Thursday, December 30, 2004

UK train travel on the up

The Grauniad has the story. Just imagine what would happen if they invested in re-opening many of the lines shutdown in the last fifty years, particularly through routes.

I'm back on the kick of comparing a railway network with a computer network. Re-instating railways would demonstrate Metcalfe's Law - connect any number, "n," of machines - whether computers, phones or even trains - and you get "n" squared potential value. Think of railway stations as nodes - the value of the railway is "n" squared where "n" equals the number of stations - open more stations and the value of the network grows exponentially.

Conversely chopping bits off the network by closing stations does calculable damage, not foreseen by the meddlers.

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