"who’d a thunk it"
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An orbital railway is needed yes, but it’ll end up being just that and likely resulting from an overground expansion (which I doubt CG want, they were trying to merge devolved railways into GBR) rather than new track (or track to patch in different parts of existing track, new track will defo be needed in east london)
Superloop is a good middle of the road option for now, where we clearly need that orbital public transport connection.
Bringing in new bus routes is an order of magnitude simpler, quicker and cheaper than introducing trams or new underground lines (the Elizabeth line took, what, two decades?) If it proves there's a demand for a better solution between those locations then fantastic, the wheels can be set in motion, but in a major C21st metropolis you can't just go "bing bang Birdseye, let's make this one puce" and throw up a new piece of major infrastructure.
My issue though is that I don't know if it's doing enough to justify it's own existence. If the journey from one town in Greater London to another takes twice as long from express buses vs getting trains in and out of London then I can't in all honestly seeing people preferring the bus option.
You would have to at least make it so the buses itself isn't as affected by traffic, which would mean Express Bus Routes and for the Express Bus itself to be more comfortable for longer distances.
I agree it's a cop out to a bigger committment but it's better than no action at this point. Anything we can do to increase public transport, I'm all for.
Back when I was near Uxbridge, there was a proposal to install a tram line from Ux to Shepherds Bush. Would have been great for my commute and replace all the (then) stinky 207s and 607 Express busses. Sadly it got NIMBY'd away. This would have formed part of the superloop structure I believe.
Given the size of the superloop, something better than busses seems sensible. A super ring of trams?
I think trams would have been a better idea, or at the very least improve bus lanes so that traffic would be less of an issue.
I love trams
It's a really poor choice of stops from what I can see. Nearly all of them are currently really hard to get to places. In the south west (where I am), Teddington, Kingston, and Sutton are all on poorly serviced train lines. I can see the logic of increasing connectivity of those places, but only if you put well connected places on the loop too. Richmond needs to be on there to give it a main line connection, district line and overground. They've put Heathrow on instead, but Heathrow doesn't serve the local community as a travel hub. You don't wander to T5 to get the tube.
Basically I have no practical public transport route to get anywhere this loop services, so I won't use it.