I think you'll find the "Levelling up the North" press release was missing an important comma.
HS2 seems to be costing about £250,000 per meter.
Any idea on fares? I vaguely recall it started out at a guessed £0.50p per mile but there seems to be some suggestion it will be near or above £1 per mile, now.
Costs is due to Government wanting the whole thing clad in gold-plated guarantees.
Construction Company X builds a cutting - all well and good, everyone knows how to do that. But they want T&Cs built in to say that if it's shifted by >5cm in 30 years, the construction company must bear the full costs of fixing it.
So it's requiring vastly greater amounts of concrete and it's insured to the hilt - partly because Company X may not be around in 30 years time and partly because the costs of fixing it will be similarly astronomical.
The land stuff has been badly managed from the start. Delays to the start of the project (Government dithering) mean that a lot of landowners got fed up of the will-they-won't-they and developed the land anyway and then, when it came to compulsory purchase, the landowner needed much more compensation because they'd built a block of flats on it which then needed knocking down.
The amount of squandered material and labour, not to mention the emissions, in building new stuff that's then been torn down without ever being used is criminal.
That's not entirely HS2's fault, some landowners were doing such stuff deliberately in order to extract more compensation but it should have had better legal protection against those sort of actions.
As usual, it's not the infrastructure that's costing the money, it's the legal stuff in the background.
@crazy-legs - they've been saying they were going to phase those pacers out for about 30 years now and yet they've still been trundling up and down, slowly and uncomfortably, the rails of the north west. If they're finally gone, nobody will miss 'em. Good riddance!
I haven't been near public transport for a while, like most people, for obvious reasons, so I wouldn't know.
But my point is that if you asked anyone other than a London-based consultant where you needed to spend money as a top priority on transport infrastructure in this country, absolutely nobody would give you the answer 'a nice high speed rail line between Birmingham and London'. Nobody!
You'd have a very long list of alternative answers, but that definitely wouldn't be amongst them. But thats what we're all getting (and paying for) whether we like/need it or not
Also have all you nay-sayers not been on a high speed train in France, Italy or Spain? They make our system look third-world by comparison
It's not just high speed I'm afraid.. I have traveled a lot by train in Europe & the far east. It is a pleasant way to travel. Always on time and reasonably cheap compared to our standards. Talking about our standards, our rail is about on par with Australia, well Queensland, but more costly.
We absolutely do need a better rail infrastructure, as pointed out above the current network is at breaking point with no options other than increasing the lengths of the trains to increase capacity.
We need fast straight lines to connect major cities and allow for branching from there. Politically this is a nightmare to do as you end up going through some affluent areas who will object at the earliest opportunity. Let's face it not enough people give a monkeys nut about ancient forests etc. So you end up with a line that becomes compromised and therefore is no longer fast.
Also have all you nay-sayers not been on a high speed train in France, Italy or Spain? They make our system look third-world by comparison
You know when you're driving on a motorway alongside a railway line? M1 and M6 both have a couple of sections paralleling the WCML.
You're doing 70 in the car and a train comes past at maybe 120. Sort of trundles past, only 50mph quicker...
I was driving in France a while ago on a section of [i]paege[/i] that had a 130kph limit (quite rare, most are now 110kph) so I was doing 130kph, 80mph. It was parallel to a TGV line and we got overtaken by something that just went whoooosh whoosh and was gone. It was doing about 200mph. Like you say, makes our trains look positively feeble in comparison.
You can’t really blame Londoners when most of them would prefer Crossrail 2 or a decent orbital railway following the M25 or more destinations in mainland Europe.
Who wants to go to Manchester? Mancunians that think it’s so good that they live and work in London.
There clearly speaks a man who's never experienced the joy of sitting staring in silent wonder at the jewel in the crown of the north...
Wythenshawe
It was doing about 200mph. Like you say, makes our trains look positively feeble in comparison.
But are our cities far enough apart to justify trains going that fast?
There clearly speaks a man who’s never experienced the joy of sitting staring in silent wonder at the jewel in the crown of the north…
Wythenshawe
Growing up in the 70's I used to spend a week of my summer holidays every year in Wythenshawe!
The other week was spent in Blackpool.
Tell that to the kids today and......
Japan's equivalent - $64 billion, 500 kph.
HS2 is £98 billion ($134 billion), 400 kph.
We need fast straight lines to connect major cities and allow for branching from there.
Except that we don't. What we need is for the need to travel to be reduced. This is happening to a degree, and yet we're still hacking the country to bits to provide for a dwindling(hopefully) need.
Except that we don’t. What we need is for the need to travel to be reduced.
Exactly! What the past 18 months has shown us is how much of that travel was totally unnecessary and just down to that 'well thats the way we've always done it' mindset
The world has changed.
"During the pandemic, I've really missed those ludicrously overpriced 6.30am trains from Piccadilly down to Euston" said absolutely nobody, ever.
Even from an employers point of view, why would you want your staff to go back to that? Especially if you're looking at the balance sheet without all those pointless and ridiculous £350 return tickets
As always, the government is way behind the rest of society and firmly stuck in a 1990's mindset.
If you're going to spend £100 billion quid then spend it on building a high speed broadband infrastructure, something that actually benefits everyone, not some bloody white elephant, mired in a 20th (or possibly 19th) century mindset
Even from an employers point of view, why would you want your staff to go back to that?
Because the money sits in London and they like face to face meetings and so the chippy northerners can get on the train
You can’t really blame Londoners when most of them would prefer Crossrail 2 or a decent orbital railway following the M25 or more destinations in mainland Europe.
95% of DoT staff live and work in London, this drives the way that investment need is looked at and why the money goes where it does, essentially to the SE
+1 for Binners on broadband infrastructure.
As I said above I’m actually all for infrastructure, including rail, but a vanity project is still a vanity project. HS2 will do nothing to address the underinvestment in the conventional routes. The rail industry is hopelessly inefficient and ultimately that needs to be resolved. Case in point - want a ‘stop board’ moving 20 yards? This is quite literally a sign stuck in the ground. ‘Of course sir, that’ll be £75,000 please.’ WTF - it’s a sign stuck in the ground - now imagine that thousands of times over and that’s why train tickets are so expensive.
Rail is critical to addressing climate change and the future economy of this country, and as an industry it really needs to get its head out of its backside and start dealing with the issues holding it back.
If you want to see a good example of a basket case infrastructure project you could look at the channel tunnel - long time to build and very controversial, hopelessly optimistic business case, constant financial troubles. Even pre pandemic the tunnel was operating at only a fraction of its design capacity.
Except that we don’t. What we need is for the need to travel to be reduced
Exactly! What the past 18 months has shown us is how much of that travel was totally unnecessary and just down to that ‘well thats the way we’ve always done it’ mindset
That may well be true in your worlds. However, the company I work for is a manufacturer and by its very nature requires people to work in a factory. While I am able to do my job from home the company would like us to start to return to the office which means for me an hour an half in the car. I have no other option but to drive. I would take the train if there was one and it was reasonably priced. You only have to drive up and down the M1 to realise that there is a need for something.
But are our cities far enough apart to justify trains going that fast?
Not only that, but going around a corner takes up acres and acres of space if you want to go at 200mph in a train. I think the radius for non tilting trains doing those sorts of speeds is about 5km
they'd [I]like[/I]... you literally just said you can work from home... how is this not an unnecessary journey 🤔the company would like us
Of all the many, many things that the money could be better spend on - I didn't think of broadband but it's obvious! Give every home/office wired fibre or free 5G or a lifetime sub to Starlink.
Even pre-Covid I thought travelling into the office for routine work or meetings was becoming an anachronism... it just seems ****ing ridiculous now!
it just sounds **** ridiculous now!
There's plenty of folks who can't though...Doctors, lawyers, nurses, reception staff, none of us can really work from home.
HS2 isn’t really about facilitating travel to work though is it? I used to commute from Yorkshire to London, but was very much in the minority. So the number of people who can’t work from home who will be helped by HS2 is I would imagine tiny.
Is a nurse REALLY going to pay £2-300 per journey to travel from Manchester (or Crewe!) to work in London?
Reception staff are getting the train to go from Birmingham to London every day? 🤔There’s plenty of folks who can’t though…Doctors, lawyers, nurses, reception staff, none of us can really work from home.
I can't work from home... guess what... I live near my work. Crazy I know. Even if there are people who can't work from home but [I]must[/I] travel, every other person who can make a change helps free up existing capacity (be that train/road/whatever)
Is a nurse REALLY going to pay £2-300 per journey to travel from Manchester (or Crewe!) to work in London?
Thats my point really.
What percentage of this countries population will actually derive any conceivable benefit from a high speed rail line from Birmingham to London? It's absolutely miniscule. A vanishingly small number of people.
Yet for this tiny number of people we're seeing truly vast amounts of public money being hosed at it. All while local transport initiatives - which would have potentially hugely more impact on so many more peoples real lives - are being shelved and put on hold indefinitely, while the black hole of HS2 sucks in everything around it (in the case of the environment... literally!)
Its absolutely bonkers
Reception staff are getting the train to go from Birmingham to London every day?
No but a massive broadband infrastructure programme to allow them to work from home isn't going to help them overmuch either.
They'll be able to watch higher definition grot, though
See... everyone benefits 🙂
except for the obvious point that if it enables [I]other[/I] people to WFH then it frees up capacity on existing transport services.No but a massive broadband infrastructure programme to allow them to work from home isn’t going to help them overmuch either.
Not only that, but going around a corner takes up acres and acres of space if you want to go at 200mph in a train. I think the radius for non tilting trains doing those sorts of speeds is about 5km
I'm not sure I understand this, how does requiring a long radius curves take up more space than short radius curves. Sure on a curve by curve basis, which is a disingenuous comparison, but over a whole scheme length from point A to point B it's really not clear cut - it could be either.
It could easily be arguable that long radius curves result in a scheme using less land as you don't try to zig zag the smaller radius track around obstacles as often which would increase overall length and hence area. Obviously being less selective on alignment brings other disbenefits but it really isn't clear cut if you pick just one item to interrogate in isolation...
As I said above I’m actually all for infrastructure, including rail, but a vanity project is still a vanity project.
So just to check...
Investment in HS rail in France - not a vanity project
Investment in HS rail in Spain - not a vanity project
Investment in HS rail in China - not a vanity project
Investment in HS rail in Japan - not a vanity project
Investment in HS rail in UK - vanity project
??
What percentage of this countries population will actually derive any conceivable benefit from a high speed rail line from Birmingham to London? It’s absolutely miniscule. A vanishingly small number of people.
TGV in France has made it possible to live in places like Tours or Lyon and commute into Paris. Tours is under 2hrs. If you extrapolate that to HS2 times, it's still further afield than Manchester or Leeds. Opening up connectivity options is never a bad thing.
crazy-legs
Full MemberThis is the point that the anti folk don’t get. It’s not like cancelling HS2 frees up £100bn of money for other infra or hospitals or whatever. It just disappears.
That's... not how money works. Of course it doesn't "just disappear". A lot of sunk costs would be lost but the rest can be re-allocated to whatever you like. Ringfencing doesn't create money, and cancelling a project with ringfenced funds doesn't break the money.
Of course, the government might not reallocate it, or might allocate it to some other damn fool project or hand it all to the private sector for a failed covid boondoggle that kills people, but that's a different thing entirely.
asbrooks
Full MemberThat may well be true in your worlds. However, the company I work for is a manufacturer and by its very nature requires people to work in a factory.
Sure but reducing demand overall by reducing unnecessary journeys means the existing capacity is freed up for the necessary ones. It improves things for the people who still have to travel. And of course reducing unnecessary journeys doesn't just mean "working from home", it also includes "not having everything in London" and "conducting more of your business remotely even if you're in the office".
(aside; my mate has been told he has to return to the office in the square mile, even though they've been working from home effectively. They never meet clients face to face, that was all remote even before the pandemic. But they "have to have an office in London" to be taken seriously apparently. And also "to attract staff", even though literally nobody in his office is from London and half relocated from Edinburgh. Taking that out of the city wouldn't just mean that he wasn't wasting time and money on a commuter train from surrey, it'd also mean they wouldn't need cleaners, security/reception, less demand on services like food outlets... Lots of knock-ons)
The tgv was built at a fraction of the cost of HS2 per km and covers a country many times the size.
All for high speed rail myself but if I was in charge I'd have done the London but last. The London to Birmingham bit will only serve to further cement the London centric transport system we have as it starves the rest of the country for investment in transport.
The tgv was built at a fraction of the cost of HS2 per km and covers a country many times the size.
Pretty much every infrastructure project ever done anywhere else is done to twice the standard and half the cost of anything in the UK.
We just seem completely incapable of (a) aspiring to do any better and (b) actually doing any better.
That’s… not how money works. Of course it doesn’t “just disappear”. A lot of sunk costs would be lost but the rest can be re-allocated to whatever you like.
It's grant-in-aid funding. It's for HS2, it doesn't (and can't) be reallocated to other trains, NHS, deprived areas etc.
There's a wider conversation about how Government creates and spends money because it's obviously not like doing household finances or paying your credit card bill but grant-in-aid funding is specific.
they’d like… you literally just said you can work from home… how is this not an unnecessary journey 🤔
Yes logistically I can work from home and have been doing so since last March. I have a home office setup as it is at work. Plus I'm more productive working from. However, the senior management want us to go back to the office.
It has something to do with the factory workforce being unionised and complaining about the them and us culture and the senior management not being strong willed enough to front it out.
I agree it's a journey that's totally unnecessary
If you extrapolate that to HS2 times, it’s still further afield than Manchester or Leeds. Opening up connectivity options is never a bad thing.
Yes it is if it is hideously wasteful and done instead of other much more productive changes.
I'm pretty sure most people in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Hull etc don't want to work in ****ing London. That's why they have chosen to live where they live. They don't want a fast train to London to take once a month or once a week or whatever. They want a ****ing train that takes them to their job in Manchester, Leeds, Hull or Liverpool.
Crazy legs has hit the nail on the head! HS2 is, and always was, about getting people to London faster…
It’s also not true to say that high speed rail in other countries is not driven by vanity. Spain only has high speed rail at all because the French had it! Finances of these lines are notoriously murky, but one thing is for sure - SNCF, DB and Renfe (France, Germany and Spain respectively) are all in seriously deep c**p with their finances and that predates Covid by a long time..
I have just been watching a video of the controversy surrounding Japans maglev line. That is costing half what HS2 will, will go twice as fast, and yet is still massively controversial..
Plus you can't really compare high speed rail in France like Crazy Legs keeps doing. It's just different in so many ways to the UK, the main difference of course being space versus population density.
They've got far more room to chuck stuff about.
We haven't. Therefore, other approaches need to happen, such as folks not having to travel hundreds of miles every week for things that could be done online/by phone.
crazy-legs
Full MemberThere’s a wider conversation about how Government creates and spends money because it’s obviously not like doing household finances or paying your credit card bill but grant-in-aid funding is specific.
That's purely accounting, there's nothing about grant-in-aid that prevents reallocation at the level that originally placed the grant.
How do governments create money? its a myth - they can't and don't. They can raise capital and investments, but that is not 'creating money' - those who are investing expect a return. They can print money, but even that is not creating money...its just cutting it up into smaller chunks, and the downsides of that are far more damaging in the long run...as we and our kids will find out over the coming decades after the money printing fetish the government has got itself into since 2008. Don't get too comfortable with that pension you've been building up. The Chickens have yet to come home to roost on that.
All governments can do is to create the environment and conditions for which business can thrive and its thriving businesses and the people that work for them that grows the economy and funds the government via taxation. And infrastructure that makes it easier and quicker for people to go about their daily lives and business is a big factor in that.
I've no idea about HS2, but seems to me if despite the rest of the nations rail network being in dire need of modernising...which it is...that doesn't mean we cant also improve the inter city network..it would be like saying "we're not going to do anything about climate change until we've solved the problem of world poverty".
But one thing I do know is that people who down talk the benefit of 20 minutes saving each way on a train journey clearly don't travel routinely. Air travellers will change airlines and airports to shave that much time off a flight. Airlines will build dedicated terminals at airports to offer such benefits to their customers. After 15 years of frequent flying on business I'd happily take 20 mins off my journey time if it was up for grabs. For those who don't value the benefit of that and the additional cost then there is always the existing rail links. If you're a handsomely paid Lawyer an extra 40 minutes in the office if you're popping down to HQ in London or visiting a client in Birmingham, is invaluable.
If they build it they will come. Thats for sure.
But one thing I do know is that people who down talk the benefit of 20 minutes saving each way on a train journey clearly don’t travel routinely.
...
After 15 years of frequent flying on business I’d happily take 20 mins off my journey time if it was up for grabs.
...
For those who don’t value the benefit of that and the additional cost then there is always the existing rail links. If you’re a handsomely paid Lawyer an extra 40 minutes in the office if you’re popping down to HQ in London or visiting a client in Birmingham, is invaluable
🤷♀️ Did you think you were arguing against everyone else there ?
Yes. It's for a privileged, expenses-saturated, largely London-based few - yet again being bolstered by the govt at taxpayers' expense. That's what ^ they virtually all said
After 15 years of frequent flying on business I’d happily take 20 mins off my journey time if it was up for grabs.
You're completely forgetting about the real costs of those precious 20 minutes that you'd grab.
As hard as it is to fathom an alternative, your continual growth is simply not sustainable.
We are really starting to pay what it really costs, more and more each year.
When you consider what it costs in real terms, not just monetary terms, as most people seem to struggle to look beyond, then your 20 minutes is going to look well,....I don't know how to put it to people concerned only with blindly maintaining the unsustainable.
Agreed - but even if you are pro growth & pro business HS2 was the wrong thing to build.
After 15 years of frequent flying on business I’d happily take 20 mins off my journey time if it was up for grabs.
I think you are missing the "we need to travel less. Full stop" part of the issue.
Agreed – but even if you are pro growth & pro business HS2 was the wrong thing to build.
What would be the right thing to build?
After 15 years of frequent flying on business I’d happily take 20 mins off my journey time if it was up for grabs.
You'd have loved pre-9/11 airline travel.
I use to be able to arrive at Heathrow by car, leave the keys with the Purple Parking folk and be on the (international) plane, all in under 30 mins.
I think you are missing the “we need to travel less. Full stop” part of the issue.
I don't think that is, or will be, accepted as a target. At least in the context of domestic travel. The best we can hope for is switching travel to the least environmentally damaging options, of which electrically powered trains rate pretty highly.
The best we can hope for is switching travel to the least environmentally damaging options, of which electrically powered trains rate pretty highly.
Indeed. Which is why its completely bonkers to be spending billions and billions on HS2, while simultaneously doing this...
Chris Grayling cancelled electrification to save money
As many people have repeatedly pointed out, there are a million more pressing projects that need funding ahead of this nonsense. HS2 is a financial black hole and whether they admit it or not, everything else is being sacrificed so the government can carry on pouring billions and billions into a project that will benefit a tiny number of people and make virtually no impact on the countries transport issues
It takes me twice as long to get from Sheffield to London by train than it does to get across Sheffield by bus. Shaving 20 minutes off getting to London is WAY down the list of public transport things that need improving.
