airports which are clearly nonsense for ones with a couple of flights a day. This would give low cost airlines a reason to use them, greatly increase traffic & bring costs way down.
46 - Provide tax rebates for anybody building or expanding port facilities, even or indeed particularly small ones, particularly on the Scottish Islands.
47 - Ensure there is a mobile phone network across the islands & ocean & require pleasure boats to have GPS. This would massively encourage pleasure boating there.
48 - Build a road/dyke across the outer edge of the Solway Firth & claim the reclaimed land, mostly, for Scotland.
49 - Make a generous offer to sublet our tunnel crew to the Isle of White for merely a reasonable mark up.
50 - Build an overhead monorail system across the Forth Rail Bridge (it is horribly overengineered & can easily carry it) to Edinburgh airport & Queen St allowing traffic to travel speedily above the streets congested by trams & smaller vehicles. Note nobody who ever supported TIE should be involved in this, or indeed anything else.
-----------------------------------------------
I must admit to having some doubts that any of this will be done or even considered on its merits since all transport ministers, back to Nicol Stephen, have refused to do so. He said his department would only consider a monorail at Glasgow Airport if I could produce someone willing to build it & when I did, he, or his apparatchik on his orders, "clarified" that promise saying he would actually only ever in any circumstances consider any new idea if presented by the leaders of the Labour or LibDim parties.
On the other hand there is no doubt that efficient transport is a major pillar of economic success & that Scotland, not merely because we are at the far end of Britain, has very poor transport infrastructure. That & our disgracefully expensive power supplies (32, 33) are major factors in the unnecessary impoverishment of the Scots people. These improvements would certainly allow the economy to grow at Chinese levels if that were desired. On a party point I think #1, done after the collapse of Labour's GARL project would lend the SNP considerable crediblity. I am even niave enough to suspect that appearing sensible competent & innovative would be more popular than the alternative, even in Scotlamd.
..
1 - Allow building of the monorail link between Glasgow Airport & Paisley station as offered by Ultra for £20 million.
2 - Build a central, tidal, lane on the Forth Bridge for £10 million max.
3 - Find out why the current Forth Bridge proposal is costed at £2.3 bn while the previous one cost £19.5 million (£320 m in current money) & the rest of the world's are similarly low.
4 - Introduce a bill to remove any of this extra costing that is bureaucracy rather than purely theft for any project declared to be "of importance for national transport needs." Note that UK public projects routinely cost 13 times what they do elsewhere. Difficult to underestimate how much that costs the long term economy.
5 - Hire the people who have been digging the tunnels in Norway at about £5m per km. & let them produce
6 - Gourock-Dunoon tunnel
7 - Cowal - east Rothesay "
8 - West Rothesay - Cowal "
9 - Loch Fyne to Tarbet "
10 - Kintyre - Arran "
11 - Oban - Mull "
12 - Skye - Lewis "
13 - Dunbar Fife "
14 - Tay Estuary " bypassing Dundee; these 2 together make transport from England to Aberdeen much quicker
15 - Kintyre - Islay tunnel
16 - Islay - Jura "
17 - John O' Groats - Orkney " 2/3 paid for by Orkney's oil fund
18 - Ulster - Galloway " "
19 - Isle of Man - Galloway " "
20 - Queensferry "
Note all of those together, even dualled would be about 150 km = £750 m
21 - Recable Forth Bridge. Cost about £10 million.
22 - Cancel replacement Forth Bridge, keeping £2.3 bn for other named projects including 6-20.
23 - Raise a land value capture tax, ringfenced for transport, by charging £10,000 for each new building built in places that were relatively inaccessible before the tunnel project. Thus would be a small part if the increase in land values for housing a hours drive from Glasgow which had previously been almost valueless because ut was day's drive, or sail, away.
24 - Fully automate Glasgow subway.
25 - Fully automate Glasgow - Edinburgh train.
26 - Bring all M8 up to proper motorway standard.
27 - Encourage both Glasgow airports, now within 40 minutes train time of each other to work as a hub e.g. people can check in at each other's sites.
28 - Put up prize for a Road from the Isles hovercraft race - Skye to Dundee. Encourages tourism & the development of commercial hovercraft suitable to Scottish H&I conditions.
29 - Negotiate a Scottish Grand Prix
30 - Get on with Hunterston Deep Water Port Facilities.
31- Ditto Skapa Flo transhipment port.
32 - Build HVDC cables to Russia (possibly via Scandinavia though the whole Baltic is international water), Iceland & Canada where electricity can be bought at 1/4 the price here. (I'm not sure if transporting electricity counts as transport but if you do it it does).
33 - Build a HVDC cable to Germany so we can sell all our cheap renewable power to them. If it doesn't turn out to be cheap (?) sell Canadian/Russian/Icelandic stuff at a good mark up.
- These 2 together would be the start of an international grid - free trade in electricity being as beneficial to the world as free trade in anything else.
34 - Put up a £10 million prize for a Scottish probe soft landing on an asteroid - that is certainly travelling.
35 - £50 million for an experimental Scottish suborbital plane based on the 50 year old British SR53 rocket fighter.
36 - Put up a £400 million prize if the first reusable space plane is built in Scotland.
34 & 36 cost zero if nobody wins it. Note that this prize system has been repeatedly lauded by Alex Salmond in describing the Saltire Prize.
37 - Negotiate with the UK for Ascension Island to be put under Scottish control.
38 - Make Ascension Island a tax free island, improve its infrastructure, make clear the prizes apply to it & encourage it to become the world's premier spaceport.
39 - Build a permanent world space College for Promoting Economically Progressive Space Law in Stirling or Edinburgh. Would naturally get us in on the ground floor of a fast growing industry.
40 -.Lay down plans for Tarbet/St Helena to be the bases of the world's first paired space elevator.
41 - Gradually fully automate all Scottish rail transport with modern rolling stock based on (& weighing no more than) buses.
42 - Introduce a law to allow quick & easy building of & provide set per km subsidies for automated overhead monorails.
43 - Work with providers of automated travel to encourage through ticketing so that it is possible to but a ticket on the monorail, on the way to the station for intercity train travel & then the monorail to within a few hundred yards of your destination.
44 - Encourage an automatic parcel delivery system for large new buildings.
45 - Increase the subsidy of H & I airports to 100% of running costs, remove those security rules applying to all airports which are clearly nonsense for ones with a couple of flights a day. This would give low cost airlines a reason to use them, greatly increase traffic & bring costs way down.
46 - Provide tax rebates for anybody building or expanding port facilities, even or indeed particularly small ones, particularly on the Scottish Islands.
47 - Ensure there is a mobile phone network across the islands & ocean & require pleasure boats to have GPS. This would massively encourage pleasure boating there.
48 - Build a road/dyke across the outer edge of the Solway Firth & claim the reclaimed land, mostly, for Scotland.
49 - Make a generous offer to sublet our tunnel crew to the Isle of White for merely a reasonable mark up.
50 - Build an overhead monorail system across the Forth Rail Bridge (it is horribly overengineered & can easily carry it) to Edinburgh airport & Queen St allowing traffic to travel speedily above the streets congested by trams & smaller vehicles. Note nobody who ever supported TIE should be involved in this, or indeed anything else.
-----------------------------------------------
I must admit to having some doubts that any of this will be done or even considered on its merits since all transport ministers, back to Nicol Stephen, have refused to do so. He said his department would only consider a monorail at Glasgow Airport if I could produce someone willing to build it & when I did, he, or his apparatchik on his orders, "clarified" that promise saying he would actually only ever in any circumstances consider any new idea if presented by the leaders of the Labour or LibDim parties.
On the other hand there is no doubt that efficient transport is a major pillar of economic success & that Scotland, not merely because we are at the far end of Britain, has very poor transport infrastructure. That & our disgracefully expensive power supplies (32, 33) are major factors in the unnecessary impoverishment of the Scots people. These improvements would certainly allow the economy to grow at Chinese levels if that were desired. On a party point I think #1, done after the collapse of Labour's GARL project would lend the SNP considerable crediblity. I am even niave enough to suspect that appearing sensible competent & innovative would be more popular than the alternative, even in Scotlamd.
..
Labels: Science/technology, Scottish politics, scottish progress
Comments:
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There is a lot more to Scotland than the central belt, no mention of A9, A96 or A90. Only when Scotland gets full fiscal autonomy (not Calman) is any of your list achievable.
Is this not an example of how so many self described "nationalisits" haqve no interest in doi8ng anything for their country, merely in blaming the English for not spoonfeeding them.
Am I wrong or would none of these cost as much as the £1 billion we spend on windmills every year, let alone the £2.3 bn (& counting) our numptocracy intend to waste on a new Forth bridge? Indeed I think they should all cost less than the £600 million wasted on not building a tramline & most would cost less than the $41 million spent on not building the glasgow rail link. If CH is even remotely close to being right these projects have never have been undertaken under the present system but obviously they were. I think that proves how wholly lacking in any nationalist ambitions & or even connection with reality the "nationalist" movement is.
Am I wrong or would none of these cost as much as the £1 billion we spend on windmills every year, let alone the £2.3 bn (& counting) our numptocracy intend to waste on a new Forth bridge? Indeed I think they should all cost less than the £600 million wasted on not building a tramline & most would cost less than the $41 million spent on not building the glasgow rail link. If CH is even remotely close to being right these projects have never have been undertaken under the present system but obviously they were. I think that proves how wholly lacking in any nationalist ambitions & or even connection with reality the "nationalist" movement is.
Oh dear a rabid unionist spouting rubbish. The trams were based on an uneconomically busisiness model but was pushed through for oppositionist sake and Garl has been shown as equally flawed.
Assumptions don't make reality and rather than be rabidly anti nationalist lets hear a justification for the stance you take like "merely in blaming the English for not spoonfeeding them" when Scotland gets back less than it pays Westminster even using the totally biased GERS figures.
Assumptions don't make reality and rather than be rabidly anti nationalist lets hear a justification for the stance you take like "merely in blaming the English for not spoonfeeding them" when Scotland gets back less than it pays Westminster even using the totally biased GERS figures.
You do not even attempt to dispute that all of these proposals are far cheaper than what your parasitic thieving governement is wasting on windmills let alone the Forth bridge.
Incidentally I said nothing to favour the original GARL. You say noting to say why your party were right to oppose the alternative.
Lets see your evidence that Scotland, with a lower per capita income than England & thus a lower tax base, can pay for a greater, indeed apparently infinitely greater, amount of state parasitism.
The use of the word "rabid" is, of course, not only wholly dishonest but a sign of the refusal of you national socialists to discuss real issues or engage in honest discussion. It is something which any true nationalist would instantly dissociate from.
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Incidentally I said nothing to favour the original GARL. You say noting to say why your party were right to oppose the alternative.
Lets see your evidence that Scotland, with a lower per capita income than England & thus a lower tax base, can pay for a greater, indeed apparently infinitely greater, amount of state parasitism.
The use of the word "rabid" is, of course, not only wholly dishonest but a sign of the refusal of you national socialists to discuss real issues or engage in honest discussion. It is something which any true nationalist would instantly dissociate from.
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