teuchter
je suis teuchter
The capacity benefits are a different thing from time saving benefits though, and it's the capacity benefits that are actually what it's all about.
HS2 high-speed London-Birmingham route rail project - discussion
- Thread starter Oswaldtwistle
- Start date
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Yes, but only adding that capacity to a Birmingham -> London only line is not worth this cost - you could connect that extra capacity to more places if you weren't going for high speed rail, which would also likely change the route and might resolve some of the issues around the current route (although I suspect any route would have similar issues).
It's not going to be stopped anyway, like SpookyFrank says, it's too far along now with too many sunk costs.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I don't think that's true. You'd have the same issues with CPOs and environmental impact and all the rest of it. If it's for passenger traffic then basically high speed generally makes sense if you're doing a new line. The speed affects the capacity too - you can shift more people per hour.
If it gets to Crewe then I think it does take a significant load off core parts of the network that have a knock on effect elsewhere.
It frustrates me that there's all this objection to HS2 while hardly anyone seems to be talking about excruciatingly expensive road projects like the Thames tunnel. We all know that adding capacity to the road network just creates more traffic.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
I mean, I know cost of living and land, population density etc all play a part and are more of an issue here than the likes of Spain, but only to some degree. This article is from 2014 but offers a comparative cost benchmark that would not have changed much for Continental countries, or Japan. Cost summary below for those who can’t be arsed
By comparison the latest projections show a cost of €220m per km in the UK.
Worth writing this down for full effect. Feel free to mentally increase the non-UK figures a bit to account for the six-year gap. All figures in Euros per km
Spain- 19m/ km
France- over 20m
Germany- 33m
Italy- 44m
Japan- 45m
And the UK’s current figures?
€220m/ km
I mean, what the actual fuck?
New Starts: Spain’s Dirt-Cheap High-Speed Rail, Upgrading Toronto Commuter Rail, NYC Elevator Woes
Spain is the world’s most efficient high-speed rail builder, Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory announced his plan for relieving Canada’s busiest subway line, and New York City struggles with a diagonal elevator for its newest subway station.
nextcity.org
By comparison the latest projections show a cost of €220m per km in the UK.
Worth writing this down for full effect. Feel free to mentally increase the non-UK figures a bit to account for the six-year gap. All figures in Euros per km
Spain- 19m/ km
France- over 20m
Germany- 33m
Italy- 44m
Japan- 45m
And the UK’s current figures?
€220m/ km
I mean, what the actual fuck?
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Cost of Lower Thames Crossing road link: €419m/km
www.kentonline.co.uk
Lower Thames Crossing now more expensive per mile than HS2
The cost of the Lower Thames Crossing has increased by 54% to £8bn before plans have been submitted - and it's now more expensive per mile than HS2.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
We’re not comparing road vs rail costs though are we?Cost of Lower Thames Crossing road link: €419m/km
Lower Thames Crossing now more expensive per mile than HS2
The cost of the Lower Thames Crossing has increased by 54% to £8bn before plans have been submitted - and it's now more expensive per mile than HS2.
cybershot
Well-Known Member
Any sources of information for this?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Major projects body brands HS2 phase 2b ‘unachievable’ | Construction News
HS2 phase 2b has been given a red ‘unachievable’ rating by the Infrastructure Projects Authority. The ‘Y-shaped’ branches of the line between Crewe and
www.constructionnews.co.uk
This seems to be an internal government report, describing the Brum-Leeds and Crewe-Manchester branches as 'unachieveable'.
E2a: I realise this falls short of a final nail in 2b's coffin but I expect that'll either be slipped out under the radar while something worse is happening or just never officially confirmed.
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T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Well, you might be surprised to hear that it was in no way an opinion against trains as a mode of transport or even against the principle of significant investment in our railway network. I’m sure that would have been clear to everyone else reading it, if not you.
It was mainly to highlight the fact that most infrastructure project budgets in this country are an indescribable rip-off that somehow goes unchallenged. I’ve long suspected it’s been embedded in the collective mind of the British population, it’s only us foreigners who marvel at how this country has come to accept infrastructure budgets that are simply unjustifiable.
Still, if nothing is going to change in that respect and such ripoff costs are de facto inevitable, there has to be a point when one has to concede defeat and admit it’s just not worth doing. Believe it or not I’m all for upgrading the UK rail network to similar extent to our Continental networks, but not at any price. And even less so on a route that stretched as it might be, still provides an appropriate service to most major hubs the high speed line will serve.
At £107bn total cost, a new London to Scotland high speed link is monumentally bad value for money. That sadly is the bottom line.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
We could drag these things back in the direction of sanity by hiring engineers and people who generally know what they're doing, instead of management consultants. Trouble is useful people are all busy doing useful stuff, while the spivs have nothing to do besides touting their own questionable services to a political class consisting entirely of people who have never had a single real job between them, have no idea how to get anything done and just want to hand everything over to someone else as quickly as possible and then go to the pub.
This is essentially it - HS2 is a totally fresh company, setup from scratch to figure out how to build high speed rail - as is nearly every infrastructure project in the UK. They have no incentive to reduce costs or time, the longer it takes the more they make.
the above numbers are from state agencies - who build high speed rail for living - not a one off project.
SNCF have been doing it for 55 years, hs2 have been doing it for 10. Also tunnels.
HS2 boss needs French lessons to get his project moving
The Sud Europe Atlantique will be built in half the time – and for half the cost – of our high-speed link. Why, asks Gwyn Topham in Poitiers
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
The Spanish built their high speed network cheaply by putting it out to tender in bite-sized chunks so smaller contractors could bid for work - sometimes a tunnel would be built by two different companies, working from separate ends. Obviously this needs careful management to meet the overall programme but they seemed to manage OK. U.K. mega projects are so large and generally let as packages by type of work so there are only a handful of big firms (usually alliances of several big consultants/contractors) that can put in a price, limiting ‘competition’ and placing a larger management burden on the firms, who price for this accordingly.
There is also a fair point in that there is a lot of nowhere between major cities in France and Spain, whereas the U.K. is more densely populated and has to do more mitigation to keep people happy in the many towns impacted. This all costs money.
There is also a fair point in that there is a lot of nowhere between major cities in France and Spain, whereas the U.K. is more densely populated and has to do more mitigation to keep people happy in the many towns impacted. This all costs money.
cybershot
Well-Known Member
Thanks. Interesting.Major projects body brands HS2 phase 2b ‘unachievable’ | Construction News
HS2 phase 2b has been given a red ‘unachievable’ rating by the Infrastructure Projects Authority. The ‘Y-shaped’ branches of the line between Crewe and
This seems to be an internal government report, describing the Brum-Leeds and Crewe-Manchester branches as 'unachieveable'.
E2a: I realise this falls short of a final nail in 2b's coffin but I expect that'll either be slipped out under the radar while something worse is happening or just never officially confirmed.
the phase 2b part I’m more interested in is the still midlands part where it goes up towards Leeds. Mainly as it will plough right through the middle of our local country park which quite frankly no words can describe how devastating that is. So fingers are crossed, but with this Tory government I suspect enough back handers and donations will go on to ensure this happens ‘whatever the cost’ just so some knobheads can get knighted or some shite.
In a post pandemic age where people have suddenly discovered they don’t need to go to London anymore for that pointless meeting and it can all be done remotely (unless of course someone else is paying for said person to have a jolly in London) then I doubt most people are no longer interested in either wasting their time going to London in the first place or b) that it shaves off a whole 20 minutes. Whoopie fucking doo.
be like the nearby m6 toll which also no fucker uses because it’s too expensive.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
Meanwhile Japan are pressing ahead with Maglev, having got bored of their high-speed trains which have been around for decades. £60 billion for 178 miles, the vast majority underground.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Population density in Europe - easy to see why London-Birmingham is nothing like the French and Spanish long distance lines.
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Agreed, but I don't think the government are about to chuck a few billion at the Working Class Movement Library.
Anyway, there's also this going on:
I mean, I know cost of living and land, population density etc all play a part and are more of an issue here than the likes of Spain, but only to some degree. This article is from 2014 but offers a comparative cost benchmark that would not have changed much for Continental countries, or Japan. Cost summary below for those who can’t be arsed
New Starts: Spain’s Dirt-Cheap High-Speed Rail, Upgrading Toronto Commuter Rail, NYC Elevator Woes
Spain is the world’s most efficient high-speed rail builder, Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory announced his plan for relieving Canada’s busiest subway line, and New York City struggles with a diagonal elevator for its newest subway station.nextcity.org
By comparison the latest projections show a cost of €220m per km in the UK.
Worth writing this down for full effect. Feel free to mentally increase the non-UK figures a bit to account for the six-year gap. All figures in Euros per km
Spain- 19m/ km
France- over 20m
Germany- 33m
Italy- 44m
Japan- 45m
And the UK’s current figures?
€220m/ km
I mean, what the actual fuck?
I'm not going to defend the project but I have travelled a bit on the Spanish high speed network and I'm professionally involved with HS2 on several aspects of it. The two are not really comparable in terms of complexity, in fact they're a million miles apart.
The Spanish network is great as you fly through countryside with barely a bridge to consider let alone a tunnel of viaduct. I went from Madrid to Valencia once and we didn't even pass through any other town, it was flat open country the whole way.
As we've seen with crossrail tunnelling through somewhere which has a subterranean as congested as London is incredibly complicated, time consuming and ruinously expensive. Something as simple as a ventilation shaft can be a massive project in its own right as things like access to the site is hugely problematic, just getting your plant and materials to the hole in the ground. All the while there is the danger of surcharging the ground or surcharging the existing railway Victorian infrastructure.
Nearly every single thing we're involved in is non-standard and bespoke solutions for unique problems. Anyone who knows anything about construction will know how expensive that is. So much of it is in clay as well which is such a fucker to build in. This really is frontier engineering.
Now you may argue this is a good reason why it shouldn't have been approved or why we shouldn't be tunnelling so many stretches and I'd agree with you on both counts. The only point I'd make is that if you are going to build something like this in the UK from a complexity level the Spanish system looks like a model railway set. The two bare little comparison.
Cameron really should have canned it as soon as all his rich mates started kicking off about their country estates etc. We've just been doubling down since then.
T & P
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Re population density: whereas it’s undoubtedly true of Europe, Japan has a more concentrated population density than the UK (347 vs 276 per sq. km.). Yet they still spend a minuscule amount per km compared to the UK. Complex tunnels under London are never going to account for all of the gargantuan price tag difference.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I get some of these points, but 'frontier engineering' is over-egging the pudding a bit. It's London to Birmingham ffs. Eighty-odd miles. Mountains: nil, coastlines: nil, canyons: nil, bandits: thousands, but all of them already on the company payroll.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
If you take England instead of the UK, then you'll find it's got a higher population density than Japan. Of course, perhaps you can get a similar result by excluding Hokkaido. Anyway, what's relevant is the areas you're actually trying to build the line through.
There are so many things that are different about the UK and Japan that it's difficult to compare like for like. Japan has a very different approach to planning, and transport infrastructure is built through urban areas in a way that just wouldn't be accepted in the UK today. Anyone who has been to Japanese cities will know this. Also, they started building their high speed network 50 years ago. What are you basing your Japan figures on? Are they based on recent Shinkansen extensions that connect into lines that have already done the hard work of getting to central Tokyo and other cities?
I wouldn't even know how to make a meaningful comparison that took into account all sorts of economic factors. It seems more useful to compare to other European countries but even then you have to bear in mind all the stuff Teaboy mentions. Also, HS2 is to some extent taking on the burden of a load of investment that should have been done earlier, or would have to be done anyway. Look at all the rebuilding of Euston for example.
Germany might be the better comparator - much of it also relatively populated. But look at where its high speed lines are and the fact that they generally don't involve building entirely new routes into cities - mostly the trains depart from the already existing stations, exit the cities on already existing lines and the join the high speed section on the periphery of urban areas. You might say, why don't we do the same, and I think the answer to that is that our existing network is already stretched to or beyond capacity in a way that isn't the case in Germany. So it all comes back to capacity, and the capacity is needed in densely populated urban areas and that's where it's most expensive to build stuff.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Clearly the answer is to scrap this nonsense and reopen the air-link from London to Brum, for freight as well as passenger traffic.
Riklet
procrastinación
What a clusterfuck of a project. 10 times too much spent per km as pointed out above. Makes Britain seem like an inefficient joke.
Things are pretty crazy when realistically it might be faster and easier to fly London Brum in 2021 (depending on where you live and are going). Personally I think domestic flights within England should be banned but hey... got to come up with a quality alternative.
Things are pretty crazy when realistically it might be faster and easier to fly London Brum in 2021 (depending on where you live and are going). Personally I think domestic flights within England should be banned but hey... got to come up with a quality alternative.
T & P
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As I’d said before, I was (and still am) on principle all for a country-wide HS network, and tbf to its supporters this issue is by no means limited to railway projects- sadly it is the norm across just about every infrastructure or building project.
To cite an outside example that comes to mind, the new Wembley was built roughly at the same time as Portugal was building or significantly refurbishing seven football stadia in preparation for the Euros they hosted. The total cost for that was roughly £350m. The new Wembley cost £700m.
Yes, Wembley is bigger than the Portuguese grounds were, and cost of living, wages etc is obviously higher here. But is that difference wide enough to explain the Portuguese being able to basically build 14 mid-size football stadiums for the cost of one large stadium here? Is it fuck.
Going back to the railways, the depressing truth is that if blatantly rip-off and unacceptably high costs for infrastructure projects in this country are somehow a certainty, then we should reconsider if it’s really justified to go ahead with them.
Riklet
procrastinación
It's just britain's at a more advanced stage of corrupt nepotistic neoliberalism than some other european countries, the robbing isn't so blatant and in your face, more systemic, to the extent it seems relatively normal that things cost twice as much because so many companies (linked to political and economic elites) are taking their cut.
but really it's just the same old privatisation of profit and socialisation of risk/loss. HS2 pretty great example of this. But hey we might get more freight trains running at some point.
but really it's just the same old privatisation of profit and socialisation of risk/loss. HS2 pretty great example of this. But hey we might get more freight trains running at some point.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Another aspect of it that hasn’t been talked about much- as far as I have noticed myself anyway- is the environmental cost of the proposed speed.
I don’t have any links at hand to back it up right now but I am sure I remember reading articles in the past about how exponentially more energy demanding high speed travel gets once you get past the ‘standard’ 300 kph/ 190 mph speed.
There has been little or no information about the rolling stock they intend to use, but a speed of 250 mph (400 kph) has been widely touted throughout. This is a very high speed for non-mag railways, and I suspect the energy consumption difference between 300 and 400 kph is actually very substantial. For such a short distance between London and Scotland it seems extravagant.
I don’t have any links at hand to back it up right now but I am sure I remember reading articles in the past about how exponentially more energy demanding high speed travel gets once you get past the ‘standard’ 300 kph/ 190 mph speed.
There has been little or no information about the rolling stock they intend to use, but a speed of 250 mph (400 kph) has been widely touted throughout. This is a very high speed for non-mag railways, and I suspect the energy consumption difference between 300 and 400 kph is actually very substantial. For such a short distance between London and Scotland it seems extravagant.
pseudonarcissus
fluttering and dancing
I know which I’d rather haveCost-wise, the final estimated cost of this thing is now not far off the cost of the UK’s nuclear deterrent renewal, for cunting fuck’s sake
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