One useful difference is that a whole swathe of south and east London would find it easier to get to Ebbsfleet for Eurostar than to St Pancras. Just hop on the Lizzie. In particular, that's by far the best way to get to Eurostar from Canary Wharf, as the route to St Pancras involves changing at Bank.
One useful difference is that a whole swathe of south and east London would find it easier to get to Ebbsfleet for Eurostar than to St Pancras. Just hop on the Lizzie. In particular, that's by far the best way to get to Eurostar from Canary Wharf, as the route to St Pancras involves changing at Bank.
Again, this seems marginal gains - we're talking about Londoners not needing to change where we could spend the money far better elsewhere in the country where there isn't infrastructure at all. I'm also aware that this is the problem, transport is treated as a zero-sum game where we spend time arguing about which option is more worthy, instead of doing it all.
But: I think you might have a business case for the line extension. I know that the Channel Tunnel Operators and HS1 want to run more Europe services but St Pancras is a limiting factor. Perhaps they could be persuaded to fund the extension, knowing that they then have a lot more market from Ebbsfleet?
I think you're right that there are better ways to spend that much money outside London if we are cash-limited (which I don't think infrastructure investment should be, but that's a different argument), but I think that connecting Canary Wharf to Paris could also get a bit of cash out of the Canary Wharf Group as well as Eurostar (ie SNCF) and possibly CTO and HS1's owners. One of the problems with Ashford is that it's not especially easy to get to from a lot of places, so it doesn't pull in that many passengers. Ebbsfleet opening up much of SE London would be accessible from a lot of places. Especially as people would likely ride Javelin from Stratford Intl to Ebbsfleet for Eurostar.
One useful difference is that a whole swathe of south and east London would find it easier to get to Ebbsfleet for Eurostar than to St Pancras. Just hop on the Lizzie. In particular, that's by far the best way to get to Eurostar from Canary Wharf, as the route to St Pancras involves changing at Bank.
Again, this seems marginal gains - we're talking about Londoners not needing to change where we could spend the money far better elsewhere in the country where there isn't infrastructure at all. I'm also aware that this is the problem, transport is treated as a zero-sum game where we spend time arguing about which option is more worthy, instead of doing it all.
But: I think you might have a business case for the line extension. I know that the Channel Tunnel Operators and HS1 want to run more Europe services but St Pancras is a limiting factor. Perhaps they could be persuaded to fund the extension, knowing that they then have a lot more market from Ebbsfleet?
I think you're right that there are better ways to spend that much money outside London if we are cash-limited (which I don't think infrastructure investment should be, but that's a different argument), but I think that connecting Canary Wharf to Paris could also get a bit of cash out of the Canary Wharf Group as well as Eurostar (ie SNCF) and possibly CTO and HS1's owners. One of the problems with Ashford is that it's not especially easy to get to from a lot of places, so it doesn't pull in that many passengers. Ebbsfleet opening up much of SE London would be accessible from a lot of places. Especially as people would likely ride Javelin from Stratford Intl to Ebbsfleet for Eurostar.