HS2 high-speed London-Birmingham route rail project - discussion

[Teaboy]

LOL yes you would be wrong to think I live anywhere near haha let's just leave the NIMBYs to do their thing alright? My concern is that we are ten years in, it's gonna cost over 100 billion and I really don't know who will use it. The review should have scrapped it but it was chaired by the former head of HS2, which is a joke. A lawyer was telling me yesterday there are various criminal charges such as malfeasance and fraud which should be laid at the door of HS2 and we already had the Carillion scandal. So my concern is that my tax dollars are being wasted and I also don't like ancient oak trees being demolished to make way for a temporary road (leamington) - that seems like exceptionally bad engineering to me.

As regards the chiltern tunnel, you may or may not know that recently HS2 did exploratory drilling at Shardeloes Lake near Old Amersham in Buckinghamshire, which resulted in the lake turning white (from chalk). Now the Environmental Agency may have said this was nothing to do with the drilling but I would dispute that. If drilling boreholes does that then I am very concerned what building a tunnel underneath the lake will do. There are also streams running white in Denham by the way thanks to HS2 work and the concern there is that there is a freshwater aquifer supplying drinking water that might be contaminated.

OK, my mistake on your motivations. A swing and a miss.

You raise some interesting points.

On the possible criminality involved I would say that as a large government funded project corruption and criminality are a given, I mean Christ look at the in your face corruption this government is up to with housing and covid contracts. God only knows what hasn't been uncovered yet. Also construction is quite a corrupt industry. There are some ways in which construction and particularly UK construction are leading the way but in other ways its still the grubby industry it always was. Bribes remain commonplace and I could list of a load of names of individuals and companies that basically use bribes and corruption like they use a pen and paper. I actually worked for Carillion briefly and I can tell some stories. This is not to justify it but to say this is how it always seems to go and is not specific to HS2.

Construction projects by their nature are nearly always environmentally destructive and the industry as a whole still spends far too much time concerning itself with largely meaningless buzzwords like sustainability and recycled content rather than the fundamentals of what impact the site will have. I'm fully aware of what happened with the lake, I'm directly involved in this project and it takes up far too much of my working days. I'm also aware of other problems that have not made the press and the inevitable future problems in store due to the construction methods being employed.

The question is does having a long term well functioning public transport system outweigh the pain of the construction process from an environmental perspective? I think it probably does but that doesn't mean to say that we shouldn't be taking more care to minimise the impact. If this was road building I'd be with you 100%.

In general I remain unconvinced that the money is being used as wisely as it should be. The project could be built for a lot less but we have already discussed on this thread that the proposal is to future proof. This is a good idea given that this railway will likely be around for a very very long time but the proof is in the eating and only time will tell. Is it the best use of money? I would like to see more investment in regional railways for sure. I think though that the idea that this is some sort of horrendous white elephant is wide of the mark, time will tell.

Anyway, as I say I have to declare a conflict of interest but then again a new runway and terminal at Heathrow would have been fantastic for me and the company I work for but I was / am still dead against it.

 

[stolinski]

The question is does having a long term well functioning public transport system outweigh the pain of the construction process from an environmental perspective? I think it probably does but that doesn't mean to say that we shouldn't be taking more care to minimise the impact. If this was road building I'd be with you 100%.

Thanks for the reply. As an industry insider you are probably limited as to what you can and can't say, but you've been quite candid there and it's really interesting. Feel free to share the Carillion stories if you want to vent! Is that enough in the past already? A friend is working for a company doing noise assessments for HS2 and they just shake their head about the whole thing. We will see what happens with Shardeloes lake then...

I do agree it is most likely gonna happen but I continue to be disturbed by the priorities of the project. This thread sent me on an idle google and i found this, the tree of the year in england of 2015 is going to be killed, that just seems totally unnecessary. And for me that's HS2 in a nutshell, yes construction works will entail environmental damage and I'm actualy fine with that, but HS2 appears to be going out of its way to cause as much devastation as possible. It's especially galling when it's destruction for temporary enabling works like the Leamington tree I mentioned earlier. Another example would be the standard HS2 Limited talk of planting new trees, which then are all dying again!

I also agree on future proofing being good but it seems likely to me HS2 will over-run so much that it will stop at Birmingham which would be a betrayal of the North. Of course there's the Major Project Authority rating the entire project red aka "unachievable". That's already been brought up here I'm sure, I haven't read back into this thread, maybe I should as I am fascinated by different people's takes on this.

 

[teuchter]

The long term alternatives to HS2 are:

• loads more domestic flights
• cut down probably a larger number of trees to increase road capacity instead
• get everyone in the UK to travel a lot less and/or abandon the principle of short notice rail travel except at much higher prices
• some technology that hasn't been invented yet.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

I was thinking about HS2 as I zoomed down from Paris to Valence in 2hrs recently in one of the double decker budget TGV/OUIGO trains ( assuming HS2 isn't 2decked but just very long).
The french were ahead of the game really. The train was totally packed and good value. But they built all these tracks ages ago.

HS2 only makes sense if you build all the rest of it so perhaps stopping at Old Oak Common makes sense now given the COVID uncertainty or is too late. I think the whole pandemic needs to end and the dust settled before you can really see whether anything fundamentally needs to change with the project.

Fundamentally I don't agree it should be built but the legislation has gone through, (20yrs too late perhaps)

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

The long term alternatives to HS2 are:

• loads more domestic flights
• cut down probably a larger number of trees to increase road capacity instead
• get everyone in the UK to travel a lot less and/or abandon the principle of short notice rail travel except at much higher prices
• some technology that hasn't been invented yet.

All far more sensible than HS2 with its open cheque book. One hundred billion pounds, obviously by the time this is finished that will have doubled and them some, quite possibly sailing past a quarter of a trillion pounds. It is too expensive and we can’t afford it. So we need to visit your other four ideas.

 

[Cid]

The cost is ridiculous and inclines me towards shelve it. I mean... I think we need it. Or at least we need something that does what it does (i.e not adding flights/conventional fuel cars). But when you're talking about sums that high, perhaps there's a better way of cutting environmental impacts and improving infrastructure. Especially given that this is really kind of inherently limited in its impact.

 

[BigTom]

I really don't know who will use it.

Everyone who currently takes direct/fast trains from the west midlands to London will use HS2. Once it's built they will need it to be used so imo it's not going to be more expensive than current fast trains to london, but the existing fast trains will cease to run to make more space for local/stopping services.
The WCML is well over capacity so assuming that my reasoning is right and they don't price people out of it (anymore than the silly railway prices already do), there'll be people wanting to use it.

 

[alex_]

The cost is ridiculous and inclines me towards shelve it. I mean... I think we need it. Or at least we need something that does what it does (i.e not adding flights/conventional fuel cars). But when you're talking about sums that high, perhaps there's a better way of cutting environmental impacts and improving infrastructure. Especially given that this is really kind of inherently limited in its impact.

come up with a cheaper way of adding as much rail capacity !

 

[PTK]

come up with a cheaper way of adding as much rail capacity !

I wonder about this. I do not claim to know much on this topic, but is it not the case that there was a central rail route from London to the Midlands that was closed years ago. Anyone know anything about this?

 

[Cid]

come up with a cheaper way of adding as much rail capacity !

Give me 30 years and a few hundred million.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

come up with a cheaper way of adding as much rail capacity !

Such as...?

 

[Cid]

Such as...?

I think they were rhetorically pointing out that I can’t do that to be fair.

 

[Cid]

I am incidentally fully on board with the idea in principle, just seems to have suffered from staggering inflations in costs.

 

[alex_]

Give me 30 years and a few hundred million.

If you’d have asked for a couple of billion we could have taken your request seriously

 

[alex_]

I wonder about this. I do not claim to know much on this topic, but is it not the case that there was a central rail route from London to the Midlands that was closed years ago. Anyone know anything about this?

I think hs2 uses some of it.

12 miles of it Great Central Main Line - Wikipedia

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Is there anyone who seriously doesn’t think this will end up costing north of 250bn? They are fretting that the national debt has now topped 2tn, 250bn represents 1/8 of the entire national debt. For one railway line, to Birmingham. Heading further north will cost even more. That is insane.

 

[alex_]

Is there anyone who seriously doesn’t think this will end up costing north of 250bn? They are fretting that the national debt has now topped 2tn, 250bn represents 1/8 of the entire national debt. For one railway line, to Birmingham. Heading further north will cost even more. That is insane.

At a time of historically low interest rates as we go into a recession for something which will pay income, it could be a lot worse.

but yes 100bn is pretty optimistic

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

At a time of historically low interest rates as we go into a recession for something which will pay income, it could be a lot worse.

but yes 100bn is pretty optimistic

If we are to borrow £1/4tn a much better return would be social housing.

 

[alex_]

If we are to borrow £1/4tn a much better return would be social housing.

This wont help overcrowded transport though, but considering the income / savings in housing benefit would be very beneficial. Tories going to Tory however.

current government interest rates are 0.205% over 10 years.

 

[Pickman's model]

If we are to borrow £1/4tn a much better return would be social housing.

Borrow? All the south atlantic projects are fully coated and will be funded by the expropriation of the former people. There will be enough left over to fund several projects in blighty, this being one of them

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

This wont help overcrowded transport though, but considering the income / savings in housing benefit would be very beneficial. Tories going to Tory however.

current government interest rates are 0.205% over 10 years.

Build social housing all over the country. Move parliament and all the civil service to Leeds or York or wherever up north & west permanently. Reduce the need for people to be shuttling around all the sodding time.

 

[Cid]

Build social housing all over the country. Move parliament and all the civil service to Leeds or York or wherever up north & west permanently. Reduce the need for people to be shuttling around all the sodding time.

Yeah, I think that's my take too... When we're talking sums that large you can start to think about huge projects to restructure the way people work, where they work etc. HS2 is a patch over problems that will likely continue to get worse. £100bn+ is enough to truly start addressing the issues that cause those problems.

 

[teuchter]

If we spread everyone all around different parts of the UK a bit more, then there will be less need for people to travel about the place. It makes such perfect sense. Especially if we put them places where the transport infrastructure is a bit rubbish. It'll all be fine. We don't really need to worry about transport at all.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

If we spread everyone all around different parts of the UK a bit more, then there will be less need for people to travel about the place. It makes such perfect sense. Especially if we put them places where the transport infrastructure is a bit rubbish. It'll all be fine. We don't really need to worry about transport at all.

The views of the metropolitan elite are of course very much welcomed* on all discussions. There's nothing weird about people moving from Scotland to London to rake in the cash cos there's none where they come from, displacing the locals and turning their vibrant towns in to yuppie hell holes, why should we try and address that hideous situation?

*By welcomed, of course I mean they are bobbins.

 

[redsquirrel]

This wont help overcrowded transport though,

And H2S will do little to help the overcrowded local bus and train lines. You wanted to know where this money could be better spent - bringing bus and train lines back under public ownership would be one place to start, another would be to do what Bahnhof Strasse and Cid have said.

I want good public transport, I don't have a car so if I want to travel it's what I use, but that does not mean that one cannot be critical of a project that has been designed more for the benefit of capital than for workers.

I'm also far more skeptical than BigTom about costs to users. I can see all kinds of ways this will be used to increase prices - from 'justifications' about users having to pay back the underestimated costs to the extra costs associated with getting to/from a H2S station.

 

[teuchter]

So, if we scrap HS2 right now, there will be £100 billion to spend on bus services and local rail lines?

 

[redsquirrel]

Has anyone made that argument?

 

[teuchter]

Well, you said:

You wanted to know where this money could be better spent - bringing bus and train lines back under public ownership would be one place to start,

 

[alex_]

And H2S will do little to help the overcrowded local bus and train lines. You wanted to know where this money could be better spent - bringing bus and train lines back under public ownership would be one place to start, another would be to do what Bahnhof Strasse and Cid have said.

I want good public transport, I don't have a car so if I want to travel it's what I use, but that does not mean that one cannot be critical of a project that has been designed more for the benefit of capital than for workers.

I'm also far more skeptical than BigTom about costs to users. I can see all kinds of ways this will be used to increase prices - from 'justifications' about users having to pay back the underestimated costs to the extra costs associated with getting to/from a H2S station.

for central parts of the country hs2 is about taking away intercity services ( to hs2 ) to add more local capacity.

doesn’t help in Devon, Cumbria or Scotland through ( or many other places )

there is a very good argument that the government should also be spending significant funds on electrification, hybrid trains and other forms of public transport

most public transport has been renationalised in the last 6 months and it didn't cost anything.

The issue with buses is that in a lot of the country they don’t make money, but they should be run as per tfl nationwide.

 

[teuchter]

HS2, and providing additional capacity in the central part of the network, can help those bits of the country beyond its immediate reach though. That's as long as you make improvements there too. For those saying that there needs to be a "big picture" improvement to the public transport network, that's true, and the picture has to involve improving (massively) things like local bus services, but for proper big picture improvements you need to invest in the core as well.

For example you could put loads of investment and improvements into Scotland's rail network and the GWML, and that would be great, and it could to some extent work independently of whatever happens with HS2 for medium length journeys within those areas... but if you want to try and transfer long distance traffic away from air and roads, then the network core is crucial to that because for journeys between, say, Scotland and South west england, it's no good to have a great network with plenty of capacity at each end but the middle bit clogged up with no space for through services to get through.