Not Long Now,
I'm with Nimmer. A great post. We seem to have no long-term plan, not only for this, but many other facets of The U.K.'s infrastructure. It's all driven by the 5-year political-cycle unfortunately,
Skim-reading 6 of the current party manifestos, each one contains some good ideas.
In an ideal world, we need a group of people to select all the best bits and combine them into a coherent national plan with a life-cycle of at least 50 years.