HS2 Update

[JohnM]

In my opinion, this whole project is a  nonsense, a complete waste of time and money.  Looks like in the end, it'll cost £^0 billion to improve journey times from manchester to London, by 30 minutes  - if you exclude the time it takes to change at Crewe!

 

The Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and Treasury officials are conducting an urgent review of the £55.7 billion rail line amid growing alarm at its spiralling price-tag.HS2 may also be taken away from the Department for Transport after officials there were deemed to have lost control of the scheme.Whitehall sources said that the relatively modest cuts to the project already mooted – such as removing a station at Meadowhall, near Sheffield, and a short length of track linking to the existing West Coast main line in Staffordshire – would not save much money. If costs for the existing scheme cannot be brought down, one option under consideration is to delay or abandon altogether the section to Manchester and build the line only as far as Crewe.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/hs2-may-not-even-reach-manchester-as-department-for-transport-fa/

[gingerjon]

Absolute joke of a project just gets worse and worse.

[Ramite]

In theory it's a good idea , rail travel is growing and we have one of the busiest networks in Europe. But with any project like this there are always delays it's just how it is. Any large government project of this size you can add 4-5 years to the time it takes.

East and west coast lines are packed what's the alternative ?

[gingerjon]

Reduce the need to travel to London. Improve Inter-City/cross country. Build this relief line so it actually connects.

[JohnM]

Certainly not HS2. It would be cheaper to let Corbyn be PM . The resulting huge increase in unemployment would then drastically reduce demand for rail travel. 

 

Big questions.

1. Why choose the most expensive, difficult and disruptive route? All those tunnels, all that compensation, all those engineering difficulties? 

2. Why start in London and work out?  

3. What use is it to someone who lives in Wilmslow, Bolton, Headingley, Harrogate,  etc and needs to go to IBM Hursley

4. Stupid assumption that people want to go to central London rather than Heathrow, Bracknell, Reading, Guildford, Farnborough,  etc.

5. And  a decision, if they ever make one, on a new runway at Heathrow or Gatwick or Luton or Stansted could screw up the whole thing

 

It really is a ####### nonsense when for 1/10 of that they could connect Liverpool to Hull with frequent, fast, clean, reliable trainis using existing technology instead of the they use now.

[Ramite]

1 what were the alternative routes ? No guarantee they wouldn't be in the same situation as now regards budget.

2.because London

3. What use is it for someone in Aberdeen who wants to travel to Moscow ?

4.I imagine more people want to go to central London rather than Bracknell.

5.Heathrow is a hub so no not really.

[JohnM]

1 what were the alternative routes ? No guarantee they wouldn't be in the same situation as now regards budget.

2.because London

3. What use is it for someone in Aberdeen who wants to travel to Moscow ?

4.I imagine more people want to go to central London rather than Bracknell.

5.Heathrow is a hub so no not really.

 

 

4. Exactly...imagination.!

3. Exactly my point! It will serve a tiny minority of people whilst the poor bloody infantry have to stand in overcrowded trains, wait for connections, etc going from where they are to where they want to go, not where HS2 say they should start and finish.

 

and..the whole time saving is an illusion but the cost is real, very real.  Unless you live over the station in central London, wherever that will be, and your meeting ta the station in say Birmingham, you have to add the time from home to that station, car parking times,  contingency etc and the same at the other end. So teh end to end time will not be much different, even if HS2 was supersonic.

 

 

 

It has been pointed out that in the UK ,productivity (output per man hour) is way behind that our our competitors. Not hard to see why when so many people spend so much time in train carriages. Why not spend the money instead on a proper  national high-speed communications infrastructure that  renders many train journeys unnecessary?  

[Ramite]

3. By that logic not much will get built , why upgrade say motorways in the south east I don't live there and don't use it. The Leeds to Manchester train route only serves a fraction of the population day to day why upgrade that ?

4. You would need imagination to go to Bracknell , no idea what this has to do with hs2 though.

Your last paragraph you are trying to link 2 things together that aren't. The Germans use the railway more than us and have better productivity.

[Bearman]

By the time this project is finished (if) we will be about 50 years behind France in getting 1 line of high speed travel against their whole network.That of course assumes they stand still and don't improve.

Distances are so short in this country that the emphasis should be on getting the best system not shaving a few minutes off the time on a two hour journey.

[nadera78]

Every step of the way I've thought "surely this ridiculous project can't go ahead, someone will stop it" but that never happens. It just keeps on rolling along.

[GeordieSaint]

Distances are so short in this country that the emphasis should be on getting the best system not shaving a few minutes off the time on a two hour journey.

Absolutely agree with this statement.