HS2 under review

[bimble]

When I was shooting the Scottish field champs last month (wow, only a month ago), I was talking about HS2 with one of the chaps in my shooting group. When I explained that the 'getting there 20 minutes faster' was only a fringe benefit, & explained about the increasing capacity, increasing frequency of semi-fast on the current west coast mainline his response was, "well, why don't they (HS2) ever mention any of this? I was kinda against it as a waste of money, but now I can see why they need it"

 

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if the HS2 publicity department has been infiltrated by the StopHS2 crowd...

[Mike Storey]

15 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Big infrastructure projects bring:

• Jobs in construction
• Jobs in businesses serving the construction industry - steel, aggregates, materials plus other service industries
• Provide somewhere for people to learn expertise
• Offer a career path through higher education to university to employment 
• Generate taxable income for the exchequer
• Provide ongoing growth and renewal of our structure

Then there is the railway itself:

• Jobs
• Suporting service industries
• Train building
• Ongoing taxable income for the exchequer.

its not just about a high speed railway, but I do share concerns that the Northern element may be delayed or watered down when we too need these sorts of jobs so that the whole scheme is seen to be equitable.

 

You are absolutely right in that they should provide those elements you mention regarding training, qualifications etc for the local/domestic population. HS2 has been very active in promoting such progression, primarily because the UK now lacks many of those skills.

 

One of the key aspects of GWIP that should have worked, but didn't, was the simplification of OLE construction, allowing domestic availability of current skills to service this major scheme. But a combination of unproven technology, poor understanding of actual site conditions (preventing the planned use of more automated installation), and apparently piss-poor project management, has given the industry a bad name. The scheme did not prioritise ongoing delivery of those skills which the general education system and private industry had failed to do.

 

But HS2 has invested far more heavily in domestic training and is producing (if we are to believe the reports coming via Rail Technology and MR etc) a generation of engineers who may actually know what they are about, once more. That would all be lost, if general opinion decides that it would be far better to mess about, doing all the things we have done so badly over the past x years, with the same marginal results, yet again.

 

Even the bloody Italians are doing this better than us now. What the hell is the matter with you?

 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Mike Storey

[lmsforever]

As has been said before HS2 will encourage people to travel to London but not many will leave London northwards and as I have said wcml will be dumbed down to a commuter line albeit long distance .Also some of the contractors for the clearance work are not as good as management say.My neighbour saw a group north of here pulling down mature oak trees using a digger to rip branches off failing  then to uproot the tree.Also they have been netting hedgerows illegaly during the nesting season.Not important to many but to those of us who live in the country very important nature must be protected but HS2 management do not seem interested talk to the people at Calvert.

[Mike Storey]

12 minutes ago, bimble said:

When I was shooting the Scottish field champs last month (wow, only a month ago), I was talking about HS2 with one of the chaps in my shooting group. When I explained that the 'getting there 20 minutes faster' was only a fringe benefit, & explained about the increasing capacity, increasing frequency of semi-fast on the current west coast mainline his response was, "well, why don't they (HS2) ever mention any of this? I was kinda against it as a waste of money, but now I can see why they need it"

 

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if the HS2 publicity department has been infiltrated by the StopHS2 crowd...

 

Spot On.

 

But, when you look at much of the more recent HS2 PR output, it does focus on capacity. Perhaps it is more likely that the news rooms at the Beeb, ITV and others have been infiltrated, or far more likely, the more outspoken Home Counties MP's and, even less-voted-for MEP's who use HS2 as yet another cause-celebre, where an understanding of the critical issues involved, matters far less than air-time, to make a controversial statement with which bloke-down-the-pub can readily recognise the fault of HS2 in his/her inability to afford a bigger TV or summat.

 

[phil-b259]

20 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Also some of the contractors for the clearance work are not as good as management say.My neighbour saw a group north of here pulling down mature oak trees using a digger to rip branches off failing  then to uproot the tree.Also they have been netting hedgerows illegaly during the nesting season.Not important to many but to those of us who live in the country very important nature must be protected but HS2 management do not seem interested talk to the people at Calvert.

 

Housing developers are doing much the same across the country yet I don't see any sign of a national 'stop the developers' campaign.  Its only the result of local outrage has anything been done https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-47473032

 

What about this incident in Norfolk https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-47880571

 

Obviously such behaviour should not be tolerated - but using it to single out HS2 for special treatment is wrong.

Edited May 16, 2019 by phil-b259

[Mike Storey]

9 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

As has been said before HS2 will encourage people to travel to London but not many will leave London northwards and as I have said wcml will be dumbed down to a commuter line albeit long distance .Also some of the contractors for the clearance work are not as good as management say.My neighbour saw a group north of here pulling down mature oak trees using a digger to rip branches off failing  then to uproot the tree.Also they have been netting hedgerows illegaly during the nesting season.Not important to many but to those of us who live in the country very important nature must be protected but HS2 management do not seem interested talk to the people at Calvert.

 

So you say. That is a far more general statement directed at Network Rail, than any HS2 contractor (often the same, because there are so few UK firms capable of taking on the size and liabilities of such major contracts).

 

I don't disbelieve what you say, nor that it is important that such matters are dealt with properly. I just don't equate that with condemning the entire proposal.

 

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

As has been said before HS2 will encourage people to travel to London but not many will leave London northwards and as I have said wcml will be dumbed down to a commuter line albeit long distance .

 

Given the housing shortage in the South East, encouraging travel into London instead of moving down here would seem an elementary sensible move.

 

Can you please define more clearly what exactly counts as 'dumbed down' commuter line - because based on ticket sales most of the people using GWR trains inwards of Swindon or Virgin between London and Birmingham are actually commuters - not folk making one off journeys.

 

As far as we are aware the current Pendalino fleet will continue to be employed on WCML services and there is no intention to reduce line speeds. Obviously it could happen - but that would be a very clear case of the Government breaking specific pledges it has made with regard to journey times and service frequencies from WCML stations.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2019 by phil-b259

[lmsforever]

Italy has more countryside uncuttered by towns than the UK so of course they will promote faster lines even if they cant really afford them!

[lmsforever]

We are looking forward to 700 traffic movements associated to HS2  every week when construction starts and that's from the company bet you who live miles a way and support this line would be ecstatic at this .

[Richard E]

5 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

We are looking forward to 700 traffic movements associated to HS2  every week when construction starts and that's from the company bet you who live miles a way and support this line would be ecstatic at this .

 

But that is not for the life of the line, it is a temporary impact during the construction phase, albeit one spread over a period of about 3 to 4 years on current planning.

 

Surely it is better than building yet another motorway where the traffic movements would be permanent. A motorway also has a far larger land grab and as for carbon footprint ...

[lmsforever]

Add this to our daily gridlock and its going to be chaos.

[mdvle]

10 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Add this to our daily gridlock and its going to be chaos.

 

Welcome to the reality of living in the modern world, where almost any / every bit of infrastructure built (or even maintained / rebuild of existing) causes temporary inconvenience which is often fairly major to those directly impacted.

 

But the alternative is to do nothing and thus let the country gradually fall apart, and few want that either.

[black and decker boy]

26 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

We are looking forward to 700 traffic movements associated to HS2  every week when construction starts and that's from the company bet you who live miles a way and support this line would be ecstatic at this .

I live 35 yards from one of the main HS2 HGV routes into Aylesbury 

 

i support HS2

[locoholic]

1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Spot On.

 

But, when you look at much of the more recent HS2 PR output, it does focus on capacity. Perhaps it is more likely that the news rooms at the Beeb, ITV and others have been infiltrated, or far more likely, the more outspoken Home Counties MP's and, even less-voted-for MEP's who use HS2 as yet another cause-celebre, where an understanding of the critical issues involved, matters far less than air-time, to make a controversial statement with which bloke-down-the-pub can readily recognise the fault of HS2 in his/her inability to afford a bigger TV or summat.

 

As has been pointed out on here before, people know that the "HS" in HS2 stands for High Speed. Trying to claim it's now all about capacity simply reminds people that the project has suffered from mission creep, which prompts nagging doubts about sub-optimal design and desperate political spin to make the line sound less like a vanity project. And that's before people think about all the budget overspends and missed deadlines of other high profile rail projects like Crossrail and the GWML electrification.

[Mike Storey]

1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

Italy has more countryside uncuttered by towns than the UK so of course they will promote faster lines even if they cant really afford them!

 

Absolute codswallop. Italy has a population similar to the UK (61m v 65m) and a land area roughly similar to the UK (301 km2 v 243 km2), and a division economically and culturally between north and south (except it is the opposite polarities that are in contest, than the UK).  So what are you talking about???

 

Yet again, you are just making it up.

 

[melmerby]

18 minutes ago, locoholic said:

As has been pointed out on here before, people know that the "HS" in HS2 stands for High Speed.

So what? That's just the same as the "HS" in HST!

High speed is (generally) applied to 125mph or faster, which whatever top speed it was going to be was "high speed".

[locoholic]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

So what? That's just the same as the "HS" in HST!

High speed is (generally) applied to 125mph or faster, which whatever top speed it was going to be was "high speed".

So you're arguing that the Great Western Mainline is actually HS4?

 

I wonder sometimes just how desperately bad a rail scheme would have to be before some people on here would admit it was no good.

[Mike Storey]

22 minutes ago, locoholic said:

As has been pointed out on here before, people know that the "HS" in HS2 stands for High Speed. Trying to claim it's now all about capacity simply reminds people that the project has suffered from mission creep, which prompts nagging doubts about sub-optimal design and desperate political spin to make the line sound less like a vanity project. And that's before people think about all the budget overspends and missed deadlines of other high profile rail projects like Crossrail and the GWML electrification.

 

But you simply demonstrate a very unfortunate inability to comprehend, for someone who claims to be interested in railways, that high speed is part of high capacity (at marginal extra costs on a new build). Reducing overall speed, reduces overall capacity, in terms of efficiency. Add that to the scheme's ability to add extra capacity into existing main line routes, by diverting long distance express services, allowing essential extra room for short to medium distance services (the most overcrowded currently), plus freight, on the WCML, MML and ECML, and you have a good combination.

 

You are right only in that the argument has been robbed by those who wish the scheme to go away, but who have no cogent nor realistic alternative. There is a job to be done to convince people, with even less willingness to understand the real issues, that a new build is necessary. But that is not the fault of the company created to make it happen. It is rather more the fault of the "client", led by possibly the most ridiculous Sec of State for Transport we have seen since, perhaps, Marples.

 

[Davexoc]

1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

Add this to our daily gridlock and its going to be chaos.

Aylesbury has been like that for years, and as it now more or less extends from Waddesdon to Wendover, a few extra trucks aren't going to change much. Try educating the local parents to walk their offspring to school and back, and you'll find most of the problem goes away. There are far too many Chelsea Tractors plying the streets, and then build some cycleways to get the MAMILs off the roads, traffic would flow alot better. And I know because I avoid Aylesbury twice a day.......

[Mike Storey]

4 minutes ago, locoholic said:

So you're arguing that the Great Western Mainline is actually HS4?

 

I wonder sometimes just how desperately bad a rail scheme would have to be before some people on here would admit it was no good.

 

I cannot recall any occasion on which you have deemed a rail scheme, which has actually gone ahead, or had any chance of going ahead, to be "good"?

 

Yet again, you critique, without submitting an alternative which would achieve anything like the overall benefits proposed, within a similar timeframe, at similar costs, and at similar levels of least disruption to existing rail users or communities. I do not count the fantasies of upgrading existing lines, wherein I am most certain we could give a good hiding to any such ideas, simply by quoting the very same route to which you have alluded, let alone the Railtrack WCML Upgrade, and the ECML "Upgrade" which in fact never happened as a cohesive project (just the electrification as a one-off, but the rest is just a continuation of LNER plans which my team inherited and could still not make a business case), but as a long term policy, and is still incomplete, even within its own limited ambition, for the last 80 years.

 

Perhaps you can regale us with your criteria which would make any practical, deliverable, timely, cost-effective and highly beneficial scheme, whatsoever, "good"? Or is that too desperate?

 

[melmerby]

37 minutes ago, locoholic said:

So you're arguing that the Great Western Mainline is actually HS4?

 

I wonder sometimes just how desperately bad a rail scheme would have to be before some people on here would admit it was no good.

Even more tosh from you

I wonder sometimes just how desperately bad your arguments will get before you give up.

[locoholic]

16 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

But you simply demonstrate a very unfortunate inability to comprehend, for someone who claims to be interested in railways, that high speed is part of high capacity (at marginal extra costs on a new build). Reducing overall speed, reduces overall capacity, in terms of efficiency. Add that to the scheme's ability to add extra capacity into existing main line routes, by diverting long distance express services, allowing essential extra room for short to medium distance services (the most overcrowded currently), plus freight, on the WCML, MML and ECML, and you have a good combination.

 

You are right only in that the argument has been robbed by those who wish the scheme to go away, but who have no cogent nor realistic alternative. There is a job to be done to convince people, with even less willingness to understand the real issues, that a new build is necessary. But that is not the fault of the company created to make it happen. It is rather more the fault of the "client", led by possibly the most ridiculous Sec of State for Transport we have seen since, perhaps, Marples.

 

High speed does NOT equal high capacity. There's the small problem that stopping distances increase almost exponentially as speed increases, so headways increase. It's the same principal behind Smart Motorways that limit speed, instead of telling drivers to speed up because the road is full.. Yet again you seem to think that trains are exempt from the laws of physics. And the "marginal" extra costs are highly suspect.

 

I have never said that there is no need for a new railway line to be built. I just think that the design of HS2 is wrong, and it should be part of the classic rail network. The current trend for trains to be restricted to one route is producing a network that has no resiliance and where nearly-new trains are sent to the scrapheap when other lines are desperately short of rolling stock.

 

The almost total lack of criticism of HS2 on this forum, and the personal attacks on those that do put their head above the parapet says far more about the mentality of the average rail enthusiast than it does about the merits of HS2.

 

 

[woodenhead]

I think most on this forum are more interested with the fact a new line is being built, the speed doesn't matter that much.

 

New line = new capacity along a new path with less impact

 

Upgrade existing line = hell for the users, the train companies and those who live along the route.

 

A new line is disruptive but not as disruptive as widening an existing line all the way up.

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, locoholic said:

As has been pointed out on here before, people know that the "HS" in HS2 stands for High Speed. Trying to claim it's now all about capacity simply reminds people that the project has suffered from mission creep, which prompts nagging doubts about sub-optimal design and desperate political spin to make the line sound less like a vanity project. And that's before people think about all the budget overspends and missed deadlines of other high profile rail projects like Crossrail and the GWML electrification.

It has always been about capacity, it was just some idiot politician who started rabbiting on about the speeds.

 

18 hours ago, melmerby said:

So what? That's just the same as the "HS" in HST!

High speed is (generally) applied to 125mph or faster, which whatever top speed it was going to be was "high speed".

No,  the definition 'high speed' on Britain's railway network applies where the linespeed is in excess of 100mph and that has been the case for over 40 years.

 

HS1 was  just some daft label thought up by some PR bloke (or blokette) in order to make CTRL sound more sexy and less Channel Tunnel-ish

[Phil Parker]

1 hour ago, locoholic said:

High speed does NOT equal high capacity. There's the small problem that stopping distances increase almost exponentially as speed increases, so headways increase. It's the same principal behind Smart Motorways that limit speed, instead of telling drivers to speed up because the road is full.. Yet again you seem to think that trains are exempt from the laws of physics. And the "marginal" extra costs are highly suspect. 

 

The capacity comes from not mixing high-speed intercity services with stopping locals and freight on the same piece of track as we do at the moment. At least that's what people involved with planning paths and schedules on the railway tell me. That's why they are keen to separate the two as much as possible.

 

The high-speed trains either get held up by the slow ones, or they all have to dodge in and out of loops to avoid each other. That wouldn't be a problem if all stations had loops and through running tracks but they don't and adding them would mean rebuilding a station to make it wider, if this is physically possible.