HS2 spiralling costs

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

Genuine question that might be a bit too niche, any Railway nerds here know what % of lines currently in use were built by the state vs private companies? In my head most lines were put down by business before WW1, but i dont genuinely know, nor do I know what level of state involvement that entailed.

A mate of mine lives on the famous housing estate at Mexborough which the engineers plonked the route through thinking it was empty because they were using eight year old maps. As owner occupiers they are still blighted as the planning proposals for the Leeds leg haven’t been withdrawn. Many if not most on the estate sold up to HS2, and some of these are empty but most on what were presumably short term lets which have turned into longer term ones. Original owners who sold up haven’t been given any option to return. A mile or two north, a lovely little country park owned by the council is completely overgrown as it was effectively abandoned once the plans were published. Shambles might be forgivable, but HS2s treatment of the locals is worse than just incompetent, it’s despicable.

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

You’d be completely mad to do it, though. There’s nothing to stop there being a high speed line between my front door and the pub, too.

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

On the same principle, and given your assertion that small projects don’t work, maybe we could think big and resurrect Boris Johnson’s idea of a tunnel under the Irish Sea or a bridge from Scotland to Ireland?

Maybe we could build an escalator to the moon?

This is the kind of blue sky ‘Global Britain’ thinking this country needs right now to showcase our engineering prowess!

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,

Well, it kind of is because of how pointless it all is.

What I’ve seen in my own area of Warwickshire, is HS2 coming in and just indiscriminately obliterating/clearcutting everything in any area that they’ve compulsory purchased at the start.

A couple/few years down the line, it’s now blatantly obvious that an enormous amount of this destruction was completely unnecessary.

It’s been done completely without care and sympathy.

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

There is a 100 mph line that does the journey in 45 mins.  Its a new service and a very good one.  Northern England would love something like that

<span>Genuine question that might be a bit too niche, any Railway nerds here know what % of lines currently in use were built by the state vs private companies? In my head most lines were put down by business before WW1, but i dont genuinely know, nor do I know what level of state involvement that entailed.</span>

Yes, the vast majority of lines were built by the Victorians.The Great Central was the last of the Main Lines built, finished in 1899 iirc.There have been some new lines built in the past 30 years, mostly shorter one, HS1 is the largest, lots of new diversion and bypass routes. and quite a lot of lines reopened after shutting in the 60’s.

What isnt mentioned much, even with covid reducing weekday traffic, there are still too many trains running on the southern mainlines, so extra traffic cannot be put on to reduce crowding on trains, and, importantly, allow more freight to use the rails. The West Coast Mainline is rammed between Rugby and Euston. There is just not enough capacity to add many more trains. HS2 will take away the express trains from that route, allowing up to ten more trains per hour on that busy ‘old’ section.

There are so many bottlenecks on the present system that it would take billions to sort them, but it would be money well spent. The usual example is the container port in Felixstowe. There are 4 sections to Birmingham where the line is single line. Freight trains can be held for hours waiting to get out. These are a perfect, easy, thing to sort, but it isnt on anyones priority list. Doing that would relieve pressure on the West Coast line from Euston, as, currently, many trains from Felixstowe go via London, rather than going direct across Country from Felixstowe to Birmingham. And another comical thing, some freight routes are electrified all the way, from loading point to loading point. GBRF, a large provider of freight services, is selling its electric locos, as the electric is costing too much to run them, so they are using diesel trains all the way. the whole railway system is messed up, and needs a good shake up, but, the Government (who run almost all rail services via the DfT) are totally useless at having a coordinated plan, so they just plod on, making the taxpayer foot the enormous bill.

Most railway lines (and stations) were originally built by private companies, in the mid 1800’s. However, everyone used different widths, so it was a nightmare until they were standardised. Obviously, none of the original track exists (due to wear n tear), but most routes (maybe over 90%?) follow their original course.

In the last few years, there have been very few ‘new’ routes. HS2, Crossrail and one between Oxford and Cambridge, that’s about it…

Key projects

Instead of asking WHY all the time, ask why not?

When all the ill informed eeeejits spout ‘cancel it’ (usually after reading the Daily Heil, The Scum, or the Express) I thank goodness the Victorians were not so short sighted and parochial.  Otherwise we’d all still be dieing  from disentry and rickets, with an average life expectancy of 37,  trying to milk the 2nd best pig for sustenance, and certainly wouldn’t have indoor electricity.

Part of the reason it’s so expensive is because of the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions spent on legal cases to address all the whining nimby and not-even-nimby legal.cases brought, public enquiries, dicking about, repeated delay (because NOTHING gets.cheaprr by delaying it).  Also see the thread on why we’re rapidly becoming a 3rd world nation.  FFS even Turkey has 5 times the high speed rail track than we do.

<span>one between Oxford and Cambridge</span>

Haha. You think that will get finished? Very little chance. The section from Oxford to Bletchley is about finished, I think that how far it’ll be going. The line from Bletchley to Bedford has been shut for the last 6 months+ as thye havent got any trains to run on that line. Its a farce.

Then there are problems in siting it around Bedford, it will be almost all new line between there and Cambridge, with lots of complaining people that the railway is going to be near their house.

And its another stupid project that has cut corners. Surely any railway today should be electrified. This one isnt. It would have been so easy to dig out and fit the footings for the electric masts as they were preparing the new line,just doingnthat makes it so much easier to fit the masts later on, but no, that would cost too much. So now it will cost 3 or 4 times as much to fit the masts when it is eventually electrified in 20 years time.

FFS even Turkey has 5 times the high speed rail track than we do.

Certainly no worries about property rights or human rights when Daddy Erdoğan gets an idea into his head…

When I’m the benevolent dictator, getting infrastructure in place will be my first priority 😉

The most effective and efficient rail building programme ever was when some bloke with a dodgy tach needed to move large numbers of a certain people from all over Europe to their new homes he’d built for them, some time in the early 40’s

He never bothered with any namby-pamby nimby bullshit and neither should we

Apparently the trains ran on time too, so win/win

#godwinslaw

If you want to see the full extent of the railways we’ve lost open up the Nation Library of Scotland’s georeferenced maps and scroll around the 1913 or 1914 maps. Lines everywhere.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5.0&lat=56.00000&lon=-4.00000&layers=1&b=1

Railmap online also shows the companies and lines, overlaid with their modern counterparts

https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php

Part of the reason it’s so expensive is because of the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions spent on legal cases to address all the whining nimby and not-even-nimby legal.cases

An oft-touted trope by the people trying to make a case for it. A red herring and insignificant in the grand scheme.

Damaging and pointless schemes need to be opposed otherwise can you imagine the shit that would happen in the world because of greedy, self-serving mentalists?

You can’t compare it with Victorian schemes. There’s huge scope to improve and modernise what we have already without pretending we need what other, bigger countries have.

Damaging and pointless schemes

Different people seem to pick up different things here, but the main point Ive always got from HS2 is that it adds capacity by creating new lines that happen to be high speed lines, which obviously it will do where actually built. Freeing up space on the existing mainlines. And doing so for the next 100+ years.

You can’t compare it with Victorian schemes

Tbh, my main interest when comparing isnt really strictly Victorian vs Modern Day. Its whether the assumption that state vs independent development has a best option. There are clearly examples of major developments of national infrastructure being built by businesses and viewed as successful,  and there are also clear and very VERY relevant examples of businesses providing garbage services. What are the elements that lead to one scenario viewed as success, and the other failure. E.g. the post war nationalised railways ive read as being badly funded leading to under investment with long term implications.

And just so no one decides to make assumptions, given the money invested in HS2 and told to make some choices. Id be trying to improve the capacity, reach and quality of relatively local day trip services AND reducing the cost of those services to the point people start opting for public (not just rail) transport over cars. Literally zero evidence thats the right choice admittedly. And I dont mean a list of failures, I mean why did those failures seemingly occur in one, but not another.

Is HS2 purely for passenger trains or freight as well? It would be great to see roll-on roll off channel tunnel type trains running the length of the country carrying freight. The amount of trucks on the roads at three moment is staggering.

Our local MP in Shrewsbury lobbied for a direct train from Shrewsbury to London, which last time I looked was over £360 to get into Euston pre 9am. It was better to leave at 5:30am, drive to Tamworth, park up at their station, grab a bacon butty and coffee and hop on the Tamworth to Euston train which was less than £40 return.

How much would the infrastructure cost if it weren’t high speed? I assume that there’s an additional cost for those 20minutes.

Possibly, but why would you build low speed rail if your intention is to increase the amount of high speed rail and you’re going to be duplicating the existing track?

This is just recycling the specious “eeh, it’s just so Londoners can get somewhere 19 minutes quicker” nonsense that idiots have been trotting out since the beginning of HS2.

Not really surely if you can build a whole line even with fewer stops then that removes the traffic as well, especially if you can take it to where it needs to go.
HS is a vanity project if normal is nearly as good but much more achievable.

Its whether the assumption that state vs independent development has a best option.

I don’t know any of the numbers, but even the “private” rail development had massive state support. The money (and any profit) may have been private, but from the Victorian construction ton CTRL and Eurostar, nothing could have happened without sponsoring acts of Parliament, local government support, the state allowing access to state-owned infrastructure, the use of compulsory acquisition powers etc. And on the other side the state has always used private sector contractors, even when BRB was at its height.

Not really surely if you can build a whole line even with fewer stops then that removes the traffic as well, especially if you can take it to where it needs to go.

I don’t really understand what you’ve written here but probably it relates to some kind of misunderstanding. There are already express and stopping and freight services running on this line (and most other main lines, I’d imagine). HS2 adds capacity for all types of traffic, and then allocates one of the tracks to express services.

You wouldn’t build an A road directly parallel to an existing A road if the existing road were congested and you wanted to induce more road traffic. You might build a motorway though.

Ah, go on, I’ll make my one and only contribution to this thread.  All this talk of capacity, freeing up space….a lot of this space is or was (if not for short sightedness) readily available on existing lines. The Midland Mainline is a case in point. The majority is four tracked and where it isn’t  (Leics to Kettering for example) there is a “diversionary route” (vis Corby) available until it picks back up to four tack again.  Also, where it isn’t four tracked you can see that it used to be and it would take far less work to make four track again.  Despite a recent re-signalling programme there is also a lot of 3 aspect signalling on that route which I will adress in a bit but having 1 mile plus between signals is a bummer for any kind of capacity.  Other places like on the East Coast Mainline have 2 track sections where you are screwed but only for short distances and those sections are rarely interfered with by freight trains, at least during the day, again, other routes are available (Donny to P’boro for example takes the long way round via Lincoln on other quieter lines avoiding the unavoidably 2 track areas around Grantham, Newark and suchlike).  The West coast Mainline is busy and the two track sections between Coventry and Wolverhampton are a bottleneck due to the suburban services sharing the track. The four track sections are extremely busy but the express services get a pretty good run of the green over there, a lot of the issues are caused in other areas that HS2 won’t be touching.

One area where capacity can be massively improved is the move to in cab signalling. Four aspect signalling its showing its limits in places, 3 aspect is a total anachronism on a high speed line amd the move to in cab signalling, whilst not a miracle cure to all the capacity ails will provide a much needed boost to capacity, especially if it was combined with some joined up thinking  and the reinstatement of the old four track layouts.  In cab signalling will come, it’s here already on some routes (Cambrian) and will benefit the entire network.   I’ve said from rhe start it is an unnecessary white elelephant that will fail.  The rail industry and unions are all for it because jobs and work.  Of course they are but they also want what I’ve stated above.  There isn’t the money for both so so many lines that desperately need the upgrading will still be waiting after the dust settles on HS2 one way or the other.  All this talk of how HS2 will benefit the country, it won’t benefit the average person anywhere near as much as those in and around Government and Hs2 itself.

Amyway, that’s my tuppence (bit more than that, I do drone on) worth and I’ll bow out now on that note.

Apparently Sunak is not keen on HS2 even making it to Euston. He wants it to stop six miles short. That will be a flagship piece of infrastructure. Birmingham to Old Oak Common in record time, Old Oak Common to central London…not quite so quick.

To answwer a couple of questions from the closed thread

Yes Dazh — we need infrastructure projects to retain engineering knowledge.  Its just this money could have been spent on various projects that would have been of more benefit to more people rather than this white elephant thats will have minimal benefits if any.  Its not just london that needs infrastucture!

Why is it a transfer of money from rich to poor?  Its because this is huge sums of government spendi9ng that could have been spent on things that actually benefit the masses – not a glorified commuter line

Its just this money could have been spent on various projects that would have been of more benefit to more people

I already addressed this earlier in this thread. If your goal as a govt is to ensure that this country has a functioning/thriving engineering and construction sector, which I think we can all agree that’s the case (despite the tories economic vandalism), then no other projects provide the scale or the security than stuff like HS2. I asked earlier what else could we do on this scale to keep an entire industry afloat? We need a steady stream of these projects like we’ve had in the past such as The M25, channel tunnel, sizewell, HS1, west coast mainline, multiple motorway projects, Crossrail, the London Olympics, and now HS2.

In future we’ll have HS3/4, Crossrail 2, more nuclear power projects, tidal barrages and all the wind and solar we can imagine. These all have functional benefits and all have their problems and will be destructive and wasteful in their own way, but they will be required because if we stop building, we stop progressing. Industries will die, the economy will die, the country will decay and we’ll end up as a proper 3rd world country rather than a fantasy one as discussed in the other thread.

Part of the reasons for cost is the insurance aspect of it.

The design specifies a certain maximum amount of movement permitted in a certain time. So many millimetres in 30 years for example. If it moves more than that, the constructors have to put it right.

So it’s insured to the hilt. Gold plated, diamond encrusted insurance because if it’s called upon, it’ll be a fortune.

Legal wrangling and addressing the NIMBY stuff is definitely one aspect.

Cost of land was another big one but the current main one is the constant bloody re-scoping, re-planning, contract changes, design changes, timeframe changes. No-one can plan anything so the uncertainty ratchets the costs up again.

Everyone in Government involved with this needs to be shot. Should have been given to the Chinese or Japanese. It’d have been running at a profit for 10 years by this point!

I already addressed this earlier in this thread. If your goal as a govt is to ensure that this country has a functioning/thriving engineering and construction sector, which I think we can all agree that’s the case (despite the tories economic vandalism), then no other projects provide the scale or the security than stuff like HS2. I asked earlier what else could we do on this scale to keep an entire industry afloat? We need a steady stream of these projects like we’ve had in the past such as The M25, channel tunnel, sizewell, HS1, west coast mainline, multiple motorway projects, Crossrail, the London Olympics, and now HS2.

What utter nonsense.  Do you really believe that that could not have been acheived with other projects?  How about 100mph transpennine trains?  Leeds to liverpool or even hull to liverpool.  How about dualling the a9, how about duallines on the highland lines? etc etc etc.  there are many possible large infrastructure projects that would deliver more for the economy tyhat this white elephant will ever do

heck even 20th centrury trains in northern england would be a huge upgrade

its complete nonsense and you know it – and how many of those projects you list are alllondon based

Open your eyes man.  If the aim is to retain engineers then northern rail could have been a great project that would have beenofmore use tomore people

If your goal as a govt is to ensure that this country has a functioning/thriving engineering and construction sector

Thats your porkbarrel politics rightthere

Apparently Sunak is not keen on HS2 even making it to Euston. He wants it to stop six miles short.

Just like all the wonderful cycling infrastructure we know so well, stopping short of actually being of any use, so all the car driving masses can point and say “all that money spent & nobody uses it” 🙄

Do you really believe that that could not have been acheived with other projects?

We need to do those other projects too. I’m not a particular fan of HS2, but I find it incredible that everyone moans about how we have shit infrastructure and how we’re becoming a ‘3rd world country’ (which is frankly ridiculous). Yet when we try to build something modern, everyone whines and moans about how it’s not what they wanted, or it’s too expensive, too hard or too close to where they live. Stop whining and let the people who’ve actually analysed and assessed this stuff in minute detail do their jobs.

Because its not a suitable project – thats why.  Its far too expensive for so little benefit.  Other projects would achieve your aim of keeping a good civil engineering skillset at lower cost for greater benefit

I really cannot believe you are defending it and so complacent about the neglect of the north

its a huge white elephant that has sucked up funds that could have been more wisely spent elsewhere.  But no – only London gets infrastyructure built

Because its not a suitable project

Says a guy on the internet with a scottish chip on his shoulder. On the other side though are legions of professionals who’ve spent years and millions of pounds researching the economic and technical feasibility of the project who then concluded that it was worth doing. It’s possible that with the benefit of hindsight other projects might have been better, or building it top-down or whatever, but to cancel it halfway through would be mental. I wonder what you would think about it if at the very start they’d said it was going to Glasgow and Edinburgh?

but to cancel it halfway through would be mental.

To cancel half of it, which they’re clearly going to do this week, is even more mental

The whole thing is a total farce. Do it all or scrap the lot! Anything else is utterly pointless

its a huge white elephant that has sucked up funds that could have been more wisely spent elsewhere.

No it isn’t a white elephant for many many reasons.

Also, and this has been mentioned before, the funds aren’t there for “diverting to other causes”. I’m no expert on the economy and how money works at this sort of level but funds get “created” and ringfenced for specific things. You can’t then decide that the money is better off being spent on the NHS or roads or other railways, it’s not a household budget.

I work in Transport now and I’ve got God only knows how many grants and capital funds in front of me. If they’re not used for their intended purpose, they disappear. I can’t reallocate them anywhere else, I can’t pay for X with the budget for Y and I can’t decide to bin it all off and spend it on social care.

I wonder what you would think about it if at the very start they’d said it was going to Glasgow and Edinburgh?

Meh

It would be nice but we have fast modern trains (ish)  Its northern england that gets short changed especially east west.

Do you really think this was done on need?  Or for political reasons .  the  same money spent on northern rail would have benefited far more folk

BTW – thats highly offensive to suggest my issues with this are parochial.  Its obvious that this project is the wrong use of money inthe wrong place

the same money spent on northern rail would have benefited far more folk

Not really. The disruption to upgrade railways (any line really, it’s not location specific) would involve 30+ years of closures every single weekend to add some tiny extra capacity by which point everyone would have got hacked off with it never delivering and gone to buses or cars.

You can’t get the extra capacity needed by tinkering around the edges with a bit of extra line here or a few new trains there.

Do you really think this was done on need?

Define ‘need’. I may be sceptical about it but I’m willing to defer to the industry professionals who have a lifetime of experience and expertise who put massive amounts of effort into figuring out if it was worth doing. Yes politics is a factor, and ultimately if politicians want something to happen and are willing to pay for it then it generally will happen, but not always. These projects take years to get off the ground. Even with political will and a blank cheque it still takes a long time to get it to the point where significant work can be done on the design and build. I suspect at the time the decision was made on HS2 there weren’t many alternatives. These big mega-projects happen in a pipeline rather than in isolation.

The disruption to upgrade railways (any line really, it’s not location specific) would involve 30+ years of closures every single weekend

This. The complexities of upgrading the east-west rail infrastructure are not to be underestimated. Rail engineers have been trying to figure out how to get through the Manchester Oxford Rd bottleneck for years and still haven’t figured it out. Last time I talked to a rail engineer they told me it basically needs a tunnel between Liverpool and Leeds but that would cost 100s of billions so isn’t anywhere near economically feasible.

dazh
Full Member

We need to do those other projects too. I’m not a particular fan of HS2, but I find it incredible that everyone moans about how we have shit infrastructure and how we’re becoming a ‘3rd world country’ (which is frankly ridiculous). Yet when we try to build something modern, everyone whines and moans about how it’s not what they wanted, or it’s too expensive,

You say this like it’s 2 separate options. There was a world where they could have built HS2, or something like it, but just with less ****, therefore delivering something better and cheaper and being able to do more elsewhere. There is a huge amount of space to criticise this project without being anti-infrastructure. Almost every step of it has been half-assed, which is how you arrive at the ludicrous position of having spent so much on a hole in the ground in Euston without even knowing what it is you’re going to build in it. Redesign 3 coming up but they’re already saying “we can redesign it but it doesn’t make any sense if we don’t know what the end job is”. The bill for the most recent postponement of Euston is £200m just to make the site safe. Plus whatever more it costs to reopen it when they finally decide what to do with it… Or decommission it entirely.

I want more and better infrastructure and you get that (in this economic system) by spending wisely and competently, not by clapping loudly while we pour money into holes in the ground while saying “we can’t afford it” to everything else.

Almost every step of it has been half-assed, which is how you arrive at the ludicrous position of having spent so much on a hole in the ground in Euston without even knowing what it is you’re going to build in it.

I don’t disagree. I strongly suspect there are shenanigans when it comes to Euston though. It’s not a coincidence is it that a huge area of prime London real-estate which has already been cleared might be interesting to property developers and others who will be whispering in Sunak’s ear about the money that can be made if they didn’t build a railway station on it.