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12 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

Out-moded thinking; in-person visiting has got to be a thing of the past if emissions targets are to be met.

 

Getting human beings to change their behaviour to that extent will never happen ! Besides, when I make the 400 mile plus journey to visit my Mum, as long as I go via London the entire journey, except for the last 10 miles, is by electric train. And HS2 will make that particular journey easier and faster, thus encouraging use of clean rail transport as opposed to polluting air or road vehicles. 

 

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20 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

A job doesn't have to be home based to make it exportable.

 

However, homeworking does allow us to cast nets wider when looking for suitable UK based employees, no longer do our night staff for example have to be domiciled within a few miles of a town centre near Manchester.

 

 

True, but many companies have had a notable proportion of their employees work from home for the first time.

They may have never considered exporting the office, but now they can see that exporting the individual office worker has the potential to be a viable and cost saving move. Maybe not now, but something for the future?

Hypothetical I know, but the effects of the pandemic may have nudged the evolution of the office workspace, a bit further on than may have occurred more organically.

 

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Just now, caradoc said:

 

Getting human beings to change their behaviour to that extent will never happen ! Besides, when I make the 400 mile plus journey to visit my Mum, as long as I go via London the entire journey, except for the last 10 miles, is by electric train. And HS2 will make that particular journey easier and faster, thus encouraging use of clean rail transport as opposed to polluting air or road vehicles.

 

Please don't assume that I am anti-HS2 - fast, efficient, less polluting mass transport will always be necessary for some purposes.

 

In order to retain the ability to make face-to-face contact for family purposes, etc., it will however be necessary to eliminate all non-essential travel.

 

The long-term survival of life on this planet will require huge changes in our lifestyles - but that does not mean that humans will have to sacrifice an enjoyable existence; just exchange the current, self-seeking one for a far less stressful, sustainable one.

 

Just my viewpoint,

John Isherwood.

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8 minutes ago, caradoc said:

Getting human beings to change their behaviour to that extent will never happen !

 

I would have agreed pre-Covid.

 

Now I understand that the survival instinct in humans can make huge behaviourable change acceptable.

 

The trick, though, will be to convince the human population that climate change IS a survival issue BEFORE it is too late !!

 

John Isherwood.

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42 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

The principal benefit, though, has to be a very significant reduction in transport emissions - which has to be the overriding priority as far as future generations are concerned.

 

Isn't this just where the Jevons paradox kicks in?

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Yes, often visits could be replaced by on-line communication but on the occasions when I was visiting the NPL it was not possible. I needed to be there.

And the proposed move I mentioned was in the 1960s. Part of the NPL moved to Watery Bottom, suitable renamed Warren Spring (near Stevenage).

Of course the Inland Revenue moved much of its operation out of London many tears ago. My tax returns come from Newcastle while my wife's come from Leicester and the Civil Service is (or was when I lived there) handled from Cardiff. 

But I would rather not have an on-line plumber or electrician!

Jonathan

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2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I can claim a tax rebate on homeworking and my equipment is company provided, the room is doubles as my railway room and the desk I use for other stuff when I am not working.

 

I don't think I do badly out of it.

But once city centre offices disappear along with their healthy business rate contributions to the exchequer and all these people are homeworking and claiming tax rebates, the government will be looking for new  tax streams to fund the shortfalls.:D

 

Maybe the exchequer will devise some sort of tax on homeworking.:jester:

 

 

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39 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Out-moded thinking; in-person visiting has got to be a thing of the past if emissions targets are to be met.

 

We need a sea change in how we live our lives - and major investment in the technology to enable this to happen - if we are to leave a survivable legacy for future generations.

 

John Isherwood.

Worthwhile in-person visiting will always exist.  Reporting to your customers via Zoom meetings is sensible; any business that thinks it can win work without meeting their customers face-to-face, won't be in business for very long.  It's not how human communication works, you build trust by shaking someone's hand and seeing the whites of their eyes.

 

While we may well be travelling less (to work), there are two things which will counter the drive to reduce overall emissions;

(1) Western society increasingly collects experiences over collecting "stuff", which means travelling to places to experience them, and:

(2) UK housing is considerably less efficient in terms of heating and lighting, than offices.  Consider than many working from home all day are now heating at least a home office room, which has a greater footprint than their employer's office space allocated to one individual.  They are probably heating half the house and many (out of laziness or lack of knowledge how to change it) are heating their whole house, all day.

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Can we please not keep repeating the mantra on here that very high speed rail travel is environmentally friendly? It is not. The higher the speed the more energy required to overcome wind resistance - and very high speeds require proportionally more and more energy to obtain each further 1mph increase. 

 

We need to slow down, stop using aircraft for domestic and short haul flights and accept that you can get a long way in a day at just 100mph. I regularly drive to Italy and southern Germany in a day. 

 

For most of human history travelling at more than 30mph was beyond comprehension. Now we have electronic instant communication, how many people really need to travel at 250mph? 

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2 minutes ago, fezza said:

Can we please not keep repeating the mantra on here that very high speed rail travel is environmentally friendly? It is not. The higher the speed the more energy required to overcome wind resistance - and very high speeds require proportionally more and more energy to obtain each further 1mph increase. 

 

We need to slow down, stop using aircraft for domestic and short haul flights and accept that you can get a long way in a day at just 100mph. I regularly drive to Italy and southern Germany in a day. 

 

For most of human history travelling at more than 30mph was beyond comprehension. Now we have electronic instant communication, how many people really need to travel at 250mph? 

But is far more environmentally friendly compared to driving.:jester:

 

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It will be interesting to see how efficient the next generation of electric cars become. Conventional rail will still have an advantage of course. But HS2? And everyone seems to be forgetting the huge carbon footprint of building the thing - all that digging isn't being done by men with shovels and pack horses. In my patch a whole quarry is about to be filled by HS2 debris meaning thousands of lorry movements. And all for a railway that most of us won't be able to afford to travel on. Utter madness. 

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

It will be interesting to see how efficient the next generation of electric cars become. Conventional rail will still have an advantage of course. But HS2? And everyone seems to be forgetting the huge carbon footprint of building the thing - all that digging isn't being done by men with shovels and pack horses. In my patch a whole quarry is about to be filled by HS2 debris meaning thousands of lorry movements. And all for a railway that most of us won't be able to afford to travel on. Utter madness. 

What is your reasoning behind that? If services now running on the WCML are diverted onto HS2, why should the fare structure be any different to what it is today (neglecting inflation, and general rises)? We don't do high speed premium fares in the UK

 

Edited by 62613
Changed "Trains" to "Services"
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50 minutes ago, fezza said:

Can we please not keep repeating the mantra on here that very high speed rail travel is environmentally friendly? It is not. The higher the speed the more energy required to overcome wind resistance - and very high speeds require proportionally more and more energy to obtain each further 1mph increase. 

 

We need to slow down, stop using aircraft for domestic and short haul flights and accept that you can get a long way in a day at just 100mph. I regularly drive to Italy and southern Germany in a day. 

 

For most of human history travelling at more than 30mph was beyond comprehension. Now we have electronic instant communication, how many people really need to travel at 250mph? 

You are right - air resistance rises with the square of the speed - but oddly enough, running HS2 at 225mph (not 250mph) compared to running at 100-125mph, the energy balance isn't straightforward. 

If you limit the trains to the lower speed, they can complete significantly fewer journeys per day, so to provide the same service frequency (which will actually attract traffic from other modes), you need far more units.  You will be running more trains drawing 5MW compared to fewer units drawing 7-8MW, plus the less reduction in emissions because you have attracted less road and air traffic. 

Consider the energy going into making every extra 12/16-car train as well.

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

It will be interesting to see how efficient the next generation of electric cars become. Conventional rail will still have an advantage of course. But HS2? And everyone seems to be forgetting the huge carbon footprint of building the thing - all that digging isn't being done by men with shovels and pack horses. In my patch a whole quarry is about to be filled by HS2 debris meaning thousands of lorry movements. And all for a railway that most of us won't be able to afford to travel on. Utter madness. 

As power generation shifts increasingly to renewable sources, electricity consumption becomes much less of an issue.  Electric cars are relatively efficient today, but there will always be losses in putting the power in and out of a battery compared to feeding it directly to the traction equipment.  The battery itself has significant environmental challenges, and far more concrete and earthworks is needed to carry the same number of people on a motorway than on a railway.  

 

High speed rail is competitive with air travel up to a much greater distance, up to around 500 miles, once the time taken travelling to and within the airport is taken into account, so has greater scope to attract passengers out of a much less environmentally friendly form of travel.  

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2 hours ago, 62613 said:

What is your reasoning behind that? If services now running on the WCML are diverted onto HS2, why should the fare structure be any different to what it is today (neglecting inflation, and general rises)? We don't do high speed premium fares in the UK

 

 

In France and Italy HS fares are significantly higher - HS2 has always been aimed at a premium business market and the government have made it clear it must be to cover costs. 

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4 minutes ago, fezza said:

 

In France and Italy HS fares are significantly higher - HS2 has always been aimed at a premium business market and the government have made it clear it must be to cover costs. 

That's not true. SNCF TGV fares are very competitive and well below the toll costs of driving to Paris from where we live. In fact SNCF have spent a lot of money conerting a whole tranche if TGV's to their OUIGO specification, which are ained very much at the mass market with low fares. They run in pairs betwern certain city pairs and can only be booked online.

 

Jamie

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14 minutes ago, fezza said:

 

In France and Italy HS fares are significantly higher - HS2 has always been aimed at a premium business market and the government have made it clear it must be to cover costs. 

HS2 fares will be determined by "yield management", the same system used by low cost airlines such as Ryan Air. That`s how Ryan Air fill their aircraft with flights to some seemingly obscure destinations. If fares are set too high trains will run with empty seats, the idea is to fill them so fares cannot be set too high. This is just a myth put around by some who think - big cost so high fares , rather too simplistic an argument

Edited by class26
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1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

You are right - air resistance rises with the square of the speed - but oddly enough, running HS2 at 225mph (not 250mph) compared to running at 100-125mph, the energy balance isn't straightforward. 

If you limit the trains to the lower speed, they can complete significantly fewer journeys per day, so to provide the same service frequency (which will actually attract traffic from other modes), you need far more units.  You will be running more trains drawing 5MW compared to fewer units drawing 7-8MW, plus the less reduction in emissions because you have attracted less road and air traffic. 

Consider the energy going into making every extra 12/16-car train as well.

The speed of the vehicle is not the only factor in how many services it can operate a day. Very high speed trains have to be kept further apart on networks, require more maintanance, and turnaround times at stations can actually be longer than for conventional units. 50% faster does not equate to 50% more mileage. However the HS infrastructure is much more expensive, requires more maintenance, again meaning higher costs and a bigger carbon footprint. 

 

If the sums added up private capital would be paying for it - instead it's £80 billion from Joe public. 

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3 minutes ago, class26 said:

HS2 fares will be determined by "yield management", the same system used by low cost airlines such as Ryan Air. That`s how Ryan Air fill their aircraft with flights to some seemingly most obscure destinations. If fares are set too high trains will run with empty seats, the idea is to fill them so fares will not be set too high. This is just a myth put around by some who think - big cost so high fares , rather too simplistic an argument

 

We were told yield management would fill the empty seats on regional Eurostar. It didn't as you could only run it at a massive loss. The same thing will happen here - until the government runs out of patience underwriting the disaster and sells off half the stock to Turkey or Egypt at a rock bottom price, 

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It has made clear time and time again that express services on the West Coast Main Line will transfer to HS2. They will not be "premium" services any more than they are now on the WCML. The fare structure will be standard, and I am sure that there will be through bookings to all stations, as now, as well as pre-booked bargains as now. As it was decided that building a new line was cheaper and less disruptive than widening the WCML to cope with extra traffic, it is not the "Expensive Luxury" option. It is the sensible approach. The big error was naming it HS2 and suggesting that it was something special rather than simply extra resources for an overstretched railway system.

Jonathan

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21 minutes ago, fezza said:

The speed of the vehicle is not the only factor in how many services it can operate a day. Very high speed trains have to be kept further apart on networks, require more maintanance, and turnaround times at stations can actually be longer than for conventional units. 50% faster does not equate to 50% more mileage. However the HS infrastructure is much more expensive, requires more maintenance, again meaning higher costs and a bigger carbon footprint. 

 

If the sums added up private capital would be paying for it - instead it's £80 billion from Joe public. 

The increased separation of trains at higher speeds affects how many trains the line can carry, not how many runs a train can do in a day.  On most lines this is dictated by station stops, not by the capacity of the lines in between, and HS2 station track layouts are designed so the line as a whole can operate 18 trains per hour.  

 

There's absolutely no reason why faster trains would need longer station turnarounds.  In fact if the journey is shorter (in time) the turnaround is probably also shorter, because passengers will have left less litter and there is likely to be less catering therefore less re-stocking.  

 

The trains and infrastructure may require more maintenance, though they are doing things like using slab track on the busiest sections to minimise this.  But the route will be closed for several hours each night so train and infrastructure maintenance can be done then.  

 

As mentioned above, HS2 will replace the fastest trains on the WCML  For example three trains per hour (pre-Covid) between London and Manchester on the WCML (with very few intermediate stops) will be replaced by three trains per hour on HS2.  11-car Pendolinos about 250m long will be replaced HS2 sets 200m long but coupled in pairs at the busiest times.  This is a significant uplift in capacity, but it is planned to allow for growth in passenger numbers over many decades.   By taking the fastest trains off the existing routes, more will be able to stop at intermediate stations that may not get a very good service today.  

 

Private capital is a mirage - unless the private sector can  find some huge efficiency gains, it just pushes the cost onto future generations at higher rates of interest than the government can borrow money at.  That would be the same even if HS2 fares income was going to pay back the capital, which it isn't.  HS2 is likely to cover its operating cost but the projected benefit to the economy as a whole make it worth building despite this.  

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32 minutes ago, fezza said:

The speed of the vehicle is not the only factor in how many services it can operate a day. Very high speed trains have to be kept further apart on networks, require more maintanance, and turnaround times at stations can actually be longer than for conventional units. 50% faster does not equate to 50% more mileage. However the HS infrastructure is much more expensive, requires more maintenance, again meaning higher costs and a bigger carbon footprint. 

 

If the sums added up private capital would be paying for it - instead it's £80 billion from Joe public. 

Note the absence of private investment in almost any transport infrastructure, it doesn't make money, it is part of the social fabric which is why the state provides it.  It's why there isn't a privately-run A&E in every town.  Even in Japan where the infrastructure is provided by the state for private operators (who pay a kind of VAT on fares).

 

As for your first paragraph, how unfortunate that the HS2 programme team forgot to employ anyone to consider these things....

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1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

That's not true. SNCF TGV fares are very competitive and well below the toll costs of driving to Paris from where we live. In fact SNCF have spent a lot of money conerting a whole tranche if TGV's to their OUIGO specification, which are ained very much at the mass market with low fares. They run in pairs betwern certain city pairs and can only be booked online.

 

Jamie

Bloomin’ell are they?  How much does it cost from Paris to SoF nowadays, last time we went it was about £70.

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

 

We were told yield management would fill the empty seats on regional Eurostar. It didn't as you could only run it at a massive loss. The same thing will happen here - until the government runs out of patience underwriting the disaster and sells off half the stock to Turkey or Egypt at a rock bottom price, 

If memory serves me right regional Eurostar never started so how can you deduce this ?. it didn`t start because it clashed with the meteoric rise of low cost airlines (using yield management!) and the time factor between the regions to Brussels / Paris was just too great. (Remember the majority of HS1 wasn`t open at the start so the time factor was greater than it would be now.

 

Also factor this in. Cost on the existing system is high because of maintaining intensively used infrastructure 150 years old and having to do this in the small hours,

HS2 will avoid this and costs will be far lower, this is demonstratively so. Fares will not need to be as high as many suppose, The costs are spread over 60 years and even if it reached 100 billion , that`s only 1.6 billion a year, approx 4.5 million a day spread over (at full service) 17 / 18 trains an hour (each way) for let`s say 16 hours and let`s say 17 trains each way . That`s approx £8,200 per train to pay back the cost which , on a 1000 seat train would make each ticket £8.20 each ! A bargain I would say. I acknowledge that not all trains will be 400 mtrs long but even so, ticket prices need not be astronomical

Now clearly tickets will be higher than that to cover wages , fuel etc but not eye watering as you suggest and I hope I have demonstrated.

As I see it there is no evidence at all to justify your statements

 

Edited by class26
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