LONDON'S RAILWAY TERMINI

You get no Brownie points for being a pioneer. Britain's early industrial revolution and the rapid expansion of the railways in the laissez faire 19th century resulted in about a dozen separate mainline railway stations in London, more than any other capital city. But the combination of three different and largely incompatible power sources (diesel, overhead electric and third rail) and a lack of connections between stations led to two unwelcome consequences. First, it allowed for a huge increase in commuters into London (commuters are difficult for railways to manage, since they require large amounts of rolling stock which are idle for most of the day, sophisticated signalling systems, which are similarly underutilised, and complex manning rosters). Secondly, however, passengers wishing to go through London had to disembark into a taxi or onto the Underground, and then reimbark at another station before continuing their journey. My brother worked for the railways for all of his working life, and once told me that he reckoned the London "bottleneck" represented 80% of the company's national operational problems.

From the Second World War until the end of the 1980's, it was physically impossible to cross London without changing trains; in contrast to (say) Paris, with its RER crosstown connections. In 1989, the reopening of the Snow Hill tunnel between Farringdon and what is now City Thameslink, disused since 1916, allowed through services from Bedford and Luton in the north to Brighton in the south. This was later joined by the reintroduction of passenger services on the West London line north-south from Willesden Junction to Clapham Junction. But it is still impossible to go east-west. The Crossrail project, connecting Paddington and the west (including Heathrow Airport) to Liverpool Street and the east via Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road, has been on the drawing board for decades, and finally got started last year, with a projected operating date of 2017. However, with a lot of brand new tunnelling under one of the world's busiest town centres, it is expensive; it will be interesting to see if it survives the draconian cuts in public services that the coalition Government will be introducing in a month or so.

In general, I don't think that the U.K. does big transport infrastructure projects very well. The planning system is unwieldy, public money scarce, the NIMBY (not in my back yard) mentality large. Until not so long ago, the only way to get to Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, was on the trundly Piccadilly line; contrast that with the international train services from Schiphol or Frankfurt directly underneath the arrivals terminal. Even now, you can only go from Heathrow to Paddington, where you again face the disconnection point outlined above.

Against that background, it is perhaps surprising that a fair proportion of the capital's railway stations have in fact managed to get modernised in recent years. St. Pancras, now the home of the Eurostar trains to the continent, looks stunning, and will look even better once the architecturally fantastic Victorian hotel reopens. Liverpool Street in the City has also been given a major improvement, and even Charing Cross and Victoria look perkier. The services out of them are not necessarily brilliant - they are certainly expensive - but at least you get to wait in more congenial surroundings.

The other problem with London is on the freight side. In a world conscious of climate change, there is much to be said for direct freight trains from the continent, with one large engine replacing lots of smaller lorries. However, even if the bottleneck around London is slightly easier for freight than for passengers, there is still the problem of continental loading gauges. Track sizes are the same, but the majority of Britain's railways use narrower loading gauges, meaning that the wider continental freight trains can't pass through the tunnels and under the bridges. The only big railway line built to continental loading gauge standards was the Great Central from Manchester to London Marylebone via Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester. Unfortunately, that was the only major line axed under Beeching in the 1960's; just the commuter trains at the southern end survive.

I used to know a guy at University who was a bit of a railway nut. He had this great idea for reopening the Great Central, much of whose basic infrastructure remains intact, and linking a big new freight depot in the Midlands directly with Milan or Dortmund. There would be some fiddling around London, and some bridge and tunnel widening on the way to Dover; but it could be done relatively cheaply, certainly for less than a new line. And lorry traffic between the channel ports and Scotland, Ireland, the north of England and the Midlands would be drastically reduced, cutting both congestion in the south and overall emissions. He was working on it during the 1980's and he was working on it when he unexpectedly died in 2004. The ideas are still around, but they are also still pretty much on the drawing board. As I say, the U.K. doesn't do big transport infrastructure projects very well.

Walter Blotscher