The argument made in TFA isn't that the Swiss method works because of population size or GDP per capita, but because the processes and goals are completely different.
They work backwards from an agreed goal - written into law - that continuous improvement into infrastructure is a requirement of all governments, regardless of political bent. I actually don't think this is controversial, even in the UK, it's why there is now majority support for nationalisation of the railway operators (and water companies, and more) - it effectively forces capital expenditure rather than the decades of capital extraction we've suffered from.
Some of the Swiss projects are simpler because of geography (shorter distances), but some are harder (long tunnels through mountains). GDP per capita is an output, not an input - if we'd started doing this decades ago instead of believing the Regan/Thatcher nonsense we now know just doesn't work long-term, our GDP per capita would have benefited and it would unlikely be a 2x difference.
As a country the UK is so quick to dismiss initiatives from other countries that are shown to work there - from capital investment into infrastructure, to sovereign wealth funds, to encouraging retail investment into stock markets more (compare the US landscape to the UK landscape), to abolishing leaseholds - all because "that won't work here". Yet the data being cited - including by yourself - is not data. It's a hypothesis. Perhaps we should just give it a go, eh? Maybe for 10 years, let's try something different and see if any of it is better than the current baseline? Because it probably will be.
The UK thinks it is special, and in some ways it is, but it is also constantly shooting itself in the foot so that the Duke of Westminster and Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall can keep making money, and so that the ghost of long-dead prime ministers with nothing to add of value to the 21st century can remain venerated by the political class.
We need to wake the hell up.
I found British culture so depressingly defeatist that I stopped trying to argue for improvements and ended up moving away.
Switzerland isn't perfect but for day to day life it's just much easier to live in. I believe that's partly being a higher trust society but also higher ambition to make infrastructure and town planning improvements.
(e.g. you know there's no point making some connection faster, because the lines still have to sync at 15m/30m/1h points. So you can focus on the places where you can go from a trip taking 40m to one taking 30m, because those are the one that will have a massive impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling
(iirc that video covered it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y9hGofgy9c )
Germany has the same problem. The railway can't plan much ahead as funding is always at the political whims of the next government, prestigious mega projects get funded while existing infrastructure crumbles - and now you have another mega-project to remediate existing infrastructure over the next years all at once, but for this they throw copious amounts of money at construction companies to ramp up that fast.
If there had been constant funding and maintenance, the network wouldn't be in such disarray in the first place and it would have come much cheaper than fixing it all at once in a short time frame.
In a bigger country, it is hard to maintain political cohesiveness over the long term. This means that big projects tend to get so large they can’t be terminated by the next round of government without major blowback. This leads to bloat and delay. The only way around this is total control (like China) but that leads to other issues.
> their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high
2x per capita * 1/6 the population = 1/3 the available money
Gotthard is longer than all the tunnels in HS2 combined. Total cost: CHF 9.560 billion as of December 2015 (it opened 1 June 2016), about £6.5bn at the exchange rate at the time.
As of 2020, the budget envelope set out by the DfT is £98 billion. HS2 is not fifteen times longer than GBT, it is (currently) four.
The approach outlined in the article, is also not applied generally to all infrastructure projects. It's specific to transport. It works because the process is sound and long-term oriented and not because Switzerland is small and rich. Perhaps your comment even inverts the causality.
Obviously each country has their own characteristics and solutions to any of their problems must be adapted. That does not mean, however, that there is nothing to learn from Switzerland just because the UK is larger. There are plenty of reproducible things that can be learn from Switzerland or any other country.
you seem to forget their famous mountains
A lot of people have spent a lot of time (accurately) pointing out how badly HS2 has gone and why. Very few people have pointed out a viable and concrete alternative.
You might think that saves a lot of money, until you drive around Zürich (think: M25), and realise that about 80% of your drive was through tunnels... and Zürich is not even mountaneous.
So, Zürich: you remember the tunnel that comes out half way to Adliswil, under Uetliberg?
What did it cost as a tunnel, what would that have cost as a surface road in reality, and what would it have cost as a surface road if the area had been flat? *That* is why you're being called out by loads of people for "a smaller geographic footprint".
Tunnels are expensive: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220621-what-if-roads-we...
As for call outs, who cares? Some people will find a reason to nag on any day that ends with a y.
And why do you think that is?
There is nothing in the outlined strategy that would be made unworkable. You may reach a different value-engineered point, and it explicitly mentions cargo trains as well.
Coalitions are a thing in competitive democracies where you might need it to form a government.
The council members are also typically moderates and are selected in part based on their ability to work across the isle.
Not to be rude, but have you considered that you may have causation backwards here.
I don't think that's relevant, as there are many small countries with the same problems as the UK and the UK is only medium-sized.
> and well-aligned.
That's the crux of the issue and it's not because of population size. Small countries are no more aligned than large ones (or medium size like the UK) in general.
Why is Switzerland more aligned politically than its peers? Why is social cohesion higher?