HS2 spiralling costs

Channel 4 did a Dispatches on HS2 years ago and of all the people within the industry they interviewed for the programme, not a single one of them thought it would ever go north of Birmingham

That’s as maybe but it then frees up the WCML for use by all the poor people and means you can run more stopping services, more freight and more local commuter services because you’ve effectively moved all the express traffic onto HS2

But if HS2 isn’t going north of Birmingham, then that all goes out of the window as the WCML will still be the only direct route from the North West to London. So none of that will be doable unless you want to massively extend the journey time from Manchester to London

Oh… actually…. that’s what they’ll probably do, won’t they?

The whole thing is a total farce that should have never been started

It absolutely needs to be subsidised.

More than that. It needs to be free.

Who on earth do you think HS2 is being built for?

Construction and engineering companies mostly. Big infrastructure projects translates into thousands of jobs in the engineering sector alone. At my place we had an entire office of a couple of hundred people working on HS2 full time. Without HS2, Crossrail, the Transpennine route upgrade, Hinkley Point and various other mega-projects we wouldn’t have an engineering industry in this country.

Building infrastructure is a good use of government money.  Its just HS2 is the wrong project.  the same money spent on other transport infrastructure would have created far more benefit

TJ just saved me the trouble of stating the obvious

Who on earth do you think HS2 is being built for? Ticket prices will be far beyond the reach of most people. They’ll be paid for on corporate expense accounts

Which of course means that eventually the customers – public – then pay for them.
I have never go the whole ‘business expenses, just whack em up high as it does not matter’ theory…

Its just HS2 is the wrong project.

If you’re looking at it from the point of view of benefiting the public. If however you’re trying to think of projects which will cost as much money as possible to prop up an industrial sector then HS2 and Crossrail are perfect as they’re very complex projects to design. The northern links of HS2 have already done their job in propping up the engineering sector for a few years. If the construction sector was completely on its arse you can bet they’d probably still be going ahead.

I work as a technical sales engineer for a company that manufactures & suppliers major components into the rail industry.
We have declined to quote for any of our products that could utilised on the HS2 project. Why? The technical and maintenance requirements are impossible for us to achieve at the pricing level they are expecting.
I suspect it is the same for many other of the major component suppliers. Therefore without suitable competition of multiple bidders, HS2 will be paying a higher price than they would otherwise like to.

This along with the cost increases we’ve all seen since COVID it’s not surprising the cost are escalating.

Shorter version of my post..

“The jobs ****ed “

It’s obscene that this vast quantity of taxpayers money is being poured into the bottomless pit of HS2, for the benefit of who exactly?

All while the transport infrastructure in other parts of the country is literally falling apart for lack of investment

binners +1

It seems that the driving force here is SE/London benefit AND a metric shed load of money going to private business – to who’s benefit?

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’;”>Who on earth do you think HS2 is being built for? Ticket prices will be far beyond the reach of most people. They’ll be paid for on corporate expense accounts.</span>

They’re not the rich people he’s talking about, they’re just ‘middle managers’.

Note how Sunak travels.

Example – there’s a helicopter that comes over me often, bloke flying from his estate nearby to run his businesses in the South East – these are the people that oldmanmtb2 is referring to.

It’s not just the cost, it’s the thousands of trees that have been cut down that I’m most annoyed about.

for the benefit of who exactly?

I’ve just told you who is benefiting. The question is do we or do we not want a functioning engineering industry in this country? I’d think most people would answer yes to that question as engineering is a strategic industry which no developed country can do without. That being the case we need projects for that industry to work on. You can debate which projects and how the money is allocated but there’s not a lot of other stuff we can do that’s on the scale of HS2 and Crossrail.

It’s not just the cost, it’s the thousands of trees that have been cut down that I’m most annoyed about.

I hate the destruction as much as anyone but it’s a small % of the trees cut down every year for yet more vast swathes of road building, most of which goes unremarked. It’s really only on the very major projects that Swampy types get involved but there’s millions of trees being trashed for roads every year, far more than HS2 is ever going to manage. Plus that actually has a reasonable replanting/rewinding contract too.

The bulk of tree destruction isn’t for the railway, it’s for the access roads to get machinery into where the line is being built. Once it’s built, the road can be removed.

A few years ago there was some substantial work done on a local canal and the nearby park got ripped to shreds to bring in and store machinery. It’s all grass and trees again now.

You can debate which projects and how the money is allocated

That’s exactly what we’re doing.

There are many more engineering projects that would be massively more beneficial for many, many more people and benefit the country far more than the white elephant that is HS2, especially in its present virtually pointless form.

I know what you’re saying about retaining skills. My dad was an engineer who worked in the nuclear industry. When the government broke it all up and sold it off, decades ago, he said it was complete insanity as we’d have to build more nuclear power plants soon and once that skill set was gone we’d have to get somebody else to come in to do it for us. They’d have us over a barrel at that point, financially, obviously. He was bang on.

You can make the case for retaining a large engineering base without HS2 and it seems to me that as it’s constantly watered down, that case looks increasingly desperate

There are many more engineering projects that would be massively more beneficial for many, many more people and benefit the country far more than the white elephant that is HS2

Which ones? HS2 is costing >100bn, crossrail cost 20bn. Hinkley Point 40bn. The only other projects I can think of that cost that much are things like tidal barrages and other nuclear power stations. Maybe we need a space programme?

The mega firms like Balfour are essentially arms length government bodies in the UK. We either employ people directly to deliver these projects or contractors do it on our behalf.

I work on a £1b infrastructure project, the costs are spiralling, but they’re against a completely unrealistic baseline. In order to get the project off the ground you need the right benefit cost ratio to get treasury sign off for your Strategic Outline Case. So, you work it out and put that number in. It bears minimal relationship to the out-turn but if you plug that figure into the calculator you can’t submit the business case. 🤷‍♂️

It’s not simply ‘trees’. They’re just plants right? Easily replaced. Just stick a shit load in the ground somewhere else, stick a bit of placcy tube around them and let them get on with it right?

HS2 has destroyed countless HABITATS of which we have ever fewer steadily decreasing Islands of that can support a diverse and healthy animal population.

Pretty much all of the discussion in this thread is economic-based. It’s a good indication of the short-sighted way of the world unfortunately and how HS2 is largely viewed.

Oh well. 😐

I can think of that cost that much are things like tidal barrages and other nuclear power stations

Then you’ve just answered your own question. I’ll throw in more wind and solar projects and all the rail projects linking the northern cities that have been shelved to pay for HS2

<span style>Which ones?</span>

I’d start with connecting up the Northern cities of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, etc with comparable infrastructure as London.

It would benefit more people, be of sufficient scale as the other projects mentioned in terms of job creation and technical advancement.

all the rail projects linking the northern cities that have been shelved to pay for HS2

Have they though? More likely they’ve been shelved because there aren’t enough engineers to do the work. I remember talking to one of our railway engineering directors a few years ago and he told me that even without HS2, there wasn’t enough engineers in the country to do all the work that Network Rail were planning. As with a lot of things the limitation isn’t money, it’s skills and resources. And you can’t just import skills and labour, because other countries have exactly the same problem. The bias towards HS2 is a result of decisions made 20 years ago. I’m not a big fan of it either but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend billions on designing something and then not building it because of unnecessary concerns about cost.

If that’s the case, that it’s the skills that are in short supply, then a huge white elephant like HS2 makes even less sense

Put your finite resources to work on smaller projects that return higher benefits for more people

If you were truly linking the northern cities and London then fine, but absolutely everyone has known for years that that’s total bollocks

They’re building a commuter line from the midlands to somewhere near London. At what cost? 120 billion? 150 billion? More….?

It’s a complete farce and they should either commit to it all or scrap the whole thing

Put your finite resources to work on smaller projects that return higher benefits for more people

Smaller projects don’t really work though. The govt wants the security of large very well resourced companies doing the work, and the companies want the security of knowing they won’t make a loss which big very well funded projects provide. Even just for early stage engineering consultancy the projects run into hundreds of millions (see below). Spending the same money on lots of smaller projects just doesn’t work because the big suppliers aren’t interested in them. In fact they’d run the risk of costing more because suppliers would want a higher profit margin to mitigate the extra risk.

HS2’s Phase 2 civils design costs soar to over £500M

Smaller projects don’t really work though

And would you say this enormous project is ‘working’ at the moment?

It’s an absolute car crash! A total unmitigated disaster by any metric you choose to judge it by, other than dividends for large corporate shareholders (and probably Tory donors)

Tell you what mate… for an anarcho-communist you don’t half mount a good defence of the taxpayer-funded, corporate-welfare status quo 😂

HS2 has destroyed countless HABITATS of which we have ever fewer steadily decreasing Islands of that can support a diverse and healthy animal population.

Quite right – you can’t just replace a 100 year old tree with a small sapling. The whole thing is a massive screw up.

This report was written by a friend of mine – rather surprisingly – HS2 folks got their calculations wrong for this too…

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/news/new-report-hs2-got-it-wrong

There are many more engineering projects that would be massively more beneficial for many, many more people and benefit the country far more than the white elephant that is HS2, especially in its present virtually pointless form.

Such as?

Genuine question – you appear to be stating it as a True Fact so – aspects of the financing aside and the fact that the money is ringfenced for HS2 and can’t just be diverted to NHS etc – what other engineering projects?

That’s not meant as snarky, I’m genuinely interested in your take on it.

I’ll add that I agree with you wholeheartedly about the cuts actually representing far less value for money and benefits – build it properly or not at all, don’t screw around with half doing this and a quarter doing that and then wondering why they’ll spend the next 100 years trying to fix it all. So yes, I agree with you there that the more they cut back on it, the more pointless the whole thing becomes.

what other engineering projects?

The public transport infrastructure in the north of England, particularly the railways, is a total and utter shambles! It’s old Victorian infrastructure that is literally falling apart. You’d have to be out of your mind to rely on it to get you to work and back every day. Everyone knows this. You’d have to experience it yourself to realise just how bad it is

The East West routes from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield are an absolute joke! They simply don’t function as a way to get from A to B.

This is why it grates so much to see a limitless amount of money thrown at yet another London-centric project while we once again watch absolutely zero investment for anything in the north

The upgrade and improvement of this crumbling mess has been promised since 2010 with George Osbournes Northern Powerhouse bullshit. Absolutely nothing has actually been done

As Andy Burnham so elequntly put it yesterday after the latest slap in the face: “levelling up? My arse!”

I’d start with connecting up the Northern cities of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, etc with comparable infrastructure as London.

It even has had a name / brand but then we all realised it was nothing more than that…

HS2 has destroyed countless HABITATS of which we have ever fewer steadily decreasing Islands of that can support a diverse and healthy animal population.

Tbh, this isnt really an argument against HS2, its an argument against any infrastructure development that doesnt rebuild on exactly the same footprint. 100 small scales projects vs 1 project 100 times the size can have exactly the same impact on habitats. Youd just find it harder to focus on.

Smaller projects don’t really work though

Can we not retain our engineering sector and develop a fairer, more sustainable nation without having to have the biggest engineering projects? Those projects seem to exist to support the big/mega businesses at the top of the tree – and it seems almost a blackmail to suggest that smaller projects or less money will lead to a disaster.

and binners +1 again.

And would you say this enormous project is ‘working’ at the moment?

From the point of view of engineering companies trying to keep people in jobs it’s extremely successful. 😕

I don’t know about you, but given the choice between a white elephant train line and tens of thousands of redundant engineers and consultants I’d choose the former.

But that isn’t the choice, and never has been.

Sat on HS1 doing 180mph as I type, it feels hard to argue against extending this to the rest of the country. I do mean the rest of the country though not just Birmingham. For me, we should be doing both HS2 and the east west northern stuff. Why does it have to be either / or? I guess that ignores the lack of engineering resource, but better infrastructure is an investment not a cost

I don’t know about you, but given the choice between a white elephant train line and tens of thousands of redundant engineers and consultants I’d choose the former.

Or perhaps having a not a white elephant northern English rail system.  Imagine leeds to liverpool in a modern fast train with connections to all other big northertn cities

I don’t know about you, but given the choice between a white elephant train line and tens of thousands of redundant engineers and consultants I’d choose the former.

That is not the choice though.
What you seem to suggest is that the survival of the mega companies is the only way these skilled people can be employed?

Or perhaps having a not a white elephant northern English rail system. Imagine leeds to liverpool in a modern fast train with connections to all other big northertn cities

Imagine Scotland not using 40 year old InterCity 125’s…

Scotland and everyone else!

I don’t know about you, but given the choice between a white elephant train line and tens of thousands of redundant engineers and consultants I’d choose the former.

And how do you feel about that exact same theory being used to justify the billions spent on nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers?

There’s nothing to stop (in theory) there being a high speed line Glasgow<–>Edinburgh, or any other major cities.

What we need is a cohesive national public transport plan, well executed.

You want high speed rail as part of that.

This is why it grates so much to see a limitless amount of money thrown at yet another London-centric project while we once again watch absolutely zero investment for anything in the north

You do realise they’re spending billions on the Transpenning Route Upgrade between Manchester and Leeds? They’re building it now. Almost our entire rail department in our Manchester and Leeds offices of around a 100 engineers have been working on it for years. It’s not enough I agree but it’s very far from zero.

And how do you feel about that exact same theory being used to justify the billions spent on nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers?

I couldn’t really care less TBH. I’m much more offended by money being spent on new fossil fuel projects and roads. It’s quite a jump though to compare a railway (as imperfect as it is) and an aircraft carrier.