I suspect most state projects are, very few are sufficiently well resourced that they are on time and on budget.
HS2 high-speed London-Birmingham route rail project - discussion
- Thread starter Oswaldtwistle
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I suspect most state projects are, very few are sufficiently well resourced that they are on time and on budget.
moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
I suspect that a few porkys are told about likely cost of projects at the start by politicians and engineers as they know once started its not easy to back out.
I suspect it’s just a lot of very well documented, very optimistic assumptions.
I’m not sure in the case of hs2 anyone would have predicted ~10% inflation.
T & P
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A new study claims that HS2 is a staggering 8.5 times more expensive to implement than comparable projects in the Continent.
Geography and population density can only account for so much more extra cost- and sure as fuck can’t be responsible for anywhere near 8.5 times the higher budget.
Paywall-free article here:
Geography and population density can only account for so much more extra cost- and sure as fuck can’t be responsible for anywhere near 8.5 times the higher budget.
Paywall-free article here:
T & P
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And it’s not confined to high-speed lines either. If anything, this beggars belief on a much grander scale, given the similarity of the engineering works required:
Leaving the Elizabeth Line comparison out because of the larger tunnels and infrastructure, the perfectly comparable Northern line Tube extension cost more than ten fucking times per mile than the Madrid Metro project. It’s almost as unbelievable as the fact that nobody at official or government level gives a shit or raises any eyebrows…
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Lot of bats nesting 100 feet underground in central London are there?
T & P
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Yeah, that’s the smoking gun imo. There are going to be few legal challenges or environmental & ecological obstacles impeding the building of an Underground branch in a city that already looks like a gruyere cheese. At the end of the day you’re talking about the cost of building additional underground lines on two major cities- one of which ending up costing ten times more than the other per mile.
Are they having a fucking laugh? Because the cost of living, labour and whatnot might undoubtedly be higher in the UK than Spain, but sure as fuck isn’t ten times as much, or anywhere near.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
What do you think is the explanation?
T & P
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A six-letter hyphenated word that starts with and R and ends in an f, followed by Britain.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
A distinctly British version of kleptocracy. Where nobody gets pushed out of any windows and everyone involved is able to delude themselves that they're actually contributing something, but the net result is still embezzlement on a grand scale.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Seems a lot of infrastructure projects are floated out there as grifts. e.g. Garden Bridge. They shift a fuck-ton of public money in to the hands of Tory mates and then are dropped. HS2, imagine a lot of people where shocked when that got the go ahead, but the money grabbing didn’t end. This country is a kleptocracy same as Russia. Just with greater pretensions. The end result will be the same.
T & P
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You are asking the right question but I’m not sure if for the right reasons or motivation. On the one hand none of us are (AFAIAC) civil engineers qualified to give an informed answer to the expected costs of a subway extension. But on the other hand, you wouldn’t need to know the first thing about plumbing to confidently bet your eternal soul that if you had an apartment in Spain and a local plumber charged you £1,000 to supply and install a new toilet suite, and then you get a pretty similar suite installed in your London home and are charged £10,000, you are 100% being ripped off to an indescribable level.
So whereas neither you or I would ever be likely to to have access to the itemised invoices for the Northern line that might attempt to explain the cost, it is ultimately irrelevant. The bottom line is that there’s no way in this world or any other in the multiverse in which similar underground extension projects could be justified to cost ten times as much here than in the likes of Spain. Whether it is an ingrained culture of overcharging that doesn’t get challenged or outright fraud or corruption is not for the likes of us to uncover.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
With HS2 whenever there's overspend they bring in another firm of accountants to work out why, the accountants bill their time at £1,000 p/h and then after a couple of months they declare that they have no idea how costs have got so high, and they'll need to hire some more accountants to figure it out.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
Btw, the ‘Britain Remade’ people behind this report (who are also doing nice Lib Dem style ‘tell us about your local problems’ adverts on Facebook with a slick marketing budget) are Tufton St, so might have a certain agenda when criticising publicly funded projects. Approach with necessary scepticism & try not to boost their reach.
(not saying that they aren’t correct, just that they’re likely to paint a ‘worst case scenario’ to meet their ends)
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Their agenda is the "too much red tape" and "too many planning constraints" angle. The fact the article was in the Telegraph a bit of a clue.
Doesn't look like we're going to get any serious discussion on this thread, of alternative explanations for why HS2 appears expensive compared to projects in other countries.
Doesn't look like we're going to get any serious discussion on this thread, of alternative explanations for why HS2 appears expensive compared to projects in other countries.
T & P
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Ah, fair enough. I would like to think that regardless of any agenda, the Telegraph would have checked the basic figures quoted in the article. But it might be the case that the cost of the Madrid subway extension they mentioned for comparison was mostly cut and cover rather than deep lines, in which case it wouldn’t have been a fair comparison.
Still, the overinflated cost per mile/ km of both railway lines and roads in here versus even the likes of France, is well documented.
To me the Underground comparison is the most telling, as any excuses of far more use of tunnels than in the Continent regarding HS2 become irrelevant. If the Northern Line spur extension really cost ten times as much as another metro extension elsewhere, there is something seriously bent and wrong with infrastructure projects in this country.
blossie33
trailer trash
Just seen this about Euston station on the Ian Visits blog -
HS2’s Euston station at risk as Old Oak Common emerges as potential London terminus
The HS2 railway might never reach Euston and Old Oak Common could become its permanent London terminus in an effort to avoid the cost of building the station at Euston.
www.ianvisits.co.uk
T & P
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And to nobody’s surprise…
www.theguardian.com
The gift that keeps on giving
Rishi Sunak pushes to axe northern HS2 rail line ahead of Tory conference
Sources say the PM wants to scrap the project’s section o Manchester before the party’s annual gathering in the city next weekend
The gift that keeps on giving
T & P
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Not to mention the whole levelling up business they’re so proud of.
blossie33
trailer trash
Another from Ian Visits blog this morning 
A cut-back HS2 could end up being slower than the existing railway
The threat to cut the HS2 railway to a short shuttle service between Birmingham and the edge of London could mean that a journey by HS2 is slower than the existing railway.
www.ianvisits.co.uk
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Another from Ian Visits blog this morning
A cut-back HS2 could end up being slower than the existing railway
The threat to cut the HS2 railway to a short shuttle service between Birmingham and the edge of London could mean that a journey by HS2 is slower than the existing railway.www.ianvisits.co.uk
The journey time is not really the point - as the article does mention, the extra capacity provided is the main benefit of HS2.
It doesn't explain a significant implication of cutting out Euston, which is that if Old Oak Common ends up being the terminus for the line, it has not been designed as such which means that fewer trains per hour can turn around there. Euston has been designed so that the number of trains that you can turn around per hour matches the maximum throughput of the line itself. Making OOC the terminus doesn't just mean that you have to change trains to get into central London, it means that the potential capacity of the whole of HS2 is hindered. Even if there was extra demand, and passengers willing to pay for tickets, you'd not be able to extract that potential ticket revenue from the infrastructure you've spent billions constructing. This is why cutting the line back now would be an incredibly stupid decision.
For what it's worth, I think there might have been an argument for OOC to have been built as the terminal from the beginning. Because with the Elizabeth Line now in operation, it's actually quicker and easier to get from there to many destinations in London than it is from Euston. But it's too late for it to make sense now: you'd have to entirely redesign OOC to allow it to handle the maximum potential capacity of the line.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
This fucking clown car of a country 
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I think people cheering on cancellations of further parts of HS2 should have a think. Because really the logic of the government seems to be that it costs too much to build big infrastructure in the UK, they're resigned to never working out how to do it more cheaply, and they're going to claim all big infrastructure is too expensive from now on (except airports, roads and other 'necessary' things obv). That's an extremely bad position for the country to get into on the verge of a climate crisis.
I'm also feeling irate once again with some of the 'ecowarriors' who have thrown their energy into opposing this. It was reasonable to argue about the route before it was decided, it was not a good use of energy to fight tooth and nail for every tree to be saved once the line was clearly going ahead. Because what's the conclusion that governments are going to draw from this? That they couldn't even keep the green lobby happy with new train routes. That new railway lines are unpopular and a political minefield. It will probably be 20 years before any new big projects are tried - in a country where it takes a day's travel to get from London to west Wales or Cornwall by train.
I'm also feeling irate once again with some of the 'ecowarriors' who have thrown their energy into opposing this. It was reasonable to argue about the route before it was decided, it was not a good use of energy to fight tooth and nail for every tree to be saved once the line was clearly going ahead. Because what's the conclusion that governments are going to draw from this? That they couldn't even keep the green lobby happy with new train routes. That new railway lines are unpopular and a political minefield. It will probably be 20 years before any new big projects are tried - in a country where it takes a day's travel to get from London to west Wales or Cornwall by train.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Agreed.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Infrastructure costs in this country are massively inflated compared to the rest of Europe.
Britain's infrastructure is too expensive
Railways, Trams, and Roads all cost more to build in Britain
www.samdumitriu.com
This article doesn't offer explanations, but the comments echo what I've read elsewhere: The planning procedures are long winded. Contractors are deskilled. Contractors compete only on price. Everything is subcontracted. Funding is sporadic and unpredictable.
This is also my experience of the construction industry, albeit not in infrastructure. It's just incompetence and misaligned incentives all the way down.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I worked for Crossrail briefly nearly 20 years ago when the planning process was going through parliament. I sat through a bunch of sessions in Westminster, and I was impressed by the procedure. It wasn't just a fobbing off - people did have the chance to make their points and changes were made in response to those points. The railway engineers producing the plans were all genuine in wanting to make the best railway they could while causing the least damage.
While it no doubt makes projects more expensive, I think this aspect of it is a good thing.
While it no doubt makes projects more expensive, I think this aspect of it is a good thing.
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