HS2 under review

[rockershovel]

The present government is nothing if not populist, and HS2 is hardly popular. Most of my acquaintances in the construction sector would rather see it cancelled and the money spent on other things, of only so that they would have a better chance of seeing some of it. Its popularity on the wider stage is hardly proverbial, either. 

Edited August 21, 2019 by rockershovel

[luckymucklebackit]

Assuming it is cancelled completely, would the current urban clearance around Euston be turned over to Network rail to expand the "traditional" network or sold back to the highest bidder for property development.  The more I typed this question the more the answer became obvious!

 

[caradoc]

Here we go again......Channel Tunnel 1975, HS2 2020.

 

Maybe the Review will included an assessment of the alternative to HS2, ie the cost and disruption likely from (somehow) upgrading existing routes to provide the same increase in capacity ?

[caradoc]

32 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

For a look back at the UK's appalling management of its transport industry, I suggest reading "What we have lost - The dismantling of Great Britain" by James Hamilton-Paterson. 

 

The Cross Rail saga, HS2, etc. are just more examples of a national inability to correctly identify, manage and finance major projects of omicron importance.

 

At least we are not alone in that; Check out Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

 

[phil-b259]

23 minutes ago, caradoc said:

Maybe the Review will included an assessment of the alternative to HS2, ie the cost and disruption likely from (somehow) upgrading existing routes to provide the same increase in capacity ?

 

And that is precisely why HS2 came into being in the first place!

 

There is plenty of scope for trimming costs - getting rid of / shortening some of the tunnels put in place as 'populist' measure to  pacify the NIMBYs of the Chilterns could generate big savings for starters.

 

Another obvious cost saving is to trim the the top speed back to 200mph - although such a change would make no difference to the routing it would allow slightly smaller tunnel bores and slightly cheaper OLE.

 

More radical ideas such a stopping construction at Old Oak or ditching phase 2 would be a classic case of making short term savings that end up costing you double when you finally have to face up to the inevitable need to compete the project properly (particularly if that means you have sold off the land previously acquired as the UK Government usually does).

Edited August 21, 2019 by phil-b259

[pete_mcfarlane]

13 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

At least we are not alone in that; Check out Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

 

Which is an order of magnitude worse than any of the problems with UK infrastructure projects.

 

Heathrow Terminal 5 was deemed to be some kind of national humiliation by our media when the baggage system had a few wobbles for a day or two after it opened. The Germans built an airport that can't open because it's fundamentally unsafe. 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

The present government is nothing if not populist, and HS2 is hardly popular.

Depends where you live.

London/Chilterns unpopular.

Midlands/North popular.

Hence a review to pacify those in the SE who think the UK/civilisation stops at Watford.

The rest can just go hang. (or return to running around in furs and daubing themselves with woad.)

If it gets cancelled (and I note the review has been put back until after Brexit, which the midlands and north voted for) the government won't have many friends in the midlands and north

 

I vote that if it gets cancelled the money should be spent on putting an extra pair of tracks alongside the current WCML, not in tunnel, so those in the SE can really see what disruption that could bring, complete with the demolition of thousands of houses to make room for it.

 

Apparently £9billion has already been spent and there is already a large workforce constructing it.

Edited August 21, 2019 by melmerby

[Jol Wilkinson]

48 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Which is an order of magnitude worse than any of the problems with UK infrastructure projects.

 

Heathrow Terminal 5 was deemed to be some kind of national humiliation by our media when the baggage system had a few wobbles for a day or two after it opened. The Germans built an airport that can't open because it's fundamentally unsafe. 

Quite probably, but that doesn't mask the fact that many major projects in the UK have been badly planned and managed, failing to provide sufficient capacity in a timely fashion. UK governments have frequently spent millions coming up with new schemes, then having commissions, reviews, studies, white papers, etc. and often end up doing nothing. The latest HS2 "review" is yet another example.

[lmsforever]

About time there are far more important projects that need attention  and also there should be an inquiry into the new Oxford Cambridge road and also why the railway was descoped to not include electrification .

[Phil Parker]

10 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

About time there are far more important projects that need attention  and also there should be an inquiry into the new Oxford Cambridge road and also why the railway was descoped to not include electrification .

 

You keep banging on about this, but fail to understand that there are far more appealing places to put money than transport and there always will be. No votes are lost from chucking a few billion in the NHS, but there are in trying to tame it's need for cash. There never will be enough money even if you cancel or abandon every other public service in the UK. Electrify a railway of cure cute children? No contest.

 

My feeling is the cancellation will just prove, yet again, that the UK can't do infrastructure and never will again.

[Phil Parker]

16 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Quite probably, but that doesn't mask the fact that many major projects in the UK have been badly planned and managed, failing to provide sufficient capacity in a timely fashion. UK governments have frequently spent millions coming up with new schemes, then having commissions, reviews, studies, white papers, etc. and often end up doing nothing. The latest HS2 "review" is yet another example.

 

Very true. We have another review of moving our local council headquarters from an old building too big for them. I suspect that the architects and consultants simply don't bother to do all the work any more as they know every new proposed project in our town quickly gains an "anti" group who eventually get their way.  There are newspaper reports showing this has been happening for over 100 years and it will carry on.

 

You can't build a project without someone being upset but the media always find them and the government always tries to keep everyone happy. The only way not to upset anyone is to do nothing.

[melmerby]

We now have two HS2 topics discussing exactly the same thing.

 

Time to merge this one with the other? (which has been running much longer)

[woodenhead]

I think part of the issue is that we build HS1 well and then got on with Crossrail thinking if we apply what we did with HS1 all will be good, didn't it have the same leadership even.

 

But Crossrail came apart at the seams towards the end as it became very apparent that it was a long way behind schedule with no hope of recovery into the project plan and needing a lot more money as a result.

 

GWML has been carnage for NR and DFT

 

So what do you do with HS2, a massive scheme who's estimated costs are only spiralling upwards and the really hard engineering hasn't begun yet and you're staring a potential recession and hard Brexit in the coming months which will demand a lot of money.  Well you do a political 'review' of some big scheme and look for an out so you can use that money elsewhere or maybe our cost of borrowing is about to spiral and some in Whitehall know it.

[ess1uk]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49421605

scrapping would be a disaster 

[Phil Parker]

19 minutes ago, melmerby said:

We now have two HS2 topics discussing exactly the same thing.

 

Time to merge this one with the other? (which has been running much longer)

 

Topics merged.

[rockershovel]

I would have thought that the time for any sort of “review” of HS2 was long since past. Surely we should know what we intend, before commencing? 

[Fenman]

On 05/08/2019 at 09:55, rockershovel said:

...

One instructive element is the devolution of England into autonomous “regions” which have not existed in a thousand years, or never existed at all; you might wonder why Blair was so keen on this, leading to the Regional Referenda of 2004, in which the proposal was heavily defeated but simply morphed into a variety of proposals for elected Mayors etc. 

...

 

The regionalisation policy was an absolutely typical UK government cock-up. Every EU country was entitled to decide for itself how to divide itself into "regions"; the UK government could have decided, for example, there would be 4 UK regions - England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Or it could have said every single county or metropolitan area constituted a "region" for the purposes of the EU (surely you can't object to those administrative units - many of them have been around for more than a thousand years?). Or it could have decided every parish was a region. It was entirely up to us.

 

So the UK government in its infinite wisdom decided it would put forward the boundaries of its own regional offices as the official "regions" of the UK. Their "logic" was that those evil UK local governments wouldn't then be able to develop a direct relationship with the EU, which might have shut out Whitehall.

 

As you wrote, these English "regions" had no existence in the public's minds, but they also had a massive disadvantage: being a relatively rich country, large regions mean that the average income per region is high - so the impoverished communities of Cornwall were swamped by the rich dwellers of Bristol. Poor Liverpudlians were counter-balanced by rich Cheshire cheeses. Which meant that not one single English region then qualified for the EU's regional aid money. We had deliberately cut ourselves off from receiving any regional funds.

 

We then whined about that over many years, until the EU in despair let us set up sub-regions (like Cornwall and Liverpool...), which then became eligible for funding. And which benefitted massively.

 

It's a typical story: the UK government behaves idiotically, usually only bothering to look at its domestic audience, and then blames everything on "Europe". The idea that those ludicrous English regions were part of an EU ideologically-driven federalist agenda is a complete fantasy.

 

Paul

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, ess1uk said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49421605

scrapping would be a disaster 

 

Oh no, one farmer is all in favour of scrapping it, so that's it then.

[Re6/6]

Heaven help us all.... that uninformed twerp Joe Rukin (Stop HST) has crawled out from under his stone and has been spouting off his usual claptrap.

[Dava]

BBC reports that 50% of Tory party members favourite cancelling HS2. No wonder, actuarially many of them will be dead before it opens, given their average age. That is fact, not bad taste. 

 

It makes no sense to develop the fast Transpennine link without building HS2 to connect North & Midlands to London. The capacity is needed but there has to be scope for both better project management and cost-effectiveness.

 

The big question is whether the UK economy can afford it, or afford not to build it.

 

Dava

[TheQ]

1 hour ago, Fenman said:

 

The regionalisation policy was an absolutely typical UK government cock-up. Every EU country was entitled to decide for itself how to divide itself into "regions"; the UK government could have decided, for example, there would be 4 UK regions - England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Or it could have said every single county or metropolitan area constituted a "region" for the purposes of the EU (surely you can't object to those administrative units - many of them have been around for more than a thousand years?). Or it could have decided every parish was a region. It was entirely up to us.

 

 

 

Paul

The English and come that Welsh and Scottish counties are not the same as they once were.  200years ago you could find a bit of Wiltshire near Windsor,  and the same for other counties.  They weren't a solid unit.  The core is in the same place,  but other bits would depend on what bit of land a king gave to some lord..

Even in my life time borders have been moved.. Rutland disappeared then reappeared.. 

[Kris]

If canceled I wonder howling the newly announced West Coast Franchise will last. I suspect a lot of the viability of the bid will have been based on the completion of and integration of HS2 into the franchise. 

[locoholic]

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

You keep banging on about this, but fail to understand that there are far more appealing places to put money than transport and there always will be. No votes are lost from chucking a few billion in the NHS, but there are in trying to tame it's need for cash. There never will be enough money even if you cancel or abandon every other public service in the UK. Electrify a railway of cure cute children? No contest.

 

My feeling is the cancellation will just prove, yet again, that the UK can't do infrastructure and never will again.

Your comment explains clearly why HS2 should be cancelled. It is public money, and therefore should be spent in a way that appeals to the people who paid the tax in the first place.

 

HS2 does not "appeal" to private investors because they would lose their shirts if they invested in it. Why should taxpayers lose their shirts instead? 

[melmerby]

11 minutes ago, locoholic said:

Your comment explains clearly why HS2 should be cancelled. It is public money, and therefore should be spent in a way that appeals to the people who paid the tax in the first place.

 

 

I pay tax, therefore I say it should be built.

There, are you happy now?

[Phil Parker]

24 minutes ago, locoholic said:

Your comment explains clearly why HS2 should be cancelled. It is public money, and therefore should be spent in a way that appeals to the people who paid the tax in the first place.

 

HS2 does not "appeal" to private investors because they would lose their shirts if they invested in it. Why should taxpayers lose their shirts instead? 

 

Fair enough. So we won't be building any roads either (there are always protests), power stations (the same) or any infrastructure at all.

Some people don't think we should fund the Police. Others that the NHS is inefficient and shouldn't get any more money. I'm no fan of wars, so we can scrap all those battleships, tanks and expensive aircraft.

 

Taxpayers pay for stuff the private sector won't (police, fire, members of parliament, armies etc.), but is important to the country. It's why these things are called public services.