HS2

[Grovenor]

I just clicked the linkand it opened, no problem.

[scottystitch]

The link works for me as well when I click on it. Straight to the document with no problem...

 

best

 

scott. 

 

 

[frobisher]

13 hours ago, melmerby said:

That's an unresolvable file name.

It doesn't have a valid extension, it needs to end ".pdf"

 

Effectively it is a file named "pdf" without an extension

If when you download it you add ".pdf" you can open it

 

That'll be down to the browser you're using resolving the mime type correctly.  Works fine in Edge/Chrome here as is.

 

[ess1uk]

NAO: More work needed to understand HS2 costs and schedule | New Civil Engineer

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/nao-more-work-needed-to-understand-hs2-costs-and-schedule-11-06-2021/

[corneliuslundie]

How much of the increased cost has been caused by delays outside the control of HS2 Ltd? A genuine question. I do not know. The answer may be none. But it is very easy for such extra costs to be created, especially every time there is a demand for a rethink/re-evaluation/redesign.

Jonathan

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

How much of the increased cost has been caused by delays outside the control of HS2 Ltd? A genuine question. I do not know. The answer may be none. But it is very easy for such extra costs to be created, especially every time there is a demand for a rethink/re-evaluation/redesign.

Jonathan

While some construction projects are impacted by things like unexpected ground conditions, which add cost, on government-led projects there is nothing to compare with specification/requirement changes and the demand for offsets, to send you way over budget.

Remember the fleet of Nightstar Sleeper carriages, bought for about £1M each, which never ran one revenue-earning mile in service and which were sold to Canada?  They were a sop to a lot of parts of the country who wanted "a direct link to the Channel Tunnel".  There was no daytime tunnel capacity available, so these areas were promised sleeper trains, for which there would never be any actual demand, but this was the only way to get some MPs to support the HS1 bill.

Likewise there will be any number of settlements which HS2 goes within earshot of, but who are getting some school all-weather football pitches or local road improvements as "compensation"; usually road improvements that the local council needed to do 20 years before HS2 was even thought of, but they never got around to doing.  Now they can get someone else to pay for it.

This stuff adds up, it's all demanded by politicians who then have the temerity to complain that it is all the fault of HS2 Ltd for being unable to manage the project budget.

[Mark Saunders]

The sleepers to the continent was strangled before birth and never given the chance to flourish! 
It is strange how people were prepared to go by bus to Spain spending 18 hours to do so and only changed with low cost airlines.

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, Mark Saunders said:

The sleepers to the continent was strangled before birth and never given the chance to flourish! 

 

I think the point being made, was that they never were "going to flourish".

The whole idea was an expensive nonsense from the start.

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

[Mark Saunders]

Just now, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

I think the point being made, was that they never were "going to flourish".

The whole idea was an expensive nonsense from the start.

 

 

.

Not convinced, given that logic most of Britain’s Motorways would never have been built as there was little traffic on them initially but most are now at capacity!

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 minute ago, Mark Saunders said:

Not convinced, given that logic most of Britain’s Motorways would never have been built as there was little traffic on them initially but most are now at capacity!

 

That's not anywhere near a comparable analogy.

 

The "rest of the UK" market to the near European destinations being proposed, would have barely supported a couple of trains a week at most. Possibly only seasonal.

Set that against the near total demise of European wide sleeper services over the last few decades and it indicates that there was no magical market for that sort of service.

It was a dead duck, dreamed up as Northmoor says, to appease and gain the support of politicians for HS1 and the CT.

The ill-fated Regional Eurostar was largely the result of similar political manoeuvrings.

 

 

 

.

[Zomboid]

How many daily flights were there from Birmingham to Paris? If we assume an A321 at maximum seating volume (236 according to wiki), each aircraft has about as many seats as a 4 car 350. If BHX to Paris was hourly for 15 hours (I think this should be an over estimate, but I'm not sure) that would be 3500 seats per day.

 

Each Eurostar 374 seats about 900, so the entirety of my hypothetical Birmingham to Paris by air market would fit into 4 trains.

 

I don't know what that really says since I could have undercooked the capacity provided before the plague, but what I wanted to say was that I doubt that the market for travel from the kind of places that "beyond London" would serve exists to the degree that it would be worthwhile even if everyone took the train instead of flying. Which is why both the regional Eurostar and sleepers were doomed from the start.

[Northmoor]

Thank you @Zomboidand @Ron Ron Ron for supporting my point.  Sleeper trains, except for some very "high-end luxury" services, are a dead concept in Europe.  The Caledonian Sleeper only survives thanks to some (both overt and covert) subsidy from the Scottish Government.

 

The economics of sleeper trains don't stack up because the carriages can only be used for a single journey each day; you can't complete the journey, turf out the sleeping passengers and start the return journey at 3am.  They're not much use as daytime carriages either; ignoring the fact they are not designed for "seating", you would be lucky to fit 20 paying passengers in per carriage.  A conventional seating coach of the same size will seat 60-80 passengers and might be able to do more than one return journey each day (consider what WCML and ECML sets do daily).  So potentially instead of earning you 240 passenger journeys per day, the sleeper coach will only earn one twelfth of that and probably cost 50% more to build than the seating coach as well.

[Mark Saunders]

2 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Thank you @Zomboidand @Ron Ron Ron for supporting my point.  Sleeper trains, except for some very "high-end luxury" services, are a dead concept in Europe.  The Caledonian Sleeper only survives thanks to some (both overt and covert) subsidy from the Scottish Government.

 

The economics of sleeper trains don't stack up because the carriages can only be used for a single journey each day; you can't complete the journey, turf out the sleeping passengers and start the return journey at 3am.  They're not much use as daytime carriages either; ignoring the fact they are not designed for "seating", you would be lucky to fit 20 paying passengers in per carriage.  A conventional seating coach of the same size will seat 60-80 passengers and might be able to do more than one return journey each day (consider what WCML and ECML sets do daily).  So potentially instead of earning you 240 passenger journeys per day, the sleeper coach will only earn one twelfth of that and probably cost 50% more to build than the seating coach as well.

Are you saying everybody must go to bed on a sleeper train!

[Edwin_m]

There's something of a renaissance in sleeper travel on the Continent, driven by "flight shame".  However I can't see that translating into any international UK sleepers, at least beyond London.  This is partly because of the diffuse nature of the market in the rest of the UK mentioned above, and also because any such stock would have to be UK gauge.  The larger size of Continental stock doesn't make that much difference to day stock (unless you are considering double-deck) but the extra space is very beneficial in improving the economics of a sleeper.  

 

Using HS2 would resolve the gauge problem, if there was also a European gauge HS2-HS1 link, not planned currently.  But another issue to overcome is that HS2 is not planned to be open overnight, and there is no alternative large-gauge route if it is closed for engineering access.  If a sleeper was to run towards the Continent before the end of HS2 service in the evening, with the return working in the early morning, then there would be high speed trains using the route and the sleeper would have to be capable of similar speeds.  

Edited June 11, 2021 by Edwin_m

[Ron Ron Ron]

3 hours ago, Zomboid said:

How many daily flights were there from Birmingham to Paris? If we assume an A321 at maximum seating volume (236 according to wiki), each aircraft has about as many seats as a 4 car 350. If BHX to Paris was hourly for 15 hours (I think this should be an over estimate, but I'm not sure) that would be 3500 seats per day.

 

Each Eurostar 374 seats about 900, so the entirety of my hypothetical Birmingham to Paris by air market would fit into 4 trains.

 

I don't know what that really says since I could have undercooked the capacity provided before the plague..........

 

Way off the mark with those wild guesses Zomboid.

There weren't that many flights between Birmingham and Paris and the seating capacity of the aircraft used was much lower than your estimates.

An Air France A321 would only be seen occasionally and the seating configuration provides 184 seats.

 

From the 2000's up in to the early 10's  - Birmingham to Paris, there were.... 

5 flights a day, Monday to Friday

2 flights Saturday

3 flights Sunday

The route was flown by FlyBe and Air France (with flights being operated by  AF partner franchise airline, CityJet).

 

Mon-Fri  

3x AF/CityJet flights, using 95 seat Avro RJ85's, plus...

2x BE (Flybe) flights, using 88 seat Embraer E175's

That's a max of 461 seats available a day Mon-Fri...

 

Sat-Sun

Less than 200 and 300 per day respectively.

 

In the early-mid 10's, Air France started using their own A319 and A320 aircraft on the route (respective seating configurations 129 or 142 ....and 152 or 158 ).

That would have meant something in the order of a maximum of 650 seats per day, Mon-Fri, reducing to under 500 when they reduced the number of flights.

Then before the pandemic hit, they started using 100 seat Embraer E190's, operated by Air France's regional airline subsidiary, Hop, on some flights.

 

Nowhere near filling a 900 seat train, but more to the point, a single train would have been useless, as it wouldn't have been able to provide departures at different times of the day, particularly morning, late afternoon and evening, when people wanted to travel.

The passengers being predominately business travellers and people interconnecting to onward flights from Paris, with a mix of leisure travellers.

The early morning departures were timed to provide business travellers with an early or mid morning arrival in Paris (and v.v.) and also provided good connections for onward flights leaving Paris late morning or through the lunchtime period.

The late afternoon and early evening flights, provided the possibility of an out and back trip in one day and connections to overnight long-haul flights from Paris.

 

 

.

[Zomboid]

19 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Way off the mark with those wild guesses Zomboid.

There weren't that many flights between Birmingham and Paris and the seating capacity of the aircraft used was much lower than your estimates.

Well I wanted to overdo it to make the point that the market simply doesn't exist. It wouldn't exist if my numbers were right, and it certainly doesn't with closer to reality numbers. Even a really busy short haul air route is very low capacity compared to rail.

 

The M-F air capacity between Birmingham and Paris was less than 8 suburban rail carriages per day. And chances are a number of those flights weren't anywhere near full either.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Zomboid

[Ron Ron Ron]

33 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

....The M-F air capacity between Birmingham and Paris was less than 8 suburban rail carriages per day.   And chances are a number of those flights weren't anywhere near full either.

 

Indeed, but without the availability of a choice of flights at different times of the day, or the direct link to CDG (Charles De Gaul airport), then the market wouldn't be there to transfer to a rail service anyway.

 

 

.

[Pandora]

On 10/06/2021 at 22:36, jamie92208 said:

I'm afraid the Mr Byng has not covered himself in glory in his opposition to the project. He has worked for Chris Packham I believe that he producmed some of Packham's evidence. Much of Packhams evidence drew rather scathing comments from the judges. I am choosing my words carefully.

 

Jamie

None of the main parties are "covered in glory" not least of all HS2 and their major errors in costings and budget predictions of the project.

[corneliuslundie]

Please point me to a major railway construction project which was completed on time and on budget!

At the very least, most histories have a paragraph saying something along the lines of "The project is now six months in arrears owning to the unusually wet winter"

Can you please point me to evidence that major delays and increases in costs have been caused other than by delays caused by enquiries into progress by various parties (including government) or changes forced on HS2 by objectors of various types.

I am not claiming that HS2 management is perfect. Far from it. But I prefer evidence to suggestion.

And a genuine question, having read Byng's report. Is he confusing cost predictions for Phase 1 with cost predictions for the whole project in some places? Since no approval had been given when that report was written for more than phase 1 I cannot see how any detailed costs can have been determined for phases 2A and 2B or the whole project, since the details of what was to be built (such as the route) had not been finalised.

Jonathan

[JeffP]

Wasn't the LGV Nord done on time and to budget?

 

And if I recall, the mayors of Arras and Lille almost came to blows to try and get it to run through their city...with the mayor of Lille almost conferred sainthood for the prosperity it has brought.

 

Compare to our NIMBYs.

[62613]

I read somewhere that CTRL phase 2 came in on time and on budget. I don't know whether this was on revised dates, costs, etc., but I'll leave it there.

 

Why is there this hostility these days in the UK, to any infrastructure project, no matter if it would actually have benefits all round?

 

[Fat Controller]

15 minutes ago, 62613 said:

I read somewhere that CTRL phase 2 came in on time and on budget. I don't know whether this was on revised dates, costs, etc., but I'll leave it there.

 

Why is there this hostility these days in the UK, to any infrastructure project, no matter if it would actually have benefits all round?

 

It did come in under-budget; the bit my wife was responsible for was £7 million under budget. A good deal of of this is probably due to teams having worked together for many years; many started with LGV1 in France, continuing through the Tunnel, and then the two phases of CTRL. 

[GoingUnderground]

20 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

That's not anywhere near a comparable analogy.

 

The "rest of the UK" market to the near European destinations being proposed, would have barely supported a couple of trains a week at most. Possibly only seasonal.

Set that against the near total demise of European wide sleeper services over the last few decades and it indicates that there was no magical market for that sort of service.

It was a dead duck, dreamed up as Northmoor says, to appease and gain the support of politicians for HS1 and the CT.

The ill-fated Regional Eurostar was largely the result of similar political manoeuvrings..

European Sleeper services are currently undergoing a renaissance with new services being introduced partly as a way to reduce the emissions from aviation. It will be worth watching their progress.

[phil-b259]

19 hours ago, Zomboid said:

How many daily flights were there from Birmingham to Paris? If we assume an A321 at maximum seating volume (236 according to wiki), each aircraft has about as many seats as a 4 car 350. If BHX to Paris was hourly for 15 hours (I think this should be an over estimate, but I'm not sure) that would be 3500 seats per day.

 

Each Eurostar 374 seats about 900, so the entirety of my hypothetical Birmingham to Paris by air market would fit into 4 trains.

 

I don't know what that really says since I could have undercooked the capacity provided before the plague, but what I wanted to say was that I doubt that the market for travel from the kind of places that "beyond London" would serve exists to the degree that it would be worthwhile even if everyone took the train instead of flying. Which is why both the regional Eurostar and sleepers were doomed from the start.

 

Not everyone wants to travel at the same time!

 

There is a reason ridership on cross country exploded once frequent short voyagers replaced the one or two a day longer loco hauled formations.

 

There is a reason urban rail routes like the North London Line have seen ridership jump massively since TfL improved service levels.

 

As such only a fool will persist in claiming you can squish all the Birmingham - Paris passengers onto one 900 seat train while its hopelessly uneconomic to have said train run only a quarter full 4 times a day.

 

As I have said before on other threads the ONLY way international services become remotely viable is if you can also let domestic passengers use them as far as London (then replacing the domestic passengers with further international travellers) thus avoiding running mostly empty trains.

 

France do it as far a (Lille / Calais), Belgium does it (as far as Lille) - its UK border policy which forbids a similar thing being done here and nukes any chance of through trains from UK regions.

 

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by phil-b259