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

[kenny g]

Worth also considering that when tunnels are bored and underground stations built enormous amounts of soil has to be removed from sites. In London the cost and complexity of digging out Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street will be an order of magnitude more than somewhere with fewer protected buildings and weakened highways. When they were building TCR crossrail some of the cellars in Soho streets started cracking and letting in rain water due to the weight of spoil lorries overhead.

 

[Winot]

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.

Can you explain a bit more about what’s involved with turning the trains around, and why OOC is slower?

 

[teuchter]

Can you explain a bit more about what’s involved with turning the trains around, and why OOC is slower?

It's mainly just the number of platforms. OOC has 6 whereas Euston would have 10 or 11.

You can increase the frequency of trains coming in and out of the station either by having more platforms or by reducing the amount of time each train sits in the platform in between arriving and departing again.

While in theory it might be possible to turn around a high frequency of service at 6 platforms it leaves very little margin for error, so as soon as any service gets delayed things get messed up very quickly, so you have low resilience to disruption and this is important for HS2 as it will have trains joining it from the "classic" network that are likely to import delays. Some people will talk about the Japanese Shinkansen lines operating from quite small terminii but they tend to be quite self contained operations.

I believe that another factor is that having both OOC and Euston means that in case of delay you also have the option of turning back late running services at OOC to get things back on schedule. If you do away with Euston there's no similar option because the line runs direct from the Midlands to OOC with no intermediate stops.

So it's the normal sort of thing, where meddling with something that has been rather carefully designed (and already had most fat trimmed out of it) can really mess up things like resilience, even if the proposed change appears to be trivial or removing complication.

It's the same to some extent with cutting back the northern branches of HS2. There's the "Northern Powerhouse Rail" scheme for the north of england and some of this is designed to connect up with HS2. Building truncated versions of both has the danger of losing significant benefits of having them connected. I'm not very knowledgeable about the detail of things at that end though.

 

[LDC]

Screenshot from Novara's coverage of the HS2 stuff yesterday.

Costs per mile of various high speed rail links... absolute fucking joke.

 

[teuchter]

Screenshot from Novara's coverage of the HS2 stuff yesterday.

Costs per mile of various high speed rail links... absolute fucking joke.

View attachment 393015

It's true that infrastructure costs a lot to build in the UK but this kind of oversimplified comparison is really stupid.

Earlier in the thread I posted the video below, which looks at cost taking into account various other meaningful metrics. The result is that HS2 is not always the most expensive, compared to other European projects. For example see what happens when you measure it per passenger-km carried. HS2 has been designed as a much more intensively used asset than most of the TGV lines.

 

[Artaxerxes]

 

[TopCat]

So it’s not going to Manchester and will be Birmingham to Acton. What’s the point?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

So it’s not going to Manchester and will be Birmingham to Acton. What’s the point?

To shovel public money in to private hands.

 

[MickiQ]

Still not coming out and admitting it according to the Beeb, it's kind of one of those things that everyone expects to happen but no-one quite has the gumption to say so.
Rishi Sevenbins seems to be having a hard time at the conference.

 

[SpookyFrank]

By the time you've fucked about getting the tube from Old Oak Common it won't actually be any faster into central London than the existing service will it?

 

[hash tag]

To shovel public money in to private hands.

Particularly friends and family members of tory MP's.
The longer they can drag this out, the greater amount of our cash they can throw away.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I wish they had never started this.

 

[teuchter]

So it’s not going to Manchester and will be Birmingham to Acton. What’s the point?

Nothing has actually been announced yet, and it seems like it will probably go to Euston.

But the point?

The point is that this government is ideologically opposed to investment in public transport. They will pretend that the money "saved" will be spent on other transport projects in the north of England. In fact they will just be cutting out potential future revenue and benefit.

The north of England will have worse public transport in the future, as a result of deciding to cut back HS2.

The move is being made to appeal to their electorate, the part of it that wants to drive their own cars everywhere and complains about potholes. Just like the announcements about limiting local authorities' ability to impose 20mph limits and so on.

That's why they are talking about cutting back HS2.

 

[hash tag]

Nothing has actually been announced yet, and it seems like it will probably go to Euston.

But the point?

The point is that this government is ideologically opposed to investment in public transport. They will pretend that the money "saved" will be spent on other transport projects in the north of England. In fact they will just be cutting out potential future revenue and benefit.

The north of England will have worse public transport in the future, as a result of deciding to cut back HS2.

The move is being made to appeal to their electorate, the part of it that wants to drive their own cars everywhere and complains about potholes. Just like the announcements about limiting local authorities' ability to impose 20mph limits and so on.

That's why they are talking about cutting back HS2.

Everything is focused on winning votes at the next election. So, save money to make tax cuts, increase minimum wage Etc.
Also, win over the motorists.

 

[hash tag]

An interesting read. I know wiki is not gospel but says "it will run"!
Sunak will not be rushed over something that was first proposed way back in 2013

High Speed 2 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[moochedit]

An interesting read. I know wiki is not gospel but says "it will run"!
Sunak will not be rushed over something that was first proposed way back in 2013

High Speed 2 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I thought HS2 was origanally announced by Labour when they were in power? So pre 2010 unless i'm having a "mandela moment"

 

[hash tag]

Again, from the wiki article
HS2 Ltd).[7]

"In December 2010, following a review by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition,[8] a route was proposed, subject to public consultation"

 

[moochedit]

Again, from the wiki article
HS2 Ltd).[7]

"In December 2010, following a review by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition,[8] a route was proposed, subject to public consultation"

So it was earlier than 2013. Glad i'm not going mad

 

[T & P]

If the government were at least to use some of the money it would save by abandoning HS2 north of Birmingham to properly and permanently slash train fares for destinations in the North, some good would at least come of it. I'm talking £40- £50 return fares, fully available at at all times of the day, like most other countries in the world magically manage to do.

Unfortunately, there's fuck all chance of that happenning, so the North will have been screwed over again, and to add insult to injury, people will continue to choose cars and airplanes over trains for domestic travel.

What a fucking shitshow.

 

[hash tag]

If the government were at least to use some of the money it would save by abandoning HS2 north of Birmingham to properly and permanently slash train fares for destinations in the North, some good would at least come of it. I'm talking £40- £50 return fares, fully available at at all times of the day, like most other countries in the world magically manage to do.

Unfortunately, there's fuck all chance of that happenning, so the North will have been screwed over again, and to add insult to injury, people will continue to choose cars and airplanes over trains for domestic travel.

What a fucking shitshow.

Tories mostly live in the south I guess even if they have a northern constituency.

 

[teuchter]

Just came across this old thread...

"Crossrail may be scrapped say Tories"

This was reported a few days ago over on Tory Troll and there's this piece in the Guardian too... Labour today accused the Conservatives of breaking a manifesto pledge only two days after launching their election proposals after a shadow minister admitted that a key rail project could be...

www.urban75.net

 

[Throbbing Angel]

HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line to be scrapped

Rishi Sunak is expected to set out alternative projects in his Conservative Party conference speech on Wednesday.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Artaxerxes]

That there isn’t a dedicated high speed line through to furthest Scotland is a National shame and embarrassment and a sign of how fucking pathetic this country is.

Bonus points for one toward Cornwall and Wales to

 

[platinumsage]

Just announced at Tory conference, Birmingham-Manchester scrapped and the £36 billion will be ring-fenced for spending on other rail and road transport schemes, Sunak reeled off a long-list of such projects that will now go ahead. It will go to Euston but something about doing it cheaply.

 

[teuchter]

So the money intended for investment in the country's public transport and rail freight infrastructure via HS2 is "ring-fenced" to be partly spent on improving motorways and resurfacing roads for the benefit of private motorists and road haulage companies.

 

[platinumsage]

So the money intended for investment in the country's public transport and rail freight infrastructure via HS2 is "ring-fenced" to be partly spent on improving motorways and resurfacing roads for the benefit of private motorists and road haulage companies.

Yes, he detailed more than a handful of specific roads and bypasses, and also mentioned resurfacing of roads in general.

These are the ones I caught from his speech: Manchester Liverpool link, Midlands Rail Hub, West Midlands Metro extension, Leeds tram, North Wales mainline electrification, upgrade A1, A2, A75, M5, M6, Shipley Bypass, Blyth relief road, 70 other road schemes, Don Valley Railway restoration, Carlisle/Barrow line upgrade, hundreds of other schemes and £2 bus fare retained.

I look forward to learning which of these were already budgeted to take place anyway.

 

[platinumsage]

Hmmm sounds like they will cut costs of the Euston bit by seizing control of the land from High Speed Two Ltd and transferring it to a new Euston Zone development corporation that will stuff in loads of snazzy property to be flogged off later.

 

[Brainaddict]

What a shitshow.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Am admission that this government can't keep its finances under control.

 

[teuchter]

Hmmm sounds like they will cut costs of the Euston bit by seizing control of the land from High Speed Two Ltd and transferring it to a new Euston Zone development corporation that will stuff in loads of snazzy property to be flogged off later.

We will see if they reduce the capacity of Euston to deliberately hamper future attempts to reinstate northern legs of HS2.