One of my themes is how over-regulation makes life on the roads a misery when it could be a pleasure. Bureaucracy too can kill the joy. From Freedom for Drivers Foundation:
The FT on planning impediments to a major congestion-cutting project:
“Lower Thames Crossing has cost £1.2bn even before construction starts. The scheme to build a 14-mile road and tunnel to connect Kent and Essex has become a totem of our snarled-up planning system, in which ventures are tied up with years of delays and mountains of expensive compliance documents.
The planning document for the project — the first wholly-new Thames river crossing east of London for 60 years — runs to 359,070 pages, while it employs around 150 staff and an eight-strong management team.”
This is another example of UK management incompetence with overpaid consultants creaming off enormous fees and delaying projects …
FT article in full: https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebcf13
My comment: Ludicrous/depressing/wasteful indeed. What was that story I read a while ago about a project that was into 6 figures of paperwork, 8 figures of outlay on consultants, yet not even started, while Norway built a bridge over a wide inlet within a year of it being proposed … something like that. Do we suffer from a “can’t do” attitude? On the plus side, a stretch of the A303 at Sparkford has just been completed and it’s great.
