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Government announces independent review into HS2 programme

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Alex McKenna

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Of course you need to build new tracks. Those tracks don't have to be specified for 250mph operation. A slower railway leads to cheaper civil engineering, reduced land take as curves can be sharper, less energy consumption when in operation and very probably less of a need to dig expensive tunnels and cuttings for no reason other than noise abatement.
A curvier line would obviously be longer, and therefore be more expensive in land-take. Regarding Nottingham - I doubt if very many people actually live near Nottingham station itself, so one would have to take the time to travel to that location into the figures. Regarding the cheaper ways of relieving the Southern WCML - this has been perplexing railway experts for a long time, and there have been many costly "patch-ups" over the years, ruining millions of journeys in the process with closures and delays. No, tinkering around with old infrasructure has done all it can do. A major "heart-bypass" in now required, even if it is only 120 mph. We'll call it something like BP1 ? R1 (A rail version of the M1) ?
 
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quantinghome

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Personally, I feel its the wrong type of high-speed rail design. Despite the media put out there that HS2 was "inspired by the Shinkansen" it seems like they were more inspired by the European systems than the Japanese one. The physical and human geography of the UK is more similar to Japan than European countries being a long thin island with drawn-out corridors of towns and cities rather than the more square countries like France, Germany, and Spain with individual clusters of towns and cities. The design of HS2 is brilliant if you want flat out speed and are looking to replicate the AVE, TGV or ICE but I don't that is the way to go.
I would much rather see a system based on the Tokaido Shinkansen running at a lower 175/200 mph rather than 200+mph with more intermediate stops and high frequency. The average distance as the crow flies between stations on the Tokaido Shinkansen is around 25/45km with two services an hour (Kodama) stopping at all stops.

HS2 is clearly taking a different approach to Shinkansen, and for good reason. Although Japan and the UK have somewhat similar geography, there are also important differences which affect how our rail plans have developed.

The pre-shinkansen Japanese network was narrow gauge and low speed, hence why a new build standard gauge network was developed rather than patching up the existing system. The new Shinkansen network needed to provide lines which allowed for intermediate stops as well as the major cities. The intricately timetabled mix of different speed trains on Shinkansen is the result.

By contrast the UK's existing network already has the ability to connect intermediate stops at speeds up to 200kph at high frequency. For an average distance between stations of 25/45km it would be pointless going any faster. This is not possible at present due to the capacity being used up by long distance express trains which speed through intermediate stations without stopping. The solution, which HS2 provides, is to move the existing limited-stop fast trains onto a new line, thus providing both faster long distance services and more frequent services for the currently under-served intermediate stations.
 

MarkyT

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HS2 is clearly taking a different approach to Shinkansen, and for good reason. Although Japan and the UK have somewhat similar geography, there are also important differences which affect how our rail plans have developed.

The pre-shinkansen Japanese network was narrow gauge and low speed, hence why a new build standard gauge network was developed rather than patching up the existing system. The new Shinkansen network needed to provide lines which allowed for intermediate stops as well as the major cities. The intricately timetabled mix of different speed trains on Shinkansen is the result.

By contrast the UK's existing network already has the ability to connect intermediate stops at speeds up to 200kph at high frequency. For an average distance between stations of 25/45km it would be pointless going any faster. This is not possible at present due to the capacity being used up by long distance express trains which speed through intermediate stations without stopping. The solution, which HS2 provides, is to move the existing limited-stop fast trains onto a new line, thus providing both faster long distance services and more frequent services for the currently under-served intermediate stations.

Fully agree with that. Japan has much of its population in a long thin strip along the south coast of Honshu, the main island. That was the focus of the Tokaido Shinkansen developments in the 1960s and there is simply nothing quite like that in terms of sheer population served over such a distance in UK or Europe. JR Central are now planning a new inland bypass, mostly in tunnel, cutting corners through the mountains to connect some of the largest settlements along this corridor. Like HS2, this will deliberately avoid highly populated areas in between, and will thus have very few intermediate station. Unlike HS2 however, the Chūō Shinkansen is planned to utilise superconducting maglev technology. Japan even has its own smaller profile 'classic compatible' trains in the form of the JR East 'Mini Shinkansen' routes over gauge changed former narrow gauge track once clear of the new build trunk lines, and sharing the track with local services, either also converted to standard gauge, or in some places sharing mixed gauge track. It is thus no longer true that the modern Shinkansen network is entirely segregated from other rail services. Mixed gauge track also takes Shinkensen services undersea through the Seikan Tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, shared with narrow gauge freight traffic.
 

Neen Sollars

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Hey I just found out something shocking. Did you know that Kilsby Tunnel on the London and Birmingham Railway (now the west cost main line) went THREE TIMES OVER BUDGET?!

Building this tunnel was a huge mistake that we still regret now. Why hasn't it been closed to teach those who want to build new things a lesson?
How much did Kilsby Tunnel cost? Original estimate, final cost, and values in today`s money.
Thank you in advance.
 

Neen Sollars

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<sigh>
No. I'm suggesting that if it were built to a lower design speed than that currently proposed, it will be cheaper to buold and operate than the currently proposed scheme. I used the Galashiels reopening as an example that a lower specification = lower cost, not as an example of the standard to which a southern WCML relief line should be built.

trebor 79, Thank you for posting your sensible comments on this subject. Don`t let them grind you down, you are perfectly correct. We do not need 200 mph trains, we do not need 175 mph trains, a 150/160 mph line would be much more flexible and safer. But the HS2 lines should be constructed from Birmingham to the North and East West across the north, and the stations,and more of them should be in the cities not 20 miles in the middle of nowhere. The Scottish Government should be paying a premium for the line to be extended to Scotland. There is a commons statement on HS2 in the next week or so, we may see SFO raids prior to that statement. East West Rail Phase 2 is nearly shovel ready, as are many other worthy road rail and metro line projects when current HS2 is scrapped.[/QUOTE]
 

6Gman

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<sigh>
No. I'm suggesting that if it were built to a lower design speed than that currently proposed, it will be cheaper to buold and operate than the currently proposed scheme. I used the Galashiels reopening as an example that a lower specification = lower cost, not as an example of the standard to which a southern WCML relief line should be built.

Well, yes and no. There will be some savings on capital expenditure. And some energy savings in operation.

BUT the longer journey times will mean you would need more rolling stock and (potentially) traincrew to operate the service. And the lower speeds may result in lower use (and thus lower revenue) and the loss of some of the overall economic benefits.

How these two balance overall I have no idea.
 

Metrailway

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Really?
That would imply the entire population of Nottingham lives in an arcology that has appeared adjacent to Nottingham Midland station?
I'm afraid that Toton will crush the existing station for a large fraction of Nottinghams population - anyone near the ring road will go there, as will anyone near the tram line. And anyone in south-western Nottingham.

Toton is hardly a station in a beet field....

NET out to Toton Lane is about 31 minutes, so call it 32 to the HS2 station......
If the HS2 journey time is more than 32 minutes shorter than the existing journey time, anyone on the tram will go to Toton as it will be faster.

The existing travel time is 1hr40
Toton-London is often projected at roughly 52 minutes.

So yes, everyone on the tram would be better off riding to Toton.

I wouldn't be so confident. The national passenger survey records data about passengers' inward and onward journeys to/from stations. This shows that the plurality of rail users who use Nottingham arrive by foot. Not car, bus or tram.

For journeys originating at Nottingham, 39% walk in. For alighting passengers, 43% walked to their destination.

Even in Derby which is poorly located for the town centre and not near a residential area, 21% arrive on foot. For alighting passengers, 36% walked to their destination.

You will also need to add interchange time as well between HS2 and the NET as well as the MML upgrade (which should see journey times fall by 10 mins) meaning the difference between classics and HS2 journey times to/from Nottingham is negligible.

Toton may be able to capture the Derby market but it will struggle to attract Nottingham passengers.
 

6Gman

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trebor 79, Thank you for posting your sensible comments on this subject. Don`t let them grind you down, you are perfectly correct. We do not need 200 mph trains, we do not need 175 mph trains, a 150/160 mph line would be much more flexible and safer. But the HS2 lines should be constructed from Birmingham to the North and East West across the north, and the stations,and more of them should be in the cities not 20 miles in the middle of nowhere. The Scottish Government should be paying a premium for the line to be extended to Scotland. There is a commons statement on HS2 in the next week or so, we may see SFO raids prior to that statement. East West Rail Phase 2 is nearly shovel ready, as are many other worthy road rail and metro line projects when current HS2 is scrapped.
[/QUOTE]

Do you have any evidence that this is any more likely than any other thing that "may" happen ?
 

Matt P

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The Uk has been woeful since the last war at infrastructure spending, finding all kinds of reasons not to, whether it be electrification or high speed rail etc. if we had got on with it at the same time as the French then it would not have cost anything like 100 billion, if indeed that is the final cost. Decades of delay and obfuscation have resulted in now playing catch up which is expensive but that doesn`t mean it shouldn`t be done. Failure to build HS2 will condemn the UK to even poorer productivity than we presently have in the future.

I agree that the UK has a rather abysmal record delivering infrastructure. I also agree that even if HS2 is descoped or scrapped in its current form, some form of relief line will still be needed for the southern end of the WCML at the very least. However I think you over state the impact having or not having HS2 will have on UK productivity. Id suggest that a failure to invest in vocational and technical education, housing and urban and regional transport are probably major factors. Ok so HS2 will assist with the latter indirectly to an extent. However when compared to most major German cities, which have extensive S-Bahns, U-Bahns or Stadtbahns, trams and extensive bus networks our cities are poorly relations. Id suggest these are as at least as important as a HSL network.
 

Ianno87

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I wouldn't be so confident. The national passenger survey records data about passengers' inward and onward journeys to/from stations. This shows that the plurality of rail users who use Nottingham arrive by foot. Not car, bus or tram.

For journeys originating at Nottingham, 39% walk in. For alighting passengers, 43% walked to their destination.

Even in Derby which is poorly located for the town centre and not near a residential area, 21% arrive on foot. For alighting passengers, 36% walked to their destination.

You will also need to add interchange time as well between HS2 and the NET as well as the MML upgrade (which should see journey times fall by 10 mins) meaning the difference between classics and HS2 journey times to/from Nottingham is negligible.

Toton may be able to capture the Derby market but it will struggle to attract Nottingham passengers.

Equally, East Midlands Hub might capture passengers who do not travel by rail at all today, due to the difficulty of reaching Derby or Nottingham.
 

The Ham

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Do you have a source to back this up? It feels unlikely to me that HS2 has diversified into property speculation.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...lion-renting-homes-near-new-railway-line.html

HS2 are renting out properties that they have purchased which would otherwise be left empty for a number of years.

Given that these properties can be within 60m of the line (and there will be others who can sell to further away) then not all of these properties will need to be demolished.

Those which don't and those which aren't needed to be demolished for a few years are being rented out and recouping some of the money paid for them.

Those which don't need to be demolished at all could be sold at a later date once the works are completed (which may include sound proofing of the property). This may not be for the same as if they weren't near to HS2, but they will payback some of what was paid for them.

As such the end property purchase costs could be on/under budget but almost certainly less over budget than is being cited.

Which is? There's not a single station, tunnel, bridge, piece of track to show for it yet. After spending 30% of the budget (if, indeed, that figure is true!)

When you build a house there's some quite big costs just to dig a hole, with some more fairly big costs just to get back to ground level. If you turned round to your builder and say "I'm not paying you because I've not seen a single roof tile, window or door on my extension" your builder wouldn't be hanging around for long.

It's the same with road/rail schemes. By the time you've done the earth moving, built the drainage and part filled the holes in the ground with the bases layers you'll have spent a lot of money.

Very little of the cost of roads is the tarmac, signs, traffic lights, street lighting and the other stuff that you see (bridges are the exception to this but they tend to be few in number so as an overall cost they too tend to be a fairly low cost item).

Likewise with rail, there's a lot of earthworks and drainage works before you get to the point where you can start to lay track.
 

jfowkes

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Equally, East Midlands Hub might capture passengers who do not travel by rail at all today, due to the difficulty of reaching Derby or Nottingham.

If this were the case I'd expect East Mids Parkway to get more usage.
 

krus_aragon

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How much did Kilsby Tunnel cost? Original estimate, final cost, and values in today`s money.
Thank you in advance.
I can offer the following ballpark figures:
This site gives the estimate as ₤99,000, and the final spend as nearly ₤300,000.

Assuming the estimate was dated 1833 (when Stephenson was appointed by the London & Birmingham Railway), and the final spend was calculated in 1838, bunging those values in an online inflation calculator gives modern figures of ₤10,593,000 estimate, and roughly ₤32,100,000 actual spend.

@anme or others may be able to get slightly more accurate figures for you, but hopefully that'll be useful in the meantime.
 

trebor79

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I used to live in Beeston. There's absolutely no way I'd want to drive to Toton to catch a train, even a very fast one. By the time you've done the drive, parked in a presumably vast car park and walked to the station (paying for parking on the way) any time saving largely eroded and comes with additional hassle.
If I still lived there, I might be tempted to get a train from Beeston to Toton. But I might as well just get the train or tram to Nottingham, or even catch a London train at Beeston.
 

jfowkes

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I used to live in Beeston. There's absolutely no way I'd want to drive to Toton to catch a train, even a very fast one. By the time you've done the drive, parked in a presumably vast car park and walked to the station (paying for parking on the way) any time saving largely eroded and comes with additional hassle.
If I still lived there, I might be tempted to get a train from Beeston to Toton. But I might as well just get the train or tram to Nottingham, or even catch a London train at Beeston.

Ah, I live 7 minutes walk from Beeston station! Yeah I can't see myself going to Toton for London journeys either, but I think in Nottingham the timings are highly dependent on exactly where you live in the city and its suburbs. There will be plenty of people for whom Toton is easier than any of Nottingham's existing stations.
 

The Ham

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I agree that the UK has a rather abysmal record delivering infrastructure. I also agree that even if HS2 is descoped or scrapped in its current form, some form of relief line will still be needed for the southern end of the WCML at the very least. However I think you over state the impact having or not having HS2 will have on UK productivity. Id suggest that a failure to invest in vocational and technical education, housing and urban and regional transport are probably major factors. Ok so HS2 will assist with the latter indirectly to an extent. However when compared to most major German cities, which have extensive S-Bahns, U-Bahns or Stadtbahns, trams and extensive bus networks our cities are poorly relations. Id suggest these are as at least as important as a HSL network.

Paradoxically building local lines (including reopening closed lines) would mean that the business case for building HS2 gets better.

As the more people that use local rail the more they will abandon their cars and then be reliant on long distance rail for their longer distance travel.

This could mean that we need to build HS2 faster and sooner than we would otherwise need.

Conversely the opposite is true, by providing for long distance travel it would encourage people to use local rail/buses as they no longer need to have a car for their long distance travel and so the justification for owning a car reduces. As such by building HS2 it is likely that local rail/bus schemes become more attractive and would certainly see more use once they are built.
 

ABB125

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trebor 79, Thank you for posting your sensible comments on this subject. Don`t let them grind you down, you are perfectly correct. We do not need 200 mph trains, we do not need 175 mph trains, a 150/160 mph line would be much more flexible and safer. But the HS2 lines should be constructed from Birmingham to the North and East West across the north, and the stations,and more of them should be in the cities not 20 miles in the middle of nowhere. The Scottish Government should be paying a premium for the line to be extended to Scotland. There is a commons statement on HS2 in the next week or so, we may see SFO raids prior to that statement. East West Rail Phase 2 is nearly shovel ready, as are many other worthy road rail and metro line projects when current HS2 is scrapped.
[/QUOTE]
In what way is slower safer?
I agree that HS2 stations should be closer to city centres - in an ideal world there would be a city centre station and an out-of-town station, but that's not going to happen.
HS2 needs to be built between London and Birmingham, otherwise you will only be able to run about 4 trains an hour on the new line - where do they go once they arrive in Birmingham from the north? There's no space on the WCML.
I do agree that if Scotland wants an extension of HS2, Scotland should pay for it as the benefits are almost exclusively Scottish. Perhaps it could be paid for by the money that Scotland thinks it is owed through the Barnett Formula as a result of the spending on HS2 (even though HS2 benefits Scotland).
 

jfowkes

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HS2 needs to be built between London and Birmingham, otherwise you will only be able to run about 4 trains an hour on the new line - where do they go once they arrive in Birmingham from the north?

<sarcasm>I'd strongly suggest they go North again.</sarcasm>

Seriously though I get what you're saying but on the face of it it seems like a really silly statement to ask where trains go at a terminus.
 

ABB125

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<sarcasm>I'd strongly suggest they go North again.</sarcasm>

Seriously though I get what you're saying but on the face of it it seems like a really silly statement to ask where trains go at a terminus.
I suppose so. Perhaps I should rephrase to something like "where do the trains that are not terminating in Birmingham go?".
 

The Nomad

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Demand management.
But, but, but your fellows are obsessed that HS2 fares will be higher than non-HS2 fares. Now you're saying we shouldn't build HS2 and just make all fares higher. That'll be popular.

.
No, you're missing the point. If a private enterprise goes over budget then that's of no particular interest to taxpayers, even if they lie about spending their own money.
If a taxpayer funded project is massively over budget, and they project company and government lie about the facts for at least 3 years, that's a different ball game.

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm simply saying that I further doubt the raison d'etre for HS2 if HS2 and the government feel that they need to lie about the true costs and cost benefit ratio for years on end. They could have been honest from the get go and said "well it's going to be at least £x billion over budget, and there's a further contingency of £y billion but here's what we are doing to minimise it. The coet benefit ratio for the original scheme doesn't make sense any more, so we've rescoped to keep the project sensible".
That would have been honest and I could support such a scheme, even if over budget.
They chose not to do that. They chose to lie. For years. That makes me highly suspicious of them, anything they say about the project, and of the project itself.

Hmm, does Aberdeen Bypass count then? Originally priced at £300-400m, possibly cost about £750m, might end up costing £1b.

trebor 79, Thank you for posting your sensible comments on this subject. Don`t let them grind you down, you are perfectly correct. We do not need 200 mph trains, we do not need 175 mph trains, a 150/160 mph line would be much more flexible and safer.
You're going to have to substantiate that claim, then look up just how many accidents the TGV and Shinkansen lines have had.

The Scottish Government should be paying a premium for the line to be extended to Scotland.
Good luck with that! Exactly which bit of Scotland? I presume you mean just Edinburgh and Glasgow. There's definitely no other cities in Scotland right? Everyone's having kittens about the cost of getting halfway up England. Getting to Aberdeen or Inverness would almost certainly double the budget with very little benefit. Scotland's lines aren't anywhere near as full. They will, however, benefit indirectly from HS2 by more paths being available on the WCML at an even more flexible and safer 110-125mph so may gain more services.
 

mmh

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If this were the case I'd expect East Mids Parkway to get more usage.

Indeed. There's no appetite for park and ride stations to London outside the London commuter belt, and we shouldn't be encouraging super long distance commuting at all, let alone to London, anyway.
 

The Ham

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Demand management. We don't forecast 10% compound growth in roads and pledge to double the motorway network every 30 years. It is unaffordable and unsustainable.

The WCML and ECML, MML for that matter have plenty of unused freight paths, not to mention half length passenger trains. There is already plenty that can be done on the supply side before spending some of the eye watering sums now being discussed.

The problem with demand management is that for the vast majority of people traveling they don't want to arrive somewhere around midnight with limited onwards travel options, so those trains are always going to be much quieter.

We could look at longer/more dense seating trains, but that would only buy us a bit more time. It would also mean that when you try to do the infrastructure projects to build something like HS2 it becomes a bigger task to deal with the trains/passengers displaced by engineering works.
 

Bald Rick

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Indeed. There's no appetite for park and ride stations to London outside the London commuter belt, and we shouldn't be encouraging super long distance commuting at all, let alone to London, anyway.

Parked at Birmingham International recently?
 

Bald Rick

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I can offer the following ballpark figures:
This site gives the estimate as ₤99,000, and the final spend as nearly ₤300,000.

Assuming the estimate was dated 1833 (when Stephenson was appointed by the London & Birmingham Railway), and the final spend was calculated in 1838, bunging those values in an online inflation calculator gives modern figures of ₤10,593,000 estimate, and roughly ₤32,100,000 actual spend.

@anme or others may be able to get slightly more accurate figures for you, but hopefully that'll be useful in the meantime.

And 26 navvies killed. (Those that were recorded).
 

Grimsby town

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One thing that strikes me about this thread is the number of people saying HS2 doesn't serve city centres or integrate with the current rail / transport networks.

HS2 will serve the following with new / expanded station:
•Euston - probably as central as you can get in Northern London. I think everybody considers this fairly central
•Birmingham Curzon Street - As central as any current Birmingham station and adjacent to Moor Street which is expected to see improved services to more destinations with construction of the Camp Hill Chords
•Crewe - as central as the current station
•Manchester Piccadilly - central
•Leeds - joined to the current relatively centrally located station.

The only real location that is served by an out of town station only is Nottingham/Derby. The issue is that Leeds and the North East are bigger markets and hence the station has to be a through one. Its not ideal but if you don't like it lobby for a direct HS2 Nottingham /Derby service rather than saying the project should be scrapped.

Additonal HS2 will serve the following destinations centrally via the classic network. Stafford, Liverpool, Runcorn, Preston, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Darlington, Newcastle for London services. For services to Birmigham via HS2 the number of stations is significantly more including stations such as Lancaster, Carlisle and Durham.
 
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jfowkes

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I suppose so. Perhaps I should rephrase to something like "where do the trains that are not terminating in Birmingham go?".

All the trains would terminate in Birmingham I assume!

I can see why an high-speed line that ran only from Birmingham to Crewe/Leeds would not anywhere near the same economics as one that also ran to London.

BUT

Clearly, HS2 is a politically charged project. And clearly, the economics of large public infrastructure projects are less subject to "common sense" economic rules. As much as we might talk about cost-benefit analyses and budgets, these things get built if they are necessary, almost regardless of cost. This is a good thing. Public money being spent on useful stuff that puts that money into the economy through wages and investment.

So, given that HS2 is already operating in the vague and nebulous economic/political zone only inhabited by things like Crossrail and Hinkley Point C, I think there should be consideration of how much political capital there is in building phase 2 before or at the same time as phase 1, even if traditional economics don't support it.

But I am an idiot, so this is probably nonsense.
 

ChrisC

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Indeed. There's no appetite for park and ride stations to London outside the London commuter belt, and we shouldn't be encouraging super long distance commuting at all, let alone to London, anyway.

Park and Ride stations are ok for passengers who are travelling to their destination and returning to their car later on the same day. There may be a significant number of business people and commuters who will travel from Toton to London and back in one day. Also, especially on Saturdays, I can see lots of leisure travellers parking at Toton and going for a day trip to London.

From mid morning onwards, throughout the week, the majority of passengers are people who are not intending to return until a few days later. Many of these will prefer to leave their car at home and in those cases the tram, buses or even a taxi to Nottingham or Derby will be easier and more convenient. Like the person who lived in Beeston, people from Hucknall, Bulwell, Arnold, Carlton, Gedling and many other areas north and east of Nottingham will find the bus or tram into Nottingham more convenient.

I live near Hucknall, by the time I have travelled into Nottingham for 30 minutes on the tram, I’m not going to want to remain on the tram past the station for another 30 minutes to Toton. If I get on the Robin Hood Line train into Nottingham, I am not going to then want to change to yet another local train to Toton when there is a direct train to London from Nottingham. I already avoid driving around the Nottingham Ring Road at busy times and I also try to avoid the M1 at busy times too. I certainly wouldn’t want to risk the ring road, M1 or driving out on the Derby Road at most times of the day if I was travelling with an Advance ticket where I was tied down to a specific train. I have had enough stress on a few occasions trying to reach the Queens Hospital in time for an appointment to know the problems even in the middle of the day.

If HS2 ends up being constructed for lower speeds the journey from Toton in comparison to Nottingham and Derby becomes even less attractive. I don’t doubt that more capacity is needed especially on the Southern section of the WCML and building HS2 from London to Birmingham and even beyond to the North West may be the answer. However, if the speeds do end up slower I’m not sure that the eastern section will be so successful as travelling via Birmingham to reach Toton and perhaps even Sheffield may not be that much of an advantage. An upgraded and electrified MML could be more cost effective and serve the purpose. Improved journey times for journeys like Nottingham to Leeds and Nottingham to Birmingham could be a completely different issue.
 

liam456

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trebor 79, Thank you for posting your sensible comments on this subject. Don`t let them grind you down, you are perfectly correct. We do not need 200 mph trains, we do not need 175 mph trains, a 150/160 mph line would be much more flexible and safer. But the HS2 lines should be constructed from Birmingham to the North and East West across the north, and the stations,and more of them should be in the cities not 20 miles in the middle of nowhere. The Scottish Government should be paying a premium for the line to be extended to Scotland. There is a commons statement on HS2 in the next week or so, we may see SFO raids prior to that statement. East West Rail Phase 2 is nearly shovel ready, as are many other worthy road rail and metro line projects when current HS2 is scrapped.

Find Bald Rick's comments on why slowing down HS2 won't make it significantly cheaper, as most of the civil engineering cost goes towards building a modern double track railway to any speed, not necessarily high speed. And costs will certainly not increase massively from 160mph to 200mph.
 

MarkyT

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Clearly in the 1840s, Brunel should have bowed to shareholder pressure and engineered his GWR alignment for an absolute maximum of 60mph, as even in the wildest imaginings of the time no train would ever be likely to exceed that. He could have saved literally 'loads' of money by incorporating tighter curves. Even if initial track standards and rolling stock for HS2 dictate a lower speed than stated originally (say, 320 or 350kph) , building the underlying alignment for 400kph, where the differential uplift is reasonable, makes sense to future proof for future technology developments. Remember these assets will be around for centuries, just like Brunel's designs.
 

mmh

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More HS2 "good news," a whistleblower claims he was removed for doing so.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49482701 - "HS2's ballooning budget was 'covered up'"

On Monday 6 April 2016, senior High Speed 2 official Andrew Bruce says he was set to reveal an uncomfortable truth to leading figures at the Department for Transport and HS2 itself.

His presentation, scheduled for 15:00 BST, on the fifth floor of the ornate Sanctuary Buildings in Westminster, would be the culmination of months of work.

After a detailed analysis of vast amounts of data, the decorated former army colonel believed the cost to the taxpayer, of the land and property needed to build the railway between London and Birmingham, was much higher than HS2's official estimate at the time of £2.8bn.

His detailed calculation, which the BBC has studied, put the figure £2bn higher.

The notion that HS2 could not be delivered within its £55.7bn budget had the potential to derail the scheme, months before a crucial vote in Parliament.

However, Mr Bruce's presentation never happened. About half an hour before he says he was due to deliver it at a board meeting, he was fired.
"My work was never seen again," he told BBC News, in his first interview.

"It was completely removed from the body of knowledge of HS2. It was as if I had never existed.

"I was dismissed to stop the figures that had been produced from going to the Department for Transport."

The BBC has seen emails, internal reports and vast amounts of data which back up his account.

However, HS2 says it does not recognise Mr Bruce's version of events.

One email he received from a colleague shortly after his dismissal described his work as "gold dust" and expressed concern that it might now be "trashed".We have also spoken to two other former directors at HS2, who also alleged that other senior figures at the company were concealing the project's true cost.

HS2 strongly denies this.

When Doug Thornton was director of land and property at HS2, he says he refused to use an outdated and misleading cost estimate. He was fired soon afterwards in December 2015.

For a project on the scale of HS2, the land and property department is vital.

Proper compensation must be paid and complicated legal processes followed, to ensure every phase of construction can proceed as planned.

But in December 2015, the department was "understaffed" and did not have a plan, according to a report by the consultancy firm Deloitte.

Mr Bruce, who was head of planning at land and property, says that in early 2016, eight new members of staff were due to be recruited into his team.

However, it never happened. He says he was suddenly inexplicably moved from London to HS2's office in Birmingham and found himself effectively working on his own.

He was motivated by the stark inaccuracy of the estimate, which was being used for all the land and property needed for the first stretch of the railway.

The £2.8bn figure in the budget was based on a simplistic and inexpensive assessment.

According to Mr Bruce, people at CBRE, the company which carried out the work on HS2's behalf, were "angry" it was still being used as the official figure years later.

There is no suggestion CBRE did anything wrong.

But that early property cost estimate only related to around 5,500 properties or plots of land for Phase One, when in reality HS2 needed to buy about 11,420 by compulsory purchase.

In effect, half of the plots or properties required had a value of zero. On top of that around 1,600 had a token value under £1,000.

"I was seeing blocks of flats in central London for £500," says Mr Bruce. "Houses and gardens in Euston for £600. It went on for page, after page, after page."

The former military man from Fife, who previously managed vast programmes for the British army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, says he worked around the clock for weeks to improve the data.

He was "nervous" about presenting a £2bn overspend to his boss, other senior managers and civil servants overseeing the project.

"I was going to tell them something they very much didn't want to hear."

On the morning of the presentation, colleagues joked that he would probably be fired.

But he was confident about the rigour of his work, to which the BBC has had detailed access, and he did not see it coming.

"It came as an utter shock."

He says he insisted he needed to give the presentation, but he was not allowed.

In a matter of minutes after his sacking, he had been escorted from the building.

A week later, in a letter, HS2's HR department claimed his performance had been "unsatisfactory".

But Mr Bruce insists he was never given a performance review and that he had surpassed all of his targets. He tried to appeal against his dismissal, but HS2 claimed it received his appeal too late to consider it.

"HS2 knew it was going to cost more. They knew they didn't have the budget to compensate people properly."

The £2.8bn figure was part of HS2's overall submission to Parliament for Phase One, which was voted through by a massive majority of MPs in February 2017.

But Mr Bruce believes Parliament was "misled".

"The true cost was absolutely covered up."

HS2 is owned and ruled by the government.

Mr Thornton says he regularly briefed senior officials at the Department for Transport that the budget was "unachievable".

HS2 disputes Mr Thornton's claims.

Mr Bruce also says it is inconceivable that HS2's political masters were unaware of the overspend.

"They could say that they never knew. I would say they closed their eyes."

HS2 strongly rejects the idea that a truer estimate for the cost of land and property needed between London and Birmingham was covered up in the first part of 2016.

A spokesperson said it did not recognise Mr Bruce's claims.

Last year the National Audit Office (NAO) investigated his allegations and cleared HS2 of any wrongdoing.

The NAO's report, published last September, said at the time Parliament did not "require" HS2 to update and improve its estimate.

Mr Bruce described that finding as "disgraceful" and said the report was a "whitewash".

HS2 said it was "incorrect for Mr Thornton or Mr Bruce to say that they were dismissed because of a desire to hide the true cost."

The company said a decision to revise the estimate had already been taken while Mr Bruce was still working at HS2.

HS2 said a "very significant request for funding" to cover the additional cost was made to the government as part of a spending review in 2015.

However, it has not explained why the unrevised, £2.8bn estimate was still submitted to Parliament.

The Department for Transport said the NAO report found that changes to estimates over the cost of property needed in large complex projects should be expected.
 
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