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HS2 under review


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13 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Don't get me started on Great Crested Newts. I may have to mention the B***** word.

 

They, like badgers, are protected because they are rare in mainland Europe. They are not at all rare here.

 

It's sad to lose any wildlife. But, like listed buildings, we "protect" far more than we need or ought to. Today's BBC report focussed on a bittern. That should not be there at all. It's lost and should be returned to its proper habitat.

 

I am currently in a bizarre position. I want to demolish a small but ugly extension. On any other non-listed building, I could do it without planning consent (less than 50m3). But because pubs are "protected", I have to put in a planning application and that causes a three-month delay in reopening. How does that help to protect the pub?

 

Tough sh1t over your extension demolition - it's the law, if your building is protected. Not all pubs are listed (only 146 as far as I know), so I do not know what you are going on about.

 

Badgers were in severe decline in the UK up until the 1980's, and despite recent increases, they still need protection. It is s0d all to do with EU legislation, which allows each nation to determine its own needs.

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7 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

The rise in pollution is more attributable to the push for diesel and here the government and public deserve equal criticism.  UKG encouraged diesel to, laudably, reduce CO2 emissions but the mathematically-ignorant public bought into the idea of "buy a diesel and save a fortune in fuel costs".  Except that in the overall scheme of things, any reductions in fuel costs are trivial to most drivers, so most were spending a lot of money to potentially save a little.

 

The maths was easy for a company car driver, petrol=high CO2=lots of tax, diesel=low CO2=low tax.

It was a no brainer for company car drivers to switch, and then once all those fleet vehicles hit the secondhand market, Joe Public bought them with the big hit already gone. So they did benefit from the lower fuel costs and VED.

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1 minute ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Tough sh1t over your extension demolition - it's the law, if your building is protected. Not all pubs are listed (only 146 as far as I know), so I do not know what you are going on about.

 

Badgers were in severe decline in the UK up until the 1980's, and despite recent increases, they still need protection. It is s0d all to do with EU legislation, which allows each nation to determine its own needs.

 

Look up the planning law. I got it wrong as well before I checked.

 

It is all pubs (mine is not listed, probably precisely because of that 1950s brick outhouse that we want to demolish) that need consent for any demolition work, the only category of buildings to have this condition.

 

Perhaps, having lived for the last 19 years in Dorset, I see the badger situation differently from you. We have far too many there. They are damaging other wildlife and probably even struggling themselves at such dense population levels. That said, I love watching them. They turn up even in the centre of town.

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5 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Look up the planning law. I got it wrong as well before I checked.

 

It is all pubs (mine is not listed, probably precisely because of that 1950s brick outhouse that we want to demolish) that need consent for any demolition work, the only category of buildings to have this condition.

 

Perhaps, having lived for the last 19 years in Dorset, I see the badger situation differently from you. We have far too many there. They are damaging other wildlife and probably even struggling themselves at such dense population levels. That said, I love watching them. They turn up even in the centre of town.

 

It only changed in 2017, regarding PDR (not listing - you are right about that), but pubs are not the only classification subject to the new conditions.

 

I do not doubt you have local issues regarding badgers, but the recent threat of culling due to potential disease, plus other attempts at reducing local populations, shows that the matter is domestic, and not yet another, entirely mythical Brussels Edict.......

 

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20 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

 

The maths was easy for a company car driver, petrol=high CO2=lots of tax, diesel=low CO2=low tax.

It was a no brainer for company car drivers to switch, and then once all those fleet vehicles hit the secondhand market, Joe Public bought them with the big hit already gone. So they did benefit from the lower fuel costs and VED.

Also, diesel facilitated mahoosive SUVs.  No-one in the UK, except maybe a few earls and lords, runs one of those on petrol.  They do in American or the UAE, where petrol is practically free.

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31 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

 

Duplicate post deleted - come on! What is wrong with this forum?

 

The forum is slow because its full up and has an old operating system. This is a very long train thread. We need a new, High Speed Forum for fast posters and the slow stuff can stay on here.  But Google will have to build a new server farm to host it and there are hedgehogs living in the forest which has to be ripped out to build it. Maybe some of us prepared to pay premium rates will get it around 2030...?

 

:drink_mini:

 

Dava

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12 hours ago, Northmoor said:

 

 

 

Finally, cars are increasing in size but actually fuel consumption is falling.  Vehicles have continued to become more efficient and although we have more vehicles per household, we are actually doing reduced miles in them.  A growing proportion of young people don't own a car and (partly because of cost) aren't learning to drive.  The rise in pollution is more attributable to the push for diesel and here the government and public deserve equal criticism.  UKG encouraged diesel to, laudably, reduce CO2 emissions but the mathematically-ignorant public bought into the idea of "buy a diesel and save a fortune in fuel costs".  Except that in the overall scheme of things, any reductions in fuel costs are trivial to most drivers, so most were spending a lot of money to potentially save a little.

NO That is wrong, overall fuel consumption has gone up in the last few years and has more than counteracted the effect of more efficient engines and is entirely due to people buying bigger and heavier vehicles.

 

 

 

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53 minutes ago, melmerby said:

NO That is wrong, overall fuel consumption has gone up in the last few years and has more than counteracted the effect of more efficient engines and is entirely due to people buying bigger and heavier vehicles.

 

 

 

That would be correct if the statement was referring to individual vehicle consumption (which I believe the poster was), but overall fuel consumption as a global figure is indeed going up.

 

Take your pick ^_^

Edited by boxbrownie
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14 hours ago, royaloak said:

The bottom end of the WCML is full and with more stopping services and more paths for freight needed the easiest way is to build a new line and transfer all the 'fast' trains onto that which will free up many more paths on the WCML for the slower trains, high speed trains absolutely eat paths and getting them off the WCML will free up many many paths for the slower trains.

But that kind of utilisation will only ever be attained if both lines are operated under a unified regime, be it a single franchise or "BR".  Otherwise, the two will compete with one another and the usual area for competition is speed.

 

There's also the issue of serving destinations on WCML that aren't duplicated on HS2. I can't see those customers being exactly chuffed to have their fastest services axed, whatever overall benefit (including more of them getting seats) might ensue.

 

High speed trains don't, of themselves, eat paths; what limits capacity is the speed differential between the slowest and fastest trains, i.e. the latter catch up with the former and also create gaps behind themselves unless followed by their own kind. That's further exacerbated by the fast ones making fewer stops.

 

Provision for faster trains to overtake slower ones restores balance but can never be sufficiently comprehensive to cater for all traffic mixes and the absolute maximum infrastructure utilisation would require all traffic to run at the same speed. Downrating the WCML line speed to (for instance) 100mph would undoubtedly increase the number of trains that could run as would creating faster (say 90mph) freight vehicles.  The difference between those two figures being manageable through the reduced stopping pattern required by freight.

 

No politician, however, will ever face up to that, let alone admit it publicly.   

 

John  

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But the same operator is going to run both the WCML and HS2, so there MIGHT be co-ordination - unless each line has its own MD with a brief to maximise profits!

Which stations on the WCML would lose fast services? Watford, Milton Keynes, Rugby? Coventry (to BNS)? Any others

Jonathan

Edited by corneliuslundie
To add a question
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2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

That would be correct if the statement was referring to individual vehicle consumption (which I believe the poster was), but overall fuel consumption as a global figure is indeed going up.

 

Take your pick ^_^

For the UK

The total km/miles per vehicle has dropped.

The total number of vehicles has increased

The total km/miles travelled by all the vehicles has increased.

The average C02/km per car sold in the last sales year has gone up.

Edited by melmerby
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3 hours ago, melmerby said:

For the UK

The total km/miles per vehicle has dropped.

The total number of vehicles has increased

The total km/miles travelled by all the vehicles has increased.

The average C02/km per car sold in the last sales year has gone up.

I do believe the posts were about FUEL CONSUMPTION, nothing else..........if you can find that the average fuel consumption of vehicles has got worse, that’s different, but virtually every new vehicle has better fuel consumption than the previous model.

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4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

But that kind of utilisation will only ever be attained if both lines are operated under a unified regime, be it a single franchise or "BR".  Otherwise, the two will compete with one another and the usual area for competition is speed.

 

But they will be under a unified regime - the DfT - who specifies everything that happens on the England/Wales rail network.

 

 

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3 hours ago, melmerby said:

For the UK

The total km/miles per vehicle has dropped.

The total number of vehicles has increased

The total km/miles travelled by all the vehicles has increased.

The average C02/km per car sold in the last sales year has gone up.

 

The last being the direct and inevitable result of new purchases being skewed towards higher CO2/km (and usually lower mpg) petrol-engine cars through the demonization of diesel.

Edited by Dunsignalling
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4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

High speed trains don't, of themselves, eat paths; what limits capacity is the speed differential between the slowest and fastest trains, i.e. the latter catch up with the former and also create gaps behind themselves unless followed by their own kind. That's further exacerbated by the fast ones making fewer stops.

But a class 2 stopping train is equivalent to a 75mph freight train so there isnt much differential in the point to point timings, that is how you get lots of extra paths, of course most limited stop class 2s will use the (now empty) fast lines so they can overtake proper stoppers and freights.

 

Many years ago somebody showed me a model of available paths with the 125mph trains running and with them removed, the difference was startling and did show how those fast train took up far more than their fair share of paths.

 

The trains intended to use HS2 are the non stop trains anyway so the intermediate stations will still get their services, they might actually get a lot more services even if some/most of them are a bit slower than the service they are currently offered. I think you will agree the stations at the Southern end of the WCML get a pretty crap service at the moment so the paths are there for the non stop services to run.

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3 minutes ago, royaloak said:

But a class 2 stopping train is equivalent to a 75mph freight train so there isnt much differential in the point to point timings, that is how you get lots of extra paths, of course most limited stop class 2s will use the (now empty) fast lines so they can overtake proper stoppers and freights.

 

Many years ago somebody showed me a model of available paths with the 125mph trains running and with them removed, the difference was startling and did show how those fast train took up far more than their fair share of paths.

 

The trains intended to use HS2 are the non stop trains anyway so the intermediate stations will still get their services, they might actually get a lot more services even if some/most of them are a bit slower than the service they are currently offered. I think you will agree the stations at the Southern end of the WCML get a pretty crap service at the moment so the paths are there for the non stop services to run.

Always supposing that having freed-up all those paths, the powers-that-be (DfT) don't insist on the operators running trains that are half the size twice as often.....

 

John  

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11 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Always supposing that having freed-up all those paths, the powers-that-be (DfT) don't insist on the operators running trains that are half the size twice as often.....

 

John  

Oh please lets not repeat that fiasco, actually we are due to repeat it again and they STILL havent learnt their lessons with the tiny 5 coach 800s and 802s.

Edited by royaloak
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Now that the Government has said it will reduce air fare taxation to save Flybee, (which goes against all its environmental promises), on grounds of conectivity I doubt it will dare to cancel HS2. That would be hypocrisy on a grand scale, even for politians

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Seem HS2 will be destroying quite a lot of the Eniroment it ploughs throughall for a few fat cats saving a few minutes. In this day and age of people crying for the Amazon and the loss of habit in Oz same thing is happening on our doorsteps but not so dramatic.  

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/hs2

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51115637

 

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1 minute ago, Sheffield said:

Now that the Government has said it will reduce air fare taxation to save Flybee, (which goes against all its environmental promises), on grounds of conectivity I doubt it will dare to cancel HS2. That would be hypocrisy on a grand scale, even for politians

 

It has not yet committed to what it will do and how. I know Grant Shapps and he is not an easy person to get a commitment from!

 

But what looks the most likely solution is for the air fare taxation to be calculated on distance and/or CO2 per seat/per journey. So it could come down on internal flights but go up on international flights. As regards "connectivity", flights to remote places already get favourable treatment.

 

Incoherent policy from politicians? Surely not!

 

I think that FlyBe is still in difficulties because, despite the rescue/takeover by Virgin/Scobart, they have not adjusted their timetables significantly to get better seat occupancy.

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1 hour ago, Georgeconna said:

Seem HS2 will be destroying quite a lot of the Eniroment it ploughs throughall for a few fat cats saving a few minutes. In this day and age of people crying for the Amazon and the loss of habit in Oz same thing is happening on our doorsteps but not so dramatic.  

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/hs2

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51115637

 

Dealt with above.

 

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1 hour ago, Georgeconna said:

Seem HS2 will be destroying quite a lot of the Eniroment it ploughs throughall for a few fat cats saving a few minutes. In this day and age of people crying for the Amazon and the loss of habit in Oz same thing is happening on our doorsteps but not so dramatic.  

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/hs2

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51115637

 

If you go back to the previous page you'll see this has been discussed, apparently the comments by the Wildlife Trust are "downright unfair", though I'm afraid I still can't grasp why - must be a bit thick!

 

Should you wish to support the Wildlife Trust stance, you can go to their website and sign their letter on the topic to Boris, there is scope to add your own thoughts if you wish.

 

John.

Edited by John Tomlinson
correction to quote in inverted commas, originally typed "deeply..."
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2 hours ago, Georgeconna said:

Seem HS2 will be destroying quite a lot of the Eniroment it ploughs throughall for a few fat cats saving a few minutes. In this day and age of people crying for the Amazon and the loss of habit in Oz same thing is happening on our doorsteps but not so dramatic.  

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/hs2

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51115637

 

 

The purpose of HS2 has been done to death in this topic and to sum up, it is not about saving fat cats, or any other oversized animal, a few minutes.

 

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