Surely you have some value from the re-electrification project?
Now there is a sore point! Electrification planned for the North is grinding to a halt. The current £260M project has been "indefinitely delayed" due to a national overspend at Network Rail. The simple answer to your question is YES, there would / will be value from it if / when the work is ever completed. The project must be funded and delivered before we see that value.
Shed, can you tell me which "big picture" use of taxpayers money will generate £211B (that's 'billion' by the way) and 70k jobs?
Firstly, the numbers. The Davies Report states that "59-77000 additional direct, indirect and induced jobs [will be created]" by LHR R3. The forecast boost to GDP is £147Bn spread over 60 years. Long-term aviation-related forecasts of this nature are notoriously unreliable anyway (think 9/11, 2008 banking crisis, LCC revolution etc. in recent times), but these are the guidelines we must work with. Long-term aviation forecasts made even 30 years ago seem laughable now, let alone over a period twice that long.
I have been wary of wandering too far "off-topic" in this thread entitled: "Another Runway for Heathrow". But how can I resist a special request to nominate some pressing regional priorities which would substantially benefit UKplc as a whole?
First, some caveats. As I understand the system, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland now make their own decisions on infrastructure priorities for their respective countries. I support proportional taxpayer funding to enable the identified priorities to be successfully delivered. As a resident of NW England, it is not appropriate for me to suggest that I know better than they do what their infrastructure priorities should be.
Secondly, I have no doubt that the West Midlands, East Midlands, South West and East of England have projects of outstanding merit requiring public funding. I leave it to residents of those regions to identify what their individual transport infrastructure priorities should be. I fully support funding of these priorities in proportion to the percentage of the population served by the upgrades. Note that significant upgrades to the Great Western rail line from London to the SW (including electrification), and on the London Liverpool St to Norwich line are being delivered.
Thirdly, I do not propose that £10Bn of public money should necessarily be allocated to a single project. A combination of public / private financing spanning several priority projects across a number of regions should produce the best ROI for the taxpayer in terms of employment impact and increasing the UK GDP.
I note that you challenge me to nominate some specific transport infrastructure priorities in the regions. For reasons explained earlier, I will do so for the North as the region I am best placed to comment upon. This does not imply lack of support for similar initiatives in the other English regions.
1) Comprehensive rail upgrade covering the Northern trunk route:
Liverpool - Warrington - [Manchester Airport -] - Manchester Picc - Salford Central - Manchester Vic - Stalybridge - Huddersfield - Dewsbury - [Sheffield / Bradford / Doncaster -] - Leeds - [-Hull] - York [-Scarborough] Thirsk - Northallerton - Darlington - Durham [Middlesbrough / Sunderland] - Chester-le-Street - Gateshead - Newcastle.
Just pause for a moment to consider the population relying on this route. Playing the Greater London population card against this doesn't work at all. The manufacturing capacity of these cities combined is formidable and absolutely vital to the future prosperity of UKplc.
This project, incorporating the 'HS3' proposals (as yet unfunded) should include full electrification, widening of most of the route to 4 tracks [ECML North of Leeds already offers this], platform lengthening to accommodate longer trains, and - most importantly - the replacement of 2-car 'Pacers' and 3-car 'Express' trains with a fleet of new-build 10-car modern trains with high-speed capability and the reliability to support high-frequency services. Capacity is a bigger issue on this line than service frequency.
In tandem with the above, other lines across the North require urgent upgrades and replacement of rolling stock, electrification, and greater capacity to offer freight paths [Leeds - Settle - Carlisle route, Calder Valley Line etc.]
At Liverpool, Lime Street Station requires a total rebuild (or more practically, a new-build station at a more suitable location). It is estimated that Lime Street's Victorian cuttings on the approach to the station limit Liverpool to HALF the number of services which a city of this stature should be supporting. Frequency to London Euston is limited for this reason; many major UK cities have no direct service to Liverpool due to capacity constraints. A resolution to the Lime Street bottleneck would be vastly more beneficial to Merseyside than a handful of daily A319's to LHR. And it would come at a fraction of the price.
Manchester Piccadilly Station also requires major re-working if it is ever to accommodate the full vision of HS2, HS3 and the 'Northern Hub'. Two additional through-platforms have been approved, but this is just a start. Manchester also lacks a single major hub for buses. Services currently terminate on numerous random side-streets strewn across the city. Most people don't know where services depart from. Long cross-city walks from bus to bus are required. This is completely unacceptable. The Manchester Piccadilly Station upgrade should be designed as a comprehensive rail / tram / bus hub interchange to finally eliminate the issues outlined above.
A spur line should be constructed to link the Altrincham-Chester line to Manchester Airport from the West, opening up Cheshire and North Wales to direct services. North Wales is desperate to secure rail access to Manchester Airport. It is considered a priority by the Welsh Assembly.
Other lines served by the 'Northern' franchise have also been massively neglected (eg. Carlisle - Hexham - Newcastle). Northern Rail is unfairly demonised by Westminster as the franchise which requires the highest subsidy. But it is also the only major franchise which operates exclusively rural and urban-commuter services. The more lucrative inter-city routes come under the Transpennine franchise, so they cannot cross-subsidise operations as other franchises can. Hence the elevated subsidy requirement. They should not be penalised for having to cope with this Whitehall-created botch-job scenario. Major upgrades are urgently required. The NE in particular is woefully under-invested with public funds for transport infrastructure.
2) ROADS
Key priorities should include extending the M67 [from around Hyde] to the M1 near SHEFFIELD. This South Pennine motorway link has been a neglected priority for years. This motorway would directly tie in South Yorkshire to the major conurbations of Greater Manchester, Merseyside and through to North Wales. How about that for boosting jobs and UK GDP? More expensive than LHR R3? I don't think so!
Also required is an M62 by-pass to the North of the current route, rejoining the current M62 around Rochdale. This measure would circumvent the lines of stationary traffic which accumulate daily where the heavily-used M60 and M62 trunk routes become one single motorway for several miles. Two major motorways into one just doesn't work.
A short section of motorway should be constructed to relieve the heavily-congested section of the A556 used by traffic linking from the M60/M62 to the M6 Southbound.
No doubt there are similar advantageous improvements required east of the Pennines which I lack the local knowledge to highlight here. But those projects which I have cited demonstrate the scale of initiatives urgently required in the North alone. Combined with the needs of other long-neglected English regions, the problem becomes apparent to anybody with the will to see the reality.
London is NOT the only game in town. It must not be allowed to continue hogging 92% of the national public expenditure on transport infrastructure. LHR R3 should
NOT be considered a priority for £10Bn of public funds set against this backdrop. And don't get me started on the proposed cost of Crossrail 2!!!
So, Trash 'n' Navs ... thankyou for asking. I wander off-topic by personal request! But these issues are of vital importance, not just for their direct economic implications, but also to head off growing discontent over neglect of the regions in favour of London and the SE. A 'Disunited Kingdom' will be the inevitable outcome of continuing 'more-of-the-same' SE-only transport infrastructure investment.
Oh, and YES ... these projects DO have the potential to create 70000 jobs. And a substantial boost to GDP. Will it exceed £147Bn or £211Bn over 60 years? Very likely, but nobody really knows. And we certainly don't know that for LHR R3 either!
Thanks for asking!!! :-)