HS2 - Bin it off or carry on regardless?

[gremlin]

A friend described it as a billion pound park and ride!

I do kinda get the Old Oak Common thing,all joking aside. To get a huge terminus in central London would be a nightmare. If you can build a hub slightly out of centre, but with good connections to London and Heathrow (Elizabeth Line?), it makes sense.

[Yorick]

If they'd started at the top end it would have made more sense (and would probably have got finished). It seems to be all about London again and, as someone suggested recently, economically, the UK is a bit like New York with a chunk of Southern Italy bolted on. It's the norf that needs most investment/regeneration/jobs etc.

And this is my gripe with the whole 'levelling up' argument for HS2. Yes, people can get to the 'Northern Powerhouse' from London quicker, but then people from the north can get to London a lot quicker. Ergo, it opens up more opportunity to work in London, thus draining the northern workforce.

The clever northern (ex) workforce went much further sarf than that London

[Yorick]

So the only people who'll use it are company people who are getting it paid for by clients. Rather than families, couples, you know, normal day to day people.

Not sure where I said that....

I never said you did.... However, i said it...

Oh no he didn't

[Yorick]

So the only people who'll use it are company people who are getting it paid for by clients. Rather than families, couples, you know, normal day to day people.

Not sure where I said that....

I never said you did.... However, i said it...

Oh no he didn't

[cheb]

Airlines don't suffer the costs of all that track maintenance, signalling etc. OK there's airports, they seem now to be self funding from sales of duty free crap, and I doubt they have to fully fund air traffic control.

Neither do they pay tax on the fuel they use AFAIK. I'm open to be corrected on that one.

[Rockburner]

Transport infrastructure in the uk, road, rail and air, is 3rd world standard. Just ridden through the Pyrenees in a road tunnel, in the Uk that would have been 30 years planning, and then another 10 building half of it and then binning the project.

Heathrow? I can recall 2 replacements, both binned

The benefits of socialist governments?

[Yorick]

And if getting to Manchester can be done with out hitting the bastard M6, then life is immeasurably improved,

Aren't there any trains now?

[gremlin]

And if getting to Manchester can be done with out hitting the bastard M6, then life is immeasurably improved,

Aren't there any trains now?

Yes, but try carrying a shit ton of student room junk on a train. The overhead shelf just ain't gonna cut it.

[cheb]

Transport infrastructure in the uk, road, rail and air, is 3rd world standard. Just ridden through the Pyrenees in a road tunnel, in the Uk that would have been 30 years planning, and then another 10 building half of it and then binning the project.

Heathrow? I can recall 2 replacements, both binned

The benefits of socialist governments?

Not many people having back yards to NIM about either.

If you consider Labour to be socialists have a quick look at the Edinburgh tram farce. Ditto the SNP and the ferries.

Excepting the Lib Dems who've never had enough power to start a proper project all the main parties have proved adept at overpriced and under delivered projects.

For an international laugh read up on Brandenburg airport, and that's the efficient Germans for you.

[Horse]

https://railpartners.co.uk/our-work/blo ... rowned-out

Excerpt:

Extra capacity has been needed for some time in Britain. Recent research commissioned by Rail Partners showed that in the two decades going up to the pandemic, passenger journeys increased by 107%, with passenger services increasing by 32%. While the coronavirus has had a huge impact, the long-term trend for passenger growth is still upwards. Despite demand increasing dramatically, we haven’t built a new mainline in Britain since the late nineteenth century, other than HS1 in the Southeast of England. The West Coast Mainline (WCML), which connects major cities including London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester is now one of the busiest, and most congested, lines carrying passengers and rail freight, in Europe.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Neither do they pay tax on the fuel they use AFAIK. I'm open to be corrected on that one.

Yeah that one always makes me laugh...

"If green tech is so great why does it need subsidies?"

Then ignore the billions of quid in tax breaks Airlines get

[millemille]

The UK rail network, principally the East and West coast main lines as our only viable north/south rail links, were at capacity at many choke points. We simply could not safely run any more trains on the tracks. It wasn't viable to try and increase capacity - whether adding more tracks or resignalling - of the existing lines and keep the railway running (it's been tried before and was a fucking nightmare, both for the running railway and the infrastructure works).

So build a new, future proof, high speed railway line north/south that aims to take the long distance, end-to-end, travelers off the existing network, freeing up capacity for more local/shorter journeys and freight trains on the existing network. The fact that the new line will make the journey quicker is a peripheral benefit.

COVID, and its impact upon passenger numbers, is a blip. Passenger numbers will recover to where they were pre-COVID and keep growing beyond that, so it would be short sighted to say we don't need HS2 based on current passenger numbers. Freight should not be overlooked, while passenger numbers are down, in some sectors, from pre-COVID numbers freight on the rails is up about 6% from pre-COVID.

HS1 was a resounding success. I worked at Southeastern when it was opened to domestic services to/from St.Pancras. HS1 Ticket prices were charged a premium to recoup the infrastructure Cap Ex and many of us thought passengers would not be prepared to pay the premium for the reduction in journey time compared to the "heritage" services operated by SE.

Wrong!

Full to capacity and SE are looking at new trains or lengthening the existing trains to increase capacity.

Fare structure and pricing in the UK is a mess. It has been the intention of every UK government in power since 1993 that the burden of the cost of the railways should be borne, as much as possible, by the fare paying passenger and not the tax payer. In contrast to Europe, where by and large the opposite is true, they regard the railway as an essential public service which the government is responsible for providing/subsidising.

The fear I have with the desire of both the government and passengers to make fare structure simpler (at the moment on any train, outside of the TfL and other devolved operations, it's a fair bet that everyone on the train has paid a different price for their ticket despite making the same journey) is that it will drive the cost of a "standard" ticket up. The railway cannot afford any reduction in revenue, so if you want to remove the super expensive "walk up" fares the lost revenue has to be recovered some how, which means the current cheap tickets have to get more expensive.

An electrified railway is the most efficient, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of all forms of mass transport. We should be working on how to get as many travelers as possible on to the railway...

[millemille]

And if anyone thinks railways in Europe are much better than in the UK....

This is the departure board at one of Vienna's stations on a recent work trip....



Every train cancelled or delayed. No explanation as to why.

And I regularly get a train from Vienna to Munich, a 4 hour journey, and it's never arrived on time. It's usually around 15 minutes late. Last week it was an hour late.

[MingtheMerciless]

Should have started at the Northern extremities and worked south to prevent the debacle we are seeing at the moment. Also proper costings (as @Mr. Dazzle said) along with decent PM's and Contracts Managers to stop the contractors raping the Govt.

I wonder how much money has been diverted from NR to HS2's budget? The monumental project for rebuilding and redesigning the Sussex's route's biggest bottleneck at the Selhurst/Norwood/Croydon triangle which would create a faster and more reliable set of junctions for future decades has been hugely cut back and rumblings are that even that may be axed.

[millemille]

I wonder how much money has been diverted from NR to HS2's budget?

None.

Completely separate sources of funding.

[MingtheMerciless]

I wonder how much money has been diverted from NR to HS2's budget?

None.

Completely separate sources of funding.

How is it funded then?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Seperately, weren't you listening

[millemille]

I wonder how much money has been diverted from NR to HS2's budget?

None.

Completely separate sources of funding.

How is it funded then?

Network Rail are funded by the treasury from public money, HS2 is funded by private investment borrowed by the treasury.

[Dodgy69]

I do remember on the news, folk complaining of having to stand because of a lack of carriages.

Maybe it would of been easier to have built the HS2 line on stilts.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Some of it is!