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HS2 under review


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2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

So what? I agree that is true. But the same process happens with rail.

 

The basic problem is that more and more people are being crammed onto a small island, and their demand for travel harms the environment. Rail has a smaller impact, but forms a small percentage of journeys and much of the UK doesn't have easy access to a railway station (sadly, HS2 won't improve the latter at all). Are you seriously trying to assert that building HS2 won't induce an increase in travel?

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1 hour ago, locoholic said:

So what? I agree that is true. But the same process happens with rail.

 

The basic problem is that more and more people are being crammed onto a small island, and their demand for travel harms the environment.

 

Which is perhaps significant point.

 

However for the population as a whole to need to travel less, the places of employment, places of leisure, education opportunities, retailing opportunities must all be located close to where people live.

 

This requires a seismic shift in economic and tax policy - which for a long time has sought to promote efficiency and low costs over just about everything else. Not building HS2 will do sod all to achieve this aim.

 

People need to earn money to live and houses to reside in, businesses need workers with the right skills (The City of London simply couldn't function without the hoards of commuters coming in from the home counties) - so travel is fundamental need of modern life.

 

Its fundamentally flawed having an economy geared around people needing to travel increasing distances to have a decent standard of life yet then restrict said people by denying them the opportunity to travel. All such an approach would do is exacerbate the large gulf between the 'haves' and 'have nots' in society at large .

 

Consequently rather than getting all vexed over HS2 (which as you note, is a more environmentally friendly solution than yet more roads), your anger should be focused on the political structure which drives the need for travel. Its unfortunate that no political party is willing to be honest about this - but given the likely voter backlash at the far reaching and initially very disruptive economic re-adjustment necessary that would have to take place can you blame them?

Edited by phil-b259
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I agree with phil-b259’s post above and I have lived through this once before...

 

in the late 1990’s a commute in San Francisco started at 6am, to be in San Jose by 9am, and a 6pm departure would see you home by 9pm.

 

Heart-of the problem was 2 freeways, and just 1 single rail route (from a poorly connected part of SF), though 10 x 6 lane short “freeways” got people about over the various bay bridges. Your only option for a faster journey was a $2mn rundown 3bed semi instead..., $5-15m for a reasonable one.

driven by the aforementioned commute issues.

too many people (7mn in the bay area vs Gtr Londons 8mn) crammed in a small place with poor transport.

 

The crisis promptly solved itself in Sept 2001, when millions found themselves unemployed, with advanced degrees in an area swarming with failed dotcoms. Many left as the economy collapsed, crime rose, city tax revs collapsed and eventually took 12+ years to recover.

 

Since then not much infrastructure has changed, SF station has a tram connection to the city, Bart to the south, but internet speeds have rocketed. According to sfgate.com 67% of employees now work from home and only 100k people now commute 3 hours a day.

 

To solve the problem of commuting is therefore quite simple, create a major but localised economic shattering event that sends everyone away, and give them technology that means they dont have to return...

 

Can anyone think of one that could encourage lots of people to leave the UK, and start working from other countries instead ?

 

 

Edited by adb968008
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5 hours ago, lmsforever said:

No motorway through the chilterns  but the basic roads need to be refettled urgently they are falling to pieces quickly ,HS2 is a project that will not help us one bit rebuilt roads will help the locals move about without our cars being battered by potholes.The government and DAFT have completely cocked up the provision of transport to the country,high fares because of a greedy treasury ,inability to listen even when they ask us for our opinions ,and the disaster that is electrification will haunt us for the next one hundred years.In short stop HS2 now and work to put the wires up to Sheffied and Leeds ,also on EWR, plus get the overall transport policy back to one of benefit to the people .A sector that requires urgent help is the bus industry routes are disappearing daily companies are going bust at an alarming rate.If this carries on the bus will be a thing of the past outside of towns leaving many people stranded this is bound up with the rail policy and needs urgent attention.          If HS2 goes ahead I hope that it will not be another Cross Rail as this project has been a disaster from the start ,are there enough rail engineers available to carry out the work and will costs be monitored properly.Okay rant over its very hard to believe anything in the media now so lets hope somewhere someone knows what they are doing.

 

5 hours ago, lmsforever said:

 

 

You want to live in this neck of the woods,  we have no motorway and only one railway line  which is prone to weather damage.  During the last serious washout we were promised a new line bypassing the seawall, that's not going to happen! The A38 is seriously congested at peak times and also no real alternative if there's an incident.  To escape the county we have been promised an improved A30/A303,  if any of that happens in what's left of my life,  will be suprised.

 

They are building around 6500 plus houses here and are doing similar in Exeter, infrastructure improvements, zilch!

 

I for one will find that HS2 will improve journey times to the East Midlands and further North via London or Old Oak than any existing route.

 

If you don't like what's happening, come down here and enjoy the status quo!

 

 

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You have motorways? In the whole of Powys there are hardly any stretches of dual carriageway. We do have a brand mew - three lane! - Newtown bypass which took 70 years of planning and indecision to get built. If the rate of progress in Devon is the same you had better tell your grandchildren to put the date in the diary for the opening of the new roads.

At current progress they will probably be able to combine it with celebrations for completion of electrification to Plymouth, work on Dawlish sea wall and opening of Crossrail.

On a serious note, someone above highlighted one major issue, namely the lack of qualified staff to handle the projects. Has the government learned anything, or after the current spate of electrification will they then do nothing new until all the expertise has retired/gone abroad/moved into other careers? 

Jonathan

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That is exactly what should be the riposte to every politician who promises at election time to "do more than THEY are doing", be it railway re-openings, electrification, nursing staff, new housebuilding, it's all the same.

 

The limiting factor is NOT money, it is availability of sufficient skilled labour in the UK to do it.   When one party talks of building 300,000 houses per annum in this country, they never say who is going to build them.  This is because either (a) they haven't a clue or (b) they know it would require substantially more (mostly) Eastern European labour than we have seen up to now in the UK and this is unsellable to their traditional voter base.

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17 hours ago, locoholic said:

So what? I agree that is true. But the same process happens with rail.

 

The basic problem is that more and more people are being crammed onto a small island, and their demand for travel harms the environment. Rail has a smaller impact, but forms a small percentage of journeys and much of the UK doesn't have easy access to a railway station (sadly, HS2 won't improve the latter at all). Are you seriously trying to assert that building HS2 won't induce an increase in travel?

 

I very much hope it does encourage increased use of rail, both on HS2 itself, and on the three key routes for which it will release extra capacity for both passengers and freight. The need to accelerate modal shift, for both environmental and road congestion issues, is clear.

 

80% of the English population lives within a reasonable distance of a railway station. (Far less true of Wales and Scotland of course, but then new rail solutions are not often appropriate for low density areas.) But many of those people choose to drive because of either cost or because the current rail offer is simply not good enough for them (whether it be service levels or high overcrowding or reliability). There needs to be a step change if forward demand forecasts for medium to long distance travel demand are anywhere near accurate.

 

The difference between rail and road expansion, which you insist on ignoring, is that road induces far greater numbers, far faster than the extra capacity is capable, and also shifts congestion elsewhere. Rail expansion tends to take far longer to reach this state, for a number of demand behaviour patterns, well documented over the past 50 years. Bus solutions have their place, but are often sub-optimal, as the Cambridge Busway has already demonstrated. But much more needs to be done with supporting and re-vitalising local bus services, since their demise to the free market. Despite the increased incidence of home-working and reduction in five-day-week commuting, all the evidence shows that increased economic activity encourages further travel.

 

Either you tarmac over much of the UK, or you find a better solution. HS2 is not the only answer, but it is an important contribution.

 

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13 hours ago, melmerby said:

We keep hearing about no motorway through the Chilterns.

Unless they have moved it, last time I went down the M40 it went through the Chilterns:

https://goo.gl/maps/zD3Df5yXtKdcBjuH6

 

Indeed, and the M40 has created a huge scar in the landscape, as seen in the opening titles of 'The Vicar of Dibley'. What's the betting that many, if not all, of those moaning about the 'environmental catastrophe' that they believe is HS2 are quite happy to drive along the M40, and other new roads, that have blighted other people's neighbourhoods.

 

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45 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 What's the betting that many, if not all, of those moaning about the 'environmental catastrophe' that they believe is HS2 are quite happy to drive along the M40, and other new roads, that have blighted other people's neighbourhoods.

 

This goes back to one of the very early largish anti HS2 meetings somewhere in the rural heartland where amongst other things argued about was the fact that HS2 would be environmental disaster.

So did they charter a bus to get them there in a "reasonably" environmentally friendly way?

No, they all turned up, mostly in Chelsea Tractors with just one person (the driver).

They are quite happy for roads to be built so they can drive where they want, as long as they are not where they live.

 

Edited by melmerby
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This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

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6 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

Airport owner supports spending billions of public money to improve access to airport. Not a big surprise!

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11 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

What might also help is if people not involved in running engineering projects had some idea of how spending on them works; it's a bit like having basic economics taught, and how Parliament actually works. We hear that the cost of HS2 is to be £56 billion. My impression is that a lot of non-engineering types think that the money is all spent upfront, rather than over its lifetime, with a peak in the middle of the main phase. If we cannot afford the £3-5 billion per annum that HS2 costs, we really are finished as a nation.

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9 minutes ago, locoholic said:

Airport owner supports spending billions of public money to improve access to airport. Not a big surprise!

 

Of course it won't be to you, as you clearly supported the taxpayer billions spent already on the M56/M6/M60 and to an extent M62, airport links. In fact, MAG, which runs Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports, is majority owned, as a stand-alone PLC, by a consortium of NW Local Authorities, and has long advocated public transport improvements to each, into which it has been prepared to invest.

 

Just below 20% of its Manchester business is domestic journeys, which stand to be reduced far further by HS2, as has happened at Leeds/Bradford following the ECML improvements of the last 30 years. So it is a bit suicidal to support HS2 unless you have an ethical business plan (and a hope to increase your international business of course, to the detriment of London).

 

Unlike the privately owned, Spanish-owned Heathrow, which has been forced to concede partial control of its over-priced public transport links, for the greater good. But it will still benefit from HS2 towards compliance with the planning conditions over the extra runway.

 

So, an airport supporting public transport improvements when it does not really have to, deserves your ire, far more than one that really needs to, but is very reluctant about it. Bummer.

 

Surely another quintuple-laned motorway would be far superior? 

 

I really don't get where you are coming from. I would guess, not many others will either (bar one, with a crimson hue, of course).

 

 

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24 minutes ago, 62613 said:

What might also help is if people not involved in running engineering projects had some idea of how spending on them works; it's a bit like having basic economics taught, and how Parliament actually works. We hear that the cost of HS2 is to be £56 billion. My impression is that a lot of non-engineering types think that the money is all spent upfront, rather than over its lifetime, with a peak in the middle of the main phase. If we cannot afford the £3-5 billion per annum that HS2 costs, we really are finished as a nation.

 

Entirely agree, but that point has been made on here several times over, to a supposedly empathetic audience, but, because it does not fit the ambitions of a certain few, it is lost in the ever-moving reasons for not doing it at all.

 

Absolute total cost will be lost in the mists of time, once the benefits (to whatever degree they turn out) arise. We have seen that with HS1, against which much the same resistance was energised, but few could imagine life without HS1 in Kent now, let alone when travelling between London and Paris/Brussels.  But even that is dismissed as "special" and cannot be included in any argument, because it did not go through the Chilterns, or did not involve someone's poor experiences of rail services elsewhere, or does not somehow help a few people in Dawlish.

 

The creation of the National Infrastructure Commission, in 2015, supported by all parties, was supposed to allow apolitical decision making about future priorities, by objective assessment of needs v capability v recommended solutions, to inform strategy. It has not. Strategy is an alien form to British politics, and sways with the Daily Mail and similar.  Tactics are everything. To keep my job / my seat / my sinecure. We have what we have, and bloke-down-the-pub knows more than any expert, 'cos they always get it wrong, innit?

 

Lord Elpus has since resigned from the NIC. I don't blame him. Obviously, according to Trump-like logic, he was clearly a crook and a traitor. Bigly.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

This is interesting. Even the people who own and run Manchester Airport are coming out strongly for HS2.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/20/tories-conservatives-hs2-party-leadership-hopefuls-warned

 

Naturally, because this is in the Grauniad, it must be complete, left wing rubbish. Except that there are many far left-wingers who would also cancel HS2 without a second thought (preferring the myth of improving what we have). Whatever the truth of the warnings, there is clearly a greater realisation of the benefits of HS2 to the Midlands and the North, by people living and working there, than is oft cited by those living further south, who think they know better.

 

As a matter of interest, if, as stated in The Guardian, the main benefit of HS2 comes from the section north of Birmingham, why didn't they build that section first?

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19 minutes ago, locoholic said:

As a matter of interest, if, as stated in The Guardian, the main benefit of HS2 comes from the section north of Birmingham, why didn't they build that section first?

 

Because the northerly sections have to have a destination.

 

Regards

 

Julian

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2 minutes ago, locoholic said:

As a matter of interest, if, as stated in The Guardian, the main benefit of HS2 comes from the section north of Birmingham, why didn't they build that section first?

 

I believe, but it is just my opinion, that you are misreading the article. As I read it, they are suggesting the main benefit to the North only comes when the northern section is completed, along with the southern section, but not alone, as you imply.

 

That is not to say there is no benefit if just the Phase 1 and Phase 2a are built. But it would appear, from HS2's and DfT's proffered explanations, that the benefits would be lessened, and, in strictly BC terms, potentially arguable, if not downright negative. Which then poses the logicality of going ahead with one ("because so much has already been committed") but not the other. Truly the argument of a lunatic, or ambitious MP.

 

But why build it in that order? Primarily because:

 

a) no-one could agree what it (Phase 2b) should be (and to some extent, that still appears to be the case)

 

and

 

b) the longest lead times were thought to be in the London area, with tunnelling, property purchase and compensation and the various complications with the HS1-HS2 link and west London issues.

 

It turns out that (b) was wide of the mark - the North and Midlands have turned out to be far more of a conundrum than Camden - and that (a) was correct. It is entirely probable that the shenanigans over the Northern section, if proposed as the initiation stage, would have more readily collapsed the entire project, and probably already. Phase 2b makes little sense without Phase 1 and 2a.

 

Indeed, various politicos in Scotland have continued to suggest that a Phase 3 Scotland link should have been started at the same time (funding notwithstanding), without any agreement (that I know of) about where that link should go.

 

So the decision to undertake the project in this order, seems entirely vindicated.

 

 

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3 hours ago, locoholic said:

As a matter of interest, if, as stated in The Guardian, the main benefit of HS2 comes from the section north of Birmingham, why didn't they build that section first?

 

Because without the line south of Birmingham the trains have nowhere to go!

 

Please remember the whole reason HS2 is being built in the first place is the southern section of the WCML is FULL UP!

 

As such all those trains on the northern leg would have to terminate in Birmingham or alternatively take up paths on the current WCML denying towns like Stafford a direct service to London.

 

If you look at high speed train services round the world they usually start from their principle capital city as thats the bit which most significantly requires extra capacity. The French did not got for Paris - Lyon simply because of the time savings (significant though they are) - the old PLM mainline was also bursting at the seems and required capacity relief in much the same way the southern section of the WCML does today.

 

 

 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, locoholic said:

And the only place that Northerners want to go to is London?

 

Just shows how grim it must be living up there that they want to go to London.

 

But that is what the ticket sales say, why Birmingham to London is so busy, and hence HS2.

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No

12 hours ago, jcredfer said:

 

Because the northerly sections have to have a destination.

 

Regards

 

Julian

 

In reality it should being built from multiple starting points, Manchester, Crewe, Birmingham (heading both north and south) and London.

This would have delivered it quicker, improved design, speed up legislation and allowed us to move on to the next priority. 

HS3 linking into HS2 and running from Holyhead to Hull via Chester, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, if this could also take cars and freight it would provide vital east west connection.

 

High Speed travel and infrastructure investment is being delivered far to slowly in this country to the point that it is obsolete once delivered. We really need to grow up and invest in our infrastructure be it roads, rail, electricity, comma or water as we are being left behind. The needs of society need to out way the needs of the few.

 

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1 hour ago, locoholic said:

And the only place that Northerners want to go to is London?

 

Of course Not! - but once you strip out local commuting journeys then in terms of ticket sales London is generally at the top of the list.

 

Equally there are quite a lot of Londoners who travel up to the north for business or leisure (just look at how busy trains to the likes of York can get with tourists).

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30 minutes ago, Tricky-CRS said:

No

 

In reality it should being built from multiple starting points, Manchester, Crewe, Birmingham (heading both north and south) and London.

This would have delivered it quicker, improved design, speed up legislation and allowed us to move on to the next priority. 

HS3 linking into HS2 and running from Holyhead to Hull via Chester, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, if this could also take cars and freight it would provide vital east west connection.

 

 

 

Laudable, but I doubt there would be sufficient capacity in the UK design and construction industry to undertake a scheme on that scale, all at the same time. Construction is already reporting severe shortages of certain, often "basic", skills in their attempts at recruitment, let alone for the additional specialist skills that railway projects need.

 

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