Airlines don't work in the way he describes either. If I have a ticket from London to Paris with BA^» (British Airways - about) but their pilots are on strike, I can't just board an Air France flight unless I buy a new ticket.

Which a fuel cell vehicle is – at least in the same way as (but far more cleanly than) a diesel train. 
It's just reaching 200 miles for cars but moving an HGV 200 miles uses much more energy than a car. Perhaps by the end of the decade it will be there.

As an extremely general, rough and uneducated initial response, fuel cell road vehicles seem to make a lot more sense than in rail, due to the impracticality of wiring up more than a very small proportion of roads.

A Ciren to Swindon shuttle might make more sense than one terminating at Kemble.

Certainly with the 'mini-Holland' schemes (a name I don't like but it seems to have stuck) implemented over the last couple of years in various places, access is never cut off. Various streets become dead ends to cars but maintain through movement on foot or bike and measures are implemented to reduce speeds, encourage other road uses and funnel main road traffic on to main roads.

Tankers themselves are converting to LNG! This is apparently due to the scrubber controversy. Do scrubbers fitted to bring sulphur emissions within EU^» (European Union - about) limits pay for themselves? The answer apparently is that the scrubbers are fragile and LNG is the way to go. I'd expect this is only at the techno forefront now but will presumably become more mainstream in time as more parts of the world start to look at pollution from shipping.

Shapps and Hendy seem to be talking about commuter services not intercity ones. Though of course there are intercity commuters too, Bristol to London being just one example.

I think they're right that wfh is here to stay though not necessarily in its current form; maybe a hybrid pattern of eg 2 days in workplace, 3 days at home (and that assumes the continuation of a 5-day week... ). But even in 2020 a lot of people have non-office jobs which need to be done in a specific location and often with specific people; anything from engineers to hairdressers. Some of these even depend on dayight, so commuting hours are not flexible.

That's interesting, in light of the "expectations".

I don't think they're trying to replace anything. It's just another option with other characteristics. There certainly is some, but I don't know how much, air freight for which shipping is too slow but which doesn't actually need to arrive as quickly as by air. If that all transferred to rail it would be a good thing. Hard to see it competing with the huge volumes of sea cargo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiwu–London_railway_line
18 days, running once a week. Some other routes run more frequently AFAIR.

There are regular China-Europe freight trains anyway. Faster than ship, cheaper than plane. Just right for certain goods.

What are Schedule 8 payments? I guess they might be compensation for services not run while the bridge is being repaired?

Some do still beep, but only the standalone crossings. If those at junctions beeped, it could be confusing (unless set up to have an all-arms pedestrian green phase). They might well turn the beeps off at night, I don't know.

Another thing that was mentioned by the Ped Xing Engineer was that the beeps are useful in giving the blind something to aim for.

That had never occurred to me. But yes, very appropriate. Thank you for pointing it out.

In purely architectural terms I'd probably go for St Pancras and Waterloo.