blonde elephant

I don't get Boris Johnson. I get the buffoon bit, and the amiable upper class dodderer, that's easy.

But why on earth is he trying to push this new London airport lunacy?? Why isn't he spending his time

promoting a city wide tram system for London? New bike routes? New railways?

What is it with toffs and nostalgia?

The reality of air travel is that it has, at most, two decades left. There are no alternatives to kerosene produced from oil to fuel the things. Oh, they might make a few prototype solar or electric gimmicky machines, that will end up in museums and are totally unscaleable, but the days when you and I can just jump on a plane and travel just about anywhere for next to nothing are soon coming to an end.

The conclusion? We need to start planning the scaling down of air travel and the associated infrastructure. We need to be thinking about how airports will be used in twenty or thirty years' time when the planes have stopped running. The idea of a new airport is absolutely hilarious. It will never be needed. It's such a waste of time and money to even think about such things.

So let's get real and start putting in real infrastructure that is sustainable and useful, in other words railways and tramways. Forget the rest, that's the past.

boris loses it

Poor Boris Johnson. The one person further to the left than Ken Livingstone ... and poor London's stuck with him.

What's the duffer gone and done now? Only cancelled nearly 3bn quid's worth of tramway development in London. What is he thinking of? And to replace these superb schemes - more buses (LOL!) and more provision for walking and cycling (cheap).

It's simple. A city isn't a city without trams. It's a joke. The problem was the plans just scrapped by Boris were nowhere near ambitious enough. London doesn't need a few km of tramways here and there, but a huge network reaching every corner of the city, plus extensions into commuterland, to totally replace the road network. Perhaps backwards-looking Boris simply doesn't get it.

London WILL get its trams, or die. It's just going to take a few more years than expected.

Bye bye Boris. You were fun for a week or two ...

Also posted to transition transport UK and future economics