Or more precisely, my parents, who received a ‘threat of compulsory purchase notice ‘ on Saturday.

Looking at the plans if be very surprised if they were directly affected but still a pretty big shock. Turns out loads on the estate down the road binned the note and are now VERY shocked to realise it’s going to be in their back gardens.

Will it go ahead now the UK has no prospects ?

Passes by here but the otherside of the existing railway so not a drama.

I think there was a change recently up Sheffield way – they originally planned to do a Meadowhall station, but now they’re talking about having a city centre station. The change in the route goes straight through the middle of a new build estate, part of it still under construction.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-36716526

(Serves them right for calling the estate ‘shimmer’ though…)

The residents of that estate will have had a lucky escape, immediate buyback of their homes shortly after realising the full horror of living in Mexborough.

The new route does look like it will please nobody though.

Old news to us southerners. Local pub’s now been empty for years and now sports a HS2 Elephant sign and graffiti.
(resident of sunny Chilterns)

You’d rather get a letter than be just the wrong side of the line, no ?

Tough times I am sure but its impossible to build infrastructure withoit an impact somewhere. FWIW I think its a waste of money, better spent on normal rail infrastructure and expanding the regional airports imho.

Tough times I am sure but its impossible to build infrastructure withoit an impact somewhere. FWIW I think its a waste of money, better spent on normal rail infrastructure and expanding the regional airports imho.

This! Hopelessly misguided project which will benefit very few, the money would be far better spent on the existing network, putting in new stations or re-opening old ones to serve expanding communities, like Portishead and Corsham, to name two local ones.

Portishead has needed a line for years and it would be easy to do ,HS2 doesnt benefit nearly enough people for the cost and the travel time saved is small

a huge creator of jobs, and sadly a huge waste of money and effort, why not spend the money on regional services, or converting the m4 to a rail line or the m25 to an orbital railway, easily done with little land take.

Such a bad idea, a lack of vision and only solves one (non) problem.

The country needs an ambitious infrastructure plan which includes a Heathrow alternative, an improvement to regional railways and a way of getting freight off the roads and onto the railways.

Also some sort of northern-centric spending maybe upgrade the gas street lighting? Pave some roads or whatever.

The Titfield Thunderbolt on bbc4 now, thats how to run and plan a railway

Bad idea? Completely peabrained if you ask me (which you won’t)
The only thing I ever thought of when I heard about it when it was 1st mentioned some years ago was, ‘why would this country want to spend millions (?) of pounds on a railway system mainly to get a fairly small percentage of people to London quicker than now’
Can someone explain please, cos I don’t get it.

Nope,you have it there!

Comes past my house into Leeds, it’s the other side of an existing railway line but will be on a 15-20m high viaduct between a canal and a river and will look **** rediculous and spoil a lovely area.

I’m a Civil Engineer, so I understand that infrastructure needs to be built and you can never please everyone, someone will always be put out. But the local rail infrastructure in these parts is desperate for an upgrade, and that would have a more beneficial impact to the local economy than some fictitious northern power house and a train that gets people from cheaper houses to well paid jobs in London quicker.

If local rail infrastructure was good enough HS2 would be great. But it’s not , so it’s a shit idea atm. IMO.

a train that gets people from cheaper houses to well paid jobs in London quicker.

Not for long, get ready for being priced out of your own areas by displaced Londoners who can start buying up the housing in newly commutable areas.

HS2 is about as funny as Boris becoming foreign secretary.

‘why would this country want to spend millions (?) of pounds on a railway system mainly to get a fairly small percentage of people to London quicker than now’

a train that gets people from cheaper houses to well paid jobs in London quicker.

Well the theory is that on their way back they bring their money with them.

Bad idea? Completely peabrained if you ask me (which you won’t)
The only thing I ever thought of when I heard about it when it was 1st mentioned some years ago was, ‘why would this country want to spend millions (?) of pounds on a railway system mainly to get a fairly small percentage of people to London quicker than now’
Can someone explain please, cos I don’t get it.

Don’t think it’s about speed of the journey at all, AFAIK [So maybe not the best choice of name to market to the general public, in hindsight]. I mean you obviously can’t propose spending billions just to shave 15 mins off Manchester – London.
It’s about capacity and renewing the aorta of the rail network for the next few decades. So it seems like a ‘normal’ sort of thing to put forward – people making it sound like some sort of extreme folly like a 200 mile long garden bridge or something when I don’t think it’s anything like that.

In fairness, the railways are full, there isn’t spare capacity for people or freight.

People keep saying they’re fed up of sitting on the floor outside the toilets and how freight should be on the railways.

Well this is the solution, there’s a practical limit to platform lengths, there’s only so short a time gap you can put between trains, and ultimately yes, people do need to get to/from London.

I live not far from the route in the chilterns & yes it’s crap for the area, but you can’t expect to live the modern lives we lead without infrastructure being improved somewhere.

+1 for what tinas & Gary L say above – its about total capacity & not just time being shaved off one particular route

As for existing infrastructure – lots of it is 150 years old and pretty knackered. Can you imagine what a brand spanking new modern railway line would be like?

Actually.. don’t need to imagine, I’ve been on them. In other countries…

[video]http://youtu.be/3jl9hTIkXXc[/video]

+1 for what tinas & Gary L say above – its about total capacity & not just time being shaved off one particular route

Having done a fair bit of rail travel when I was back giving people easy alternatives for the long haul is a good thing, extra capacity for the arterial routes should take pressure off the local services and allow more stopping trains etc. with connections in the major cities.
If I was travelling to London I’d rather arrive in London than Gatwick/Heathrow – taking regional pressure off the airports around london would be an improvement.

Of the long commutes I did Glasgow Manchester was easier by train than plane, a high speed direct ish link would keep that going well. There is something to be said for city to city transit as opposed to heading 30-40 mins out to go to an airport.

and as if by magic for the vid above
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-14/new-plan-for-high-speed-rail-link-between-melbourne-and-sydney/7628316
To put that into perspective Flight time is 1hr25 so 1hr50 proprosed would be faster than flying with checkin times. The all stops version close to 3 hrs would still be faster centre to centre than flying.

And really fast trains are cool

There are shit loads of existing lines/unused decommissioned etc why does it need to be over virign ground ffs. It’s going to plough across quite lanes etc up our way too.

There are shit loads of existing lines/unused decommissioned etc why does it need to be over virign ground ffs.

As I understand it the gradient is more important, and such things like that. To make it work it needs to be done proeprly. The classic British bodge and go, patch it up and carry on approach would just lead to something worse.

So the new GREAT Britain can’t make a decision on a new runway after years of wrangling and consultations, has huge issues building a new railway line and has endless problems building a new nuclear power station (Hinkley Point C)…. and people think were going to show the world how to do it the British way…. Imagine being a foreign business person who lands at Gatwick and your told that over 200 trains have been cancelled by Southern Trains from the Airport to the centre of the capital because of an arguement going on for months!!

Why build HS2 = Because Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan… etc all did and they work brilliantly.

Yep, French railways are airports are all smashing, ignore the fact that they cancel more trains and flights than we do.

CDG on the TGV mainline is boss, you have to say. The flight was delayed 3 hours and they lost your bags, but at least you can go anywhere in Europe on the train.

Oxford – Cambridge would be an excellent line to re-open, infrastructure-wise. Major innovation axis of the country, and Cambridge’s connectivity to anywhere other than London is dreadful. Bit of a pipedream, though – think there’s a decent amount of housing being built over the line since the 60s.

If this gets built how much will a ticket cost? Long distance fares are already stupidly expensive.
Scrap it and build tidal barrages instead.

Oxford – Cambridge would be an excellent line to re-open, infrastructure-wise. Major innovation axis of the country, and Cambridge’s connectivity to anywhere other than London is dreadful. Bit of a pipedream, though – think there’s a decent amount of housing being built over the line since the 60s.

This !!!!!!!

There have been rumblings but housing at the oxford end is the problem
but linking via MK in the middle would be excellent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Rail_Link

now that the plan is to spend our way out of recession again it might just happen

Oxford – Cambridge would be an excellent line to re-open, infrastructure-wise. Major innovation axis of the country, and Cambridge’s connectivity to anywhere other than London is dreadful. Bit of a pipedream, though – think there’s a decent amount of housing being built over the line since the 60s

Yes, but it is still a south east UK favouring policy…
Alongside better infrastructure, we could solve lots of housing issues by actually moving away from investing so heavily in London/South East benefit policies and decisions.

“to get a fairly small percentage of people to London quicker than now”

Or you could look at it as getting a small percentage of people out of London quicker than now?

Which can only be a good thing. I’m all for HS2. I think it’s an excellent project, and if it inconveniences a small number of people, then so be it.

HS2 is a vanity project. It’s the wrong sort of railway, with stations in the wrong place.

Simon Jenkins piece is worth a read –
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/hs2-the-zombie-train-that-refuses-to-die

http://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2014/02/rail-740-hs2-is-the-wrong-scheme-in-wrong-place/
” the location of stations is clearly designed to minimise cost rather than improve accessibility. People do not like to travel to parkway stations as demonstrated the unpopularity of those such as Avignon on the French TGV network and yet the HS2 designers have put forward out of town stations serving Sheffield, Birmingham, Nottingham and Derby. Rail’s key advantage is as a form of city centre to city centre transport and therefore the out.

” HS2 ‘does very little to improve the network, and merely concentrates connectivity on London’. That is spot on. The supporters of the line in the midlands and north who think that this is a project that will improve their local economies are deluding themselves.

Indeed, HS2 is being designed almost as a separate railway. This is well demonstrated by the crazy plan to partly use rolling stock that would not be compatible with the classic rail network which will make interchange with existing services even more difficult. HS2 as presently designed will do little to improve connectivity for the vast majority of towns and cities in the UK, apart from the few lucky enough to have a station.’

Wasn’t part of the point of HS2 to remove the long distance load on the exisiting lines (mainly west coast) to allow more local services, given many lines are already at capacity.

I agree making it incompatible with existing stock is a bit odd but if your building a new line why not make it high speed, rather than another slow one? and if your doing that then old stock isn’t suitable anyway (as it would just slow everything down).

It will cut across my commute and a few of the bridleways we ride here.

Pretty sure we could spend the money better, rather than turning the East Midlands into a suburb of London and pricing my kids out the area when they want to get a place of their own.

the East Midlands into a suburb of London and pricing my kids out the area when they want to get a place of their own.

Then again, if it takes some of the pressure off the south east, my kids might not be priced out of the area when they want to get a place of their own.

Going back to the compulsory purchase thing, my brother & his gf did very well from it when their flat in Camden was earmarked for demolition for HS2 a couple of years ago. They jumped on the opportunity and got something like 10% over (favourable) market valuation, all legal fees and other costs, and SDLT contribution on their new place. And no estate agents involved. The process took a while, and they even got the valuation revised upwards because the market had moved in the meantime. In all he reckoned they were about £50k better off than if they’d simply sold up in a normal market.

Obviously it sucks if you’re getting turfed out of a cherished family home but if you had any plans of moving it’s actually a great opportunity.

Oxford – Cambridge would be an excellent line to re-open, infrastructure-wise. Major innovation axis of the country, and Cambridge’s connectivity to anywhere other than London is dreadful. Bit of a pipedream, though – think there’s a decent amount of housing being built over the line since the 60s.

It’s coming in bits.

As a few have said, HS2 isn’t about speed, it’s about capacity. The West Coast Main Line is full, they’re trying to squeeze more and more freight onto it, and there’s just no room. They need to do something. High speed rail means you can run more trains, thus relieving a lot of pressure on the WCML, and thus the road network.

You can’t use double deck trains nor can you make trains longer on our existing infrastructure, and if you think HS2 is expensive, just try upgrading existing infrastructure – check out the Trent Valley quadrupling programme costs. You could improve the signalling on the entire network to potentially squeeze in a few more trains, but see previous point re: cost for incremental improvement.

There are shit loads of existing lines/unused decommissioned etc why does it need to be over virign ground ffs. It’s going to plough across quite lanes etc up our way too.

That’s just moronic. Yes, let’s revive a load of branch lines closed 60 years ago, because the best way to build a new ultra high capacity line is to have an absurdly circuitous route which still uses 150 year old infrastructure. 🙄

Comparisons to France, Germany, Spain et al are flawed, because our geography is very different. We don’t generally have the large distances between centres of population they do. The French are envious of our rail network anyway – we’re more punctual and have a better service.

Japan is a lot closer to us, but they’ve been investing in a network of high speed lines for nearly 40 years, and there’s very little freight transported by rail compared to passengers, so there’s not the same contention on the infrastructure.

As a few have said, HS2 isn’t about speed, it’s about capacity

Except they have made it about speed, for vanity, at a cost. I can’t remember where it was but there was an interesting analysis article about how even a few mph less would make it a different, cheaper and more feasible project, basically what we are currently proposing is the wrong HS2. If anyone can remember what this article was it would be good to post it here.

I think if we brexit it’ll be pulled anyway, after all that has been spent on it so far.