August 19th, 2010 |
» As the United Kingdom encourages investors to pony up billions of pounds for its High-Speed 1 route, Chicago’s sell-off of parking assets comes back to bite.
Who knew an investment in public infrastructure could be so profitable? Or rather, are government entities being bamboozled out of the value of their own property?
About two years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sold off the rights to 75 years of his city’s public parking meters for $1.15 billion to a partnership of private companies led by Morgan Stanley. Mayor Daley pushed the city council to approve the deal, since it would mean
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May 24th, 2010 |
» New government, set on fiscal austerity, could limit transport expenditures in face of the recession. New minister declares an end to “the war on motorists.”
In power for thirteen years, the British Labour party had a mixed record when it came to transportation investments. While it greatly expanded funds committed to public transportation operations and maintenance, especially in London, it did so while pushing private ownership of bus lines and PPP control over construction programs. While it brought the nation’s railroads back from the abyss caused by John Major’s hugely problematic privatization of British Rail, it made few investments
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May 11th, 2010 |
» Mayor Boris Johnson instructs Transport for London to purchase controlling shares of Tube Lines, the PPP process’ remaining private infrastructure manager.
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone sued the government twice in the early 2000s to prevent the full-scale contracting out of maintenance and work on the London Underground, which then-Chancellor of the Exchequer and soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Gordon Brown imposed on to the city beginning in 2003. The U.K. government, which provides financial sponsorship for most of the reconstruction of this city’s huge transit network, forced a series of public-private partnership (PPP) agreements through, giving big contracts
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March 14th, 2010 |
» Initial project would link Birmingham to the capital in 49 minutes, but future connections would extend north to Leeds and Manchester.
The fear that only one section of the United Kingdom’s Midlands would receive new high-speed rail service has been laid to rest. Hoping to draw unity around a single compromise alignment, UK Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis has drawn out a twenty-year plan that would connect London with Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham. It’s a 335-mile Y-shaped network that would cost £30 billion to construct and dramatically advance the speed of rail
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March 7th, 2010 |
» A station at Heathrow looks more promising when envisioned as a connection between the United Kingdom’s northern and southern rail networks.
In my Friday article on the brewing controversy over whether to link Heathrow Airport to the United Kingdom’s proposed HS2 high-speed rail network, I dismissed the idea rather quickly, arguing that the airport station proposed by the Conservative Party would multiply construction costs and increase travel times. Because Heathrow is not directly on the way between London and Birmingham, including a station at the airport on the first segment of the HS2 route would
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March 5th, 2010 |
» The British government is set to produce a high-speed plan that does not include a direct connection to Heathrow Airport. Is that a problem?
It’s one of the standard arguments made by promoters of high-speed rail: by investing in multimodal hubs at airports, trains can reduce congestion in the air by encouraging people flying short journeys to switch to rail, even while expanding access to long-distance routes only feasible by airplane. The argument is lapped up by politicians and business groups, both of whom use air travel far more frequently than the average population. The
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