Comment by dhfbshfbu4u3
7 hours ago
The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit simplistic.
Not buying that.
The argument made in TFA isn't that the Swiss method works because of population size or GDP per capita, but because the processes and goals are completely different.
They work backwards from an agreed goal - written into law - that continuous improvement into infrastructure is a requirement of all governments, regardless of political bent. I actually don't think this is controversial, even in the UK, it's why there is now majority support for nationalisation of the railway operators (and water companies, and more) - it effectively forces capital expenditure rather than the decades of capital extraction we've suffered from.
Some of the Swiss projects are simpler because of geography (shorter distances), but some are harder (long tunnels through mountains). GDP per capita is an output, not an input - if we'd started doing this decades ago instead of believing the Regan/Thatcher nonsense we now know just doesn't work long-term, our GDP per capita would have benefited and it would unlikely be a 2x difference.
As a country the UK is so quick to dismiss initiatives from other countries that are shown to work there - from capital investment into infrastructure, to sovereign wealth funds, to encouraging retail investment into stock markets more (compare the US landscape to the UK landscape), to abolishing leaseholds - all because "that won't work here". Yet the data being cited - including by yourself - is not data. It's a hypothesis. Perhaps we should just give it a go, eh? Maybe for 10 years, let's try something different and see if any of it is better than the current baseline? Because it probably will be.
The UK thinks it is special, and in some ways it is, but it is also constantly shooting itself in the foot so that the Duke of Westminster and Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall can keep making money, and so that the ghost of long-dead prime ministers with nothing to add of value to the 21st century can remain venerated by the political class.
We need to wake the hell up.
I think one key point why things are this way for CH, is that they decided to move to Takt scheduling (clock face scheduling) in the 70s. Integrated country-wide scheduling, makes doing those long term planning much easier.
(e.g. you know there's no point making some connection faster, because the lines still have to sync at 15m/30m/1h points. So you can focus on the places where you can go from a trip taking 40m to one taking 30m, because those are the one that will have a massive impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling
(iirc that video covered it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y9hGofgy9c )
> As a country the UK is so quick to dismiss initiatives from other countries that are shown to work there
I found British culture so depressingly defeatist that I stopped trying to argue for improvements and ended up moving away.
Switzerland isn't perfect but for day to day life it's just much easier to live in. I believe that's partly being a higher trust society but also higher ambition to make infrastructure and town planning improvements.
What does the Swiss method (predicatable and consistent funding for the railway) have to do with population size and density?
Germany has the same problem. The railway can't plan much ahead as funding is always at the political whims of the next government, prestigious mega projects get funded while existing infrastructure crumbles - and now you have another mega-project to remediate existing infrastructure over the next years all at once, but for this they throw copious amounts of money at construction companies to ramp up that fast.
If there had been constant funding and maintenance, the network wouldn't be in such disarray in the first place and it would have come much cheaper than fixing it all at once in a short time frame.
The UK — actually, no, just England in this case — less cohesive than Switzerland? Switzerland gives a lot power to each canton. It is also famously mountainous, which is hard on infrastructure projects. They're also a through-route from Germany (and Austria and France) to Italy, so looking at just their own economy for industrialisation and load is insufficient, as this wouldn't explain the existence of e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
That's very reductive. Famously Switzerland has difficult terrain and many of the large infrastructure projects happen in the alpine region. Some of those projects are quite challenging and require international effort and coordination. GDP per capita being higher is an advantage, but it also makes everything more expensive domestically.
The approach outlined in the article, is also not applied generally to all infrastructure projects. It's specific to transport. It works because the process is sound and long-term oriented and not because Switzerland is small and rich. Perhaps your comment even inverts the causality.
Always this silly excuse. The Swiss method work because it's good and the country is governed incredibly better than the UK and most of the rest in Europe.
If the country were as large as the UK, it wouldn’t be run the same way. Not even close. The Swiss are very aware of this.
> They have a smaller geographic footprint
You might think that saves a lot of money, until you drive around Zürich (think: M25), and realise that about 80% of your drive was through tunnels... and Zürich is not even mountaneous.
I lived in Zürich for two years and I’ve traveled extensively in the country.
How is lower GDP per capita a valid reason for overspending? And a lack of political cohesion shouldn’t be a reason for poor planning.
When the country is big enough, every “successful” project has to be too big to fail. Otherwise, it gets cut when the next lot come in to run the place. It’s a different way to look at the planning mechanism.
If we could only deliver 1/12 relative to Switzerland it would still be a huge improvement on the current baseline.
It is true that the Swiss have more money to spend on rail, but this makes a compelling case that we aren't spending our money as effectively.
A lot of people have spent a lot of time (accurately) pointing out how badly HS2 has gone and why. Very few people have pointed out a viable and concrete alternative.
The issue is that in many large countries, the project _must_ be enormous or else they’ll get cut as the political winds shift to and fro. The result is that they become highly inefficient and expensive. The only real solution is political cohesion.
> They have a smaller geographic footprint
you seem to forget their famous mountains
I lived there. The number of trains that go over the top of the mountains is basically zero.
But then how is China (much bigger) able to build incredible public transport systems?
China builds everything at a scale that makes no sense anywhere else in the world. They have total political will, lower cost labor, and lax environmental standards (though that last on is changing). Also, their technical ability to terraform is insane.
UK has a much higher population density.
Not really (274 vs 227), especially if you consider that ~40% of the land is unusable due to being mountainous.
Switzerland is the land of gobs of cash and gold. The UK is having difficulty making ends meet for basic infrastructure like the £20 billion in debt for one water company. UK debt is 96% of GDP (£2.8 trillion, £16.4 billion monthly interest payment). Switzerland debt is 38% of GDP.
The national debt in Switzerland is so low because of a constitutional rule that limits spending to match revenues since 2003. In practice, this has led to lower debt.
Did you read the article and can point out which part of the specific method would not work in the UK?
There is nothing in the outlined strategy that would be made unworkable. You may reach a different value-engineered point, and it explicitly mentions cargo trains as well.
The long term commitment by the government works for Switzerland because the government is a permanent national unity coalition that has not changed in party composition for over 50 years. The fact that the people in power when things are planned will be the same that reap the rewards 4 elections later helps align politics for long term issues.
Last time the proportion of the Federal Council was changed was 20-ish years ago, not over 50. But your broader point still stands as it's roughly the same parties (the "magic formula" is roughly proportional to the proportion of parties in the national council)(but also takes into account gender and language/region).
This reads as "the political parties in the UK are fully dysfunctional since they cannot plan for checks notes a decade ahead in country where average life expectancy is checks notes 81 years and the country itself has been around for checks notes 1500 years"
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> and GDP per capita is twice as high.
And why do you think that is?
Most people will point to banking and finance, but even the industrial sector is highly specialized with much higher margins.
Looking at GDP and population, without considering any of the other relevant details is also a bit simplistic, wouldn't you say?