OT Never mind the super railway-

[Broadback]

Lets have another parallel motorway to the M6. That would be much more practical and useful!

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

How does that help with global warming?

Still just don't take a diesel car into Bristol Town Centre next year. Brian

[Andy Burns]

You could call it M6(toll)

[Martin Brown]

There is already one around Birmingham but you have to pay to use it.

[Jethro_uk]

If we assume road traffic is set to maintain it's present manifestation (I have my doubts) I wonder what the practicalities of building a second motorway above the first would be ? No need for more land - and you could have proper trunk routes again, rather than the current parochial mess around cities, where it's faster to hop a couple of junctions on the motorway than use the local and A roads. (Especially if you can sneak on at the services :) )

[Dave Liquorice]

Doesn't help from Wolverhampton to the M62. That'll be better, FSVO "better" once it's all smart motorway. The current 35 miles of 50 mph average speed cameras is coma inducing...

Of course if people drove properly on motorways in the first place, kept to speed limit and proper distance) we wouldn't need "smart" motorways to enforce it.

[Andy Burns]

I drove up from Leicester to the Lake District last year and the sheer level of roadworks on a single journey was, as you say, staggering, I'm surprised they don't split it up, even though it'd stretch out the work.

[The Other Mike]

I guess you've never ever come across the concept of risk assesment?

Land and a new road at ground level especially via a CPO will always be a few orders of magnitude cheaper than building a bridge even without the complications of building it over or adjacent to live traffic.

Extrapolate that to a road a couple of hundred miles long and you end up with the 'economics' of socialism,

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[Jethro_uk]

Of course it needn't be a road. It could be a railway :)

[Dave Liquorice]

Only the 60 odd miles from the M6(toll) to M56/M62 is is serously bad on a daily basis. North of Lancaster it's relatively empty even midweek during the day. Past about 2100 Night and you can drive for minutes at a time on main beam without dazzling anyone as there is no one in front north or south bound. B-)

Yeah, I was thinking build the HS2, bung all the passenger (fast) trains onto that and keep the old mainline for freight/local (slow) trains.

[Marland]

To be honest the two modes of transport are converging in some ways . It used to be that roughly railway vehicles operated in a controlled environment and road vehicles less so.

Already with the setting up of smart motorways the control of road vehicles by an external control centre which is similar in some ways to the role of a railway signalling centre in that the operators have the decision as to how fast you can go rather than an individual driver making their own choice. Of course at the moment drivers can ignore the messages given on signs but risk fines and points in doing so. I doubt it will happen in the optimistic time scales predicted but in the march to autonomous vehicles one of the first stages could be that vehicles are physicall controlled from an external control room and if they decide that the traffic must do 40mph then that is signalled to all vehicles and they don?t vary wether the driver likes it or not. There are other suggestions about trucks following each other much closer than human reactions allow using sophisticated adaptive cruise control so you will end up with what is basically a road train but coupled by electronics rather than a piece of steel.

GH

[Jethro_uk]

The suggestion of electrified motorways also blurs rail and road transport.

Whilst goods obviously need to be moved (for now); the persistence of

*people* needing to be shipped all over the country on a daily basis continues to mystify me.

[Martin Brown]

And increasingly you see part finished railway carriages being transported long distances by road causing traffic disruption.

[invalid]

how does a new railway?

but modern diesels are cleaner than your petrol car, probably.

[Bob Eager]

Exactly. But they prefer the blunt instrument, it seems.

[Theo]

That's indeed the whole point.

(the '250mph' stuff is just a distraction - if you're going to build a new thingy, the delta on building a decent new one versus the one compromised by cutting corners isn't that much).

[Chang]

It shouldn?t. Have a look at why Adam does that.

[Bill Wright]

I don't know how we can help with global warming, but it does seem to be happening too slowly.

Bill

[Andrew]

Bollocks. They emit NO2 which is far, far more dangerous than CO2.

[Andy Burns]

Are they banning all diesels, or just those pre Euro V or whatever?