HS2

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Does the NSW government lose money on this?

 

 

They sure do! The inter-urban lines like the Illawarra down to Wollongong for instance recoup as little as 10 percent of running costs.  Even the most profitable ferry routes across the harbour to Manly recoup only something like  55%. 

 

But public transport, like other essential services like roads,  the water supply and the health system shouldn't be regarded  as simply a cash cow to milk the public via or to  flog off to private interests.  

 

(Though to be balanced  the previous government did have an unhealthily  huge love for  building private toll roads all over the city).....

Edited September 26, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[APOLLO]

Not HS2 but here in Bolton, Wigan, and parts of Bury, Salford and Manchester, the BEE bus network went live yesterday. 

 If you travel on a bus in Greater Manchester you’ll never pay more than: 

£2 for an adult single fare, £1 for a child. 

£5 to travel all-day by any bus, £2.50 for a child. 

£21 to travel by any bus for seven days, £10.50 for a child. 

Fares valid until September 2024.

 

https://tfgm.com/the-bee-network

 

A start at least. Not sure as to Trams and Trains fares etc, I believe it's being planned.

 

Brit15

[corneliuslundie]

I am curious. Those of you who are quoting the cost of travelling by car as against train, are you quoting the fuel cost or the total cost - depreciation on the vehicle, oil, tyres, maintenance, road fund licence, MOT etc? When I was much younger I was told that the true cost of car travel is typically twice the cost of the fuel. That will depend partly on how much the car is used, and therefore how depreciation and road fund licence are spread, but other factors mentioned above will be related pretty directly to mileage. And whereas when I was young it was possible to do much basic maintenance oneself this is almost impossible these days.

If one takes this "whole cost" approach, how does it affect your comparisons?

 I ask this as one who has never driven, and managed to have a pretty full life.

Jonathan

[BachelorBoy]

33 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

But public transport, like other essential services like roads,  the water supply and the health system shouldn't be regarded  as simply a cash cow to milk the public via or to  flog off to private interests.  

 

 

Presumably then the state should run road transport too (the UK tried that in 1948). Food, which is also essential, should only be prodcued by nonprofit state firms too ... with farms and supermarkets being nationalised?

[BachelorBoy]

6 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I am curious. Those of you who are quoting the cost of travelling by car as against train, are you quoting the fuel cost or the total cost - depreciation on the vehicle, oil, tyres, maintenance, road fund licence, MOT etc?

 

Of course not.

 

Calculating that is complicated (and something like depreciation is not a day-to-day cash cost so it doesn't fell "real" compared to shelling out for a rail ticket)

 

 

[locoholic]

Excellent article on the Spectator website today by Sean Thomas, detailing the "comprehensive" Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies of HS2 - nice to know that they've got EDI all sewn up, although perhaps if they concentrated on building the railway, the costs might not have spiralled out of control so spectacularly.

[Pacific231G]

22 hours ago, Bob83a said:

The ghost train has been replaced by a bus!, I believe it is one way only. So the only regular use between Greenford and South Ruislip is freight which uses the Greenford to West Ealing connection. But that does include the HS2 tunnel segments from Grain to West Ruislip for the western end of the Northolt Tunnels,  I.e. West Ruislip to Greenford.

There have been a few of those. ISTR  a weekly bus from Ealing Broadway to Clapham Junction, possibly rendered moot when the Overground (etc) station at Shepherd's Bush opened. When I first moved to the area in the early 1990s there was very little freight on the Greenford Branch and the half hourly Greenford-Ealing-Paddington DMUs (now Greenford-W. Ealing) was almost all you ever saw on it. Nowadays it's quite well used with about a dozen or so freight trains carrying a mixture of aggregates, ballast and waste (from Brentford). 

[locoholic]

13 hours ago, adb968008 said:

...Electrification is the answer, but it takes time...

As the GWML showed, electrification doesn't just take time - we simply can't do it any more, sadly.

 

I still find it impossible to believe that the wires still don't reach Oxford or Bristol Temple Meads.

[monkeysarefun]

22 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Presumably then the state should run road transport too (the UK tried that in 1948). Food, which is also essential, should only be prodcued by nonprofit state firms too ... with farms and supermarkets being nationalised?

 

 

Hmmm there's a bit of a difference between simply not milking  the  public transport customers, or not  flogging the water supply off  to private industry  and going full-on  Communist Russia I reckon!

 

Getting back to trains, it doesn't compare with the HS2 in  technology etc but the inland rail project  currently under construction is 1,700km long, connecting Melbourne to Brisbane via an inland route  which will allow the eventual  operation of 3.6km long double stacked trains has blown out to  $31 billion (£16 billion pounds) from its original $16 billion (£8 billion) estimate so you  arent alone!

Edited September 26, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Joseph_Pestell]

I suspect that much of this conversation is redundant. The Tory press and other media have been briefed about the possible abandonment of HS2 so that Rishi Sunak can make some news next week at the Tory conference next week with a "good news" announcement. Total coincidence, of course, that the conference takes place at Manchester Central station.

[woodenhead]

17 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I suspect that much of this conversation is redundant. The Tory press and other media have been briefed about the possible abandonment of HS2 so that Rishi Sunak can make some news next week at the Tory conference next week with a "good news" announcement. Total coincidence, of course, that the conference takes place at Manchester Central station.

"And here we are sat inside what maybe in 20 years the new Manchester terminus for HS2....maybe"

 

"Yes, to save billions we've had an idea to reverse the closure of this old station whose entrance is now blocked by a large tower block"

 

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

Rails are now being laid on the  Aylesbury to Princess Risborough line, HS2 diversion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engineering train on the new bridge over the HS2 formation......

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[adb968008]

7 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

The credit card analogy doesn't really work in the case of the 2008 bank bailouts. The government lent emergency cash to banks, or bought shares in them to recapitalise them, or both. The loans are being repaid, and the shares are slowly being sold. The Treasury may well have surplus cash at the end of it all.

 

I don't think you could say the same with any confidence on government spending on HS2

Where did the cash come from to lend in the first place ?

and wheres the recovered money gone ?

 

[BachelorBoy]

4 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Where did the cash come from to lend in the first place ?

and wheres the recovered money gone ?

 

1) Sales of UK government bonds (borrowing from investors)

2) The Treasury

[BachelorBoy]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Hmmm there's a bit of a difference between simply not milking  the  public transport customers, or not  flogging the water supply off  to private industry  and going full-on  Communist Russia I reckon!

 

There is. But where does it lie? Water is essential for life, I get that. But so is food.

 

[woodenhead]

The chairman of JCB is suggesting that if they cancel HS2 north of Birmingham they should use the land for electricity pylons.  I didn't know we were short of them, I thought the problem was a lack of power stations.

 

Makes a change from road building, but what a great idea and then the UK Government can blight a load more land next time they attempt to do HS2 because the original route has been built over.

Edited September 26, 2023 by woodenhead

[Edwin_m]

4 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

The credit card analogy doesn't really work in the case of the 2008 bank bailouts. The government lent emergency cash to banks, or bought shares in them to recapitalise them, or both. The loans are being repaid, and the shares are slowly being sold. The Treasury may well have surplus cash at the end of it all.

 

I don't think you could say the same with any confidence on government spending on HS2

The idea is that better transport links encourage economic growth, which should in general improve prosperity for all and increase the government's tax take to repay the borrowing.  This is what the HS2 business case is intended to assess.  

[adb968008]

3 hours ago, locoholic said:

As the GWML showed, electrification doesn't just take time - we simply can't do it any more, sadly.

 

I still find it impossible to believe that the wires still don't reach Oxford or Bristol Temple Meads.

My little one was amazed to be hearing bells in a signal box on the GWML in Cornwall…

[martin_wynne]

39 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

There is. But where does it lie? Water is essential for life, I get that. But so is food.

 

 

You can grow your own food. Making your own water is tricky.

 

[woodenhead]

17 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

The idea is that better transport links encourage economic growth, which should in general improve prosperity for all and increase the government's tax take to repay the borrowing.  This is what the HS2 business case is intended to assess.  

 

And that business case should have been along the lines of:

"We need an additional 2 tracks on the WCML because at the southern end it is at capacity.  Adding two tracks by the existing railway will be extremely complicated and devastating to communities along the line so the best option is to create a new route out of London to the Midlands where it can rejoin the classic network.  Because Birmingham New Street is full and Snow Hill hasn't the capacity to expand we will need a new terminus there close to the centre and connected to the tram network.  To mitigate noise for communities along the route we will employ sensible solutions to reduce noise but the trains would be no louder than existing railways and whilst it will be necessary at time to do maintenance at night, mostly between the hours of 11pm and 5am there would be no trains running"

 

Nice simple railway between London & Birmingam with connections to the WCML - no claims about speed, no washing it with green just a simple railway with bridges and tunnels, maybe a couple of parkway stations along the way to enable more residents to ditch their cars.

[woodenhead]

1 minute ago, martin_wynne said:

 

You can grow your own food. Making your own water is tricky.

 

You can make your own water, and at the same time provide fertiliser for your home grown plants 😁

 

"Using membrane distillation, the scientists were able to remove 95 percent of ammonia from the urine. The urine is heated in a solar-powered boiler, then passes through a membrane separating water from nutrients such as nitrogen and potassium, which may be used to make fertilizers."

 

source: https://futurism.com/turn-your-urine-into-drinkable-water-with-this-new-solar-powered-machine

[DK123GWR]

2 hours ago, locoholic said:

Excellent article on the Spectator website today by Sean Thomas, detailing the "comprehensive" Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies of HS2 - nice to know that they've got EDI all sewn up, although perhaps if they concentrated on building the railway, the costs might not have spiralled out of control so spectacularly.

I'm sure that would be the case, until they developed a reputation as a toxic work environment and found that people who aren't straight white men were often reluctant to work for them, pushing up the wage bill (and probably lowering the physical productivity of the workforce). And that's before any costs associated with fighting or settling cases brought by employees who've been discriminated against. Once you've factored in those sorts of costs, I would imagine that implementing strong EDI policies (which is a common business practice) works out quite a lot cheaper. And that's before addressing the questions around the desireability of a society that tosses aside anyone it doesn't need in order to turn a profit, which are beyond the scope of this thread.

 

1 minute ago, BachelorBoy said:

1) Sales of UK government bonds (borrowing from investors)

2) The Treasury

Assisted by the Bank of England who effectively printed money to purchase financial assets (mostly government bonds) second hand, which drives up the market price and (because economics*) pushes down the interest rate that the government has to pay on newly issued debt). This policy is now being unwound.

 

*Bond holders are payed a fixed amount, the coupon value, at pre-determined intervals. The coupon value does not change as the price does, so when second hand bond prices increase (e.g. because the central bank has artificially increased demand for them) the bond yield will fall. If the yield of second hand bonds falls, investors will be willing to accept a lower yield on newly-issued bonds. This reduces the interest rate that the government has to pay on new borrowing.

 

21 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

There is. But where does it lie? Water is essential for life, I get that. But so is food.

 

One approach (and certainly not the least sensible) is to look at various factors, including what the effects of competition are in a particular market. Water and electricity transmission are usually regarded as natural monopolies, since it would be hoplessly inefficient to duplicate all of the infrastructure in the way that a competetive market would (the duplication of railway routes by the LCDR and SER is widely ridiculed on here and likely played a part in the financial difficulties of those companies - imagine how silly it would be to do the same thing with water pipes). If a monopoly is the most efficient way to run an industry, it makes sense for the state to run it in the national interest. Rail may also be a natural monopoly, and it is certainly not possible to establish a perfectly competetive market for rail travel (see the LCDR/SER case). If this is true, passengers and the wider economy will suffer from a privately owned network (at least in terms of extortionate fares, and Railtrack showed us that they may pay an even greater price if infrastructure maintenance is profit-driven) so it makes sense to run it as a public service.

 

By contrast, there is an argument that in the food market, or road-based freight transport, people are better off in a competetive market. Here a strongly competetive market between could plausibly lead to greater choice and lower prices, and force firms to operate more efficiently than a government monopoly would. There will still be market failures, for various reasons, some of which the government will be able to correct.

 

A full analysis would obviously be much larger, and would depend upon the values of the society in question. Nevertheless I believe that the above is sufficient to show why water and rail might be differentiated from industries such as food and are (at least at first glance) good candidates for being run as a public service.

[BachelorBoy]

15 minutes ago, DK123GWR said:

Rail may also be a natural monopoly, and it is certainly not possible to establish a perfectly competetive market for rail travel (see the LCDR/SER case).

But rail is only ever a natural monopoly in a trivial sense. In reality, railways have lots of competition.

 

If I want to go from London to Edinburgh I could walk, cycle, take a coach, drive my car, sail my yach, hire a taxi, or fly. Etc.

 

 

[melmerby]

43 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

And that business case should have been along the lines of:

"We need an additional 2 tracks on the WCML because at the southern end it is at capacity.  Adding two tracks by the existing railway will be extremely complicated and devastating to communities along the line so the best option is to create a new route out of London to the Midlands where it can rejoin the classic network.  Because Birmingham New Street is full and Snow Hill hasn't the capacity to expand we will need a new terminus there close to the centre and connected to the tram network.  To mitigate noise for communities along the route we will employ sensible solutions to reduce noise but the trains would be no louder than existing railways and whilst it will be necessary at time to do maintenance at night, mostly between the hours of 11pm and 5am there would be no trains running"

Most of that was exactly what the business case was.