Kill Crossrail to save Tube says Simon Jenkins

I found one readers comments on that article very amusing:

Quote : "We should ditch Crossrail but also stop Tube upgrades, as an overused public transport shows this country is not very aspirational. Put the money into making it easier to drive around London, build more express ways and show that owning a car is something people have worked hard for and be proud of.

- Kimberley, London"

How can a publicly owned asset go insolvent?

Regrettably it can, in theory. Many NHS Trusts for instance are technically in severe financial trouble because of budget deficits. The days of the bottomless pit of bail-out government funding, and that of local authorities, have gone.

However, while that is the case, your rebuttal is also full of factual inaccuracies.
yet you haven't travelled NE-SW on the Victoria - a busier and more crowded line. Both the Central and Victoria would be relieved by Chelney.There's rather a large area unserved - not the biggest, but a large area. Hackney is the biggest area of inner London north of the Thames not connected to the tube, Chelsea the second biggest. Chelney would relieve the Victoria, allowing it to be extended into the second biggest area of inner South London without tube access. Crossrail provides frequent rail services to no areas that do not have frequent rail service (maybe you could say the Royal Docks, Woolwich and Abbey Wood) - Chelney does.Yes, a little scheme that is older than the River line and Crossrail. That was number 2 to the JLE because of Docklands and the Dome, that is number 2 to Crossrail because of the Heathrow-Hayes & Harlington link and Docklands again.
And a bucket load of residential area - ditto Hackney. Crossrail is about serving ig business, Chelney far more about ordinary Londoners. Isn't it obvious why Crossrail is ahead - not because it's a more needed scheme, but because it gets the backing of big business and their money.

Does Crossrail's financial help from big business mean it's a better scheme than Chelney?
Certainly not
Does Crossrail's momentum mean that it's the best possible scheme?
Definitely not - in order to justify it it has had to become jack of all trades and master of none - having two eastern branches means that neither are served by enough trains to cope with growth, but losing one and you've either lost Docklands, with it's money, or Stratford and congestion relief. The Stratford problem is easier solved, so ditch Shenfield.

Yet another laughable article.

Sadly I can't help feeling that if Crossrail were dumped, the money would not go on another transport project at all but would rather disappear into the treasury's ever disturbing (im)balance sheet.

As for LU insolvency, this seems highly unlikely. At worst all planned upgrade work would be dumped - but this would be madness, as the upgrades will reduce running costs in many cases.

Some interesting comments here and twaddle from Simon Jenkins. Many years ago someone said that re-opening the WLR and providing a regular train service from Clapham Junction to Willesden would abstract traffic and revenue from the District line and the newly opened Victoria line, hence the project was shelved for years.

These days it seems the WLR is strugling to cope...

As for LU being insolvent, I gather it was a couple of years ago, after the disatrous failures on the Central, and bus replacement operators not being paid for considerable periods after the year end. I know, I was one of those bus operators. It is rumoured that LU and LBuses regularly run out of money towards the year end, but would any government let them fail? I doubt it.!

Its supposed to take over Wimbledon Park NR; this was safegaurded or something in the 2007 re-application thing

Either that's deliberate hyperbole, or a complete ignorance of car emissions (diesel, like that in buses and trains is far more fatal, ditto coal that caused the smogs and powers the power stations that provide electric railways with power) and their effect (it's something like 1% of greenhouses gases in the UK come from car emissions).

However Kimberley needs to realise that London has so much supressed car demand (congestion is inherently self-regulating, the congestion puts people off travelling by car and an equilibrium is reached) that even if you built the ringway plans at their most extreme, you'd still have masses of congestion and roughly the same average traffic speeds, just a lot more traffic going at those speeds. It's not that new roads create new traffic, it's just that new roads create more capacity that fills up with new traffic if there is demand for that capacity.