HS2

[Pete the Elaner]

3 hours ago, Mattc6911 said:

 

Despite all arguments put forward this is YOUR belief,  many others would STRONGLY disagree.  Dont suppose you think the earth is flat do you ? (Just in case your not sure, yes that WAS an attempt at a joke)

 

Edit to add I somehow managed to bejigger the quote from Phaeton into a quote from Pete,  my apologies to Pete 

I was a bit confused until I saw the edit description! 

[Railpassion]

If there is a drop in traffic after corona it will mean fewer people standing at busy times rather than empty seats.

[meil]

On 06/04/2020 at 09:13, Zomboid said:

I don't recall any similar discussions about Birmingham, but the Birmingham interchange station is a suburban park & ride that's sort of near to Birmingham International after a ride on a people mover. It's no substitute for a city centre station.

 

 

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

[woodenhead]

2 minutes ago, meil said:

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

I doubt very much Solihull will become the new centre of Birmingham,

[Pete the Elaner]

5 minutes ago, meil said:

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

Have you been there? This is not possible.

New St is unique in being right in the middle of the city it serves & you can get to many places in the country from it: Chilterns, London, Scotland, the SW, NW, NE England, Anglia, N & S Wales. They approach New St from many directions. You can't just move them all to another nearby station.

If you think other stations are in their respective city centre, you really need to visit Birmingham. Some may be 5-10 minutes away on foot but New St is really in the centre. The concourse is not near a shopping centre, it is a major shopping centre right in the centre of the city.

Think of all London's main termini (Euston, Kings X, St Pancras, Liverpool St, Victoria, Waterloo, London Bridge, Fenchruch St, Paddington, Marylebone, Charing X) all continuing to form 1 big station beneath Oxford Circus. That is effectively what New St is for Birmingham.

[runs as required]

26 minutes ago, meil said:

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

I can't believe this.

Brum (thanks to Chamberlain) has always been Centrepetal despite the disasters it has weathered from the postwar roadbuilding decades. 

Have you visited Brindley Place and the areas to the NW of the Town Hall?

[Ian Hargrave]

27 minutes ago, meil said:

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

This is intriguing. On what evidence do you base this prediction ?.Please be aware ( if you are not already ) of the huge amount of redevelopment now in progress around the Town Hall,Centenary Square and Paradise Circus. The West Midlands Metro is opening up new routes in the immediate area. You are talking about moving the cradle of civilisation.

 

Er ....”issue” ?  What..no more punch ups in Broad Street on a Saturday night  ?

[Ian Hargrave]

46 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I doubt very much Solihull will become the new centre of Birmingham,

 Got a very nice John Lewis though..

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, meil said:

The issue is however that Birmingham City Centre will move to the interchange Station. The present City centre will become a ghost town.

 

So, why did that not happen when Birmingham International opened ?

 

[Siberian Snooper]

With the tram extension to Curzon Street, I suspect that there will be good connections to both New Street and Snow Hill, especially if they can put in a triangular junction with the existing line. Also no doubt there will also be a good bus service at the new station when it opens.

 

 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

With the tram extension to Curzon Street, I suspect that there will be good connections to both New Street and Snow Hill, especially if they can put in a triangular junction with the existing line. Also no doubt there will also be a good bus service at the new station when it opens.

 

 

The Triangular junction is going in at the Corporation Street/Bull Street intersection.

The are footings there for it but no other prepararion was done, unlike Blackpool that put a proper

junction in for the link to the station, even though it wouldn't be needed for a few years.

 

Here are a couple of pictures I took when they were laying the footings. You can see the provision for a junction but that is all that was done:

 

Looking at top of Lower Bull Street from Corporation Street

 

Looking down Lower Bull Street

Edited April 7, 2020 by melmerby

[Edwin_m]

3 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Have you been there? This is not possible.

New St is unique in being right in the middle of the city it serves & you can get to many places in the country from it: Chilterns, London, Scotland, the SW, NW, NE England, Anglia, N & S Wales. They approach New St from many directions. You can't just move them all to another nearby station.

If you think other stations are in their respective city centre, you really need to visit Birmingham. Some may be 5-10 minutes away on foot but New St is really in the centre. The concourse is not near a shopping centre, it is a major shopping centre right in the centre of the city.

Think of all London's main termini (Euston, Kings X, St Pancras, Liverpool St, Victoria, Waterloo, London Bridge, Fenchruch St, Paddington, Marylebone, Charing X) all continuing to form 1 big station beneath Oxford Circus. That is effectively what New St is for Birmingham.

I agree New Street is pretty much dead centre in Birmingham, although there are some distinctly non-central and dodgy areas within five minutes walk of the "back" entrance.  I also agree it's strong enough that having the HS2 station somewhere else won't destroy the city centre.  The number of people arriving on HS2 will be a small fraction of the total.  

 

However if the only HS2 station was in the suburbs then it would syphon off a certain amount of growth from the centre, including businesses that have a lot of visitors from other cities who would now find it more difficult to get to city centre premises.  What's more of a concern is that the station and those premises clustering around it would only be easily accessible by car, unless the region spent a lot of money building public transport links to it.  Though it could be better (and as mentioned it's being improved), the public transport to the existing city centre is far better than to any suburban site, so people all around the West Midlands have the best chance of accessing HS2 without needing to drive to it.  

[Siberian Snooper]

12 hours ago, melmerby said:

The Triangular junction is going in at the Corporation Street/Bull Street intersection.

The are footings there for it but no other prepararion was done, unlike Blackpool that put a proper

junction in for the link to the station, even though it wouldn't be needed for a few years.

 

Here are a couple of pictures I took when they were laying the footings. You can see the provision for a junction but that is all that was done:

 

Looking at top of Lower Bull Street from Corporation Street

 

Looking down Lower Bull Street

 

At least passive provision was made for the junction when the initial works were done, thus reducing the amount of disruption when the junction is finally fitted, as you say it would have been better to have done the work during the initial installation and just left a pair of lines for the eastern extension.

 

 

[runs as required]

On 06/04/2020 at 21:29, lmsforever said:

Dont  think the Scottish Govt has the cash for extension they have problems with schools health service and we wont cough up any cash for them.Home rule is the be all and end all in Scotland HS2 if its built should at least go to Carlisle .Maybe the cross pennine HS3 could go there as well now that would offer real connectivity but I am still not convinced by the line and have no confidence in the company.

There has been a gathering cross-border campaign to restore/realign the Border Counties from Hexham to Riccarton once Galashiels has been re-connected to Hawick (and on to Carlisle).

The argument is based on local hatred of speeding logging trucks on both sides of the Border and passenger desire lines for access from Hawick to Newcastle - and also improved access from NE to Kielder's under-used recreational potential.

My  old mate from student days who has the B&B/railway at Saughtree Station is not at all pleased by the lobbying !

[Edwin_m]

Wouldn't that route have a bit of a problem with drainage, seeing as several miles of it are under the reservoir?  

Edited April 8, 2020 by Edwin_m

[Siberian Snooper]

18 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Wouldn't that route have a bit of a problem with drainage, seeing as several miles of it are under the reservoir?  

 

The Ffestiniog  had that problem, they built a spiral to get around the problem.

 

 

[Phaeton]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

 

That's your funding stuffed then, at least there will be some good come out of this horrendous situation, we cannot build our way out of killing the planet we have to come up with other ways to stop people needing to travel, not facilitate the need.

[Zomboid]

49 minutes ago, runs as required said:

There has been a gathering cross-border campaign to restore/realign the Border Counties from Hexham to Riccarton once Galashiels has been re-connected to Hawick (and on to Carlisle).

The argument is based on local hatred of speeding logging trucks on both sides of the Border and passenger desire lines for access from Hawick to Newcastle - and also improved access from NE to Kielder's under-used recreational potential.

My  old mate from student days who has the B&B/railway at Saughtree Station is not at all pleased by the lobbying !

I wouldn't say he's got much to worry about, Hawick might get connected, but from there to Riccarton & Carlisle... No chance.

[Northmoor]

28 minutes ago, Phaeton said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

 

That's your funding stuffed then, at least there will be some good come out of this horrendous situation, we cannot build our way out of killing the planet we have to come up with other ways to stop people needing to travel, not facilitate the need.

After WW2, which cost considerably more than the Covid-19 crisis is likely, the UK spent a great deal of money "building our way out of trouble".  The Modernisation plan, flawed though it was, came only six years after the end of the war.  Again, you are assuming the HS2 money has now been allocated to something else, rather than the new expenditure coming from unexpected borrowing.

[runs as required]

58 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Wouldn't that route have a bit of a problem with drainage, seeing as several miles of it are under the reservoir?  

True, but as you’d expect they’d noticed this and:

a) propose using the road alignment and laying an uphill/down dale electrified line like the old Belgian ones

b) a new east side lakeside line (with spiral?) south of the dam. But there is a lot of opposition to this because the east has always been  ‘the Walk on the Wild SIde’.

[black and decker boy]

47 minutes ago, Phaeton said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

 

That's your funding stuffed then, at least there will be some good come out of this horrendous situation, we cannot build our way out of killing the planet we have to come up with other ways to stop people needing to travel, not facilitate the need.

Hardly. Its still a small sum in the UK plc budget as is the few £bn a year for HS2 phase 1

[John Tomlinson]

53 minutes ago, Phaeton said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

 

That's your funding stuffed then, at least there will be some good come out of this horrendous situation, we cannot build our way out of killing the planet we have to come up with other ways to stop people needing to travel, not facilitate the need.

As the report says if you read all if it, this cost (£30-40bn.) is a lot less than the cost of economic dislocation caused by widespread business failure and mass unemployment. Think of say 5m. people on unemployment benefit, drawing money from the Government and making no contribution in terms of paying taxes or NI, plus spending a lot less so reduced VAT revenue as well.

 

What it really highlights is that economically this is a choice between bad or very bad. There isn't a good outcome. The independent IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) demonstrated the fiscal inconsistencies in both the main Parties plans at the last election in December, and that was before all this. I'd expect to see some fairly serious tax rises, especially on the better-off (which includes me in case anyone thinks I'm just stirring), and a drastic review of spending by Government. Prioritisation will be a very tough set of decisions indeed. I was listening to George Osborne on R4 a couple of days ago who said just this, anyone who thinks there's going to be a mass spendng spree by Government is likely to be very disappointed. Hence my comment some pages back that HS2 will be subject to review, along with everything else. Whether that means it will be axed I have no idea, nor I suspect does anyone else at this stage.

 

John.

[billbedford]

3 hours ago, Phaeton said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

 

That's your funding stuffed then, at least there will be some good come out of this horrendous situation, we cannot build our way out of killing the planet we have to come up with other ways to stop people needing to travel, not facilitate the need.

 

You're right, they will never have time to build it in the 3149 day left for the planet. 

[davknigh]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

 

You're right, they will never have time to build it in the 3149 day left for the planet. 

Is that when the Vogons are due?

 

Cheers,

 

David

[mdvle]

4 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

What it really highlights is that economically this is a choice between bad or very bad. There isn't a good outcome. The independent IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) demonstrated the fiscal inconsistencies in both the main Parties plans at the last election in December, and that was before all this. I'd expect to see some fairly serious tax rises, especially on the better-off (which includes me in case anyone thinks I'm just stirring), and a drastic review of spending by Government. Prioritisation will be a very tough set of decisions indeed. I was listening to George Osborne on R4 a couple of days ago who said just this, anyone who thinks there's going to be a mass spendng spree by Government is likely to be very disappointed. Hence my comment some pages back that HS2 will be subject to review, along with everything else. Whether that means it will be axed I have no idea, nor I suspect does anyone else at this stage.

 

Something for people to ponder as various people in the coming weeks/months/years all claim that massive cuts will be needed to pay for this.

 

The UK, like a lot of governments both at the current moment and for the recent past, can essentially borrow money for free.

 

The interest on a UK Gilt (aka bond) is currently running at 0.38% for 10 years, or 0.75% on 30 years. https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/uk

 

While the money borrowed needs to be paid back at some point, when you look at the cost over a 30 year period it isn't anywhere near as bad as those who want to have an excuse to cut things for reasons other than cost.