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HS2
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Mate. How many more times does this need to be explained on here? That is fundamentally not what the project is about.MrOneLung said:A colossal waste of money.Who has refused to do business with a company in Birmingham cause the train journey is 15 minutes too long ?
The existing line is full. F.U.L.L. It means you have Pendolinos stuck behind late running regional or suburban trains and so your train to Manchester is late. It means that you cannot get more freight out of the HGVs you are stuck behind on the M6 and on to trains because there is no space for more freight trains. That's the problem. And now here are the opportunities (some of which rely on sticking to the original plan, mind)
You know this "levelling up" shit the Tories keep talking about? What do you think it actually means? We all think South Eastern commuting is shite, but you should take a bit of time to see how it is in the big Yorkshire and Lancashire urban areas. Nothing will actually deliver meaningful levelling up like HS2. It will mean that a young couple who live in Leeds could easily have one of them working in Newcastle and get there and back in the same commuting time as, say, Eltham to Paddington. It will mean that the growing tech/software biz in Nantwich (whose owner I just heard on R4) can recruit the smart young people he needs who might currently be working in London. It means that foreign companies actually have a reason again to invest in the UK, and especially in the North where land is cheaper and labour available, knowing that they can get their stuff and their management around like they can in Germany.
Levelling up is about addressing the fact that the entire economy of the UK is savagely tilted towards London and the greater South East, a fundamentally bad thing for every business sector except the rather sad one of buy to let landlords, and highly damaging for the cohesion of society. Nothing else can fix this problem like HS2. The fact that the UK's record with delivering rail infrastructure development since Thatcher's destructive time is utterly dismal, is an entirely different point.
"Someone challenge me on that?" © Mr. C.Methven
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BingoPragueAddick said:
Mate. How many more times does this need to be explained on here? That is fundamentally not what the project is about.MrOneLung said:A colossal waste of money.Who has refused to do business with a company in Birmingham cause the train journey is 15 minutes too long ?
The existing line is full. F.U.L.L. It means you have Pendolinos stuck behind late running regional or suburban trains and so your train to Manchester is late. It means that you cannot get more freight out of the HGVs you are stuck behind on the M6 and on to trains because there is no space for more freight trains. That's the problem. And now here are the opportunities (some of which rely on sticking to the original plan, mind)
You know this "levelling up" shit the Tories keep talking about? What do you think it actually means? We all think South Eastern commuting is shite, but you should take a bit of time to see how it is in the big Yorkshire and Lancashire urban areas. Nothing will actually deliver meaningful levelling up like HS2. It will mean that a young couple who live in Leeds could easily have one of them working in Newcastle and get there and back in the same commuting time as, say, Eltham to Paddington. It will mean that the growing tech/software biz in Nantwich (whose owner I just heard on R4) can recruit the smart young people he needs who might currently be working in London. It means that foreign companies actually have a reason again to invest in the UK, and especially in the North where land is cheaper and labour available, knowing that they can get their stuff and their management around like they can in Germany.
Levelling up is about addressing the fact that the entire economy of the UK is savagely tilted towards London and the greater South East, a fundamentally bad thing for every business sector except the rather sad one of buy to let landlords, and highly damaging for the cohesion of society. Nothing else can fix this problem like HS2. The fact that the UK's record with delivering rail infrastructure development since Thatcher's destructive time is utterly dismal, is an entirely different point.
"Someone challenge me on that?" © Mr. C.Methven 0 -
Prague - I would have been happy for the whole project to have been north of BirminghamPragueAddick said:
Mate. How many more times does this need to be explained on here? That is fundamentally not what the project is about.MrOneLung said:A colossal waste of money.Who has refused to do business with a company in Birmingham cause the train journey is 15 minutes too long ?
The existing line is full. F.U.L.L. It means you have Pendolinos stuck behind late running regional or suburban trains and so your train to Manchester is late. It means that you cannot get more freight out of the HGVs you are stuck behind on the M6 and on to trains because there is no space for more freight trains. That's the problem. And now here are the opportunities (some of which rely on sticking to the original plan, mind)
You know this "levelling up" shit the Tories keep talking about? What do you think it actually means? We all think South Eastern commuting is shite, but you should take a bit of time to see how it is in the big Yorkshire and Lancashire urban areas. Nothing will actually deliver meaningful levelling up like HS2. It will mean that a young couple who live in Leeds could easily have one of them working in Newcastle and get there and back in the same commuting time as, say, Eltham to Paddington. It will mean that the growing tech/software biz in Nantwich (whose owner I just heard on R4) can recruit the smart young people he needs who might currently be working in London. It means that foreign companies actually have a reason again to invest in the UK, and especially in the North where land is cheaper and labour available, knowing that they can get their stuff and their management around like they can in Germany.
Levelling up is about addressing the fact that the entire economy of the UK is savagely tilted towards London and the greater South East, a fundamentally bad thing for every business sector except the rather sad one of buy to let landlords, and highly damaging for the cohesion of society. Nothing else can fix this problem like HS2. The fact that the UK's record with delivering rail infrastructure development since Thatcher's destructive time is utterly dismal, is an entirely different point.
"Someone challenge me on that?" © Mr. C.Methven
The project will make it easier for the northerners to access London rather than the other way around
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Why dont we build the railway over the existing motorway network ?
As in 10 metres above it, not replace the road with track.
The land is already owned, there is space there.
You just pre-fabricate and place the pieces over the road0 -
The disruption to the motorway network would be immense. There needs to be an investment programme in upgrading all tracks and some new lines in the north. Rolling stock and sensible pricing for tickets. A twenty year plan.MrOneLung said:Why dont we build the railway over the existing motorway network ?
As in 10 metres above it, not replace the road with track.
The land is already owned, there is space there.
You just pre-fabricate and place the pieces over the road2 -
For couple of decades we've had real terms cuts in fuel duty, what should have been happening was increasing taxes to help fund the modernisation and encouraging people on to railways. Now we have a situation where the roads are full, the trains are full and train prices are prohibitive much of the time. Problem is as we have seen any changes to try and limit cars and the numbers of people driving them our country sees that as some sort of attack on civil liberties. So round and round we go.ShootersHillGuru said:
The disruption to the motorway network would be immense. There needs to be an investment programme in upgrading all tracks and some new lines in the north. Rolling stock and sensible pricing for tickets. A twenty year plan.MrOneLung said:Why dont we build the railway over the existing motorway network ?
As in 10 metres above it, not replace the road with track.
The land is already owned, there is space there.
You just pre-fabricate and place the pieces over the road3 -
Well up to a point I agree that it might have been better to have started up there but the capacity pinch points inevitably increase as you get closer to London. And northerners accessing London still have to get back oop North, right?MrOneLung said:
Prague - I would have been happy for the whole project to have been north of BirminghamPragueAddick said:
Mate. How many more times does this need to be explained on here? That is fundamentally not what the project is about.MrOneLung said:A colossal waste of money.Who has refused to do business with a company in Birmingham cause the train journey is 15 minutes too long ?
The existing line is full. F.U.L.L. It means you have Pendolinos stuck behind late running regional or suburban trains and so your train to Manchester is late. It means that you cannot get more freight out of the HGVs you are stuck behind on the M6 and on to trains because there is no space for more freight trains. That's the problem. And now here are the opportunities (some of which rely on sticking to the original plan, mind)
You know this "levelling up" shit the Tories keep talking about? What do you think it actually means? We all think South Eastern commuting is shite, but you should take a bit of time to see how it is in the big Yorkshire and Lancashire urban areas. Nothing will actually deliver meaningful levelling up like HS2. It will mean that a young couple who live in Leeds could easily have one of them working in Newcastle and get there and back in the same commuting time as, say, Eltham to Paddington. It will mean that the growing tech/software biz in Nantwich (whose owner I just heard on R4) can recruit the smart young people he needs who might currently be working in London. It means that foreign companies actually have a reason again to invest in the UK, and especially in the North where land is cheaper and labour available, knowing that they can get their stuff and their management around like they can in Germany.
Levelling up is about addressing the fact that the entire economy of the UK is savagely tilted towards London and the greater South East, a fundamentally bad thing for every business sector except the rather sad one of buy to let landlords, and highly damaging for the cohesion of society. Nothing else can fix this problem like HS2. The fact that the UK's record with delivering rail infrastructure development since Thatcher's destructive time is utterly dismal, is an entirely different point.
"Someone challenge me on that?" © Mr. C.Methven
The project will make it easier for the northerners to access London rather than the other way around0 -
Nothing wrong with HS2 in theory but the execution as been awful. SHG is right to say that the benefits aren't speed but resiliance and capacity but that's not how it was sold in the beginning and accordingly it's not how its been designed. The need for speed means that its basically in a straight line which hugely increases construction and land acquisition costs because there's simply no flex in the detailed design. Design standards are beyond gold plated, massively in excess of what any other country requires for their high speed network which is why HS2 is costing £200m(!) a kilometre while typical costs of high speed rail in Europe is around £30m/km. Governance and procurement is a joke. There are ridiculous layers of control e.g. a land deal of any significance needs to go through numerous layers of authority. I deal with this all the time for landowners affected by HS2 - their failure to get deals done almost always ends up with them paying way more both in compensation and in costs. Just on my cases over the last 4 years, I've had several transactions where the client was willing to do deals at £5-£10m and a couple of years later HS2 have ended up paying double or triple plus a million or so in litigation costs. There's a fundamental dysfunction built into the project because there's not really any proper accountability for managing it - it's split between DfT, Treasury and HS2 Ltd all working in their silos. I'm not close to the procurement but understand that the various consortiums have shovelled all the risk onto HS2 as appears to be evidence by the delay caused by construction cost inflation (like costs are going to come down if you delay for two years)2
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Getting into London from anywhere before 9:00am costs a small fortune because the trains are full and there is no capacity to run extra trains.
Most High Speed Lines in Europe are not "full" and several companies are able to run trains in direct competition. Fares inevitably fall in the same way they do for cheap airlines. (Madrid - Barcelona is an example).
Maybe the initial "test" trains from Old Oak Common to Birmingham should be connected to the Oyster, contactless payment system - maybe managed by TFL. £10 flat fare!
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@Jints I completely agree with most of your remarks and I am glad that you especially have a pop at UK public procurement and quote build cost per km in Europe. The HS2 people themselves counter that the EU costs are lower because most high speed lines are built across vast tracts of depopulated countryside, but I dont consider that as
more than a mitigating factor. Further, it isnt really a straight line. Its just straighter than the WCML which was designed 100 years ago. Again the HS2 designers will say it has more curves ( and tunnels) than a TGV line because it has to bend around villages and precious woodland almost its entire length. But again I could find high speed lines jn Germany where its equally challenging.Where I disagree, and am convinced you are incorrect, is to suggest HS2 was designed for speed and the capacity argument has been retro-fitted. Not according to the many rail experts I follow on Twitter. Some of them have spent mostly the entire lifetime of Twitter trying to explain the capacity rational after yet another misleading media article. It’s the government’s fault, not just because they are Tories ( Tories = cars, all day long) , but because the Transport ministry gig has never been a political priority. When did we last have a good minister? But then again why should we ? The opinion polls have never ever had “transport” in the Top 5 issues for voters going into a general election. So I would argue that the UK gets the HS2 it deserves, sadly.1 -
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Nail on the head, Shooters.ShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
It's not even about saving 15 minutes on a rail journey from London to Birmingham, it's about augmenting/replacing an inadequate knackered essentially mid-19th century engineered over-capacity trunk route with all the benefits of 21st century technical progress, just like most European nations have already been doing during the last 40 years.
Even Spain, a communist backward run country 50 years ago, has today a far superior fast efficient inter-city rail network compared to that of Britain. Spain invested in their rail infrastructure. Most other major European nations have too.
As is fast becoming the norm, Britain is lagging far behind our neighbouring countries when it comes to efficient transport, particularly the railways.
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Prague, no I don't think the capacity argument was retrofitted. Capacity has always been the primary reason for HS2 but probably because they thought that the public were too stupid to understand the massive benefits of freeing up the WCML for commuter and freight traffic, the early publicity was all about speed and journey time savings. I don't know enough about minimum curve radius etc to dispute what you say about how straight the line is. I do know that the consent early design process is massively sub-optimal. To have the details of a major, highly complex project like this scrutinised by a committee of part-time bored MPs (some replaced part way through the process because of an election) and Lords who have no specialist knowledge at all is just asking for trouble. This is particularly so the Parliamentary Bills are introduced on the basis of very basic reference designs a good 6 or 7 years before detailed design. The costs are based on those designs as well and its not surprising that they are massive under-estimates. For example, I know for a fact that the property cost estimates for the London-Birmingham leg were compiled by graduate surveyors looking at google earth. I agree that the Govt takes the lion's share of responsibility but there's plenty of blame to go around for the shambles. The real shame is it saps any confidence in our ability as a country to build the infrastructure we so desperately need.PragueAddick said:@Jints I completely agree with most of your remarks and I am glad that you especially have a pop at UK public procurement and quote build cost per km in Europe. The HS2 people themselves counter that the EU costs are lower because most high speed lines are built across vast tracts of depopulated countryside, but I dont consider that as
more than a mitigating factor. Further, it isnt really a straight line. Its just straighter than the WCML which was designed 100 years ago. Again the HS2 designers will say it has more curves ( and tunnels) than a TGV line because it has to bend around villages and precious woodland almost its entire length. But again I could find high speed lines jn Germany where its equally challenging.Where I disagree, and am convinced you are incorrect, is to suggest HS2 was designed for speed and the capacity argument has been retro-fitted. Not according to the many rail experts I follow on Twitter. Some of them have spent mostly the entire lifetime of Twitter trying to explain the capacity rational after yet another misleading media article. It’s the government’s fault, not just because they are Tories ( Tories = cars, all day long) , but because the Transport ministry gig has never been a political priority. When did we last have a good minister? But then again why should we ? The opinion polls have never ever had “transport” in the Top 5 issues for voters going into a general election. So I would argue that the UK gets the HS2 it deserves, sadly.1 -
The infrastructure IS under public ownership already. Every signal failure outside Lewisham or London Bridge is the responsibly of Network Rail not SoutheasternShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
And public ownership means that the railways have to compete with the NHS, schools, social care, defence etc for spending. It's not just HS2 which is being partially delayed, the Lower Thames Crossing has been pushed back too
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Public ownership doesn’t mean that the rail network can’t be run the same way as a private company. There’s no need to fund it in competition with the NHS or any other funded public service. None of NHS, Education or social care have paying customers. You can bet if they did they’d be private companies already. The difference is is that instead of any profits lining the pockets of shareholders they would be ploughed back into the rail network. What we currently have is getting on for a third world service and infrastructure at first world prices. Deutsche Bahn is run as a private company where the German government is the single shareholder.killerandflash said:
The infrastructure IS under public ownership already. Every signal failure outside Lewisham or London Bridge is the responsibly of Network Rail not SoutheasternShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
And public ownership means that the railways have to compete with the NHS, schools, social care, defence etc for spending. It's not just HS2 which is being partially delayed, the Lower Thames Crossing has been pushed back too4 -
Agreed @Jints and Sir John Armitt, involved with one of the rare big infrastructure successes (London 2012-apart from you know what, of course) makes some interesting points that back up yours..
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There was an opportunity 12 years ago to really get this project going. Credit was essentially free, post global economic crash there was loads of under employed labour, meaning labour was cheap. That was the time to build large scale infrastructure. But no, the Tories chased austerity and delay and delay and waited until labour costs were at their highest and interest rates had literally jusy sky-rocketed and decided now, this moment is the time to start HS2. Somebody somewhere is making a lot of money out of this farce, because it can't just be incompetence. You don't deliberately and continuously ignore a century of economic wisdom by accident.7
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But isn't that pretty much what we have? From Wiki:ShootersHillGuru said:
Public ownership doesn’t mean that the rail network can’t be run the same way as a private company. There’s no need to fund it in competition with the NHS or any other funded public service. None of NHS, Education or social care have paying customers. You can bet if they did they’d be private companies already. The difference is is that instead of any profits lining the pockets of shareholders they would be ploughed back into the rail network. What we currently have is getting on for a third world service and infrastructure at first world prices. Deutsche Bahn is run as a private company where the German government is the single shareholder.killerandflash said:
The infrastructure IS under public ownership already. Every signal failure outside Lewisham or London Bridge is the responsibly of Network Rail not SoutheasternShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
And public ownership means that the railways have to compete with the NHS, schools, social care, defence etc for spending. It's not just HS2 which is being partially delayed, the Lower Thames Crossing has been pushed back too
"Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain.[5] Network Rail is an "arm's length" public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways."1 -
But that’s not the whole railway system is it. We have segmented rail companies all with shareholders and because of having to pay dividends to those shareholders they neglect or at least second prioritise in investing in the necessary rolling stock, staff and anything else. They do the bare minimum and some even less than that.Jints said:
But isn't that pretty much what we have? From Wiki:ShootersHillGuru said:
Public ownership doesn’t mean that the rail network can’t be run the same way as a private company. There’s no need to fund it in competition with the NHS or any other funded public service. None of NHS, Education or social care have paying customers. You can bet if they did they’d be private companies already. The difference is is that instead of any profits lining the pockets of shareholders they would be ploughed back into the rail network. What we currently have is getting on for a third world service and infrastructure at first world prices. Deutsche Bahn is run as a private company where the German government is the single shareholder.killerandflash said:
The infrastructure IS under public ownership already. Every signal failure outside Lewisham or London Bridge is the responsibly of Network Rail not SoutheasternShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
And public ownership means that the railways have to compete with the NHS, schools, social care, defence etc for spending. It's not just HS2 which is being partially delayed, the Lower Thames Crossing has been pushed back too
"Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain.[5] Network Rail is an "arm's length" public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways."0 -
Rail companies are making very little now, the "glory days" of fat profits are long gone. Abellio for example have just been sold off by their dutch owners.ShootersHillGuru said:
But that’s not the whole railway system is it. We have segmented rail companies all with shareholders and because of having to pay dividends to those shareholders they neglect or at least second prioritise in investing in the necessary rolling stock, staff and anything else. They do the bare minimum and some even less than that.Jints said:
But isn't that pretty much what we have? From Wiki:ShootersHillGuru said:
Public ownership doesn’t mean that the rail network can’t be run the same way as a private company. There’s no need to fund it in competition with the NHS or any other funded public service. None of NHS, Education or social care have paying customers. You can bet if they did they’d be private companies already. The difference is is that instead of any profits lining the pockets of shareholders they would be ploughed back into the rail network. What we currently have is getting on for a third world service and infrastructure at first world prices. Deutsche Bahn is run as a private company where the German government is the single shareholder.killerandflash said:
The infrastructure IS under public ownership already. Every signal failure outside Lewisham or London Bridge is the responsibly of Network Rail not SoutheasternShootersHillGuru said:The problem in cancelling projects like this, is that slowly our rail infrastructure gets further and further behind our European competitors in terms of speed and the ability of the tracks to operate fast modern trains. Already we’re way behind the likes of France and Germany and probably many others. HS II is about moving our infrastructure forwards and not stagnating. Our rolling stock is in the main very out of date. Traction and braking systems we use are now unheard of in France and Germany. The sooner that rail is brought back into public ownership the better. What’s happened to our railways since the sixties is unforgivable.
And public ownership means that the railways have to compete with the NHS, schools, social care, defence etc for spending. It's not just HS2 which is being partially delayed, the Lower Thames Crossing has been pushed back too
"Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain.[5] Network Rail is an "arm's length" public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways."
Indeed many operators, like LNER and Southeastern, are semi-nationalised now0 -
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Good riddance. Massive waste of money3
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Just read the last page of March posts, found myself agreeing with so many points even though posters were providing countering stances. Clearly demonstrates both what a mess and headache this all is.1
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Tories fiscally prudent you say? The money spunked away on this (as well as faulty PPE, test and trace etc etc), anyone would think there was a magic money tree!7
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How do people feel about Khan bringing in ideas to fund a creaky 160 year old underground system?
Mentioned this before, but a simple change in fluorescent ( now obsolete) lighting has a hell of a cost.
That is even before we look at cabling/switchgear.
It needs a full 1985 Kings X approach.
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EveshamAddick said:Tories fiscally prudent you say? The money spunked away on this (as well as faulty PPE, test and trace etc etc), anyone would think there was a magic money tree!
I wonder who could possibly be buying up this land?
This announcement today is depressing stuff and the government is ensuring this can't be reversed by selling off the land it acquired and refusing to build the extra platforms at Euston. It signals we just can't do infrastructure projects in this country anymore which must look great to the rest of the world.
It's fine though this money can go on potholes (that should already have been fixed), running 20 trains an hour between Leeds and Sheffield and building tram lines in Nottingham that already exist.6 -
I think cancelling HS2 feels like a sad indictment of the state the country is in. Other nations can build national high speed rail networks; we can’t do those sorts of things anymore.5
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HS2
Two high speed rail lines
In the whole country
And one is scrapped after 10 years of work with 10 years left to go
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This summer I went to China
High speed rail lines connecting most major cities up
7 years to build 10,000km
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🤷♂️
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Anyone who has ever used the Cross Country service that runs from Aberdeen to Penzance (some trains stop and start in Edinburgh and Plymouth as it takes 12 hours) can see why we need a new, fit for purpose high speed rail network.
It took over 4 hours, actually on the train, from Bristol to Leeds yesterday. Next week the "fast" service from Leeds to Nottingham will take me 2 hours. Its 70 miles!
Don't even get me started on Leeds to Manchester.4
