Saturday 20 December 2014

The spirit of the Metropolitan Railway lives on, or does it?

This looks like an example of a railway company trying to capture the uplift in capital values caused by the building (or in this case a reopening) of a railway line. But is it? The promise of a station at Leekbrook and a rail service into Stoke will certainly raise the value of the houses to be built at Leekbrook, but what is to prevent Moorland and City Railway from pocketing that extra cash and not rebuilding the line? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that "enabling development" went ahead without there subsequently being any "enabling" at all.

For the usual NIMBY fun, check out here.

2 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

The railway company is being refreshingly honest. From the second link:

"The fact that there were rails etc in place and that the line had never been formally abandoned should have given local residents some sort of clue that trains may run that way again at some time."

Bayard said...

Yup, NIMBYs, don't you just love them. The bit about the track being a "village green" was fairly inspired.