Thank you for sticking around, Mr. Graves and Mr. Cruickshank. I want to finish off with a reference to what you said earlier on, that you have to think in terms of projecting down the road in order to really engage in high-speed rail.
I mentioned this at this conference today, that you can either wait for all the right conditions or you can plan for the conditions under which you are going to build. The Chinese, the Hong Kongese, when they built the tunnel under the bay to connect Kowloon and Hong Kong several years ago, faced the same negativity. They had the foresight then to think in terms of extending that subway rail up into the northern part of Kowloon and into the then border town of Shenzhen, now a major city. That railway track at the time was condemned by virtually everybody as too expensive, not affordable. They said nobody was going to use it, that they should go in incremental steps.
I think you're familiar with what's happened. It's a prototype for the kind of construction and foresight in planning that's required. You can go from Shenzhen down to Hong Kong Island in less than an hour. If you try to walk three blocks in Hong Kong it will take you an hour. If you try to take a car, you'll never get out of the parking lot. So was it costly then? It would be prohibitive today.
I thank you for what you have brought to the table today. It shows that the choice is not between incrementalism and high-speed, it's between making an investment today and having a prohibitive cost tomorrow.
Thank you very much.