This guy (a kopite who lives in Milton Keynes by the way) is one of the strangest people on the internet and a real "character"....
John aka Inner City aka Save our Docks aka Waterways aka JohnMK aka any number of about a dozen usernames on multiple sites is a serial web forum pest who is banned from KEIOC, Liverpool Echo, skyscrapercity and god knows how many other forums.
John is a pensioner who lives in Milton Keynes. He is a train enthusiast and a heritage crank who has authored 2 websites one relating to 'saving' Liverpool's docks and one relating to 'extending rapid rail' in Liverpool....a city he has admitted on other forums that he not lived in for years and rarely visits. His passion for these specific topics is so over the top and unrellenting that on the skyscrapercity forums (where I first came across this chap) a few people speculated that he may have a form of Asburgers.
His recurring and constant trolling on multiple sites has led to him being banned on every forum he starts these topics on and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he will be banned from Toffeeweb. The pattern is always the same. Coming on to talk about his extension of rail and ending up insulting the very people he is trying to convert by calling them "football obsessives" (hilrious to do this on football forums!).
A funny John moment was when he informed the skyscrapercity Liverpool forums, in a thread about Everton's need for a new stadium, that he knew what he was talking about because he was a "true Evertonian" who remembered going to Goodison and watching his hero Billy Liddel score goals....yes Billy Liddel the LIVERPOOL player all Evertonians of a certain age will remember and love (Arf!).
As I mentioned another of John's obsessions is the idea that a football stadium should NEVER even be considered to be built on Liverpool's docklands. He was banned from skyscrapercity under his 'Save our Docks' username for insulting people and generally being a dick with an obsessive campaign against the (then under construction) ACC Kings Dock Arena.
During this "debate" (rant) John insisted that the Echo Arena would be a failure and would ruin the area "killing the place dead". "Concrete bowls that are only used a few days each month" would wreck Liverpool's recovery.
The actual result of course was an award winning arena, an extra 2 million per annum to the local ecconomy and passing trade and increased income for the Albert Dock (up 30%) since the arena was built.
Perhaps even more shamefully, John claimed that if Everton had built the Kings Dock 55,000 seat stadium there would be another Hilsborough. This is obviously a quite shocking scare tactic to use on Liverpool based forums.
When talk in the stadium development threads on skyscrapercity and then later KEIOC's forums turned to the possibility of a stadium being built on Clarence Dock, within the proposed Liverpool Waters site in Liverpool's Central and Northern docklands, he went absolutely NUTS, with dozens of rant filled attacks on any such notion of a stadium being built there using the same "Stadiums kill an area dead and are anti-social fire hazards" argument. He claimed that Goodison is "an accident waiting to happen" and that the docks would be filled with litter from "football hooligans" is a stadium was ever built at Clarence Docks.
His opinion of Evertonians and football fans in general smacks of snobbery and hatred of the working class and football in general.
John objects to stadiums being built anywhere in cities and favours (preferably) out of town retail developments, particularly supporting vigourously Kirkby. He was (obviously) banned from KEIOC....not for his anti-Goodison stance and pro Kirkby leanings, but because he just couldn't behave himself and started insulting people who wouldn't listen to his hare-brain schemes.
Football stadiums to him should be built "away from the people" so they can live in peacxe, with fans rapidly trained in and out to create as least a disturbance on good minded folk as possible.
John hates Goodison Park (and Anfield as a matter of fact) as he believes very strongly that football clubs are dirty, litter creating, anti-social cancer to local communities. He has said on various threads that he believes Walton and Anfield need to be shut of both stadiums. As you can imagine this gains him no favours with football fans whatsoever and so the "you're all stupid football obsessives!" insults start to fly.
Now that we know more about this crank let's look in detail at his plans....
1. Merseytram which is a fairly simple street running (above ground) system is costed at 400 million pounds. This is a scheme that is "hop-on/hop-off" service and therefore does not require staffing and/or stations. Imagine then how much a fully integrated outer loop with multiple stations, staffing, car parking AND a doubling in size of the underground would cost.
2. Bringing back dissused tunnels and rail lines is not simply a case of "reinstating rapid rail" that is already there and is not, as John claims "easy to do". John has been told this, god knows how many times, by transport experts who have worked in the field of PT provision for decades, across the world. They have already told John on the transport threads on SSC forums that his scheme would cost billions of pounds. It's not just a simple case of line re-instatement. Stations need to be built (obviously) for the stops. many of these in John's grand scheme are underground tunnels for ancient disused tunnels. Major, MAJOR construction tasks.
In terms of costing: In the 1990's Conway Park in Birkenhead cost £35 million. That's for one station and not taking into account inflation and how much a station would really cost in 2010. John advocates between half a dozen and a dozen stations to be built AND the complete rennovation of disused tunnels that have not been used since the victorian era.
None of this takes into account station running costs, staff costs and other issues such as the fact that extra trains will need to be bought for these new routes (again, multi millions of pounds for one train alone).
3. These tunnels were not built to handle mass passenger transport and do not have room for this and two train tracks with two (large) passenger carrages going each way. They would need to be modified. Once again transport experts who have worked in the field for decades have told him that this would cost hundreds upon hundreds of millions and many times more than Merseytram. He won't listen to these facts. Liverpool Central is already dangerously over subcribed with 40,000 travellers during peak hours, barely struggling with overcrowding (particularly harsh and potentially dangerous when trains are cancelled leaving more people on the platform). Waterloo/Wapping/Victoria tunnels have no room for this kind of demand so expecting that, in Everton's case 55,000 spectators, and in the [Poor language removed]'s case 60,000-70,000 be served by narrow undergound tunnels built for freight from the docks, is absolutely laughable. Put simply to convert these tunnels to serve large numbers of passengers is simply not cost effective and would cost 4 or 5 times the cost of Merseytram (for example and comparrison).
4. Money: Neither Liverpool City Council, The government of the United Kingdom or Bill Kenwright have any. John claims that Evertonians lack ambition when this is brought up but he fails to give any idea of where Bill Kenwright, a man with an estimated total worth of less than £30 million (who has tied ALL of this into his True Blue holdings, even remortgaging his house at one point to retain control of EFC), is going to find the money to build the 75,000 seat plus stadium he laughably insisted Everton MUST build on the outskirts of the city.
He also seems to have serious mental health issues if he believes that any government is going to spend the billion or more pounds required to build this transport system he envisions. The country is skint.