Her voting record includes such triumphant positions as voting not to exclude hereditary legislators from the House of Lords and a swithering positing on gay rights, but let us not cavil about such trivial lunacies and, instead, welcome someone who at least has an interest in transport (according to theyworkforyou, while in Opposition she asked more questions about transport than any other topic -- although I can't discern a pattern from the ones I've seen).
Hammond has been an ok SoS, his best work being to push hard for High Speed 2, the high speed line intended to connect London to Birmingham before later stages connect to Manchester and the North-East.
His worst decision was either to press on with the insane Hitachi bi-mode InterCity Express project, or perhaps to scrap AirTrack, the proposed rail connection from the south and south-west to Heathrow Airport, a decision perhaps not unconnected to his campaign against it as the local MP.
It's pretty dismal that this Government already seems to be following its predecessors in regarding the Transport Secretary's job as a revolving door, with no need for anyone to stay in office longer than 18 months. This is one of those departments where timescales are inevitably extremely long-term, and chopping and changing the leadership destroys any possibility of a coherent, integrated approach.
No comments:
Post a Comment