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Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)

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al78

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With climate change now being of such alarming concern the government policy should be to take away the need to travel, especially daily commutes to work.

This one is going to be difficult to resolve. If companies want to be based in London because it gives them international status, and the house and rental prices in Greater London are well out of reach of those who are working at those companies, what option is there other than commuting from somewhere with affordable housing?

How do we incentivise companies to locate their head offices in other major cities than London, and how do we persuade managers not to arrange meetings that people scattered all over the country have to attend, I thought tele-conferencing was supposed to be an alternative to this?

In the 17 years I have lived in Horsham, I have noticed the local area steadily getting more and more rammed with people, with new housing estates popping up all over the place. Where are all these people coming from, and why, because it certainly isn't anything to do with the birth rate. If we are still in the situation where people from the north are moving to the SE because London has attractive well paid jobs, how do you resolve that (although when the cost of a season ticket is taken into account, how much better are the jobs in central London)?

I don't think there are quick or easy solutions, there never is if the solution requires persuading millions of individuals to change their way of thinking.
 

The Ham

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With climate change now being of such alarming concern the government policy should be to take away the need to travel, especially daily commutes to work

That may actually require more travel by train even though people are traveling less overall.

If you work from home 4 days a week and go into the office one day, the high upfront cost of car ownership starts to make less sense.

If you pay £150 per month on lease costs for the car but it only costs you £25/day in rail travel (£100 to £125 a month in rail travel costs for one day a week) then unless you had a need for a car for other reasons rail starts to look a good deal.

Even at £15/day and going twice a week (£120 to £150) or still looks fairly good, even before considering the fuel costs.
 

PartyOperator

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The arithmetic of commuting only works because the majority of the people living in commuter towns don't commute. If a daily commuter to London accounts for about 500 entries/exits at the terminal station per year (twice a day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year), Euston station with 50 million entries/exits per year would account for about 100,000 commuters (assuming they were the only people using the station), or roughly the population of Watford. In practice even for the most commuter-heavy towns in the commuter belt, there are kids who go to school locally, often spouses who work locally or care for children while one member of the family works in London, then all the retail workers, teachers, tradespeople etc. who are needed to keep the local economy going. I'm not sure it's the ideal situation, but a town where say 10% of people commute to London could have a fairly low average annual mileage per person if all the non-commuter work locally.
 

matacaster

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Whilst I am against hs2, I would support it if its primary stated aim was to stop Heathrow expansion and provide links to Birmingham and Manchester airports which would then provide the airport expansion required for the south. Londoners would then be expected to catch hs2 for some services to Manchester and Birmingham, just like we northerners were expected to go to that abomination Heathrow. The costs of HS2 could then be ameliorated by the savings on expanding Heathrow. We still get the perceived rail benefits too.

Everybody wins, what's not to like.
 

HSTEd

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I feel sure that if tunnelling throughout would be cheaper, the team designing HS2 would have at least considered the possibility. They have already extended tunnelling on certain sections of Phase 1 over the initial proposals, with the Chiltern tunnel extended significantly, an Old Oak Common - Ruislip tunnel added, and another new one around Washwood Heath on Birmingham's Curzon Street approach.

The problem is that tunnelling throughout would not have been cheaper if the original cost estimates had been correct.
The problem is that once theyve performed all the calculations on the premise that they have, they will not want to go back adn completely rethink the scheme.

We end up with lock in.

Knowing what we know now on how much this is going to cost, tunnelling throughout looks like a reasonable option.
But when it was going to cost £40bn, it did not.
 

matacaster

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The problem is that tunnelling throughout would not have been cheaper if the original cost estimates had been correct.
The problem is that once theyve performed all the calculations on the premise that they have, they will not want to go back adn completely rethink the scheme.

We end up with lock in.

Knowing what we know now on how much this is going to cost, tunnelling throughout looks like a reasonable option.
But when it was going to cost £40bn, it did not.

Yes, the problem is one of inertia. So many mistakes on costing - probably deliberately to get the project off the ground. Then people say it can't be stopped because its started. This reminds me of the oft quoted if you are in a hole keep on digging!
I still think a tunnel to Milton Keynes 100mph max and local stations, no branches is the way to go.
 

HSTEd

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I still think a tunnel to Milton Keynes 100mph max and local stations, no branches is the way to go.

You would need a lot of intermediate stations before 100mph max looks like a reasonable design choice.
Even two or three intermediate stops would still permit 100mph+ average speeds based on Japanese experience.
 

The Ham

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Er, why? It'd cost loads more and have less of a benefit.

Indeed, it certainly wouldn't help Manchester or Leeds, where the extra platforms for the long distance services would create extra capacity.

In the car off Manchester by removing the long distance services from London it would allow the TPE services to run to places like Crewe and other stations which will still need to have a connection to Central Manchester, but remove some paths from the congested corridor making the system work better.

It would also make travel between Crewe and Leeds or Stoke and York better, providing better East West connectivity.

Is it not often said that other cities need a Thameslink? As such it could work in a similar way to the Thameslink services between Brighton and Luton.

Yes it may well need some improvements North of Piccadilly, but it would remove the need to do so much to the South so soon. (Although it is likely that it would still be needed in time, it just makes it easier to determine which projects need to be done in what order).
 

matacaster

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Indeed, it certainly wouldn't help Manchester or Leeds, where the extra platforms for the long distance services would create extra capacity.

In the car off Manchester by removing the long distance services from London it would allow the TPE services to run to places like Crewe and other stations which will still need to have a connection to Central Manchester, but remove some paths from the congested corridor making the system work better.

It would also make travel between Crewe and Leeds or Stoke and York better, providing better East West connectivity.

Is it not often said that other cities need a Thameslink? As such it could work in a similar way to the Thameslink services between Brighton and Luton.

Yes it may well need some improvements North of Piccadilly, but it would remove the need to do so much to the South so soon. (Although it is likely that it would still be needed in time, it just makes it easier to determine which projects need to be done in what order).

Would repurposing Manchester Central back to rail use for long distance trains be of benefit (with travelator to man picc)
 

ExRes

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Easy, just cancel season tickets. Make sure that someone traveling 5 days a week pays 5 times as much as someone traveling once a week.

That gives a financial incentive to commute less.

And how do you suggest that people who don't sit behind a desk all day get to work? How do you 'incentivise' somebody who works in a shop, or a hospital, or do you intend to shut down all city centres?
 

6Gman

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Would repurposing Manchester Central back to rail use for long distance trains be of benefit (with travelator to man picc)

Surely the answer is No ?

1. How would you reach Central?
2. It is currently in another use.
3. Could you fit in 400m trains?
4. It's not exactly easy to fit a travellator between the two!
 

matacaster

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Surely the answer is No ?

1. How would you reach Central?
2. It is currently in another use.
3. Could you fit in 400m trains?
4. It's not exactly easy to fit a travellator between the two!

..... It might take some ingenuity (lol)!
 

PartyOperator

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FT reporting that "Boris Johnson and ministers to decide fate of HS2 this week"

On the basis that no complex decision is ever made in a meeting, presumably this means it's already been decided?

https://www.ft.com/content/9586736a-403e-11ea-bdb5-169ba7be433d
Boris Johnson will this week hold talks with senior ministers to decide the fate of the HS2 high speed rail line, as one cabinet minister insisted that the project remained “a key part” of the government’s plan to revive the Midlands and North of England.

Mr Johnson will hold talks with Sajid Javid, chancellor, and Grant Shapps, transport secretary, in what is widely seen as the moment when the prime minister finally decides whether to back a project whose costs could spiral to more than £100bn.
 

AndrewE

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Seems to be a theme of the HS2 antis on this thread. More expensive stuff that does barely anything (other than looking nice on a map)
Maybe it's time to remind ourselves of the 11 pages of network upgrades that Berkeley (link up-thread somewhere) said would be needed to replace HS2... Even if half of them are needed in addition to HS2 anyway!
One of the most amazing things is the blase way he says (under the heading York-Leeds-Manchester) "Additional infrastructure needed east of Leeds:" Needs freight to be accommodated (proven possible with additional running lines on former four-track sections)" I wonder how much he thinks he can fit in between Diggle and Manchester?
I couldn't believe that anyone might imagine that all the upgrades could be done for less than an HS2-type budget.
 

Tetchytyke

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How do we incentivise companies to locate their head offices in other major cities than London

We improve urban transport. We need to make our regional cities attractive in their own right. Currently they aren't, because transport into regional cities is so dire. Nobody sets up business in city centres because the transport is crap, and nobody goes to shop in city centres because the transport is crap.

Knocking 20 minutes off a Manchester-London train ain't gonna encourage companies to leave London. Anyone who says it will is a liar. Companies aren't climbing over each other to set up in Milton Keynes, Northampton, Peterborough or Leicester, even though those towns are already an hour from London. So why will it be different for Birmingham?

HS2's grandiosity costs £110bn. By contrast, the *entire* Manchester Metrolink system cost £1.4bn at today's prices. Even Edinburgh's absolute disaster zone of a tram came in at £750m.

Imagine what that £110bn would achieve in the regions. Getting £300m out of this Government for T&W Metro upgrades was like getting blood out of a stone. Imagine what HS2's budget could achieve here.

But, quite simply, HS2 is sexy and has the lobbying pressure of multinational construction companies (who will get minted through HS2) behind it. A tram for Leeds isn't sexy. So HS2 will happen- or at least the bits that are lucrative for the multinational construction companies will- and regional cities will get ever-more traffic choked.
 

Bletchleyite

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Knocking 20 minutes off a Manchester-London train ain't gonna encourage companies to leave London. Anyone who says it will is a liar. Companies aren't climbing over each other to set up in Milton Keynes

Erm, yes they are. The whole reason MK has been so successful is it being "open for business" and very near London. The other new towns have been nowhere near as successful for that reason. MK has more inbound commuters than outbound ones, or did have.

I don't agree it is urban transport that is causing issues, it's mentality.

And the reason people don't shop in city centres for their weekly shop is nothing to do with buses or trains, but because people want to drive to the supermarket. Supermarkets in city centres are invariably "metro" or "local" variants for picking up stuff on the way home from work/clothes shopping.
 

The Ham

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We improve urban transport. We need to make our regional cities attractive in their own right. Currently they aren't, because transport into regional cities is so dire. Nobody sets up business in city centres because the transport is crap, and nobody goes to shop in city centres because the transport is crap.

I fully agree, which is why we need to invest that £43 billion in regional transport schemes and not cut in nearly in half just so that we can say that we've got the costs down (with a 1/3 of those savings being from the advice cut) as Lord Berkeley suggests.
 

The Ham

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Erm, yes they are. The whole reason MK has been so successful is it being "open for business" and very near London. The other new towns have been nowhere near as successful for that reason. MK has more inbound commuters than outbound ones, or did have.

I don't agree it is urban transport that is causing issues, it's mentality.

And the reason people don't shop in city centres for their weekly shop is nothing to do with buses or trains, but because people want to drive to the supermarket. Supermarkets in city centres are invariably "metro" or "local" variants for picking up stuff on the way home from work/clothes shopping.

It's not just MK though, there are other locations which do well (admittedly not new towns), from my experience both Farnborough and Guildford have a lot of in and out bound passenger flows with a LOT of employment based there, likewise it's reported that Reading had a lot of people traveling to it. The thing such links them is that tab travel is about 45 minutes from London.

That allows those business which are located there to attract from a wide area (including those who would rule themselves out from going to London for work as it'll be too far to go), has cheaper travel costs and building rents (so both staff and company can save compared to a London location). Yet is close enough that a meeting in London is no great problem.
 

HSTEd

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We improve urban transport. We need to make our regional cities attractive in their own right. Currently they aren't, because transport into regional cities is so dire. Nobody sets up business in city centres because the transport is crap, and nobody goes to shop in city centres because the transport is crap.
It isn't that simple.

Transport is rubbish in the regions, but people probably still wouldn't locate there because London is an economic juggernaut that cannot be competed with except by a city of comparable size.
The aggregation benefits are absolutely enormous.

The only way a coutnry as small as the UK can solve this problem is by making everything London and London everywhere.
A megacity with an effective population of 70 million would be an economic engine the likes of which Europe has never seen.
 

jfowkes

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I wonder if some of the criticism of HS2 isn't so much about the project itself, but about how easy it is to " magic up" billions of pounds for it.

If we can fund HS2 from low interest loans, then why not a mass transit system for Leeds? Why not electrification of the MML?

Is HS2 really so much more of a necessity or economic driver that it deserves this, while other schemes have to compete for tax funding?
 

matacaster

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I think the problem many people have with HS2 is what exactly is its raison d'etre?
So far, from memory the objective has been at various times

1) Ten-T - to link England, Scotland and eventually Ireland to Paris and Berlin (requiring a high speed network to avoid use of UK to EU local flights). Died when no link to HS2 and all services went to St Pancras dead end.
2) To allow direct access to Europe from Manchester and Leeds by train (trains built never used)
3) To allow direct access to Europe from Edinburgh and Glasgow via sleepers (only competitive by high speed) - never got off the ground
4) Heathrow - to avoid Heathrow expansion by use of rail connection to regional airports - that died a death when they said Heathrow expansion will go ahead
5) To relieve southern WCML thus freeing up capacity for additional freight and passenger services
6) To reduce journey times by various amounts in 10 years time (to Birmingham) and a bit to Leeds, Manchester and Scotland. More benefit in 15-20 years to Leeds and Manchester. No mention of HS2 proper to Scotland and even less said about who would pay for it as there is little benefit to England to create and HS2 to Carlisle and the Scots money comes from England anyway in the form of an (over) generous grant, but they cannot afford it. Even more so should they get Scottish independence!
7) it will help the regions and north (pretty optimistic if you ask me)

Have I perchance missed any other principal reasons that have been given to justify HS2 over time?

Seems to me a project that is looking for a compelling reason to exist other to keep the construction industry in clover. The multitude of reasons given so far lead one to suspect it is an answer looking for a question.
 

DynamicSpirit

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I think the problem many people have with HS2 is what exactly is its raison d'etre?
So far, from memory the objective has been at various times

1) Ten-T - to link England, Scotland and eventually Ireland to Paris and Berlin (requiring a high speed network to avoid use of UK to EU local flights). Died when no link to HS2 and all services went to St Pancras dead end.
2) To allow direct access to Europe from Manchester and Leeds by train (trains built never used)
3) To allow direct access to Europe from Edinburgh and Glasgow via sleepers (only competitive by high speed) - never got off the ground
4) Heathrow - to avoid Heathrow expansion by use of rail connection to regional airports - that died a death when they said Heathrow expansion will go ahead
5) To relieve southern WCML thus freeing up capacity for additional freight and passenger services
6) To reduce journey times by various amounts in 10 years time (to Birmingham) and a bit to Leeds, Manchester and Scotland. More benefit in 15-20 years to Leeds and Manchester. No mention of HS2 proper to Scotland and even less said about who would pay for it as there is little benefit to England to create and HS2 to Carlisle and the Scots money comes from England anyway in the form of an (over) generous grant, but they cannot afford it. Even more so should they get Scottish independence!
7) it will help the regions and north (pretty optimistic if you ask me)

Have I perchance missed any other principal reasons that have been given to justify HS2 over time?

Seems to me a project that is looking for a compelling reason to exist other to keep the construction industry in clover. The multitude of reasons given so far lead one to suspect it is an answer looking for a question.

There are two problems with your reasoning here.
  • Firstly, to judge from this and other things you've posted, you seem to be having some trouble grasping the idea that a single project might be designed to achieve multiple objectives.
  • And secondly. I'm pretty sure that many of the objectives you list here have - particularly your emphasis on Europe and your mentioning of Ireland - never seriously been part of the official plans for HS2 (Maybe some of HS2's more enthusiastic proponents amongst the public and on Internet forums might have hopefully mentioned them from time to time but that isn't the same thing).
 

The Ham

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I think the problem many people have with HS2 is what exactly is its raison d'etre?
So far, from memory the objective has been at various times

Shall we look at each in turn:

1) Ten-T - to link England, Scotland and eventually Ireland to Paris and Berlin (requiring a high speed network to avoid use of UK to EU local flights). Died when no link to HS2 and all services went to St Pancras dead end.

Ten-T is a network which encourages ease of movement around Europe, the schemes listed for the UK include Southampton/Felixstowe to the Midlands.

IIRC the only people who have linked HS2 to the Ten-T network are those who look at the map and see a line from London to Scotland which passes through or near to Birmingham and Manchester.

However that map also shows a link to Liverpool, and as I've hinted at above, Southampton and Felixstowe. None of which will have HS2 infrastructure running to them.

2) To allow direct access to Europe from Manchester and Leeds by train (trains built never used)

That was something which happened at part of HS1; and whilst there was the proposal to have a link to HS1 from HS2 the cost of this link was determined to be too high.

Whilst a link would be useful, however the only way to have direct services would be at the expense of frequency of the main routes.

There would also be issues with boarder control.

Overall the benefit of the direct link want seen as viable.

3) To allow direct access to Europe from Edinburgh and Glasgow via sleepers (only competitive by high speed) - never got off the ground

See above.

4) Heathrow - to avoid Heathrow expansion by use of rail connection to regional airports - that died a death when they said Heathrow expansion will go ahead

Whilst a direct connection to Heathrow would be useful, again it would impact on the frequency to Central London and so the benefits would be fairly low for the costs involved.

Whilst it would mean a change of trains, which makes rail less attractive, by having a more frequent service this would like more than offset the losses.

5) To relieve southern WCML thus freeing up capacity for additional freight and passenger services

This is the main advantage, however there's lots of other things which HS2 does as well.

6) To reduce journey times by various amounts in 10 years time (to Birmingham) and a bit to Leeds, Manchester and Scotland. More benefit in 15-20 years to Leeds and Manchester. No mention of HS2 proper to Scotland and even less said about who would pay for it as there is little benefit to England to create and HS2 to Carlisle and the Scots money comes from England anyway in the form of an (over) generous grant, but they cannot afford it. Even more so should they get Scottish independence!

Journey time savings are an advantage in that it encourages people to use the new services over the existing ones. It's part of the train that upgrades to the Chiltern Line is unlikely to have the same benefit add it would be slower. As such fewer people would switch to those services.

7) it will help the regions and north (pretty optimistic if you ask me)

In one of my recent posts I highlighted how Manchester could benefit with "Thameslink" type routes running across Manchester using services which already run through then serving places South of Manchester but with the advantage of the corridor not being so congested as the Intercity services would have been removed.

Whilst I'm being optimistic that it would happen like that, it's certainly not optimistic that such changes could happen.

Have I perchance missed any other principal reasons that have been given to justify HS2 over time?

That it frees up capacity on the XC network (now I'm not saying that it replaces the need for the XC network).

That it provides the opportunity for new services and longer trains on the existing services

Seems to me a project that is looking for a compelling reason to exist other to keep the construction industry in clover. The multitude of reasons given so far lead one to suspect it is an answer looking for a question.

The compelling reason is that it does provide so many benefits across so much of the network. The main reason is the long list of reasons.

Any other scheme may fix a few of the issues, and whilst reach project could do it for less money, HS2 deals with so many that is you tried to fix them all you'd end up spending a lot more money.

In fact, given how fast rail growth had been rising there is as fair chance that some of these other schemes put forwards as alternatives would likely to happen as well whilst we wait for HS2 to be built. Especially given that the opening days have been pushed back.
 

nidave

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Imagine what that £110bn would achieve in the regions.
The money is borrowed for HS2 and HS2 only - it is not sitting there waiting to be spent - it can't and the agreement by the treasury won't get used for anything else other than HS2 - any other projects would need separate funding released by the treasury.
 

jfowkes

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The money is borrowed for HS2 and HS2 only - it is not sitting there waiting to be spent - it can't and the agreement by the treasury won't get used for anything else other than HS2 - any other projects would need separate funding released by the treasury.

See my question above - why does HS2 get the special massive low interest loan? Why can't we do that for other projects?

I am pro-HS2, but the answer "the money is only for HS2" doesn't really address the underlying crux of the thing.
 
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