HS2 under review

[locoholic]

1 hour ago, Richard E said:

I've now viewed the 'report' screened by the BBC. Very one sided with tales of 'land grab' for compounds etc being extended to cover areas that are said, by the land owners, to be the actual trackbed areas. HS2 were not represented, nor was anything said about an approach to them for an explanation.

 

Plenty of surmise that this tactic is being used to 'protect' land that will be required for the trackbed itself once the final alignment is known, the item suggests that the actual route of the trackbed has yet to be decided, it is only the general route that has been agreed and that could be varied due to geological issues. Certainly gripes about lack of compensation payments to date to farmers (I'm not sure if what I have read is correct in that the landowner has, under section 16, to claim compensation, it isn't paid automatically) despite the NFU having been instrumental in drafting section 16.

 

Local MP's join the debate, one is pro HS2 but 'disgusted' by the way his constituents are being treated by his government whilst the other is anti (and a member of the Opposition) but also unhappy about the back door 'nationalisation' process being used to get the land without paying for it.

 

Seems as if it is more a lack of explanation and understanding of the process rather than underhand tactics being used.

Your comment is factually incorrect - HS2 were represented, and they admitted that the current situation was unacceptable.

[rockershovel]

Re Mike Storey, above, absolutely... it’s not the future if there are no flying cars! 

 

Various replies above do seem to point in a direction I had long concluded - that the purpose of the HSx network is the extension of a mass transit network between local regional capitals within the EU. This would be entirely consistent with European history; there would be no modern Germany, no Italy without railways; come to that, no USA, Canada, Russia or Australia (the American and Australian ones are somewhat different because mass freight transit remains an important function, mostly minerals and food). No India, either. 

 

Its also consistent with the trend in this country, of funnelling everything to London - which was the economic hub long before places like Birmingham or Leeds were more than minor market towns, and has outlasted them. 

 

I dont see anything suggesting that HSx will, or could revive regional industry in U.K. 

 

In the USA, approximately 2% of the population move to another state for work reasons, annually. A million Poles came here in less than five years. Siemens recruited most of the British rolling stock assembly workforce to Germany in a matter of weeks, and few ( if any) of those even stay at weekends - expecting to be paid off sooner rather than later. 

 

Federal states have always behaved like that. The Austro-Hungarian Empire failed under its own internal contradictions, but they tried railways, too. 

 

 

[Mike Storey]

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

 

I dont see anything suggesting that HSx will, or could revive regional industry in U.K. 

 

 

 

The vast majority of Northern councils and trade bodies disagree with you. They regard improved north-south transport as essential to their futures, as much as east-west.

 

[rockershovel]

28 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

The vast majority of Northern councils and trade bodies disagree with you. They regard improved north-south transport as essential to their futures, as much as east-west.

 

 

I don’t disagree, as far as that goes. Whether that will be achieved by reviving local regional industry, is rather a different matter. 

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

The vast majority of Northern councils and trade bodies disagree with you. They regard improved north-south transport as essential to their futures, as much as east-west.

 

I seem to remember that the only council in West Yorks that wasn't in favour of HS2 was Wakefield, mainly because there was no station in tier area.   Since the route revisions they've also lost the construction base and rolling stock maintenance depot to Leeds.

 

Jamie

[pete_mcfarlane]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Re Mike Storey, above, absolutely... it’s not the future if there are no flying cars! 

 

Flying cars might actually happen sooner rather than later. We're approaching the point where autonomous aircraft are allowed in Civil airspace, and there are various technology demonstrators of pilotless small passenger aircraft out there. Having the things fly themselves removes the problem of licensing the pilots - the training and certification of car drivers and pilots is massively different, so you couldn't let anyone with a driving license start zipping around in their own flying car. 

 

I suspect they'll be a bit of a niche product though, as you won't get a secondhand one for £1000. 

[rockershovel]

33 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I seem to remember that the only council in West Yorks that wasn't in favour of HS2 was Wakefield, mainly because there was no station in tier area.   Since the route revisions they've also lost the construction base and rolling stock maintenance depot to Leeds.

 

Jamie

 

Serves ‘em right for not getting with the programme! 

 

Seriously though, no-one is going to say that they DON’T want a slice of a major, government funded programme which will go somewhere else if they don’t want it. At the very least you get some shortlived construction work, plus whatever benefits might derive longer term.

 

 

[Fat Controller]

On 03/03/2019 at 19:00, rockershovel said:

Regarding the hypothetical French tourist wishing to travel to the Midlands by train, why does he not simply fly to Birmingham or Manchester? However if he is REALLY determined to travel by train, it’s worth pointing out that it’s only a few minutes’ walk from St Pancras to Euston....

 

You could always try fooling the tourist into thinking the trinity of stations on Euston Road are one large station by rebranding them in the style 'Euston- King's Cross' etc; this is pretty much what SNCF did with Montparnasse in the 1980s for TGV- Atlantique, and more recently with Gare du Lyon- Bercy. In both cases, it is advisable to bring a packed lunch when travelling from one end to the other..

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Oh, come on. You're forgetting that all these new cars will hover, and we won't really have to leave our houses at all, because Amazon and QVC will provide for our every need. Work, for those who can't cope with video-conferencing, will be for wimps and robots.

 

Apparently.

 

Seriously, it is quite strange that the Highways Agency have been allocated a far greater increase in road enhancement and maintenance expenditure, than the the railways, and yet Local Authorities have recently been allocated far greater responsibility for A roads maintenance, which were a HA remit, but have had their budgets cut (apart from the recent one-off bribe at the last election). Conspiracy theory could be nearer the truth, but it does not seem to make sense with the present party of government. Oh, hang on. Yes it does. I just remembered that the vast majority of their constituencies are rural, or outside Metropolitan Authority conurbations, where such changes have little effect. Silly me.

 

Detrunking of A roads (i.e transferring responsibility for them from the Highways Agency/its predecessor to local authorities has been going on for most of this century if not even earlier.  The oldest Detrunking Order I can find is dated 2002, it has also been mentioned for certain stretches of what were currently motorways, e.g the M32 but i don't know if that happened, sorry part of it was detrunked in 1999.

 

Linked below is the Hansard record of a 1999 answer to a Parliamentary question  listing roads proposed for detrunking

 

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1999/dec/06/road-policy-de-trunking

Edited March 5, 2019 by The Stationmaster
Correct typo

[phil-b259]

5 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Detrunking of A roads (i.e transferring responsibility for them from the Highways Agency/its predecessor to local authorities has been going on for most of this century if not even earlier.  The oldest Detrunking Order I can find is dated 2002, it has also been mentioned for certain stretches of what were currently motorways, e.g the M32 but i don't know if that happened, sorry part of it was detrunked in 1999.

 

Linked below is the Hansard record of a 1999 answer to a Parliamentary question  listing roads proposed for detrunking

 

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1999/dec/06/road-policy-de-trunking

 

I think the point is not that de-trunking of roads is new - rather its the case that in recent decades the Highways Agency was actively trying to rid itself of as much single carriageway as possible with the aim of being a Motorway / Dual carriageway 'A Road' organisation with the net result that the practice of removing trunk road status was accelerated for artificial reasons rather than on the basis of sound evidence. Such efforts were of course encouraged by the DfT as it allowed money given to the HA to go further.

 

Of course it goes without saying that the local authorities who ended up taking on the de-trunked roads were not given a consummate increase in funding - ministers using the "well if it was nationally strategic it would still be a HA responsibility so all the traffic must be local and thus road maintenance should be paid by local council tax payers" argument.

[black and decker boy]

 

The indications coming from government & Highways England are that over the next 10 years or so, it will cease to exist as an executive agency with ownership & control

of the whole trunk road network & motorways devolved down to the regional transport bodies (quangos) such as TfN, Midlands Connect and so on

 

this is partly that all major capacity enhancement on the motorway network will have been completed (widening & new build is off the agenda so smart motorways is as good as it will get) so focus then moves to A roads feeding & supporting the M-Ways

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

You could always try fooling the tourist into thinking the trinity of stations on Euston Road are one large station by rebranding them in the style 'Euston- King's Cross' etc; this is pretty much what SNCF did with Montparnasse in the 1980s for TGV- Atlantique, and more recently with Gare du Lyon- Bercy. In both cases, it is advisable to bring a packed lunch when travelling from one end to the other..

 

Kings X and St Pancras are immediately adjacent. Euston is only about 200m away. 

[jamie92208]

1 minute ago, rockershovel said:

 

Kings X and St Pancras are immediately adjacent. Euston is only about 200m away. 

From my experience in Barcelona once, that's more than near enough to be shown on the network map as one station.   I seem to remember it was nearly half a mile walk including crossing a dual carriageway, hop over the central barrier and then go down an embankment to get to the car park of the Main Line station from what I think was a metre gauge section.  It's also closer than Lille Flandres is to Lille Europe.

 

I seem to remember that some sort of underground travellator has been mooted though how they thread that through the basement levels of the British Library I have no idea.

 

Jamie

[Joseph_Pestell]

41 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Kings X and St Pancras are immediately adjacent. Euston is only about 200m away. 

 

Probably a tad more than 200m. But that is just the bit along the Euston Road. If you alight from the far end of an HS2 train at Euston there is 400m to do just to get to the barrier line on the west side of the station. Add to that a queuing system to get through security at St Pancras Int and possibly another 200m to get to your seat on HS1 and you are soon at well over a kilometre. I don't advocate a through route (uneconomic) but there should be some sort of peoplemover to link the two.

[Joseph_Pestell]

4 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

You could always try fooling the tourist into thinking the trinity of stations on Euston Road are one large station by rebranding them in the style 'Euston- King's Cross' etc; this is pretty much what SNCF did with Montparnasse in the 1980s for TGV- Atlantique, and more recently with Gare du Lyon- Bercy. In both cases, it is advisable to bring a packed lunch when travelling from one end to the other..

 

The Montparnasse trek dates from the 1960s when the mainline station was rebuilt much further out from the city centre. The Montparnasse Tower stands where the old station was.

[phil-b259]

9 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Probably a tad more than 200m. But that is just the bit along the Euston Road. If you alight from the far end of an HS2 train at Euston there is 400m to do just to get to the barrier line on the west side of the station. Add to that a queuing system to get through security at St Pancras Int and possibly another 200m to get to your seat on HS1 and you are soon at well over a kilometre. I don't advocate a through route (uneconomic) but there should be some sort of peoplemover to link the two.

 

I understand one of the problems with any subterranean link between St Pancras and Euston is the underground laboratories of the Francis Crick Institute where experiments that are sensitive to sound / emf emissions are undertaken.

 

https://www.crick.ac.uk/

 

I believe that said institute has powerful friends in high places and as such all proposals for any link between the two stations north of Euston Road has been relatedly rejected

[JeffP]

5 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I seem to remember that the only council in West Yorks that wasn't in favour of HS2 was Wakefield, mainly because there was no station in tier area.   Since the route revisions they've also lost the construction base and rolling stock maintenance depot to Leeds.

 

Jamie

As I understood it, the locals had NOT wanted anything built near them?

[pete_mcfarlane]

5 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

You could always try fooling the tourist into thinking the trinity of stations on Euston Road are one large station by rebranding them in the style 'Euston- King's Cross' etc; this is pretty much what SNCF did with Montparnasse in the 1980s for TGV- Atlantique, and more recently with Gare du Lyon- Bercy. In both cases, it is advisable to bring a packed lunch when travelling from one end to the other..

 

The trek from (say) the DC lines to St Albans branch platform at Watford junction must be over a quarter of a mile, so walking half a mile down the road to another station is not that much more of a hassle than changing within some stations. 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by pete_mcfarlane

[letterspider]

43 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

I understand one of the problems with any subterranean link between St Pancras and Euston is the underground laboratories of the Francis Crick Institute where experiments that are sensitive to sound / emf emissions are undertaken.

 

https://www.crick.ac.uk/

 

I believe that said institute has powerful friends in high places and as such all proposals for any link between the two stations north of Euston Road has been relatedly rejected

Thanks for that.  However i thought the link would be much further North through Camden.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, letterspider said:

Thanks for that.  However i thought the link would be much further North through Camden.

 

For clarity I was referring to a pedestrian / travelator link between the two stations.

 

The proposed railway link between HS1 and HS2 would indeed have been through Camden either alongside or replacing one of the heavily used North London line tracks

[Mike Storey]

The attached may help understand how decisions were reached. (Crick alone did not kybosh the subterranean people mover link - it is mentioned as a substantial medical research centre - Camden Council resistance was enough to do that).

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/480372/HS2-HS1_report.pdf

 

The maximum journey time gain from any automated link was estimated at 12 minutes, and the maximum number of people travelling internationally that this would benefit was forecast at just 800 over the three hour peaks - most beneficiaries would be domestic users, but even that out likely peak usage at only around 1,300 people an hour, against a likely capacity of 10,000 per hour. At around £250m underground, or £120m elevated (2011 prices) against the disruption and other issues during and after construction, it was rejected in the appraisal. But what I do not understand is that the report estimated a "benefit" to HS2 users of £225m. It does not say whether this was a per annum benefit or a total over the expected life span of the works. But it then goes on to say the vast majority of the benefit would be for domestic users, implying that other parties rather than HS2 should mostly fund something like this.

 

 Looks like an "enhanced" walking route at street level is the only solution on offer now, together perhaps with a shuttle bus and/or enhanced taxi provision for those who need it. Until or if Crossrail 2, which creates a super-station underground, linking all three stations (plus Euston Square) by escalator/travelator. 

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Probably a tad more than 200m. But that is just the bit along the Euston Road. If you alight from the far end of an HS2 train at Euston there is 400m to do just to get to the barrier line on the west side of the station. Add to that a queuing system to get through security at St Pancras Int and possibly another 200m to get to your seat on HS1 and you are soon at well over a kilometre. I don't advocate a through route (uneconomic) but there should be some sort of peoplemover to link the two.

 

I believe it's called "the Tube".... I've always thought that it was quicker to walk, and I find I'm not alone in that opinion 

 

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/25522/whats-the-quickest-way-from-london-kings-cross-to-euston-by-foot-or-tube

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by rockershovel

[rockershovel]

re Mike Storey, above, an "enhanced street level walking route" would surely include an underpass or overbridge for the chaotic road crossing West of Kings X! 

[Bernard Lamb]

4 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

I understand one of the problems with any subterranean link between St Pancras and Euston is the underground laboratories of the Francis Crick Institute where experiments that are sensitive to sound / emf emissions are undertaken.

 

https://www.crick.ac.uk/

 

I believe that said institute has powerful friends in high places and as such all proposals for any link between the two stations north of Euston Road has been relatedly rejected

I would have thought that the institute is far enough to the north to be unaffected by any automated walkway on the main road.

it is not so much friends in high places but a case of them carrying out rather important work.

Now if the original road frontage building line had been maintained rather than the creep forward that has been allowed to happen over the years then there would have been plenty of room for a walkway.

I would have thought noise and vibration coming from the lower levels of the British Library would create more of a problem.

Bernard

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

 

I would have thought noise and vibration coming from the lower levels of the British Library would create more of a problem.

Bernard

 

What do they DO down there, then? 

Edited March 6, 2019 by rockershovel