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

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Deerfold

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There is no benefit to either Scotland or Wales from the largest potential capital expenditure post Brexit this reflects very badly on a supposed union.

Do you know how much extra Scotland will get from the Barnett formula because of HS2 spending in England? One of the complaints of some anti-HS2 groups is the billions of extra funding that will have to go to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
 
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si404

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Easiest way to serve Oxenholme and Penrith is to have it so the Birmingham-Scotland is the same unit as a London - Birmingham with a short reverse time in Curzon Street. Probably not worth it though.

Lancaster can be pretty easily done - IIRC, the timetable has a lengthy turn round time on Preston terminators, allowing them to go to Lancaster (or Blackpool, or both alternating). Crewe Hub plans had, should a north-facing access be built, the unit they proposed terminated at Crewe (that runs coupled to a Liverpool unit south of there) would bypass Warrington (served by a unit coupled to the other Liverpool train in all proposed patterns now), and extend to Lancaster.

Carlisle is pretty easy too, but I've not seen any formal plans for it. Splitting there, not Carstairs, being perhaps the easiest, but the slow speed through Carlisle station means the time penalty for stopping there isn't that bad anyway.
 

Ianno87

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Do you know how much extra Scotland will get from the Barnett formula because of HS2 spending in England? One of the complaints of some anti-HS2 groups is the billions of extra funding that will have to go to Scotland and Northern Ireland.


...even though HS2 services go to Scotland?
 

The Ham

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A statement of intent!

Maybe, maybe not.

By having a transport advisor who is opposed to something just means that those in favour have to work a bit harder to overcome the issues raised.

However there's a lot of evidence that there's a need for something, so unless there's a viable alternative (and smart timetabling hasn't been shown to be viable yet) then the only option on the table is HS2.

Unless you've got an argument against the increases in passenger numbers yet:
View media item 3340
 

NoMorePacers

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Oh yeah, what happened to smart timetabling I wonder? I haven't heard anything from it in a while, so I was just curious to see if there were any updates on it.
 

PR1Berske

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Oh yeah, what happened to smart timetabling I wonder? I haven't heard anything from it in a while, so I was just curious to see if there were any updates on it.
I said very clearly some months ago that I was to reduce posting about HS2 on this forum. It was doing my mental health no good at all. It was one against dozens and that is no way to spend free time on the internet.
 

quantinghome

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And? Gilligoon's a paid hack. He'll say whatever he's told to. He always has.
If he's not going to get in the way of HS2 that's good news. I had been under the impression his opposition to HS2, like Simon Jenkins, was a personal obsession.
 

The Ham

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The same old ideas keep getting those opposed to HS2 excited:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/there-is-a-far-better-option-than-hs2-and-it-already-exists/

But he could do us all a favour by ditching the wretched HS2 and replacing it with a far cheaper and more practical alternative — a project which actually offers something to the communities which have been fighting the high speed link and which, while speeding up and improving rail links from London northwards, would also release billions of pounds for much needed improvements to public transport between and within northern cities.

That alternative is the little-known Great Central Railway. This ready-made high-speed line takes almost exactly the same route between London and the Midlands as HS2 would. It sits there, its viaducts and bridges unused, begging for trains. It did once have them — at one point it had the fastest expresses in the country. Opened in 1899, it was the last and the best–engineered of all the main lines in Britain. It was built with the vision of operating 125mph expresses, and used a ‘continental loading gauge’ — which means that, uniquely for British lines, the wider trains used in mainland Europe could be run along it.

The Great Central was one of the many casualties of the Beeching closures of the 1960s, yet it remains almost totally intact. A few agricultural buildings have been built across it, but otherwise its line remains clear — a recently-built housing estate in Brackley, Northamptonshire, respectfully leaves its course as an undeveloped green corridor, just in case. There is a question of what would happen at the London end — whether to share existing tracks to Paddington or Marylebone, or to tunnel to Euston. But for much of its length the Great Central could be reinstated with little earth-moving, tunnelling and without the need to demolish residential properties or foul sites of special scientific interest.


The reopening of the line has, indeed, already been mooted. Between 1996 and 2003 a private company, Central Railway, did extensive work on reinstating the line as a goods and passenger route. At the time when the project was dismissed by the Blair government in 2003, its cost was put at £8 billion — and that included upgrading and reopening sections all the way to Liverpool. The project then briefly resurfaced again in 2013, when Ed Miliband’s Labour looked at it as a cheaper alternative to HS2.

The Great Central fulfils all the main objectives of HS2 without the excruciating cost, the environmental objections and absurdities of the latter project. True, no train on the Great Central is going to reach 225mph — the projected speed for HS2. A maximum line speed of 140mph is more realistic. But then no one has ever explained why a compact country like Britain needs the fastest long-distance railway in the world, other than for the purpose of national willy-waving. International experience suggests that high-speed railways transform the market for travel between cities — knocking out airlines and creating a substantial new market for day-return travel — when they reduce journey times to below about two and a half hours.

Yet the cities which would be linked by HS2 — London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds — already are within this travel time. Small reductions in travel times have to be weighed against other factors. As HS2 trains would require advance booking and not be available to passengers who want to turn up and go, there is little point in shaving 20 minutes off your journey if you are then going to have to turn up at the station 20 minutes earlier to be sure of catching the train on which you are booked. HS2 would only really be justified if the new lines went on to Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, but it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, the disadvantage of running trains at 225mph is that they can’t stop very often. As a result, HS2 misses out the towns which are most in need of regeneration: Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, Leicester. Derby and Nottingham would be served by a station between the two — requiring a long tram ride to the centre of either. In Birmingham, HS2 trains would terminate at a new station, Curzon Street, rather than New Street, where all the connections are to other towns in the West Midlands. As for East Midlands airport — that is the most ludicrous situation of all. Which other country would burrow a high-speed rail line under the runway of an international airport and not have a station there?

A reopened Great Central line, by contrast, would plug much more naturally into the existing rail network. Moreover, it would allow two new stations to be built at important locations — at Brackley, a growing part of Northamptonshire which has not had a rail service since the 1960s, and at the intersection with the old Oxford to Cambridge line, itself the subject of reinstatement proposals. The Oxford to Cambridge corridor has been proposed as a growth area for development in decades — why not put a high-speed rail station with connections north and south bang in the middle of it?

The main job of the Great Central line would be to create extra capacity between London and Rugby, to relieve pressure on the West Coast main line. North of that point, there are fewer capacity problems because the West Coast main line splits, one section going to Birmingham, the other towards Stafford. As for the billions saved by not building HS2 — just a fraction of the money could transform public transport in northern cities. The proposed three-line Merseytram, abandoned in 2005 after a disagreement between the Blair government and the Merseyside authority over who would underwrite the financial risk, was costed at £325 million, less than 1 per cent of HS2. The similarly abandoned Leeds supertram was similarly costed at £500 million.

In backing a new Transpennine line, Boris has signalled he understands where investment is most urgently required — between and within provincial cities. He can find the cash — without abandoning the need for an extra north-south inter-city line — by reviving a forgotten gem of Victorian engineering


There's only a few problems, what to do in London, what to do in Birmingham, that it doesn't link to the North East, or provide a new line into Manchester.

Once you've done all that chances are it'll cost the same as HS2.
 

civ-eng-jim

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Has anyone in the comments section given him a bit of a slap down? (I can't read them without subscribing)

Not a great start to the article which the author has dated as 2 days in the future.....
 

SN1 19-5

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Probably, because, we are getting tired of promises that haven't happened yet.

I started spotting around 1975. I saw all sorts of good stuff back then.

Been promised "improvements" ever since. Not seen them arrive.

The gwr HST's nearly got there. I never got on with spotting units, so, I didn't worry about them.
 

mmh

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The same old ideas keep getting those opposed to HS2 excited:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/there-is-a-far-better-option-than-hs2-and-it-already-exists/




There's only a few problems, what to do in London, what to do in Birmingham, that it doesn't link to the North East, or provide a new line into Manchester.

Once you've done all that chances are it'll cost the same as HS2.

What does HS2 do in London, or in Birmingham?

Talk of the north east is just far fetched. If it wasn't an HS2 pipe dream it would be instantly dismissed on here as the ramblings of a "crayonista."
 

Esker-pades

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What does HS2 do in London, or in Birmingham?
Build new stations (Birmingham Curzon Street) or expand existing ones (London Euston).

Re-building the Great Central will require the building of new city centre stations, or the expanding of existing ones.

If we take London, the Great Central will need to significantly expand Marylebone Station. Good luck getting that done without significant expense.

Birmingham? The Original Great Central Main Line didn't touch Birmingham, so we'd need a new railway to branch off somewhere. Not sure where.

There's also how much existing capacity there would be along the current Chiltern Main Line. If we tunnel, that adds to the expense and makes the project close to the price of HS2 without as many of the benefits.
 

Sceptre

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The GCML, I believe, also shares its tracks with the tube between Amersham and Harrow on the Hill.

That's okay if you're only sending a train or two an hour up to Aylesbury and beyond, but for the intensive service needed for a main line going to Birmingham and points north, that's not going to cut it.
 

Ianno87

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What does HS2 do in London, or in Birmingham?

Talk of the north east is just far fetched. If it wasn't an HS2 pipe dream it would be instantly dismissed on here as the ramblings of a "crayonista."

The North East leg is a pretty fundamental part of HS2 Phase 2B, not a "pipe dream".
 

PeterC

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The GCML, I believe, also shares its tracks with the tube between Amersham and Harrow on the Hill.

That's okay if you're only sending a train or two an hour up to Aylesbury and beyond, but for the intensive service needed for a main line going to Birmingham and points north, that's not going to cut it.
It wasn't a problem for the GCR so no problem now of course.

As long as you ignore trivia such as the fact that there are now 6tph in each direction stopping at stations between Chalfont and Rickmansworth rather than the 2tph from the 60s.

Or you could run into Paddington, there was plenty of spare capacity for closing Marylebone back in the day so no problem there.

I am no fan of HS2 but it is definitely the "least worse" option.
 

tavistock

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I won't repeat everything I've said on the subject. But my objection lies on the following main points.

1. It costs too much. No project, none, should have such a large and apparently unstoppable budget. HS2 itself cannot confirm what it will ultimately cost. That is not acceptable.

2. We don't need it. The WCML is not congested to the extent that it once was. There are other solutions to building a line going into Birmingham with no immediate stops.

3. London doesn't need it.

4. The North cannot wait. The proposals for extending into the north is too little too late. The amount of money spent on getting to Birmingham in the 2030s could be spent on the north *now*.

5. HS2 has no justification. First it was about speed, then congestion, then reconnecting the North, then it was about something else. Its lack of purpose is exactly why the budget is spiralling. Its lack of purpose is exactly why enthusiasts struggle to get behind it.

I know that works have begun at Euston. These can be allowed to continue without HS2 being built. Bring those works to a close and then scrap HS2. It's never too late to admit it was a terrible mistake.

Mark my words. HS2 will be an economic horror story fuelling only London Euston. To save our nation, to rescue the North, HS2 must be axed.

you are 100 per cent spot on. No project, none, can have a blank cheque. If it is to be built, then keep to the £56bn. That would take it to `Crewe, and classic convertible services can feed into it from there. No need for the Eastern leg, and CERTAINLY no need for the ridiculously expensive tunnel under Manchester or new stations at Manchester, Leeds, or Birmingham
 

Aictos

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So if there isn't a business case for HS2 which is what you're saying then how pray do you suggest we deliver the much needed capacity not just for now but for the future?

But then again, those opposed to HS2 don't have a answer do they?
 

The Ham

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THERE ISNT ONE. Fantasy, like the £56bn budget

View media item 3340
Is the above fantasy too? If not does it show that rail growth has risen significantly in 9 years? Does it show that growth is above 25% (9 years of 2.5% growth per year) for nearly every region which benefits from HS2? Does it show +70% growth for those regions which benefit from HS2 phase 1?

If so are you aware that under the model growth was predicted for 2.5% per year meaning that by the opening of Phase 2a growth should have reached +56%. +56% to +70% doesn't sound a lot but given the flows involved it's about a million extra trips being made a year between London and the North West compared with what was expected at the opening of Phase 2a.

Now although the North West and Yorkshire/Humber are below this they are still above the predictions anticipated for this point in the growth model by over 1/2 million passengers, with 1.35 million passengers to find in the next 9 years to carry on being on track at the opening of Phase 2a. To put that in perspective there were 2.4 million in the previous 9 years. However there's new trains and new services starting, which tend to always boost passenger numbers.

Phases 1, 2a & 2b (West) are currently more than justified on passenger growth, so can cope with some cost overruns. Phase 2b (East) is less robust, but is still meeting and exceeding the passenger rail growth predictions used to justify building HS2.
 
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