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

Peter Kelford · 16 May 2019

Ianno87 said:
That's funny... the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 are likely to be the London commuters of Watford, MK, Northampton and Rugby. Who, for the most part, are not 40% tax payers.

No, it won't be. Anyhow, the intellectual content has gone down and I will respond to all the issues raised together at the end rather than enter into a quick-fire argument round. Good night gentlemen.

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Ianno87 · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
With République Française argent.

4 of the 6 trains each typical hour don't go anywhere near France.

And Gillingham is hardly packed with investment bankers...

Ianno87 · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
No, it won't be. Anyhow, the intellectual content has gone down and I will respond to all the issues raised together at the end rather than enter into a quick-fire argument round. Good night gentlemen.

Translation: He's right and I have no counter-argurament to make against it.

EM2 · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
What else will they be? In the absence of any more information, I will have to assume that they will cost a fortune.

You can compare them to existing High Speed fares?
An Anytime return from Ashford International to Charing Cross tomorrow is £59.40.
To St Pancras International it's £71.10, a 'premium' of less than 20%

EM2 · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
With République Française argent.

Not many French customers boarding at Maidstone, or Chatham, or Gillingham, or Strood, or...

DynamicSpirit · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
Please, don't pretend to say that HS2 tickets won't command a premium.

There's no pretending about it. It's basic economics and the laws of supply and demand. HS2 will provide massively, massively, greater numbers of seats than exist at present along the London-Birmingham-Manchester/etc. corridor. There will some increase in demand because of the faster journey times, but not enough to outstrip the massive increase in supply of seats. And basic economics says that in that situation, prices are likely to go down rather than up.

To make out that HS2 will cause ticket prices to go up is to completely ignore very well established principles of economics.

Polarbear · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
No, it won't be. Anyhow, the intellectual content has gone down and I will respond to all the issues raised together at the end rather than enter into a quick-fire argument round. Good night gentlemen.

I really do not understand this argument that HS2 will “only be for the rich”.

The people that will use HS2, from day one, will be all those people currently sat on Pendolino’s & Voyagers heading north from London. Yes, some of those will be rich/40% taxpayers etc., but the great majority will be the likes of me & many others, who travel between the north west & London using the fast service.

Yes, there may well be some premium fare structure for HS2, HS1 has higher fares, but claims that fares will be extortion/rip-off/sky high for all services are just plain scaremongering.

And before anyone asks, no I don’t know what the fare structure will be. I don’t work for the railways, I’m a civil servant who lives in the north west of England. I do however have an interest in transportation, studied transport management at college, and can be bothered to read up & research stuff.

ChiefPlanner · 16 May 2019

Ianno87 said:
That's funny... the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 are likely to be the London commuters of Watford, MK, Northampton and Rugby. Who, for the most part, are not 40% tax payers.

Generally - well to some extent anyway - people who cannot afford on moderate wages , who are priced out of London. You might be surprised. (yes there are some toffs of course - but check the demographics of the Chiltern corridor north of say Seer Green , and wonder why (M40 / M25 excepted there is a particular cadre of anti HS2 there ..?)

You need good roads in the Beech Woods to get you to John Lewis etc .....

The Ham · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
Please, don't pretend to say that HS2 tickets won't command a premium.

Why should it? I've explained in my post below how by seeking of 1/2 of the seats leaving Euston at £50 for any destination could cover the construction costs of HS2.

The Ham said:
At 18tph for 15 hours a day in each direction over a 50 year period will mean that there's 9bn seats, so each seat only needs to generate £6 to cover the construction costs of £56bn.

Even if we accept (for the purpose of checking) that the cost of HS2 does come in at £100bn that's £11 per seat.

Either way there's plenty of scope to sell off cheap (say £50 return between London and most locations, which would give the coach companies a fairly good run for their money at £30 return to Scotland) tickets and still be making more money than is needed to cover the construction costs with 50% occupancy on those discounted tickets, with the other running costs being covered by those who buy other tickets.

Now obviously no one going between London and Birmingham or some of the other shorter hops which could be made is going to take advantage of that offer, so it may have to 60% of seats. However the point stands that's there's scope for tickets to Manchester to be cheaper than the current ~£90 off peak return whilst still making enough money to fund the operation of HS2.

Given that we know that the train costs are £2.75 billion and they tend to be 1/3 of the costs. Let's say that's £9 bilion to be split over a 25 year period. That's about £1,900 per train, or less than £6 per seat on the trains which are starting/ending at the Southern end of their trips.

At a 30% occupy of those trains we'd only need to sell tickets at £20 each way which is comparable to the existing return tickets between Birmingham and Manchester but about 2/3 of the cost of between Birmingham and Leeds.

Therefore, unless my maths is off and if it is I'd be interested to see where, construction is paid for by London starting services on a £50 to anywhere ticket (50% occupy) whilst operation costs paid for by Birmingham starters on a £20 to anywhere ticket (30% occupy).

6Gman · 16 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
Please, don't pretend to say that HS2 tickets won't command a premium.

(Domestic) HS1 tickets carry a premium - but when I've travelled on HS1 I've seen plenty of ordinary working people and families.

The Ham · 16 May 2019

6Gman said:
(Domestic) HS1 tickets carry a premium - but when I've travelled on HS1 I've seen plenty of ordinary working people and families.

HS1 (domestic) services have trains with 340 seats, so the staff costs are quite high per seat.

In comparison HS2 could have 2 gaurds, 2 catering staff and 1 driver and still have lower staff costs per seat.

MarkLong · 16 May 2019

I provide some experience as a foreign worker working in a UK university while having many friend in the Chinese HSR system building:

In 2003, China started to plan its HSR system, the first leg of HSR proposed to built between Wuhan (8M ppl) and Guangzhou (13M ppl) in 600miles. But the entire railway department tries to avoid the term HSR as much as possible. The 200 miles of Wuhan-Changsha leg, we called it a new modernized intercity railway, the 120 miles of Changsha-Hengyang section, we called it two additional tracks beside the Beijing-Guangzhou railway (because of this section of railway already at capacity at that time). and Hengyang-Guangzhou section, we call it Passenger dedicated line. in late 2009, when all 3 sections are built. We just start to call it a high-speed railway.

Of course, as an authoritarian country, the gov can ignore any critics to the project which they insist to build. But even they are very smart in the Public relation, avoid proposing a huge project in the beginning, instead, when the line did not finish, keep it low tone. Using the term which the public think it is less ambitious and less costly.

hwl · 16 May 2019

The Ham said:
HS1 (domestic) services have trains with 340 seats, so the staff costs are quite high per seat.

In comparison HS2 could have 2 gaurds, 2 catering staff and 1 driver and still have lower staff costs per seat.

And HS2 realistically having just over 1090 seats per 2x 200m unit.

Rolling stock, staff, energy, infra renewal will come in at circa £8per seat on Euston - Manchester with all seats filled, so any thing above that will repay infra construction costs.
**this is way cheaper than currently**

The faster the train goes the fewer trains you need as they run more services per day.

DynamicSpirit · 16 May 2019

6Gman said:
(Domestic) HS1 tickets carry a premium - but when I've travelled on HS1 I've seen plenty of ordinary working people and families.

It's also worth pointing out that supply and demand works a bit differently for HS1: For HS1, the Government provided quite short trains, and basically opened HS1 as a way of providing faster services but without providing much significant capacity increase. Personally I think that was deeply regrettable, but there you go. The result of course was that demand skyrocketed because of the shorter journey times from Kent to London, but there wasn't really much of an increase in supply of seats to match. (Maybe there was a small increase, I can'r recall exactly how the SouthEastern timetable changed when HS1 opened, but it certainly wouldn't have been huge). In that situation - increasing demand but not much increase in supply - the laws of supply and demand predict that prices will rise. That of course is exactly what happened.

HS2 is different because it will bring such a massive increase in capacity, far greater than the likely increase in demand. Those same laws of supply and demand predict that in that situation, ticket prices will fall. So HS1 is not really a good example of what is likely to happen with HS2 (other than that it does demonstrate the laws of supply and demand holding true).

Bald Rick · 16 May 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
The result of course was that demand skyrocketed because of the shorter journey times from Kent to London, but there wasn't really much of an increase in supply of seats to match. (Maybe there was a small increase, I can'r recall exactly how the SouthEastern timetable changed when HS1 opened, but it certainly wouldn't have been huge). In that situation - increasing demand but not much increase in supply - the laws of supply and demand predict that prices will rise. That of course is exactly what happened.

That’s not quite what happened. Ticket prices on the commuter railway do not follow the basic laws of supply and demand. What happened on HS1 is that government decided that all fares on Southeastern, not just the high speed fares, would rise a little more than the rest of the country to help pay for the line. Note that this was in place before the line opened, and was overt policy. Note also this is not policy for HS2.

There were also a good number of extra seats, particularly from Ashford & beyond, and Tunbridge Wells. The Medway towns also had more. Tunbridge Wells is very valuable - high fares, relatively low resource required.

Bletchleyite · 17 May 2019

Ianno87 said:
That's funny... the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 are likely to be the London commuters of Watford, MK, Northampton and Rugby. Who, for the most part, are not 40% tax payers.

I'd reckon that a fair whack of them are. Much below the threshold with a 5 grand season ticket and it becomes not worth it.

JamesT · 17 May 2019

Bletchleyite said:
I'd reckon that a fair whack of them are. Much below the threshold with a 5 grand season ticket and it becomes not worth it.

The threshold for the higher rate this year is a nice round £50k. Median salary for the UK is approaching £30k, but London workers will tend to average higher.
I’d agree, it’s not much of a stretch to say a fair chunk of London commuters will be higher rate taxpayers.

Bald Rick · 17 May 2019

JamesT said:
The threshold for the higher rate this year is a nice round £50k. Median salary for the UK is approaching £30k, but London workers will tend to average higher.
I’d agree, it’s not much of a stretch to say a fair chunk of London commuters will be higher rate taxpayers.

Probably right. So they’ll pay more for it!

al78 · 17 May 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
There's no pretending about it. It's basic economics and the laws of supply and demand. HS2 will provide massively, massively, greater numbers of seats than exist at present along the London-Birmingham-Manchester/etc. corridor. There will some increase in demand because of the faster journey times, but not enough to outstrip the massive increase in supply of seats. And basic economics says that in that situation, prices are likely to go down rather than up.

To make out that HS2 will cause ticket prices to go up is to completely ignore very well established principles of economics.

There seem to be two competing effects potentially on ticket prices. Ticket prices will be modest if they want to fill as many seats as possible, because there are more seats than demand. Ticket prices might be more expensive if HS2 is marketed as a premium product (faster, greater comfort), which do tend to be more expensive than the standard product e.g. first class, Gatwick Express, connections via instead of avoiding London.

Bald Rick · 17 May 2019

al78 said:
There seem to be two competing effects potentially on ticket prices. Ticket prices will be modest if they want to fill as many seats as possible, because there are more seats than demand. Ticket prices might be more expensive if HS2 is marketed as a premium product (faster, greater comfort), which do tend to be more expensive than the standard product e.g. first class, Gatwick Express, connections via instead of avoiding London.

Ticket prices will be set, like on almost all long distance public transport, to maximise revenue. There is no reason to believe that the elasticities of demand (vs price, frequency, journey time, supply) will be any different for HS2 than any other long distance railway.

Peter Kelford · 17 May 2019

MarkLong said:
I provide some experience as a foreign worker working in a UK university while having many friend in the Chinese HSR system building:

In 2003, China started to plan its HSR system, the first leg of HSR proposed to built between Wuhan (8M ppl) and Guangzhou (13M ppl) in 600miles. But the entire railway department tries to avoid the term HSR as much as possible. The 200 miles of Wuhan-Changsha leg, we called it a new modernized intercity railway, the 120 miles of Changsha-Hengyang section, we called it two additional tracks beside the Beijing-Guangzhou railway (because of this section of railway already at capacity at that time). and Hengyang-Guangzhou section, we call it Passenger dedicated line. in late 2009, when all 3 sections are built. We just start to call it a high-speed railway.

Of course, as an authoritarian country, the gov can ignore any critics to the project which they insist to build. But even they are very smart in the Public relation, avoid proposing a huge project in the beginning, instead, when the line did not finish, keep it low tone. Using the term which the public think it is less ambitious and less costly.

Or start with creating a grand project at a reasonable cost that gets people excited about the potential. The UK already has a reputation for messing up so this won't happen in the UK but can happen elsewhere.

Ianno87 said:
4 of the 6 trains each typical hour don't go anywhere near France.

And Gillingham is hardly packed with investment bankers...

However, international train services pay for one-off costs. When HS1 was opened in 2007, it was just international services. It would cost the same to build a railway with 2tph or one with 5tph. Iris 320 still needs to come across the channel once in a while regardless of the number of trains on the line etc.

DynamicSpirit said:
There's no pretending about it. It's basic economics and the laws of supply and demand. HS2 will provide massively, massively, greater numbers of seats than exist at present along the London-Birmingham-Manchester/etc. corridor. There will some increase in demand because of the faster journey times, but not enough to outstrip the massive increase in supply of seats. And basic economics says that in that situation, prices are likely to go down rather than up.

To make out that HS2 will cause ticket prices to go up is to completely ignore very well established principles of economics.

Supply and demand work in a free market. Rail networks are, due to the prohibitive cost of operating them, not free enough to allow anyone and everyone to easily start up a new rail operator. Therefore, demand will go up a tiny bit, supply potential will go up a lot but prices can also go up as there's no alternative. If someone flooded the market with cheap tickets that are unremunerative (i.e. HS2 runs at a loss) than other companies will need to reduce their costs. But the situation is that it's a monopoly so there will be no cheap tickets.

6Gman said:
(Domestic) HS1 tickets carry a premium - but when I've travelled on HS1 I've seen plenty of ordinary working people and families.

But their premium is £4 from London to Ashford which is a 40 mins saving. If that premium was £20, fewer people will take it. The Eurostar passengers end up paying most of the HSR premium together with the French and Belgian governments. I daresay that they get a chunk of their money from the European Union's TEN-T programme, with HS1 lying on corridor 2 of the TEN-HSR program and conventional North Sea corridor.

MarkLong · 17 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
Or start with creating a grand project at a reasonable cost that gets people excited about the potential. The UK already has a reputation for messing up so this won't happen in the UK but can happen elsewhere.

Sadly, no country can finish their first or second HSR on time and on budget. Japanese first HSR overbudget in the 1960s, China's Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR overbudget from 8bn GBP to 23 bn（2009 price）, Hong Kong's first HSR overbudget for newly 30 percent, Taiwan's first one has 9 years of delay in few stations. I can go on and on... But this does not mean we should stop, by contrast, after a few unpleasant experiences, the sector can manage it better. And the public's concern will disappear soon.

In 2016, nearly 50 pc of HK citizens think HK-SHENZHEN HSR should be scrapped even it is 74% of construction finished. By only 7 months since its open, most HK ppl think it is right to have this HS line even it cost 8bn GBP(2016 price) for a 26 km line.

si404 · 17 May 2019

al78 said:
Ticket prices might be more expensive if HS2 is marketed as a premium product (faster, greater comfort), which do tend to be more expensive than the standard product

DfT policy was, and I believe still is, to have fares via HS2 no higher than fares on ICWC the day before opening.

Ticket prices on ICWC might become cheaper, marketed as a more budget product, but that's a different thing to HS2 being marketed as a premium product and demanding a premium. More so MML and ECML residual Intercity services (and some XC) when phase 2b opens, as they won't be the same franchise. There's also the released capacity helping the competition compete where there's parallel lines.

The main political factor when it comes to fares is fighting the 'white elephant' narrative by filling trains. The Government would seek, as much as it can, to get the operator to fill trains.

Bletchleyite · 17 May 2019

MarkLong said:
Sadly, no country can finish their first or second HSR on time and on budget. Japanese first HSR overbudget in the 1960s, China's Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR overbudget from 8bn GBP to 23 bn（2009 price）, Hong Kong's first HSR overbudget for newly 30 percent, Taiwan's first one has 9 years of delay in few stations. I can go on and on... But this does not mean we should stop, by contrast, after a few unpleasant experiences, the sector can manage it better. And the public's concern will disappear soon.

In 2016, nearly 50 pc of HK citizens think HK-SHENZHEN HSR should be scrapped even it is 74% of construction finished. By only 7 months since its open, most HK ppl think it is right to have this HS line even it cost 8bn GBP(2016 price) for a 26 km line.

This is fundamentally the problem with lowest-cost tendering which is used for almost everything - it promotes being unrealistic, because everyone is unrealistic.

Peter Kelford · 17 May 2019

MarkLong said:
Sadly, no country can finish their first or second HSR on time and on budget. Japanese first HSR overbudget in the 1960s, China's Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR overbudget from 8bn GBP to 23 bn（2009 price）, Hong Kong's first HSR overbudget for newly 30 percent, Taiwan's first one has 9 years of delay in few stations. I can go on and on... But this does not mean we should stop, by contrast, after a few unpleasant experiences, the sector can manage it better. And the public's concern will disappear soon.

In 2016, nearly 50 pc of HK citizens think HK-SHENZHEN HSR should be scrapped even it is 74% of construction finished. By only 7 months since its open, most HK ppl think it is right to have this HS line even it cost 8bn GBP(2016 price) for a 26 km line.

It's not HSR but every infrastructure project in the UK (just about)

MarkLong · 17 May 2019

Bletchleyite said:
This is fundamentally the problem with lowest-cost tendering which is used for almost everything - it promotes being unrealistic, because everyone is unrealistic.

This is one reason, another reason is the infrastructure projects will meet unpredicted situations, like natural disaster, labor cost rise, legal challenge, and possibly accidents.

Peter Kelford · 17 May 2019

si404 said:
DfT policy was, and I believe still is, to have fares via HS2 no higher than fares on ICWC the day before opening.

Ticket prices on ICWC might become cheaper, marketed as a more budget product, but that's a different thing to HS2 being marketed as a premium product and demanding a premium. More so MML and ECML residual Intercity services (and some XC) when phase 2b opens, as they won't be the same franchise. There's also the released capacity helping the competition compete where there's parallel lines.

The main political factor when it comes to fares is fighting the 'white elephant' narrative by filling trains. The Government would seek, as much as it can, to get the operator to fill trains.

If HS2 does get built, I will be taking it once but will revert to pendolinos on ICWC

MarkLong · 17 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
It's not HSR but every infrastructure project in the UK (just about)

And it is true in the world. Not only in the UK. For example, German made their Berlin new airport for 15 years in the dust, having no taking off at all.

AM9 · 17 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
If HS2 does get built, I will be taking it once but will revert to pendolinos on ICWC

Providing:

Class 390 trains run on the classic WCML (or anywhere) for long enough after HS2 opens
The services offered meet your requirements
The fares are competitive with HS2 (maybe not if you insist on cutting your nose off to spite your face)

kilonewton · 17 May 2019

Peter Kelford said:
It's not HSR but every infrastructure project in the UK (just about)

Just the ones you hear about, because it sells newspapers (or in the modern parlance, generates clicks). Even though the parties responsible for successful projects try to trumpet them in the press, they’re not picked up or if they are, the stories get buried.
Case in point. A recent Telecoms project. Budget just shy of £120m. Brought in for half that.
I could reel off more examples, but it’s not interesting to those who like to read about doom & gloom

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

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