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Scrapped HS2 bike path 'five times better value than HS2 itself'

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AndrewE

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https://www.theguardian.com/environ...d-have-reaped-five-times-more-than-hs2-itself says
A scrapped “emerald necklace” cycleway up the spine of the country alongside HS2 would have delivered a return on investment of up to five times greater than the rail project itself, an FoI request has revealed – but neither the government nor HS2 Ltd will fund it.
A 50-page report outlining the business case for the national cycleway, obtained by the Guardian, reveals health, congestion and economic benefits of between £3 and £8 per £1 spent. The return on investment of HS2 itself, meanwhile, is just £1.5-£1.7 per £1, according to the National Audit Office. Campaigners say completing the cycleway should have been a “no-brainer”. (and continues)
Depressing but predictable.
 
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yoyothehobo

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A cycle proof HS2 tunnel sounds like you would still be putting the CapEx onto HS2 to improve the business case of the cycle route. I cant imagine it being that enjoyable to cycle through a high speed rail tunnel. I dont think it was ever likely to happen.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Nowhere in the article does it quote a total cost for the cycleway, and the business case is a private one probably funded by the bike lobby.
It's not a full survey anyway, just sample sections.
In any case the HS2 Phase 1 project specification is now closed following Royal Assent so there's no prospect of adding bits to it.
However beneficial a cycleway might be, it's too late to argue about it now.
 

AndrewE

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A cycle proof HS2 tunnel sounds like you would still be putting the CapEx onto HS2 to improve the business case of the cycle route. I cant imagine it being that enjoyable to cycle through a high speed rail tunnel. I dont think it was ever likely to happen.
I think they mean underbridges (through embankments) that are so long that they seem like tunnels: if there's currently an open road then the resulting crossing should be made safe for bikes to continue to use.
A linked article (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...d-necklace-cycleway-along-hs2-route-published) says
But John Grimshaw, an engineer who helped write the study, said not only had the government sat on the report for two years – a fact a DfT press officer put down to “extensive dialogue with local and national bodies” – but it had failed to tell HS2 to make sure the new bridges and tunnels crossing the rail line were safe and attractive for cyclists and walkers.
 

Doctor Fegg

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I don't see why this is news. HS2 is about building a railway. If someone wants to start a project to build a cycle path, start a separate one.
Oh, come on. The concept of "planning gain" is hardly a new one. It's entirely reasonable that anywhere impacted by the route - from the Chilterns to Staveley - should get some baubles in return for the disruption of construction and the impact on amenity. Making it easier for local people to cycle places is a laudable bauble.

Every single non-negligible property development pays Section 106 or Community Infrastructure Levy. There is nothing strange about expecting HS2 to make an amenity contribution to the areas it passes through.
 

Doctor Fegg

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Nowhere in the article does it quote a total cost for the cycleway, and the business case is a private one probably funded by the bike lobby.
No it isn't, it was funded by the Government. As it says in the article: "David Cameron commissioned the study when he was prime minister in 2013."
 

Bletchleyite

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Oh, come on. The concept of "planning gain" is hardly a new one. It's entirely reasonable that anywhere impacted by the route - from the Chilterns to Staveley - should get some baubles in return for the disruption of construction and the impact on amenity.

That isn't what planning gain is really for (not that some Councils aren't misusing it for that by basically using it as a form of property taxation). Planning gain used properly is for providing required infrastructure for a development - perhaps, for instance, increasing a bus service or dualling a single carriageway road so a housing estate doesn't cause congestion. Or perhaps building a community centre or school to directly provide those facilities to the estate and neighbouring areas.

It's not for building a cycle path which is totally irrelevant to the railway. And I say that as a cyclist. If you were going to provide cycle facilities as part of HS2 planning gain, quality cycle access and secure storage at the stations would be the way to go.
 

HowardGWR

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That isn't what planning gain is really for (not that some Councils aren't misusing it for that by basically using it as a form of property taxation). Planning gain used properly is for providing required infrastructure for a development - perhaps, for instance, increasing a bus service or dualling a single carriageway road so a housing estate doesn't cause congestion. Or perhaps building a community centre or school to directly provide those facilities to the estate and neighbouring areas.

It's not for building a cycle path which is totally irrelevant to the railway. And I say that as a cyclist. If you were going to provide cycle facilities as part of HS2 planning gain, quality cycle access and secure storage at the stations would be the way to go.
That is a most odd comment IIMSS. Why not a cycle path to get to those community facilities? Why isn't that a planning gain? Long distance cycle paths along a route like HS2 could be very unpleasant to use, perhaps only by sporting cyclists, whereas what is needed is local cycle paths for residents of those estates.

Edit I agree with your last para. I think I misunderstood your first too, apols.
 
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Mogster

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When travelling by rail in Switzerland I’ve noticed there are often cycle paths beside the rail lines. You can always see lots of people running/biking on them, in winter when the snow comes down they switch to Nordic skiing.

I don’t see why running/biking alongside a rail line would be unpleasant necessarily. A long distance cycle route is an interesting concept. It’s not easy to cycle between large cities in the UK, you tend to end up on badly maintained canal towpaths and such.
 

Ianno87

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That is a most odd comment IIMSS. Why not a cycle path to get to those community facilities? Why isn't that a planning gain? Long distance cycle paths along a route like HS2 could be very unpleasant to use, perhaps only by sporting cyclists, whereas what is needed is local cycle paths for residents of those estates.

Edit I agree with your last para. I think I misunderstood your first too, apols.

Because it would increase the land take of peoples' properties needed in the HS2 Hybrid Bill to permit space for the cycleway, that would have to be justified and defended. Hard to do that in front of select committee when it's nothing to do with providing an operational railway (irrespective of how much HS2 may *want* to provide one for the commuity benefits.).
 

Bletchleyite

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That is a most odd comment IIMSS. Why not a cycle path to get to those community facilities? Why isn't that a planning gain? Long distance cycle paths along a route like HS2 could be very unpleasant to use, perhaps only by sporting cyclists, whereas what is needed is local cycle paths for residents of those estates.

Edit I agree with your last para. I think I misunderstood your first too, apols.

Yes, I think I perhaps didn't explain clearly enough. A long-distance path along HS2 through the middle of nowhere would be an utter waste of money, there are already plenty of nice quiet country lanes to cycle on through the Chilterns etc. What would be of benefit would be promoting and making easier the use of a bicycle to access HS2 itself by providing local access cycleways and quality secure storage facilities to encourage utility cycling, which is the kind that should be encouraged as it's the kind that removes the most environmentally damaging form of car use, namely short local journeys. (Nothing wrong with sport cycling, but it only has a health benefit, not a road traffic reduction one, so is less worthy of spending).

For what it's worth, I don't know if readers of this thread have ever used the North Wales Cycleway which was built to replace cycles being allowed on parts of the A55. It's not at all nice to use by and large, winding its way around the place, up and down steep hills (which the road doesn't) and being poorly maintained and covered in glass etc. A cycle lane along the HS2 route would end up the same and be a useless waste of money except for long-distance sporting cyclists who can just ride on secondary roads and generally prefer to do so anyway. The one exception to this is the cycleway alongside the Cambridgeshire busway, but Cambridge is a very special case in terms of cycle use by the general population.
 

Bletchleyite

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I don’t see why running/biking alongside a rail line would be unpleasant necessarily. A long distance cycle route is an interesting concept. It’s not easy to cycle between large cities in the UK, you tend to end up on badly maintained canal towpaths and such.

This would be badly maintained too.
 

si404

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I don’t see why running/biking alongside a rail line would be unpleasant necessarily.
I'm not sure anyone is saying it's an inherently bad idea, but certainly there's a difference between most Swiss railway lines and HS2. It won't be pleasant to be cycling along and having 200m+ long trains travelling at 300km/h passing by you every 100 seconds (on average) - air turbulence and the like.
It’s not easy to cycle between large cities in the UK
But how many people would? Especially for transport, rather than recreation. But if it's along the route of HS2, there's not much opportunity for leisure cycling along the route beyond it being a challenge in and of itself for the road racers. Scenic merit isn't there as it is a deep cutting or tunnel in the Chilterns, local traffic is unlikely given the railway seeks to avoid settlements en-route, etc.

There's potential for short stretches to be of use, but even then, there's better places to put the cyclepath.
you tend to end up on badly maintained canal towpaths and such.
Wouldn't that, however, be the route into London (NCN6)? You can't really run it alongside HS2 when the railway is in a tunnel - you'd have to botch it onto existing routes. I guess there's the remnants of the Western Avenue cycle path, but that's just a similar issue.
 

Ianno87

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The one exception to this is the cycleway alongside the Cambridgeshire busway, but Cambridge is a very special case in terms of cycle use by the general population.

That an the advantage of a guided busway (yes, there is one!) being that the 'Up' and 'Down' lines can be hard up against each other, permitting space for the cycleway alongside easily within the former railway formation.

The cycle path also doubles as the access road for conventional road maintenance vehicles that can't run down the busway track.
 

mallard

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"Five times better value" is a little misleading in this case... Sure, it's approximately 1.7x vs 8x in relative terms (ignoring the fact that the HS2 and cycleway calculations were almost certainly done with different criteria/formulae and that HS2 itself claims 2.3x...), but it's a drop in the ocean in real terms...

HS2 is estimated at somewhere in the region of £40bn. So that's at least £60bn of benefit.

The cycleway is unlikely to cost more than a few tens of millions, £100 million at the outside. So that's less than £1bn of benefit.

Sure, if there were £40bn worth of similarly beneficial cycleways to build, it would make more sense to do so than to build HS2. Spoiler: there aren't.
 

AndrewE

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Sure, if there were £40bn worth of similarly beneficial cycleways to build, it would make more sense to do so than to build HS2. Spoiler: there aren't.
Actually I - and lots of other people - think there probably are. The original article says
“If the government want best value for money, and it really is a choice between HS2 and cycle tracks, they should have cut HS2. Of course, that’s ludicrous – the government could have done both.”
and I agree. Really the wider benefits from increasing cycling are so enormous (and will bring such savings across all sorts of areas of public spending) that it's hard to understand why the government are dragging their heels, apart from the motoring lobby being so influential and the Tories' obsession with being seen to cut taxes in the short term, even if it leads to longer term costs and other disbenefits.
 

squizzler

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I am a bike user myself. Bikes are very much a highways thang. Central government should mandate that the highways agency and highway authorities use a fixed proportion of their capital budget to roll out bike routes along the roads, starting of course where there is the greatest return of investment. It will be much easier to find routes alongside the roads that have great business cases because roads go from everywhere to everywhere so your choice of roads where a bike track can compliment the carriageway is similarly much wider.

Supposedly this railway generates one fifth of the return on investment as its parallel bike track. Now imagine doing the same exercise with current or proposed highway schemes. I wonder how many multiples more return on road investment a bike track would generate relative to the carriageway? Did the M74 extension (notorious as an urban motorway built in the 21st century) have a bike route with published benefit cost ratio?
 
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Ianno87

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"Five times better value" is a little misleading in this case... Sure, it's approximately 1.7x vs 8x in relative terms (ignoring the fact that the HS2 and cycleway calculations were almost certainly done with different criteria/formulae and that HS2 itself claims 2.3x...), but it's a drop in the ocean in real terms...

HS2 is estimated at somewhere in the region of £40bn. So that's at least £60bn of benefit.

The cycleway is unlikely to cost more than a few tens of millions, £100 million at the outside. So that's less than £1bn of benefit.

Sure, if there were £40bn worth of similarly beneficial cycleways to build, it would make more sense to do so than to build HS2. Spoiler: there aren't.

Plus, in cost terms, the cost of providing the cycleway would be piggybacking on the cost of HS2 anyway. No HS2 = the cycleway has to pick up the entire line of route's cost, not just the marginal cost over and above what HS2 would be doing anyway.
 

Via Bank

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Really, the question is, 'if the business case is so good, why not?'

(Of course, we know why. In this country, cycles are seen as toys rather than modes of transport, blah blah red lights road tax helmets etc.)

Compare the policy in almost every other, more sensible, Western European country, of building these connections for cycling whenever there's a convenient opportunity to do so (as Mogster has said above in Switzerland.) Funnily enough, if you build a high quality cycleway, with a sealed surface and lighting, and maintain it properly, people will use it.

We spend an awful lot of time in this country deciding saying 'no, building this particular cycle scheme in this exact place would be a waste of money,' and very little time actually building anything. Is it any wonder the cycling modal share in the UK is so abysmal when we dither and refuse to invest the relative pittance to get spades in the ground?
 

route:oxford

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Funnily enough, if you build a high quality cycleway, with a sealed surface and lighting, and maintain it properly, people will use it.

If you threaten to build a cycleway with streetlighting through the Chilterns - there'll be just as much anger about it from the locals as there is the railway.
 

si404

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We spend an awful lot of time in this country deciding saying 'no, building this particular cycle scheme in this exact place would be a waste of money,' and very little time actually building anything.
Building a load of useless cycle routes just because they are cheap and easy and it is good virtue signalling is precisely the UK's problem with its cycle infrastructure. We don't use discernment, build stuff where its not difficult but useless (eg alongside new-build bypasses) to score some pro-cycling points, wonder why these new routes aren't being used for transport and then treat cycling as a leisure thing only (and perhaps a niche activity given the low volumes).

Building an HS2 cycle route, especially with the fanfare they were giving it, would be a negative to UK cycling infrastructure as it would be exhibit A to block more difficult-to-do but (or even therefore) much more useful routes.

If we were talking E-W Rail, then the objections made here to the very idea would mostly not being made - because it would be a useful cycle route, serving towns sensible distances apart rather than avoiding them/going through a corridor where there are few.
 

Bletchleyite

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If we were talking E-W Rail, then the objections made here to the very idea would mostly not being made - because it would be a useful cycle route, serving towns sensible distances apart rather than avoiding them/going through a corridor where there are few.

Agreed. By the way, there is one over part of it already - cycle route 51, which includes the bit alongside the Busway:
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map/route/route-51

Like most of these routes it's not all segregated (though a fair bit of it is) but also runs along quiet country lanes which are good cycling territory in themselves.
 

jon0844

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I agree that most cycle routes are built because they're easy and add to the overall mileage (thus looking great). Miles of shared access or dedicated cycle lanes on quiet roads, then when you come to a difficult junction - on to the road you go.

I am all for improved cycle facilities. Yes I do rant about militant cyclists that think they're above the law (and therefore no better than arrogant motorists they always bring up in a predictable 'whataboutery' deflection) but I don't go on about them needing to pay road tax etc, although insurance is probably a good investment for the benefit of the cyclist.

Old railway lines converted to cycle ways are great (we have the Cole Green Way and Alban Way routes here) but while they're pretty well maintained and surfaced (certainly the Alban Way, not so much the other), they're unlit and certainly not gritted. They get plenty of use for leisure cycling when the weather is good, but I wouldn't say they're much good a lot of the other time.
 

Bletchleyite

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Old railway lines converted to cycle ways are great (we have the Cole Green Way and Alban Way routes here) but while they're pretty well maintained and surfaced, they're unlit and certainly not gritted

The latter is certainly a downside. My bike gets laid up in MK in winter as the Redways go from really quite useful to really quite dangerous (this is from experience, I've gone flying on ice too many times). While cycling on the main roads is grim.
 

Via Bank

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Building a load of useless cycle routes just because they are cheap and easy and it is good virtue signalling is precisely the UK's problem with its cycle infrastructure. We don't use discernment, build stuff where its not difficult but useless (eg alongside new-build bypasses) to score some pro-cycling points, wonder why these new routes aren't being used for transport and then treat cycling as a leisure thing only (and perhaps a niche activity given the low volumes).

Building an HS2 cycle route, especially with the fanfare they were giving it, would be a negative to UK cycling infrastructure as it would be exhibit A to block more difficult-to-do but (or even therefore) much more useful routes.

If we were talking E-W Rail, then the objections made here to the very idea would mostly not being made - because it would be a useful cycle route, serving towns sensible distances apart rather than avoiding them/going through a corridor where there are few.
Well, if we look at the HS2 corridor's BCR by segment, as tweeted by the article's author here, indicates it would be far from useless. Connections from Uxbridge to central London. Manchester Airport to Knutsford. Manchester Airport to Manchester itself. Buckingham to Aylesbury. If this corridor was built, and the crossings of the HS2 route were cycle-proofed (which HS2 Ltd now claims it has no money for) then they would provide obvious connections not only for people in the urban centres, but for towns and villages on those routes which would benefit from connections to the main corridor.

If we took the same attitude to building railways and general traffic roads as we do to building cycle routes, we'd have never built any of the damn things.
 

si404

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Connections from Uxbridge to central London.
How do you build that cycle route along HS2, which will be in tunnel!?! (PS, there's Q16/NCN6 and LCNs 39 and 40 giving three different cycle routes - all of different types of facility - on that corridor already!)
Manchester Airport to Manchester itself.
Again, how do you build alongside HS2, which is in a tunnel?
Buckingham to Aylesbury.
OK, that one might be useful to have alongside HS2 for a bit (more E-W Rail really as HS2 is the southside of the formation and we're talking about two places north of it), though Bucks CC prefers building ones alongside main roads for ease of maintenance (which they are terrible at due to low funding, whether road or cycle path, so lets try and make it easier for them to keep something usable) and serving development. Every new road in what's currently Aylesbury Vale District (to be abolished), unless a residential cul-de-sac, is built with cycling in mind - often a segregated cycling facility next to it. All planned roads have it in their design, and there's some more places where upgrading existing roads between towns (eg Buckingham and Winslow) to have decent cycle facilities is planned.

The examples you give are not HS2 dependent, nor would HS2's construction need to change one iota to allow for them to happen.

And I never said that none of it would be useful - I even suggested some small parts could be. My problem with it is the underlying principals behind the idea.
If we took the same attitude to building railways and general traffic roads as we do to building cycle routes, we'd have never built any of the damn things.
If we took the attitude you want to take with building cycle routes to building railways, we'd not build expensive but highly useful stuff like Crossrail, but would build mostly useless railways along the lines of projects of other modes.
 

WatcherZero

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The report was published last year, they didn't estimate the costs only doing so for a small section (Wakefield-Bolsover) as a case study and that's what the Guardian is pulling figures from (though I note they never mention the cost).

https://assets.publishing.service.g...udy-national-cycleway-associated-with-HS2.pdf

Basically two two studies found that 30% of the cycleway would have been on existing roads and it was only really the local connections (creating links within communities) that provided benefit not national and regional connections between communities.

I mean lets face it, how many people are year are going to cycle from Manchester to London?

Feasibility study - National Cycleway associated with HS2
Context
A study into the potential for new and improved cycle routes within a corridor of the HS2 route was commissioned in 2013 in response to an announcement made by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, of his ambition to increase levels of cycling in England.
The feasibility report, and the associated design notes, were carried out by Royal Haskoning DHV in partnership with John Grimshaw & Associates and Phil Jones Associates.
The project brief was to set out broad options for possible new and improved routes, how much they might cost, and to assess the feasibility and demand for such a scheme. The study also set out a long term vision for a national cycleway, comprised of local routes and linking local communities with urban centres, major airports and tourist attractions.
The feasibility report was commissioned prior to the publication of the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy in April 2017, which set out the government’s long term ambition for cycling and walking. This included a strong focus on supporting local authorities to develop Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs), and to implement interventions that align to local priorities.
Funding
Neither the Department for Transport nor HS2 Ltd. have any current plans to fund the national cycleway outlined in the study. This study was carried out independently of HS2 Ltd. and this report has no financial impact on the ongoing HS2 rail project.
If local authorities are interested in progressing the local routes within the study, they are encouraged to incorporate them into their LCWIPs and explore funding opportunities with their Local Enterprise Partnership, and other potential funders.
Local authorities may also wish to explore funding options arising from the Community and Environment Fund and the Business and Local Economy Fund which have been set aside for local communities who will be affected by HS2 works along the Phase
One route. Applications for these funds can now be made online by visiting www.groundwork.org.uk/hs2funds.
The Department would encourage those local authorities who have been allocated funding through the HS2 Road Safety Fund to consider whether they might wish to use that fund to support any of the projects identified in this study. HS2 Ltd. has undertakings and assurances on cycling provision, and some of the options set out in this report may be deliverable through collaboration between HS2 Ltd. and local authorities.
 
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PeterC

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I mean lets face it, how many people are year are going to cycle from Manchester to London?
The sort of question that comes to my mind when I see various proposals for longer distance cycle routes.

There was also a mention above that quiet country lanes are good for cycling. Definitely not, when cyclists are mixed with other traffic they need good sightlines and room to pass.
 

Bletchleyite

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There was also a mention above that quiet country lanes are good for cycling. Definitely not, when cyclists are mixed with other traffic they need good sightlines and room to pass.

Of course quiet country lanes don't contain many vehicles needing to pass, hence why they are preferable to cyclists.
 
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