It’s all over R4 and they cannot decide if it will benefit or deplete the second tier cities.

Never bothered the Victorians, they built them and the city economies grew around them – do we navel gaze this stuff too much?

I’m pretty ambivalent, my closes will be Sheffield, at Meadowhall any advantages gained by HST will be negated by the time and cost of getting to Meadowhall in the first place, but it could work wonders for the Don Valley (other than visiting the soon to close world class sports facilities).

It’s obvious that a high speed link will bring jobs, prosperity, quality of life and better environment. Just look at Doncaster…

The only difference HS1 has made as far as I can tell is that it allows commuters to get to and from their well-paid city jobs a bit quicker. I am not sure HS2 will be so vastly different.

But for the Victorians most stuff was made oop North and needed transporting to London and I suppose Bristol (2nd biggest city back then iirc). Nowadays with limited UK manufacturing less of an issue.

There will be more jobs meaning less people on the dole but benefit will not be in my lifetime. Will be happy to see it finished tbh. I spent 34 years on the railway before retiring so maybe a bit biased to a decent rail network.

I’d rather they spent it on trains than motorways. I’d like to know how much tickets are and who’ll be running it. Anyone know?

Surely it’s just going to be a brain drain on the North?

Yes those commuters will be propping up the local coffee shop, wine bar, and John Lewis in the Northern economy. But the jobs/money will be in London. I can’t imagine this encourageing compnaies to set up shop in Doncaster and people commute from London.

I’m not sure what, but I am sure there must be a better way to spend £33billion that would actualy benifit the rest of the country not just London.

But how much space will there be for bikes in the guards van, and will there be baby buggy exclusive spaces? 😀

I’ve not seen travel times from Nottingham (Toton) yet but going via Birmingham is not a very direct route.

i think bbc just said london to leeds is currently 2hrs 20 and that HS2 would bw 1hrs 20

can we start a petition for a deciated cycle carriage on the HS2?

pushing the potential benefits of the northern section, to take focus away from the London – Birmingham section which cannot be justified, for the same reasons above

Surely the sections other than the one to B’ham is going to be “HS3”?

It’ll mean the BBC staff can all get ‘home’ from Salford a bit quicker, at least! 😉

A standard class ticket from Manchester to London, on peak, is presently £270 return. I presume HS2 will be charging a premium for the speed, therefore the same ticket will cost the same as the GDP of a medium sized African nation

IF HS is so good, why not have the private sector pay for it from the outset? Once again the taxpayer is going to get shafted for building an unneccessary vanity project that will be sold at a knock-down price to the private TOCs.

I had a few trips on the bullet train in China between Beijing and Tianjin. Compared to anything in the UK it’s just embarrassingly good.

A trip that took about 3 hours on a somewhat vomit-inducing coach took 30 minutes of smooth wonderfulness on their bullet train.

I don’t know if it will make any difference to growth or jobs or anything else here in the UK. But streaking across the Chinese countryside at 285km/h is like stepping into the future.

What’s the fricking hurry?

How far is the proposed route from London to Leeds? With a top speed of 225(?)mph and the need to stop at 4? 5? stops on the way. Is it possible to do it in 1hr 20mins? I assume it can’t get up to speed until out of town.

just reading some of the bumpf on http://www.gov.uk

18 trains per hour from 5am until midnight. so one every 7 minutes north and south. Not too shabby.

Edit the edit, It’s 18 trains per hour each way!!!!!

Does any line run this often? does the londonshire underground even run this often? every 3 and a half mins or so.

section 12.1.3

What’s the fricking hurry?

+1

ohnohesback – Member
IF HS is so good, why not have the private sector pay for it from the outset? Once again the taxpayer is going to get shafted for building an unneccessary vanity project that will be sold at a knock-down price to the private TOCs.

this

taxpayer funded so private companies can cream huuge profits off the top, the price will be prohibitive for many except the high paid london commuters

as much as anything its an admission that the governments economic plan has failed, the promised private sector led recovery has led us further into recession, only the taxpayer funded olympics caused any sort of boost

What’s the fricking hurry?

It’s called progress. And about time too – the Victorians built the existing network, and the Germans didn’t do us the favour we gave them of forcing a rebuild after the war. Anyone who thinks public transport in the UK is even adequate needs their head seeing to.

Was interested to see that the government is telling us that there’s not going to be a ticket premium charged for using the HS2 service, unlike the one third extra charged for using HS1.

Of course that’ll probably change, but it temporarily allays one of my original concerns, that it would turn into the railways version of Concorde, though with a lot lower demand for the seats.

To the ‘what’s the frickin’ hurry’ crowd -how many of us deliberately pick the stopping at all stations service over the faster one, because ‘we’re not in any hurry’. Most of us have lives, and prefer not to spend them on trains.

ohnohesback – Member

What’s the fricking hurry?

trains/lines are full*, we need to build more lines, high speed lines are better.

*yes they are – a lot of maintenance work is done by people working on the lines in the few minutes between trains** – if you increase the number of trains, you reduce the amount of maintenance that can be done, but more trains mean more maintenance, see the catch?

**i used to do it, but gave it up as too dangerous.

ohnohesback – Member

What’s the fricking hurry?

Yup, spot on.

I do the Big Town run about once a week on average, 2.5 hours allows me to sit down, grab a cuppa, plug in and get connected to the on board WiFi – then a happy 2 hours uninterrupted work before landing in the Smoke. Less time and you’d hardly have time to open your KitKat!

Invest in making the existing infrastructure work better – widen tracks, raise bridges, open up tunnels and put on wide, double decked trains. Make the tickets like airline tickets – you buy a ticket and you get a seat allocated, when it’s full – it’s full. Unlikely if you have 3 times the seats on a train though.
My 2p worth.

Love the idea of a dedicated bike carriage, never going to happen though – why carry 50 bikes for free when you can cram another 60 passengers into the space, each of whom pays £270 return peak fare?

Anyone who thinks public transport in the UK is even adequate needs their head seeing to.

Actually our rail network is among the better out there. Not the best for sure, but far from the worst. It’s expensive, but by and large the service is pretty good.

The only difference HS1 has made as far as I can tell is that it allows commuters to get to and from their well-paid city jobs a bit quicker. I am not sure HS2 will be so vastly different.

It’s meant that folk can live in the further reaches of Kent and commute to London in a short time, so there’s been more investment in those places, and property prices have risen. The north has the same to look forward to I suspect!

I would rather the money spend on improving the links between the “hubs”.

When the HS2 link is done it means i can get From Manchester to London quicker than I can get from My house* to Manchester.

*Bolton.

and property prices have risen

which is all that really matters 😉

and property prices have risen

which is all that really matters

Time to get in on the ground floor of the buy to let boom I guess.

IF HS is so good, why not have the private sector pay for it from the outset?

Infrastructure shouldn’t be built on the basis of its own single balance sheet. Personally I think a proper high speed rail system on a par with those in most of the rest of Europe is a no-brainer

I dont think it will bring jobs and prosperity
Its surely just a plan to make London Commutable from anywhere in the UK.
I am not sure how this benefits me seeing as i go to London about once every decade or so.

I’ve heard that they have trains that go underground in that London JY. How mad is that?! Its unnatural if you ask me! If god had ever intended us to travel underground, he’d have given us paws like moles instead of hands

IF HS is so good, why not have the private sector pay for it from the outset?

For a start the government can borrow at much better rates than a private company, which means it costs less to build, so hopefully lower fares.

Personally I think key infrastructure should be an investment by the government in our long term prosperity, rather than a short term profit opportunity for private companies.

It really makes my piss atomise

So we have made a high speed line between Leeds and London, where as the rest of the transport network is unreliable, falling to pieces, overpriced and overcrowded.

Unless transport functions as a network it will always be the above. Take myself as an example for me to get to London I have to: Get a bus (shows up when ever it wants) then I have to get a train to Leeds (again frequently late and overcrowded) fair enough the last part of the route is nice and quick, but it doesn’t matter since all the hassle involved in getting to Leeds means I’ll be in taking the car instead.

Edit: We need new rolling stock – which has a top speed of about 100mph, however it should be designed to accelerate and decelerate very quickly, because of the amount of stops on Britain’s railway lines.

That’s why the local train is slow, not so much because of the time taken for people to board at each station, more because of the time taken for the train to slow down and speed up.

Don’t forget that the benefits may not necessarily come directly from HS2 and the obvious decreased travel time/increased capacity.

Running the higher-speed trains on HS2 frees-up capacity on the traditional lines, opening up huge opportunities for frieght, multi-stop inter-city trains and local all-stations services. By separating high-speed and slow-speed services onto different lines, the capacity increases are enormous (remember it’s the speed differential between different services that constrain capacity for a given line-of-way).

The amount of frieght traffic that can be removed from the roads as a result will be collosal and the impact of this will be reduced congestion on the creaking road network.

It’s all good folks! 🙂

That only works if you can compel the hauliers to use rail.
That’s going to go down well!!

Apparently they want to move a bit of the M1 to make way for it, that’ll be fun.

We need new rolling stock – which has a top speed of about 100mph, however it should be designed to accelerate and decelerate very quickly

The newer (generally electric) models of train with distributed power have probably the best acceleration and breaking curves available to the steel/steel interface, drivers have to take this into consideration already when driving with passengers free to stand up and walk around. I really don’t think this is the answer – maybe your experience is with older trains?

Yep older and diesels for that matter – it’s grim up North

That only works if you can compel the hauliers to use rail.

The cost (both in diesel and environmental impact) of lorries will sort that out. We as a nation are already paying for the lack of investment for 40-odd years in increased costs of everything that needs transportation – which IMO is one of the basic causes of the ‘rip-off Britain’ so often muted on these hallowed pages.

A standard class ticket from Manchester to London, on peak, is presently £270 return.

The walk on fare is £77 off peak, and a week’s notice gets you an on-peak fare for £134.

It kind sucks that the Sheffield stop is at Meadowhall. It contributes further to the demise of the city centre which already suffers from out of townitus. And how are people going to get to the station? By car on an already creaking road network.

Sure the route would be trickier but it would make sense for the local comunity to lobby for a city centre station.

Used to do Leeds – London on a regular basis and booked tickets early – some great deals to be had (under £15 each way)but standard fares are a farce. Great if the company foots the bill but ridiulous for a family ..
Doubt the HS2 route will be viable for the average punter but HEY!!
what do the current encumbants care about that ?? Makes the govenment look good on paper but totally impractical.