I've always thought CL is a great sample of a cross-section of UK public opinion, so in that spirit I'm opening this up - it will inform a project I'm working on here. And there's no game this weekend
So I hope admin may at least let it run and I'll do my best to moderate it myself.
I'm seeking your personal perceptions on the HS2 project and what has happened to it. Inevitably there's a political dimension to anyone's viewpoint, but let's try to "contain" that part of the answers. I won't share any of my train-load of opinions, only feed in some specific questions (if the discussion takes off). So here goes;
- What did you understand to have been the main benefit of HS2 as an infrastructure project? (no "right" "wrong", just your spontaneous current perception of what it is/was about
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Thanks in advance!
Comments
Fast trains to oop north, and freeing up capacity on the current network.
How do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Costs have been spiralling, and decision making poor (they turned down my PM job application ten years ago!). That said, it's a bad decision (despite apparently promising the spend will go elsewhere...) as the country as a whole needs good, fast, transport infrastructure, and completing HS2 will also allow better capacity on the current network.
How do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Getting worse by the day. Roads are full to bursting, rail at capacity on the important lines, and starting to fall apart after years of non-investment. Shorter air routes are not environmentally welcome. Re-instate HS2 to Manchester minimum; build better bus networks locally; maintain roads better; rebuild rail infrastructure to 21st century standards.
Capacity with the bonus that by building new you would get high speeds
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Stupid, it's thinking the price now outweighs the value long term, if that thinking has been around 5 years ago, I suspect the Elizabeth line would have been left unfinished, instead of carrying 700k people a day, and be a crucial part of London's infrastructure, find me a Londoner who gives a fuck it was over budget. Narrowmind looking at the spreadsheets has been an act of national vandalism
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Terrible, and getting worse, as well as HS2, NPH rail should be being built in tandem, and in London Crossrail 2 and the Bakerlook extension to Lewisham should have the OK to get going. The inability of the treasury to think beyond a narrow funding window is holding the country back.
The amount of temporary traffic lights I have to go through on a daily basis is just a joke and my train line is constantly buggered by ‘engineering works’
More capacity on the WCML that is struggling as it is. Freeing up the current line to run better
Despite living on the south coast and it not being a service I would use too often , it's utterly stupid to cut it back and it risks ending up looking like a White Elephant that doesn't achieve any of its goals.
Terrible. More investment needed across public transport , sort out the awful situations in places like the West Country, HS2 and Northern Powerhouse should have just been the start of things.
Much better to do a rail line than building a Nuclear Powered submarine in terms of spending, but Old Oak Common? Really? That feels like Eurostar starting and finishing at Ebbsfleet.
If my long term home had been compulsorily purchased for this failing project I would be doing my nut more that I usually do on a daily basis.
- Demonstration of the UK's ability to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects. This is the over-riding, long-term, international benefit. HS2 should be - should have been - a means by which the UK flexes its industrial and financial muscles. "If you build it, they will come" is a silly mantra, but there's truth in there: if the UK had been able to deliver HS2, fix its motorway network, expand its airport capacity and deliver fully-functioning logistics for port cargo, then the UK would very much be seen as the industrial powerhouse we've been told we should aspire to.
- Second benefit - increased capacity on the UK's rail spine.
- Third benefit - distribution of capital, wealth and economic activity beyond London; simultaneously stimulating inward investment in London.
- Fourth benefit - long-distance rail journeys could have been shortened, moving traffic from air and road to rail.
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?- It's a shameful decision, because
- It's an abrogation of the government's duty to invest in the UK
- It turns our back on the things that - literally - made Britain great: industrial development, rapid expansion of canal and rail networks, massive infrastructure improvements. All of these are still being used hundreds of years later, without a moment's thought about the cost and with a great appreciation of their value: the precise opposite of the way in which HS2 has been axed.
- There are only two good reasons for making a decision to commit vandalism in the way that has been meted out in the last weeks: first, if it saves cost; second, if its benefits can be delivered by another means, however...
- The government has announced spending plans that use up all the savings generated by cutting the Birmingham-Manchester part of the network, so there is zero cost saving. And...
- The government is not planning to bring forward the benefits that HS2 would have delivered.
- (Without being too political) the current government is likely not to be in charge at the end of next year, yet it's just canned a project that was started years before any of the Cabinet were in their roles. The government is not just U-turning on its own plans, it's making a decision that is irreversible by its successors - that's undemocratic.
- Ridiculous decision, made at the wrong time, by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?As a footnote, when HS2 was first mooted, my hope was that we would be ambitious enough to run it from Aberdeen to London, with an additional link across the Pennines. But that it would be built from north to south. That way, by now Scotland and the north of England would already be reaping benefits and "Westminster" would be disinclined to stop it as it approached the south east.
- What did you understand to have been the main benefit of HS2 as an infrastructure project? (no "right" "wrong", just your spontaneous current perception of what it is/was about
Increase to current capacity with bonus of quicker times. The other benefits would be as a consequence of the first two.
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Idiotic, the amount of money wasted on delivering something that won't necessarily improve what we already have.
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Bad and getting worse. Public transport needs a huge amount of investment. Inner cities we need to be discouraging car use and improving public transport options be that trains, buses but also bicycles and electric scooters that should be seen as a big opportunity to get cars off the road. Outside of cities we need better links between different areas, some areas it's nearly impossible to get between them without cars. Nationalising railways should be a priority, prices are ridiculous and do nothing to try and encourage people off the roads.
Added rail capacity and reduced journey times
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
I'm not sure, on one hand I can't se the need to reduce journey times so am pleased that it has been cancelled, on the other hand our passenger and freight rail traffic needs increased rail capacity but not at the proposed cost, surely it could have been done cheaper
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Dire, the privatisation is a mess but did yield additional routes. Priority is to bring the railways under one management either private or public, increase rural bus services, and reduce road bottlenecks.
The second major problem was the consenting process and the decision to authorise through Parliament. Each phase was only at outline design and there was minimal land acquisition budget so on teh one hand they had to build in massive flexibility with far greater land blighted than necessary and on the other hand they didn't have suffieicnt powers to deal with unforseen issues which arose on detailed design. The impact on landowners and occupiers has been unnecessarily large and with a limited budget issues whcih could have been dealt with early at relatively low cost have had to be dealt with later at much higher cost (and trauma).
Finally, HS2 Ltd is a dysfunctional organisation because officers have no agency. Almost everything has to get separate DfT approval and any significnat cost expenditure has to be approved by Treasury. I've had some deals which have had to go through up to 9 stages of approval. A collosal waste of time and money and goodwill. I've worked on loads of trasnport projects - East London Line, Crossrail, DLR extensions, road schemes. This has been the worst managed by a huge, huge margin.
It's so sad. Talking to HS2 people yesterday evening Sunak's decision was almost out of the blue and shocked them - right up to CEO level. They had been expecting a pause and review.
Happy to have a chat with you Prague if it would help with your project.
Two or three anyway.
Faster trains and connections between London and the North of the country
Given the astronomical cost of the entire thing (which were only going up) I think cutting back the project is a decision that makes sense financially in the short term, but probably not in the long term. Costs will only get even higher and the current infrastructure even more outdated
It's shite, to put it one way. Trains are running on 150 year old lines in some places, with little to no upgrades along many of them. We are a victim of our own success from the Victorian times, if we were like China where much of the large infrastructure is being built from scratch, it would be far easier.
Priority should be on finding ways to upgrade existing infrastructure, making trains higher speed, motorways smarter and routes more efficient across the board, however it is a massive undertaking and there's not enough money to go around
OK, so here's a nudge question. So far nearly all of you tend to support the building of a HS line to the North, that much is fair to say. However YouGov run a one -question tracker and it suggests the country as a whole has a very different view. I've also got a more "proper" poll off the DfT website, but it's still relatively negative. And that means that any government, under budgetary pressure, would feel broadly entitled to have HS2 high on its list for savings. So
- if you are one who would answer "strongly/tend to oppose" if YouGov asked you, I'd love to hear your viewpoint
- if you are pro, why do you think the polls are anti. What could/should have been done to secure more public support, and who should have done it?
To create a new dedicated line designed specifically for express non-stop trains.
This provides extra capacity leading to more trains and lower fares.
Existing lines can then be developed for freight and commuter traffic.
Trains on the new line will no longer be blocked by slow stopping trains crossing their path. Plus no more f***ing replacement bus services every other weekend while complicated point work needed for intersections and stations is maintained.
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Well it's obviously a ridiculous politically motivated decision.
No one seems to have picked up on the quoted "savings" of 39 billion. How the hell can it cost 39 billion to build a railway line with no stations or junctions over a relatively flat landscape between Birmingham and Manchester (85 miles!).
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
It's become a political football and probably shouldn't be discussed here.
Both our rail and road networks need new "super highways" with fewer junctions / exits so that local and through traffic do not mix.
For the railways in particular we need to plan and (eventually) complete the HS line.
Dover - London - Birmingham - Manchester - (tunnel!) - Leeds - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow.
Existing and other routes could then be developed knowing that this line will eventually exist with no need to cope with through traffic between these major hubs.
It probably wouldn't be such a bad idea to replicate this with a parallel motorway including a tunnel under London but I guess this would cost trillions rather than billions.
but selfishly, let's sort out the south first! Extend the Elizabeth line to ebbsfleet or gravesend, stopping at Dartford and greenhithe.
Lots of jobs for men in orange suits walking around, 4 security guards per gate, 24 hours a day.
Even when it’s finished, I will have to go into London to board the train.
What happened to working from home?
Why is it necessary to travel to London everyday?
Grumpy rant over!
What did you understand to have been the main benefit of HS2 as an infrastructure project? (no "right" "wrong", just your spontaneous current perception of what it is/was about
The stated aim was to improve the journey time between London and Manchester and thereby Scotland, However by choosing the ridiculous route that they did, they managed to increase the cost exponentially and probably only cut off 4 minutes from the journey time to Birmingham (or add to it if they don’t get to Euston). The reality is that one of the problems in the UK is the shortage of building land and arguments about using prime food production land. If you build a new railway line you will always lay waste to grade A farmland that can then be developed as industrial or housing That, I believe, was the real purpose of the route they chose.
If they had chosen the cheap option that was supported by many in the rail industry they would have re-laid the Great Central route through Rugby to Leicester, Nottingham, onto Sheffield and thereby .Manchester through the pre existing Woodhead tunnel. This was a fast route built in the late Victorian era with low inclines to enable fast running and a good gauge capable of modern high speed. Indeed in the home counties, when not looking for land to enclose, parts of the great central route were used. The Great Central was closed by Beeching during the British Rail era due to internecine arguing between the Midland and Eastern divisions over which route should be cut. The headquarters of BR was in Euston and they sacrificed the fastest route to maintain their own jobs and steal a victory from their Eastern rivals who ran the Great Central route. This route could also have connected to St Pancras (HS1) by a link across at Finchley Road (Sainsbury car park would have been lost)
Axing it was a blessed relief for a long running saga that was incapable of being delivered other than as an uneconomic white elephant, because of the bureaucratic mess involved.
This was the same as the relaying of the West Coast mainline in the late nineties early noughties when the track was essentially re-laid more than once and sometimes twice because of bureaucratic bungling. Planning for moving block running when there are so many junctions on the route should not have been given to Westinghouse who couldn't deliver.
Another of the bureaucratic failures was the western region electrification from Paddington to Euston which ran three times over budget because of bureaucratic intervention. It was quoted using similar catenary that was used on the West Coast and East Coast mainline which is capable of circa 150mph but not the 190+ mph that is used on HS1 and TGV routes. The ministry then decided to intervene and require an upgrade for higher speed running which meant different foundations and more expensive catenary – much more expensive. However they didn’t consider that the line originally built by Brunel would need significant civils work to re align and upgrade it to these speeds They started to upgrade but quickly ran out of money resulting in no real benefit for the expensive catenary that was installed and a much shortened electrification.
All of these projects could have been delivered within a budget had there not been senior management and bureaucratic incompetence
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Saddened but relieved
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
We should focus on the transport side of things and allow business to follow rather than trying to build in “land opportunities for building houses and warehouses into the design.
East West rail is a case in point, the route from Bedford to Cambridge is an entirely new route rather than relay the route of the old Victorian Varsity line. They plan to bring it into Cambridge from the South thus leaving an impossibly tight curve for heavy freight onto the Newmarket to Ipswich line which their northerly route would make available via the old Cambridge north junction and a simple new chord on vacant land. If they are bringing it in from the south and don’t want to relay the varsity line then relay the Bedford to Hitchin line (much shorter distance), link and flyover the east coast mainline at Hitchin and use the existing Hitchin to Cambridge line into Cambridge. This is to simple a solution and much cheaper to bother the bureaucrats. The current planned route will eat up grade A farmland we need to feed a population. Somewhat sad but amusingly Mr Gove has classified the old grass runways at RAF Tempsford which their current route will cut through as brownfield even though they have been growing crops for the last 50+ years.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oakervee-review-of-hs2
As is the dissenting report of Lord Berkeley
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:8e9c8f87-2650-4aa0-8e0f-0eaf6e709640
I also assume these polls will be answered by people in parts of the country who either would never use the line or it doesn't go to their region. This should always have been framed as the start of project high speed in that all major cities would be linked by HS rail just as Spain has done.
primarily it was to increase capacity for rail travel up the west side of the country - the WCML has long been full to capacity, there is no use for faster long distance trains because they'll just catch up with the slower local stuff, similarly there's no space for higher occupancy rolling stock because the stations real estate can't even cope with peak time demand now
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
It makes no sense on any level unless the country is actually potless without access to any funds at all right now - which obviously ain't true.
The initial quoted budget on any major national procurement/development project is always a tissue of lies, dreams and simplistically made up bullshine to keep the guesstimate small enough to not scare everybody off right at the start. All talk of "it's now too expensive" is just hollow falsehood which shouldn't be fooling anybody. For no.10 to be denying responsibility for the (lack of) progress and costs to date is also hollow lies - the same administration has had its hand on the tiller for 13 years. The current PM was himself Chancellor receiving periodic (monthly?) updates on how our money was being spent and as the biggest single development project on the books he has to have been across it.
There have been major inflationary pressures on everything in the last 3 years for which the tories aren't responsible but that inflation amplifies the eventual benefit side of the equation the same as it increases the cost side. It's bad for short term cashflow, is all.
It is the opposite of sense politically too: (with no party affiliation myself) abandoning HS2 has holed any chance of the tories hanging on to (m)any of the "red wall" successes come the imminent election. Keeping HS2 on the books until at least 2025 could have provided some credibility to the whole "Levelling Up" soundbite. Also with the imminent probable (landslide) election defeat by first quarter 2025, if HS2 is on the books and the next incumbents in Nos.10 & 11 find out that it really is unaffordable/unjustifiable, leave it to them to cancel it and suffer the flack. Rarely has the easy option of kicking the decision down the road been rejected in favour of a much tougher sell.
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
Outside of central London's far from perfect public transport system, getting from A to B around Britain is a far slower, costlier and more uncomfortable slog than it ought to be. It is in effect a tourniquet on activity. The railways are just about the most obvious natural monopoly any country can have, the ownership structure in GB is preposterous and simply a mechanism to bulldoze taxpayers' and travellers' money into faceless private pockets. Renationalising is no small consideration but is effectively underway already with numerous franchise holders deciding there's not enough money to be made and handing them back to HMGov's 'operator of last resort'. The railway unions aren't blameless either. COvid cut a big slice off the demand for public transport in numerous areas. It isn't growing back at any sort of rate, so for the unions to flatly refuse to acknowledge there could be consequences for staffing levels is idiotic rabble rousing dressed up as class war dogma. Add in labour saving technology and an ever more tech literate clientele and the downward pressure on headcount is undeniable. How long it takes for the rank and file to realise they're just canon fodder for the noisy egos of their union executives probably holds the key to how long before the strikes peter out.
A decade of witless reduction in public expenditure also has our roads in deplorable condition, a self perpetuating false economy.
Central government has its head firmly in the sand about the infrastructure requirements of electrifying private cars.
CrossRail proves that even something almost a decade "late" and billions over various meaningless made up "budgets" can very rapidly improve connectivity. Passenger numbers have been huge. They're not all 'new' journeys of course lots of them are people replacing their previous presumably slower or less convenient routes and methods. What's much harder to appraise is how much less crowded & uncomfortable the pre-existing cross town lines and routes now are and thereby how much more quickly people are travelling without ever using CR. Speeding up and increasing the capacity of public transport connections to Heathrow airport was a complete no brainer. The wider benefits will be hard to tie down with any specificity but the desirability of living in the areas toward the outer ends of CR will creep up fuelled by the commuter connectivity, with the inevitable multiplier effect of the money spent by the people moving to those suburbs. The economics is hard to prove in bare numbers in much less than a generation but it is desperately simple to understand.
People really want cheap and reliable transport a la Easyjet or Ryannair (or TGVs!). They don't actually care that much about luxury or service or speed.
So the message should have been.
Cheap tickets all day with no fare increases before 10am!
More frequent trains.
No delays and hanging about.
NO NEED FOR FIRST CLASS!!!!!!
No replacement bus services.
When HS2 was initially proposed, I was totally unaware of the freight capacity reasons; all I heard was the journey time savings. I anticipated it would be premium class - and cost - service, aimed largely at business users charging their tickets to expense accounts. I assumed that mainline trains would run as before, serving all the intermediate stations (which would be lacking on HS2) except that the first class carriages would be emptier, while people in overcrowded standard class continued to have to stand for long journeys.
If I am correct about the mainline trains, I still do not see where the increased freight capacity would come from. I felt from the start that the money could be better spent on upgrading the existing network, starting with parts of the country - such as trans-Pennine - where there was the most need to enable people to use trains rather than cars for commuting, etc.
- how do you feel about the latest decision to cut back the project and why?
Once the decision to build HS2 was taken, like many others I felt it should have been started in the north since that is where the need is greatest, and also it would have made it politically harder to cancel. It was conceived as a whole, and surely once started needs to be completed as a whole it if is to have the desired benefits.
I doubt if the London-Birmingham route alone represents Value For Money, since it is there that so much additional expense has been incurred increasing the amount of tunnelling, etc, to try to placate the voters. So we are ending up with the worst of all possible outcomes. There are already major groundworks being undertaken north of Birmingham, between Litchfield & Burton on Trent, causing major overnight and weekend road closures. Is that to simply be written off? Closing the door to any future reappraisal of the northern part to me smacks of political dog-in-the manger behaviour. I foresee the land will be sold off, but no benefit will accrue to other transport needs this side of a general election, because the time is too short.
- how do you see the UK's transport situation overall and what do you think the priorities should be?
It is an almighty mess, and the necessity to stop just talking and get acting on the need to address the climate issue is an over-riding imperative which cannot be left solely in the hands of a multiplicity of private companies without a really strong government oversight, along with some sticks & carrots.
Almost all goods begin and end their journeys on lorries. Incentives need to be given to increase use of containerisation, so that the middle part of the journey can be by train. I'm thinking here particularly of the A9 north of Perth, which is still largely 2-lane and clogged by speed-restricted lorries carrying consumer goods to places such as Inverness, each with a long, long tail of lighter traffic behind it. It is an extreme example, but motorways throughout the country would also benefit if lorry traffic could be reduced.
The biggest hurdle I see with this is that many lorries carry mixed loads, assembled in distribution centres which I think would still be needed. While a large Tesco could probable store & sell within a reasonable timespan a container full of, say, Andrex toilet rolls (provided there is a selection of packet sizes!) straight from the manufacturer, they might not be so happy with a containerful of pots of something like Marmite! Items with a short shelf life, such as fresh food, present more logistical problems.
There are huge areas of the country outside of major conurbations where public transport is currently simply not an option. Where it is uneconomic to provide frequent, affordable bus services, more park and ride schemes are needed, with reliable bus and local train timetables, integrated so people can commute by public transport, and be sure of getting to work/school on time.
Cars will continue to be an essential part of many people's lives, and there needs to be a real drive to increase charging points. Any new housing, or public carparks should be built with the cabling already installed for car charging at every parking space- even if the actual charging units are not all installed until demand increases. Planning laws should require solar panels on new buildings, wherever it is suitable (eg not north facing roofs!). Note that there are existing multi-story carparks which are not strong enough for a full load of battery cars, so that will also need to be addressed, either by reducing capacity, or rebuilding.
As for intercity travel, how have we got to a situation where it can be cheaper to fly between major English cities than to go by train? Unless and until clean, green air travel becomes a reality, surely short-haul flying should be dis-incentivised by making the alternatives more attractive.
- if you are one who would answer "strongly/tend to oppose" if YouGov asked you, I'd love to hear your viewpoint
- if you are pro, why do you think the polls are anti. What could/should have been done to secure more public support, and who should have done it?
As indicated above, I was initially unconvinced that this was the right way to solve an undoubted problem.
However, having started the project, I think it is absolutely bonkers to make it impossible to complete it. I do think it needed to be paused to have a hard look at the finances and to get them back under control.
This was presumably an English-wide, if not British-wide poll. (Scotland of course has it's own transport horror story with the ferries) If so, that is a weakness.
Many of those in Greater London and much of the surrounding suburban Home Counties are sadly ignorant of how comparatively well-off they are in terms of public transport compared with much of the rest of the country. Lacking trains or buses, if people do not have their own cars the only alternative is taxis - and if you think it is difficult / expensive to get a taxi to go south of the Thames, just try to get one outside of any major conurbation in the rest of the country! Most of the rest of the country, whose taxes contributed towards Crossrail or the Elizabeth Line, will never benefit personally from those additions to London's infrastructure, but I don't think Gallup ever polled us about them! What London wants, London generally gets, but I'm not sure Londoners as a whole extend that generosity to the rest of the country.
I can well understand why those in Wales (which post-Beeching has hardly any railways!) or the West Country, or Yorkshire and the North East would not particularly value HS2 Brum-Manchester. It would do nothing for their infrastructure (although Northern Powerhouse in conjunction with HS2 would have helped some of those areas, had it not also been cancelled). What is lacking is a well thought out, well publicised, realistic vision for a transport network for the whole country as it will be in the next 10, 25, 50 years. Which is very difficult when everything in this country is constrained by the 5 year political cycle.
I don't know how, but I would like to see big long-term projects somehow taken out of the hands of whichever party is forming the government of the day into the control of a working party "of all the talents" drawn from all parties and independents in both Commons & Lords, with the power to consult with independent experts. Such a move might as a side effect incentivise constituencies to put forward candidates with expertise beyond the all-too-common background of PPE & working for a think tank. Lets have some ex-military involved in procuring new warships and fighter jets, ex-NHS staff looking at new hospital designs, and former rail staff involved in transport issues.
Travelled from Cordoba to Madrid by train a few weeks back (250 miles in just over 2 hours) for about £30.
Speedwise our rail is shameful compared to Europe. There is also an environmental benefit in that quicker more connected railways should have led to less internal UK flights.
Therefore I am disappointed and feel it makes us look shambolic.
Had London to Birmingham been the only objective then the project was pointless and a waste of money. This is one of the few journeys where you have a choice as the Marylebone line provides a cheaper alternative to Euston. Anyone who travels on HS1 knows the frustration of how trains slow down east of Ashford. This will be similar to how HS2 will carry on to Manchester
My criticism is that the northern leg wasn't built first. This would have meant connectivity in the north would have been a priority.
It also does seem shameful that you can now reach Paris quicker than Edinburgh from central London.
In terms of priorities, I don't see this as an either or. We need better connectivity in the north but ditching HS2 means the north won't get some of the economic benefits that London can offer.