HS2

[caradoc]

11 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

It's pretty damning for Lord Berkley as well. 

 

 

Indeed; On Page 16: 'Moreover we note that Lord Berkeley did not read all of the documents that were made available to him in any event. Despite that apparent handicap, he was still able to present a 71 page Dissenting Report.'

 

Ouch ! Perhaps he only read the documents that agreed with his point of view ?

 

Regarding costs, I would hope and expect that these will be paid in full by the unsuccessful claimant, otherwise their contribution to another increase in the price of HS2 will just become another stick to beat the project with.

 

[Northmoor]

This review and the admonishment of those who raised it, reminds me an oft-heard phrase/whinge from the losing party after legal procedings:

"The judge has completely ignored our evidence". 

No they didn't.  The judge reviewed both sets of evidence with an unbiased pair of eyes and arrived at an independent assessment.  It's what judges' many years of legal training and experience enables them to do, why they've got to the position they are in and why the whingers generally haven't.  The high profile examples of apparently senile judges who don't know who the Beatles are, are exceptionally rare.  We don't hear about the other 99.9% of times when they've applied the law fairly and intelligently.

Just because someone doesn't accept your view without question, doesn't make them wrong. 

Roll on the end of the pandemic and HS2 work can continue. 

[corneliuslundie]

Interesting as that contradicts the government statement which I remember reading. That (which I would not now know how to find) stated that the steady increase in life expectancy over the last few years had almost ended because of increasing obesity, type 2 diabetes etc, and that there were signs that it was actually beginning to decrease. The report cited above evidently believes that life expectancy will continue to increase.

However, whatever the scenario, over the long term if births are below "replacement" level then any population increase will depend entirely on immigration.

By the way, I missed two words out in my original post. I should have said "well over 1500 deaths a day"; it is more than 1600 from a rough calculation. But if you assume stable life expectancy of 80 (for simplicity) then one would expect about 825,000 deaths a year. So the current figure of 600,000 is likely to increase.

But all that is rather academic. My original intention was to point out that the numbers of deaths being suggested in the current pandemic are  not going to make a significant dent in the population long term. For comparison, although the most recent figure is apparently about 6000, the long term annual death toll through influenza alone is nearer 15,000 (why is it so high when there is a big immunisation programme?), and some of those who die from Covid 19 would, I am afraid,  have died during the year from other (underlying) causes.

By the way, many thanks to those who have been following and reporting on the court case.

Jonathan

[Edwin_m]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

This review and the admonishment of those who raised it, reminds me an oft-heard phrase/whinge from the losing party after legal procedings:

"The judge has completely ignored our evidence". 

No they didn't.  The judge reviewed both sets of evidence with an unbiased pair of eyes and arrived at an independent assessment.  It's what judges' many years of legal training and experience enables them to do, why they've got to the position they are in and why the whingers generally haven't.  The high profile examples of apparently senile judges who don't know who the Beatles are, are exceptionally rare.  We don't hear about the other 99.9% of times when they've applied the law fairly and intelligently.

Just because someone doesn't accept your view without question, doesn't make them wrong. 

Roll on the end of the pandemic and HS2 work can continue. 

There seemed to be an element of "well this means you have no case, but even if we are wrong on this we've looked further and found five or six other reasons that show you have no case either".  Also a swipe at submission of so much evidence, most of it irrelevant, at a time of health crisis.  

[John Tomlinson]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Interesting as that contradicts the government statement which I remember reading. That (which I would not now know how to find) stated that the steady increase in life expectancy over the last few years had almost ended because of increasing obesity, type 2 diabetes etc, and that there were signs that it was actually beginning to decrease. The report cited above evidently believes that life expectancy will continue to increase.

However, whatever the scenario, over the long term if births are below "replacement" level then any population increase will depend entirely on immigration.

By the way, I missed two words out in my original post. I should have said "well over 1500 deaths a day"; it is more than 1600 from a rough calculation. But if you assume stable life expectancy of 80 (for simplicity) then one would expect about 825,000 deaths a year. So the current figure of 600,000 is likely to increase.

But all that is rather academic. My original intention was to point out that the numbers of deaths being suggested in the current pandemic are  not going to make a significant dent in the population long term. For comparison, although the most recent figure is apparently about 6000, the long term annual death toll through influenza alone is nearer 15,000 (why is it so high when there is a big immunisation programme?), and some of those who die from Covid 19 would, I am afraid,  have died during the year from other (underlying) causes.

By the way, many thanks to those who have been following and reporting on the court case.

Jonathan

The review of life expectancy by I think the Institute of Actuaries two or three years ago showed that the increase in life expectancy in the UK had stopped, per your first paragraph. In fact IIRC it had been revised downwards a tad because of increased mortality in the cold winters of 2012 and 2013. The figure I do remember clearly was that men aged 60 in 2016/7 had an average expectancy of reaching 87, down from 89 some years earlier, and that the figure for men aged 40 was the same, so not increasing. As this review was done I believe for the insurance industry we might expect it to be reasonably authoritiative, given the sums of money involved in life assurance, annuities, pensions etc.

 

As someone who was 60 in 2016 I was especially interested as it gives me something  to work on, is 27 years enough to complete all those kits in the stash?!

 

John.

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I get why you say that Mike, but in reality, apart from freight services, it is all about passenger numbers.

 

For example, of the many variants tested originally, capacity increases were included that increased train lengths, or increased train lengths across all three primary routes, or increased service frequencies by incremental upgrades. These were all to allow an increase in passenger numbers, not just paths. But ultimately, HS2 was chosen as the most promising solution, cost wise, time wise and future demand wise.

 

Line capacity is about running a certain number of (extra) trains. Running a certain number of trains does not define passenger carrying capacity, as high density stock can be used (as per CrossRail), or double deck stock. But running a certain number of trains at higher speeds can increase passenger carrying capacity, because you can have more paths. And so on.

 

The release of train paths, by building HS2, from the classic WCML, and to an extent from the MML and ECML, means they can carry more passengers from other origins (and freight) but will still have the same number of paths.

The biggest restraint on line capacity is speed and stopping pattern differentials - with lineside signalling and absolutely consistent train capabilities it is, for example easy to achieve a capacity of a train at a headway of slighlty less than  every 3 minutes at 125 mph.  But the instant you introduce a train which makes stops among many which don't, or one which is slower or faster than the base case 'ideal' train, you reduce overall capacity.

 

One of the problems of the WCML - which isn't necessarily, and within certain limits, anything to do with train length - is the mix of trains in order to serve different markets and even more importantly in recent years the provision of extra trains in order to provide a better offer to passengers.  There is for instance the oft quoted example of numbers of trains between Euston and Birmingham running 'half empty' (or even more lightly loaded).  In that situation the number of trains - there for marketing reasons - is the driver eating into capacity rather than the number of passengers although clearly the operator has added those trains as part of a plan to increase business.  

 

Equally - assuming stock is available and the franchise terms are sufficiently flexible - some trains could be lengthened - particularly stopping passenger services.  While lengthening a train could impact on available headways and through them margins in many cases it won't have any  impact because the signalling provides for longer trains than are already using a route. (e.g going from 2+7  to 2+8 HSTs and latterly to 9 car IETs on the GWML has had no effect on headways - similar levels of frequency could still be maintained and in fact exceeded despite having longer trains).

 

Overall there are a whole series of factors affecting line capacity which are rather more complex than simple increases in passenger numbers and they will work in different ways on different routes.  The WCML as it stands could carry many more passengers - should they still wish to travel - by more closely aligning the speeds and stopping patterns of all passenger trains.  But that would obviously not be commercially acceptable for longer distance services.  Hence you reduce the speed differential impact by moving away the trains at one end of it - logically the non-stop and fastest passenger trains because on their own they represeent the most consistent, between trains, performance characteristics thus giving the most efficient capacity utilisation.

[david.hill64]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Interesting as that contradicts the government statement which I remember reading. That (which I would not now know how to find) stated that the steady increase in life expectancy over the last few years had almost ended because of increasing obesity, type 2 diabetes etc, and that there were signs that it was actually beginning to decrease. The report cited above evidently believes that life expectancy will continue to increase.

However, whatever the scenario, over the long term if births are below "replacement" level then any population increase will depend entirely on immigration.

By the way, I missed two words out in my original post. I should have said "well over 1500 deaths a day"; it is more than 1600 from a rough calculation. But if you assume stable life expectancy of 80 (for simplicity) then one would expect about 825,000 deaths a year. So the current figure of 600,000 is likely to increase.

But all that is rather academic. My original intention was to point out that the numbers of deaths being suggested in the current pandemic are  not going to make a significant dent in the population long term. For comparison, although the most recent figure is apparently about 6000, the long term annual death toll through influenza alone is nearer 15,000 (why is it so high when there is a big immunisation programme?), and some of those who die from Covid 19 would, I am afraid,  have died during the year from other (underlying) causes.

By the way, many thanks to those who have been following and reporting on the court case.

Jonathan

But as John Tomlinson pointed out, 27% of the forecast increase in population is caused by excess births over deaths. So the current birth rate would appear to be in excess of the death rate. 

[corneliuslundie]

Yes, slightly more births still than deaths:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/vitalstatisticspopulationandhealthreferencetables

In 2018: 731,213 live births in the UK, 616,014 deaths.

So I am wrong, Apologies.

However, I believe that the long term trend is still as I suggested as the number of live births per woman is something like 1.7 which does not lead to replacement of the population, as nearly half are men who do not, as far as I know, without assistance from women contribute to the number of babies. To me the various official statistics do not seem to give the same message. We shall see if we live long enough - to over 88 I think would be necessary.

Anyway, I still maintain that Covid 19 will not drastically reduce our population. The biggest influence will, as has been suggested, be national policy on immigration.

Any news of activity on HS2 on the ground? Unlikely I know as even if there is any no-one should be around to see it.

Jonathan

 

 

[Zomboid]

Just now, corneliuslundie said:

Anyway, I still maintain that Covid 19 will not drastically reduce our population. The biggest influence will, as has been suggested, be national policy on immigration

The worst case, do nothing estimate was 500000 deaths due to covid, many (though not all) of which would have been people who didn't have that long left anyway, so in terms of the UK population the kinds of numbers we're likely to get if the measures we're living under are effective will be a drop in the ocean - and many (though not all) of those who do die will be people who would have died relatively soon anyway.

 

Net immigration will have a much bigger impact on population growth or shrinkage.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Anyway, I still maintain that Covid 19 will not drastically reduce our population. The biggest influence will, as has been suggested, be national policy on immigration.

Any news of activity on HS2 on the ground? Unlikely I know as even if there is any no-one should be around to see it.

Jonathan

 

 

We have just had a relatively mild Flu season and AFAIK there have been less expected deaths than normal.

Some of those taken by Covid would probably have been taken by a severe flu season.

[Mike Storey]

7 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The biggest restraint on line capacity is speed and stopping pattern differentials - with lineside signalling and absolutely consistent train capabilities it is, for example easy to achieve a capacity of a train at a headway of slighlty less than  every 3 minutes at 125 mph.  But the instant you introduce a train which makes stops among many which don't, or one which is slower or faster than the base case 'ideal' train, you reduce overall capacity.

 

One of the problems of the WCML - which isn't necessarily, and within certain limits, anything to do with train length - is the mix of trains in order to serve different markets and even more importantly in recent years the provision of extra trains in order to provide a better offer to passengers.  There is for instance the oft quoted example of numbers of trains between Euston and Birmingham running 'half empty' (or even more lightly loaded).  In that situation the number of trains - there for marketing reasons - is the driver eating into capacity rather than the number of passengers although clearly the operator has added those trains as part of a plan to increase business.  

 

Equally - assuming stock is available and the franchise terms are sufficiently flexible - some trains could be lengthened - particularly stopping passenger services.  While lengthening a train could impact on available headways and through them margins in many cases it won't have any  impact because the signalling provides for longer trains than are already using a route. (e.g going from 2+7  to 2+8 HSTs and latterly to 9 car IETs on the GWML has had no effect on headways - similar levels of frequency could still be maintained and in fact exceeded despite having longer trains).

 

Overall there are a whole series of factors affecting line capacity which are rather more complex than simple increases in passenger numbers and they will work in different ways on different routes.  The WCML as it stands could carry many more passengers - should they still wish to travel - by more closely aligning the speeds and stopping patterns of all passenger trains.  But that would obviously not be commercially acceptable for longer distance services.  Hence you reduce the speed differential impact by moving away the trains at one end of it - logically the non-stop and fastest passenger trains because on their own they represeent the most consistent, between trains, performance characteristics thus giving the most efficient capacity utilisation.

 

Unlikely. The release of paths to the WCML (and the ECML for sure) will not result in equally defined paths (and hence substantially more of them). There will still be a mix of fast, semi-fast and slows, just more localised, because that is what the market will demand. On the ECML at least (I am no expert on the WCML), the distribution of demand now, between Doncaster and all stations in between, and London, is greater than the entire ECML demand in 1980.

 

Unless we end up with a totalitarian control of the railways, once more, I am not convinced that the solution is optimum paths over passengers.

 

 

I 

[Edwin_m]

There will still be a mix of trains on the main lines, but the removal of the fastest ones onto HS2 should increase capacity overall.  This is probably more so for the WCML since all the longer-distance trains transfer onto HS2.  But HS2 trains on the ECML aren't planned to run north of Newcastle, with Edinburgh served via the WCML.  There will presumably still be through London-Edinburgh trains on the ECML, but making more stops for intermediate passengers.  It's not clear if there will still be faster trains going beyond Edinburgh or whether those passenger will face a slower through journey or have to change at Waverley.  

Edited April 10, 2020 by Edwin_m

[david.hill64]

10 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

However, I believe that the long term trend is still as I suggested as the number of live births per woman is something like 1.7 which does not lead to replacement of the population

 

This is also true, but this figure relates to mothers born in the UK. With recent substantial immigration - and I make no judgements on this - mostly of younger people, then there can be growth without further immigration if the fertility rate of the recent arrivals is greater than that of the more established population, which it would appear to be.

 

So government policy regarding transport needs - including HS2 - healthcare, housing, education etc and the financing of them, are all based on growing population. 

[Covkid]

22 minutes ago, david.hill64 said:

 

This is also true, but this figure relates to mothers born in the UK. With recent substantial immigration - and I make no judgements on this - mostly of younger people, then there can be growth without further immigration if the fertility rate of the recent arrivals is greater than that of the more established population, which it would appear to be.

 

So government policy regarding transport needs - including HS2 - healthcare, housing, education etc and the financing of them, are all based on growing population. 

 

Slight correction David.  Can you please use "should" instead of "are" in your last sentence. There are many things which Whitehall should have done over the last 20 years which they didn't.  What we don't know in these unprecedented times is what will happen to our business after the minimum six months of DfT control of the franchises.  Arriva have had the XC franchise since October 2007 and it is likely to proceed for at least the next two years.  In that time Arriva have

 

Brought back five HSTs from the Bicester "scrapyard"

Taken over two voyager end cars from Virgin for 221144

Reduced two 5 car 221s to 4 cars to provide the other two cars for 221144

Insert an ex WMR  class 170 centre car into an XC 2 car 170 with five more to follow next year.

 

Because DfT micro manage all franchise rolling stock needs the buck stops with them over rolling stock provision and none of us know what ridership will be like post Covid.  

[mdvle]

12 hours ago, david.hill64 said:

This is also true, but this figure relates to mothers born in the UK. With recent substantial immigration - and I make no judgements on this - mostly of younger people, then there can be growth without further immigration if the fertility rate of the recent arrivals is greater than that of the more established population, which it would appear to be

 

This does generally seem to be true - the people who immigrate (not just to the UK, but any western country) tend to follow the social norms of where they come from in family size.  But, their kids (and certainly grandkids) end up assimilated into western society and go for the more normal fewer kids but the dual careers/holidays/delay marriage/delay first kid/all the other things that money is spent on instead of 2+ kids.

[corneliuslundie]

Possibly atypical, but I spent six years living and working in Kosova. In the past in that predominantly Muslim country families have traditionally been large. In just a few generations family sizes have dropped to much the same as the UK. We are in touch with a lot of our ex students and two children seems to be more or less the norm.

Once a country gets reasonably prosperous and has some kind of health care system, family sizes tend to drop both because you don't need lots of offspring to support you in old age and because of better life expectancy of infants. Which is what happened in the UK some time ago. Agreed that it takes a few generations. (About the time needed to build HS" perhaps???)

Anyway, as has been said everything at the moment is guesswork.

Jonathan

[Edwin_m]

2 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Possibly atypical, but I spent six years living and working in Kosova. In the past in that predominantly Muslim country families have traditionally been large. In just a few generations family sizes have dropped to much the same as the UK. We are in touch with a lot of our ex students and two children seems to be more or less the norm.

Once a country gets reasonably prosperous and has some kind of health care system, family sizes tend to drop both because you don't need lots of offspring to support you in old age and because of better life expectancy of infants. Which is what happened in the UK some time ago. Agreed that it takes a few generations. (About the time needed to build HS" perhaps???)

Anyway, as has been said everything at the moment is guesswork.

Jonathan

This has been observed in many countries.  Other factors are better education of women, so they are more able to go out and earn a living instead of just being home-makers and mothers, and a more urban and industrial society where there is less need to have lots of children to help in the fields.  

[corneliuslundie]

"lots of children to help in the fields"

Now that's what we need in the UK. Estimated 50,000 shortage of workers for harvest was it I heard?

Jonathan

[mdvle]

35 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

"lots of children to help in the fields"

Now that's what we need in the UK. Estimated 50,000 shortage of workers for harvest was it I heard?

 

As always, it's not necessarily that there is a shortage of workers - rather, the farmers aren't willing to pay a UK level wage because the consumers aren't willing to pay a realistic price for the produce in the store - and those consumers will pay the cheaper price for an import from a low wage country vs. locally grown higher priced produce(*)

 

Same problem in most western (aka high relative wage) countries.

 

* - yes, there are always the exceptions - some people prefer to support local, etc.

[Mike Storey]

22 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

There will still be a mix of trains on the main lines, but the removal of the fastest ones onto HS2 should increase capacity overall.  This is probably more so for the WCML since all the longer-distance trains transfer onto HS2.  

 

Overall, yes, but not as much as is being suggested elsewhere. The demand for extra, faster trains from Coventry, Rugby and Northampton (and perhaps Wolverhampton, Chester and so on) will still eat paths. Then you have demand for extra fasts from MK, Tring, Berkhamsted and Watford. Little of this has been possible to date, without HS2. And that is without all the extra freight that it is being suggested will be re-routed to the WCML.

 

Suppressed demand means a lot more than just replicating the remnants of the remaining WCML service south of Brum. HS2 is needed to meet this demand. but it will still be a challenge.

[Mike Storey]

Mr Packham has not given up yet, naturally:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/11/chris-packham-vows-to-continue-hs2-legal-battle

 

I like the bit, from his brief, criticising the M'Luds for not taking into account various things, which they clearly covered in their itemised judgement. Perhaps they only read the summaries?

[melmerby]

4 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

Mr Packham has not given up yet, naturally:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/11/chris-packham-vows-to-continue-hs2-legal-battle

 

I like the bit, from his brief, criticising the M'Luds for not taking into account various things, which they clearly covered in their itemised judgement. Perhaps they only read the summaries?

Perhaps he doesn't read anything that doesn't agree with his point of view.

[lmsforever]

I hope that fast expresses to the north will be kept on the WCML so as we can still travel without dragging into London and adding to journey times by over an hour.But I am not holding my breath as with all the money being spent the DFT will try and force us onto this new line to justify its exstence.

[Zomboid]

There would be little point building it if the fast trains on the WCML remained unchanged. I would expect the capacity created to be used in a number of ways, probably including more fast trains to the north that aren't as fast as the fastest ones today. Places like Nuneaton ought to get a more frequent service, and there will probably be more inter city trains calling at MK than presently do. That's just speculation though, I've no idea what the actual plan is.

 

And if you're on or near the Southern WCML and want to head north, then a change at Birmingham (Curzon or Interchange) is going to be a more likely choice than going into Euston just to come back out again.

[pete_mcfarlane]

2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

Mr Packham has not given up yet, naturally:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/11/chris-packham-vows-to-continue-hs2-legal-battle

 

I like the bit, from his brief, criticising the M'Luds for not taking into account various things, which they clearly covered in their itemised judgement. Perhaps they only read the summaries?

 

I guess he also didn't read the bits criticising his brief. I got the impression the judge didn't think much of them.