HS2

[Leothebear]

Seeing that the cost of HS2 is likely to be double the 2015 estimate, doesn't that blow the cost benefit analysis out of the water?
Or have the benefits suddenly doubled as well?

[JohnB]

I see the BBC keep misrepresenting its purpose. Its designed to increase capacity by having 2 more tracks up the spine of England. The fact they are high speed is just because when building a brand new line you might as well make it high speed. Separating non-stop and stopping services gives many more paths for trains.

The environmentalists are overstating their case for effect too. They certainly don't want a new motorway link, which is the only alternative given the public aren't prepared to stop travelling.

If HS2 fails, we are condemned to never have any big infrastructure work done in the UK again. The cost-benefit of that is at stake.

[Watis]

Even assuming the cost benefit justifies HS2, it is a mystery to me why it is not being built alongside the existing London to Birmingham railway. This would massively reduce the amount of despoliation of virgin countryside that we can expect on the current route - and possibly fewer tunnels will be needed as well.

Might even be less expensive too!

Watis

[stewamax]

If HS2 fails, we are condemned to never have any big infrastructure work done in the UK again

This depends on whether providing ubiquitous Gigabit-and-faster broadband is regarded as 'big infrastructure'.
Given:
- HS2's lengthy implementation timescale
- the need to reduce travel of all types to reduce energy consumption
- the speed of technical innovation that facilitates effective remote working (the Internet as most people know it has been around for less than 20 years)

I could find better ways to spend £100bn than to help the better-off who work in London (and can afford a premium ticket price) to live further out

[gryffron]

Even assuming the cost benefit justifies HS2, it is a mystery to me why it is not being built alongside the existing London to Birmingham railway. This would massively reduce the amount of despoliation of virgin countryside that we can expect on the current route - and possibly fewer tunnels will be needed as well.

Because the existing route goes right through the middle of dozens of towns and major cities, which have grown up around the stations. Building through cities would make the cost and disruption staggering (Crossrail!).

Once completed, railways are great for wildlife because they act as people-free corridors connecting isolated environments. And unlike roads, big gaps between trains makes it easy for critters to cross.

It would be interesting to know over what timescale the benefits are calculated. Stephenson's Chat Moss route is still in service, 195 years and counting.

BTW. Can anyone ever remember a mention of "ancient" woodlands before? Pretty certain they were only invented by HS2 protesters?

Gryff

[JohnB]

Rail travel has risen faster than population growth even as Internet technologies have improved, so I don't think Fibre Broadband is really going to suppress demand. And Broadband's lots of little trenches will generate lots of little protests, but my concern is that any big project will founder because for all the opinion of experts, politicians will bow to pressure groups, and we'll end up doing minor fiddling within existing infrastucture. Heathrow expansion will be cancelled, then Crossrail 2, then any Northern powerhouse rail changes, the Lower Thames Crossing, nuclear power stations, etc, etc.

With HS2 providing a 3rd link London-Birmingham, I'd expect the prices on the normal Euston route to fall, as it competes more with the Marylebone route.

I'm off this to work in my Country Park this afternoon, and while I'd be peeved if they put a new railway across it, I'd accept the evidence that it was a good thing for the country as a whole.

[UncleEbenezer]

Even assuming the cost benefit justifies HS2, it is a mystery to me why it is not being built alongside the existing London to Birmingham railway. This would massively reduce the amount of despoliation of virgin countryside that we can expect on the current route - and possibly fewer tunnels will be needed as well.

Might even be less expensive too!

Watis

Motorway routes would also provide long and much wider sections of already-blighted land.

There's a lot of rail infrastructure we could do with. I've lived in one city supposedly served by HS2: Sheffield. It has reasonable rail connections to London via the East Midlands; south/west to Brum, Brisl, etc, and North/East to York and on to Jockland. What it lacks are half-decent connections to nearby big and important cities. The line to Manchester is scenic but rather slow and its capacity is that of a rural branch line. The lines to Leeds across the coalfield are altogether worse: slow, uncomfortable, thoroughly unpleasant.

So HS2 should at least fix Sheffield-Leeds, right? Except, HS2 isn't getting a station in Sheffield, it's out at Meadowhall, which is convenient for nothing but the motorway. By the time you've made the journey from the city to the HS2 station, you've lost the advantage of it.

Similarly the HS2 station for the East Midlands seems to be planned for halfway between Derby and Nottingham, serving neither city. This kind of inconvenience is what you expect from an airport, not a station!

Talking of airports and in reference to my current part of the country, much fuss was recently made of Newquay airport in the context of the Flybe (1970s socialism is back!) bailout. Southwest England has an abrupt border at Exeter: east of Exeter there's developed-world infrastructure including fast rail connections to London, Brisl, etc, but west of Exeter is a joke. A decent line from Exeter (and the rest of the country) to Plymouth and Cornwall would serve our region infinitely better than an inaccessible white-elephant airport at Newquay.

[UncleIan]

BTW. Can anyone ever remember a mention of "ancient" woodlands before? Pretty certain they were only invented by HS2 protesters?

Yes, as a phrase. Looks like they started cataloguing ancient woodland in the 1980s*. No, it wasn't invented by HS2 protesters.

* Well, technically, a lot of woodland was cataloged in the doomsday book. That was a fair while ago.

[bungeejumper]

It's another of Bojo's empty gestures to the north of England. As soon as he can afford to, electorally speaking, he'll shelve it.

IIRC, the HS2 project got seriously started around 2012, the time when George Osborne was going on endlessly about the "Northern Powerhouse" - which he didn't really understand (he actually understood very little about industry and employment), but which he quite correctly identified as an area that might bring in some conservative votes from what he still thought of as hostile flat-cap territory.

Fast forward to the May era, when HS2 was part of Chris Grayling's brief. (Note the transition from flat cap to cat flap. ) And the scene was set for the current mess. Eventual costs are currently looking closer to three or four times the original estimate, and the shires of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are up in arms. What chance of the Northern Powerhouse happening now?

Birmingham by 2026 might be feasible, supposing that Brum has still got a manufacturing base by then. Manchester and Leeds by 2033? I'll believe that when I see it. Would be good, but....

Agree, though, that doubling up the cross-country infrastructure along the spine of England is necessary, and well overdue. FWIW, I doubt that you could usefully build two new tracks into Euston though (there's not enough width available). Old Oak would make more sense. And anyway, Euston's a pretty crap part of London to arrive in - the onward transport links are awful unless you like walking. An 11 storey terminus with a bright yellow roof isn't going to change that.

BJ

[Watis]

Even assuming the cost benefit justifies HS2, it is a mystery to me why it is not being built alongside the existing London to Birmingham railway. This would massively reduce the amount of despoliation of virgin countryside that we can expect on the current route - and possibly fewer tunnels will be needed as well.

Because the existing route goes right through the middle of dozens of towns and major cities, which have grown up around the stations. Building through cities would make the cost and disruption staggering (Crossrail!).

It doesn't have to cling to the existing route the whole way.

Once completed, railways are great for wildlife because they act as people-free corridors connecting isolated environments. And unlike roads, big gaps between trains makes it easy for critters to cross.

I would expect that HS2 will need to be fenced off. At HS2 speeds, the carnage resulting from a train hitting a deer, hooligan or car doesn't bear thinking about. So it seems more likely to me to partition the countryside off rather than facilitate animal crossing.

It would be interesting to know over what timescale the benefits are calculated. Stephenson's Chat Moss route is still in service, 195 years and counting.

Have the benefits outweighed the costs on this route?

BTW. Can anyone ever remember a mention of "ancient" woodlands before? Pretty certain they were only invented by HS2 protesters?

Gryff

These ancient woodlands have been around for a long time. Hence the name. http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/woodla ... dwoods.htm

Watis

[sunnyjoe]

BTW. Can anyone ever remember a mention of "ancient" woodlands before? Pretty certain they were only invented by HS2 protesters?

Pretty certain the Woodland Trust would disagree
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/protec ... -woodland/

[UncleEbenezer]

It's another of Bojo's empty gestures to the north of England. As soon as he can afford to, electorally speaking, he'll shelve it.
BJ

Talking of Stuttley, will he now as PM authorise the new runway at Heathrow, then as campaigner go and lie in front of the bulldozers?

[JohnB]

You can't build along the existing route because 1) the profile for a HS line is different 2) the bits that aren't already built-up are often ancient woodlands already, which have existed in harmony with the current line for 150 years already. The proposed route is actually very clever in avoiding sensitive areas, its just that the campaigners will never be satisfied. And the reason you get out-of-termini is there is no capacity to bring the new lines into city centres without demolishing swathes of housing or building long tunnels and underground stations, and getting Crossrail level costs.

[Rhyd6]

Isn't it a shame that Dr. Beeching couldn't see into the future. We were told then that motorways were the way forward and that rail travel would slowly die out. We had a railway that ran through our village and was well used but under Beeching it was axed, now we have neither bus or railway and have to rely on cars. I don't know what the answer is re HS2 but I do wish that there was a supply of crystal balls.

R6

[Midsmartin]

One of the things with the woods & wildlife is the problem of fragmentation. HS2 (and existing motorways & roads) create barriers that prevent species moving around. In a large woodland, an outbreak of disease or predation might kill of a particular species in one patch, but they just migrate in again from another patch of woodland. This is much harder when there's a huge scorched-earth strip of HS2 in the way, or a prairie-style monoculture field come to that. In the long run, it also cuts down interbreeding between local populations, which is bad for long term genetic health of the species, and thus their ability to survive. Then add in climate change, which may put huge pressures on species unable to easily migrate further north or up a hill.

We should be putting all projects through a test of whether they will reduce climate emissions (as well as other environmental problems). We should be planning towns and our society so that people don't feel the need to travel long distances so much. It isn't sustainable.

If they must build HS2, it should be redesigned to run at slower speeds. This reduces energy use hugely, and noise for nearby residents and wildlife:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... port-finds

[scrumpyjack]

Railways are old technology. One can envisage in 20 or 30 years time people travel in auto drive electric vehicles that pick them up from their point of origin (no need to go to a station) and drive them on motorways, having formed close packed 'trains' with other self drive vehicles, and deposit them at their ultimate destination (again no need to go to a city centre station).

Much of the cost justification of HS2 is apparently business mens time but that is a fallacy. Increasingly time when travelling can be used - video phones calls, email etc etc - it isn't wasted.

Spending on HS2 is the modern equivalent of spending huge amounts in Victorian times on special roads for Penny Farthing bicycles. Daft

[Lootman]

I doubt that you could usefully build two new tracks into Euston though (there's not enough width available). Old Oak would make more sense. And anyway, Euston's a pretty crap part of London to arrive in - the onward transport links are awful unless you like walking. An 11 storey terminus with a bright yellow roof isn't going to change that.

Don't forget Chiltern Trains from Marylebone to Birmingham. That's a nice low-stress way of doing the trip and usually cheaper as well.

50-odd years ago Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill was a main line route and it could be again (speaking of Old Oak Common). You can still get from Paddington to Birmingham now, but changing at Reading or Oxford.

Four railway companies can currently get you to Birmingham from three different London terminii. Do we really need a fifth?

[supremetwo]

We should be spending the money on transporting goods via electrified rail rather than polluting diesel lorries.

Passenger trains can use the route as well and no need for such high speeds over relatively short distances in the UK.

[gryffron]

We should be spending the money on transporting goods via electrified rail rather than polluting diesel lorries.

There isn't any room on the network for any more freight trains. That's the whole point of building more tracks.

Gryff

[servodude]

We should be spending the money on transporting goods via electrified rail rather than polluting diesel lorries.

There isn't any room on the network for any more freight trains. That's the whole point of building more tracks.

Gryff

And the reason for making things faster
HS2 should be Increasing bandwidth through both FDM and TDM

- sd