[petercooper]

Out of interest, why do you wish that it had happened?

I like roads. I like motorways. I've always enjoyed being in LA. Just a personal preference. I am under no illusions that it would have actually worked in London, but I have a Ballardian sense of "what if" to major infrastructure projects. I never expect anyone to agree with me.

your suggestions are still surprisingly far in to London. Why do they need to be inside the M25 at all?

They don't. Ebbsfleet, being on HS1, is a reasonable example of a park and ride option outside the M25, although it's amazingly expensive to park there for what used to all be fields when I was a kid..

The problem is lack of infrastructure. We can't just slap 4 or 5 Ebbsfleets outside the M25 because there are few reasonable ways to offer a 20-30 minute journey into central London from them at this point. But this is my point. If they'd conceded we'd need this sort of thing when they ditched the ringways project 40+ years ago, we could have had something in place well before now. Where can you park and ride from, say, the top third of the M25? Stevenage is probably your only reasonable bet.. especially as even Cockfosters is a cramped 40 minute tube ride to St. Pancras.

[nicoburns]

Why does it need to be a 20-30 minute journey? It would take a lot longer than that to drive that distance.

[petercooper]

There needs to be a quid pro quo for the inconvenience and 20-30 minutes feels like a reasonable amount of time to get from the outskirts to the centre of a large city. If public transport took the same amount of time, or more, as driving, there is less motivation for a driver to use it unless you can price them out of driving.

(Indeed, that is the problem in my local area since the nearest town is an hour on the bus, versus a 25 minute drive, so services keep getting cut.. so less people ride.. etc. etc.)