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

TrafficEng · 23 Jan 2020

Grimsby town said:
To get anywhere near our emissions target we need to stop short distance flying and using petrol cars. Electric cars are getting closer but manufacturing is still pretty carbon intensive and battery life is still not brilliant.

Actually the big issue for meeting emissions targets is increasingly going to be getting rid of domestic gas central heating (GCH). It is an area that generally gets overlooked because people need heating, whereas car use in recent times has been portrayed as frivolous and unnecessary.

In some respects GCH is easier to address because the mobility element is removed. You don't need batteries to switch a house to electric rather than GCH. And furthermore there are technologies such as heat pumps that allow proportionally more heat to be produced per unit of input energy. Similar efficiencies are much harder to achieve in the transport sector.

The challenge is going to be finding ways of generating low-carbon electricity in the quantities required to eliminate GCH. In that context the transport system is going to have to justify its consumption of electricity. The assumption that power-hungry electric trains are automatically a positive thing may not stand up to scrutiny. We may only be able to meet targets if all forms of transport see reduced use.

Grimsby town said:
Arguing that HS2 is not needed because the demand may not materialise is a silly argument because demand could be higher than forecast.

Like it or not, that approach is the way that all publicly funded projects are assessed. Planners make estimates of demand, politicians and accountants challenge the assumptions those estimates are based on. Then the politicians make a political decision and hope the advice they were given turns out to be correct.

RailUK Forums

quantinghome · 23 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
Broadly that approach is familiar to us as 'predict and provide'. In the case of strategic road building it was largely discredited in the 1990's on the basis that providing more will stimulate demand, with the increased demand in turn resulting in increased predictions and further capacity requirement.

I've not yet seen a cogent argument as to why a methodology which has been rejected as flawed when it comes to road building is still seen as wholly valid when it comes to railway building. (or for that matter airport runway provision and house building)

'Predict and provide' was rejected for roads due to government deciding that road building should not be the sole focus of transport investment and that there should be more of a balance between road and rail. Demand for travel didn't disappear, it just shifted to the railways. Increasing demand for travel is inexorable. Is there any developed or developing country in the world where demand for travel is reducing, or where a government is not building more roads or railways?

JonathanH · 23 Jan 2020

quantinghome said:
Increasing demand for travel is inexorable. Is there any developed or developing country in the world where demand for travel is reducing, or where a government is not building more roads or railways?

Demand for travel though needs to be addressed from a climate change perspective. If investment encourages a modal shift to a cleaner form of transport all well and good but if investment encourages more travel in absolute terms that is catastrophic.

If they cancel HS2 in environmental grounds I think most people would understand but at the same time to be consistent an announcement should be made about rationing other forms of transport, especially car and aircraft travel. Perhaps the appropriate investment if HS2 doesn't happen is something that enables travel demand to reduce and recognition that we have reached the peak point of demand for travel.

HSTEd · 23 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
Demand for travel though needs to be addressed from a climate change perspective. If investment encourages a modal shift to a cleaner form of transport all well and good but if investment encourages more travel in absolute terms that is catastrophic.

Why?
The environmental impacts of traveling on a nuclear or renewable powered train are negligible.

EDIT:
The predominant radiological risk from nuclear waste is found in the HLW (ie. spent fuel).

One 20kg natural uranium fuel bundle for a CANDU reactor, irradiated to a discharge burnup of 7.5GWd(th)/t will produce 1260MWh of electricity.
A TGV Duplex is about 40Wh/seat-km, so about 100Wh/passenger-km at 40% loading (which I would think is probably conservative).

So each passenger (not seat) can travel 12,600,000km for the discharge of a single fuel bundle.
Let's say they commute from London to Manchester 300 days a year, that is a distance of about 530km in round-trip. They will rack up one fuel bundle discharge in 80 years of doing this.
This fuel bundle is 4" in diameter and about 20" long.

Moving the passenger, not the seat, 530km will consume the sum total of 21kWh.
That is it.

JonathanH · 23 Jan 2020

HSTEd said:
Moving the passenger, not the seat, 530km will consume the sum total of 21kWh.
That is it.

So what? Power and resources still need to be used to build the nuclear power station, the train, the track, the wind turbine, anything else that goes into increasing capacity.

No matter how small, the electricity used in moving the train could be used for something more vital to life than travel.

HSTEd · 23 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
So what? Power and resources still need to be used to build the nuclear power station, the train, the track, the wind turbine, anything else that goes into increasing capacity.

These impacts will be so small as to be negligible, they will hardly be "catastrophic" as you claim.

JonathanH said:
No matter how small, the electricity used in moving the train could be used for something more vital to life than travel.

This sort of thinking leads to very dark and dangerous places very very quickly.

Mogster · 23 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
If they cancel HS2 in environmental grounds I think most people would understand but at the same time to be consistent an announcement should be made about rationing other forms of transport, especially car and aircraft travel. Perhaps the appropriate investment if HS2 doesn't happen is something that enables travel demand to reduce and recognition that we have reached the peak point of demand for travel.

No UK government is going to ration travel, it’d be political suicide.

The Ham · 23 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
So what? Power and resources still need to be used to build the nuclear power station, the train, the track, the wind turbine, anything else that goes into increasing capacity.

No matter how small, the electricity used in moving the train could be used for something more vital to life than travel.

It would be better to build HS2 and close down some of the strategic road network, given the amount of emissions which are created from the maintenance and operation of the road network.

In the case of wind turbines, various sources cute that they have an emission payback period of less than a year, with the smallest taking the longest and some taking little more than 2 months. Even if those numbers are off by a factor of 10 that's still only a maximum of 10 years (and then for the 100kw one, whilst a 3.4mw one would have to be off by a factor of between 20 and 60 to only be clear after 10 years).

HSTEd · 23 Jan 2020

The Ham said:
In the case of wind turbines, various sources cute that they have an emission payback period of less than a year, with the smallest taking the longest and some taking little more than 2 months. Even if those numbers are off by a factor of 10 that's still only a maximum of 10 years (and then for the 100kw one, whilst a 3.4mw one would have to be off by a factor of between 20 and 60 to only be clear after 10 years).

Best guess is that Sizewell B produced < 300kg CO2/kW, this reactor contains far more steel and concrete than modern designs.
Given that the reactor might be expected to amass 450,000+ EFPH (Effective Full Power Hours) then it is clear that the carbon emissions are very small indeed.

Even in nuclear the fuel dominates the carbon emissions, with total emissions believed to be on order of 5g/kWh.

camflyer · 23 Jan 2020

Interesting video from a railway engineer (i.e. an expert) explaining away several anti-HS2 arguments and myths:

Facing Back · 23 Jan 2020

camflyer said:
Interesting video from a railway engineer (i.e. an expert) explaining away several anti-HS2 arguments and myths:

I enjoyed that, thanks for posting it.

RLBH · 24 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
In some respects GCH is easier to address because the mobility element is removed. You don't need batteries to switch a house to electric rather than GCH. And furthermore there are technologies such as heat pumps that allow proportionally more heat to be produced per unit of input energy. Similar efficiencies are much harder to achieve in the transport sector.

The interesting thing with central heating is that it's actually quite efficient - assuming a well insulated house. The entire point of it is to generate low-grade heat, which is regarded as waste in almost all other applications. If electricity is predominantly generated by burning stuff to power a generator, then electric heating adds inefficiency at the generating station and during transmission - so it's overall a detriment unless the grid moves away from gas-fired generation. Coal and oil too, though that's largely been achieved.

As far as predict and provide goes, I'm not convinced it isn't valid. Expensive, yes, but basically valid - there is some optimal level of provision of any utility, whether that's roads, railways, runways, houses, or electrical generation. Predict and provide is based on the assumption that we can define and achieve that level. It keeps failing because we consistently underprovide and so stay on the left-hand side of the demand curve. If demand must be suppressed - and that might be appropriate for any number of reasons - then limiting provision is an incredibly blunt instrument for doing so.

I've asked the question about induced demand being seen as a good thing for public transport and active travel, but bad for road and air transport, before, and never got a really satisfying answer. As far as I can see, the holistic view is to look at demand across all modes, and modal share within that total demand, rather than fixating on one mode to the exclusion of all others.

AndrewE · 24 Jan 2020

RLBH said:
The interesting thing with central heating is that it's actually quite efficient - assuming a well insulated house. The entire point of it is to generate low-grade heat, which is regarded as waste in almost all other applications. If electricity is predominantly generated by burning stuff to power a generator, then electric heating adds inefficiency at the generating station and during transmission - so it's overall a detriment unless the grid moves away from gas-fired generation. Coal and oil too, though that's largely been achieved.

Hence the attraction/logic of building smallish thermal power stations to power electric public transport with the waste heat supplying district heating systems. As was done by Battersea Power station in London I believe, which was extra clever because the coal could be delivered efficiently by water. (If you ignore pollution from the exhaust.)
Also I remember seeing the enabling works for the Sheffield tram system (moving old services etc) putting in steam/hot water pipes at the same time. The only problem there is that I believe waste has to be shipped in by road from all over Yorkshire to feed the incinerator in the city!

Alex McKenna · 24 Jan 2020

Great video. A bit of rational thinking in all this chaotic jungle of arguments.

Nicholas Lewis · 24 Jan 2020

National Audit Office have issued there report into current status of HS2 https://www.nao.org.uk/report/high-speed-two-a-progress-update/ its a critique of the project and is impartial in terms of should it or shouldn't be built. Only skimmed the main report but it as some useful graphs on how costs of changed on phase one and the risks that are still in play but seems to reassure on the cost forecast on phase one thus providing another prop on some hybrid version of HS2 being the outcome from Dept of Transport/No10 in a few weeks.

Neen Sollars · 24 Jan 2020

Only read the BBC news take on this NAO report, but looks as if the ducks are being lined up to support scrapping HS2 in its current form. But as stated previously my view is that HS2 should be constructed from Brum and Bham Intl. to the north first to tie into HS3 Northern Powerhouse rail. There should be a lot of connectivity with the existing network and top speed around 160 mph. Extra platform capacity at Euston to OOC and re-open the old GWR section to South Ruislip. Not long to wait now.

Robertj21a · 24 Jan 2020

Interesting to note that the 'Business Commentary' in The Times today comes out with a view that if we want to spend £100bn on the railways then it could be put to better use improving commuter networks in the Midlands and North, plus upgrading the links across the Pennines.

camflyer · 24 Jan 2020

Robertj21a said:
Interesting to note that the 'Business Commentary' in The Times today comes out with a view that if we want to spend £100bn on the railways then it could be put to better use improving commuter networks in the Midlands and North, plus upgrading the links across the Pennines.

Err... HS2 does help improve commuter networks by freeing up capacity on existing lines. Many more local and regional services will be able to run when the intercity services are moved to a dedicated line.

nick.c · 24 Jan 2020

Robertj21a said:
Interesting to note that the 'Business Commentary' in The Times today comes out with a view that if we want to spend £100bn on the railways then it could be put to better use improving commuter networks in the Midlands and North, plus upgrading the links across the Pennines.

It is an interesting point that what the country really needs is enhanced commuting capacity into our great cities rather than faster links between cities. However the reality is that HS2 does both.

As planned HS2 is an ideal high-speed railway with dedicated infrastructure from the buffer stops at Euston to the buffer stops at Curzon St, Piccadilly and Leeds New Lane. However, if the focus was purely on high-speed, I think it unlikely that it would be planned as such. In a scenario where there was loads of spare capacity in city terminals and approach lines then the rational approach would be to use these existing assets as the extremely high cost in terms of tunnelling and demolition of driving new routes into city centres simply wouldn’t be needed. New infrastructure would only be built in the open countryside. In this scenario a high-speed network might start near Tring, and re-join the classic network near the NEC, Manchester Airport, and Wakefield.

Of course, this is all hypothetical and HS2 needs to drive new alignments into city centres precisely because there is insufficient terminal and approach line capacity on the existing network, but in so doing, creates lots of additional capacity for new suburban and regional services.

The reality is that HS2 is both a high-speed and crowd busting railway. The question is, where is most of the cost? More precisely, what is the cost of all the new terminal capacity plus say the first 20 miles of line out of London and 10 miles out of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds versus all the rest?

coppercapped · 24 Jan 2020

AM9 said:
Since the '50s and, personal car ownership has been ascending, so in times of recession, rail travel has plateaued or even declined. In 2018, a trend in car ownership outside of any defined recession was noted (a 5% drop) https://assets.publishing.service.g.../800502/vehicle-licensing-statistics-2018.pdf
thought by some to be caused by lessening interest in cars from young persons, (maybe in consideration of energy use and climate change). Meanwhile, rail travel has continued it's climb.
In the next 10 years there will be even more downward pressure on car driving as environmental measures and restriction start to bite, so it is not unreasonable to expect both of those trends to continue and plan accordingly.

For completeness I would add that the document you quote also states:

At the end of 2018, there were 38.2 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain, an increase of 1.2% compared to the end of 2017.

So, although new registrations showed a 5% drop, the actual number of vehicles on the road rose.
So both vehicle numbers and rail travel have risen.

nick.c · 24 Jan 2020

camflyer said:
Err... HS2 does help improve commuter networks by freeing up capacity on existing lines. Many more local and regional services will be able to run when the intercity services are moved to a dedicated line.

Extending the point that what the country really needs is enhanced commuting capacity into our great cities… The released capacity provided by HS2 on the southern sections of the WCML, MML and ECML plus some important and currently congested corridors in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds has a value. I would expect that revised timetables with additional services would have been worked up at least in outline as they would add to the overall economic benefit provided by HS2. It is entirely possible that on some corridors the released capacity would be far higher than would ever feasibly be needed. It is also possible that the released capacity would be swallowed up almost immediately by new services that have an economic case. In either case, I would expect a baseline new commuter timetable to be developed.

The next step would be to work out how this new economically viable expanded commuter timetable could be implemented in the absence of HS2 going ahead. Clearly new infrastructure would be needed, new track, new signalling at multiple locations.

HS2 provides additional suburban capacity as a by-product to its main purpose of providing enhanced intercity capacity. An interesting question is whether HS2 would provide this extra suburban capacity more cost effectively than a scheme solely dedicated to enhancing suburban capacity.

Robertj21a · 24 Jan 2020

camflyer said:
Err... HS2 does help improve commuter networks by freeing up capacity on existing lines. Many more local and regional services will be able to run when the intercity services are moved to a dedicated line.

I don't know but I would have thought that the reference to improving commuter networks wasn't meant to mean just freeing up a bit of capacity. Presumably, the writer was thinking of proper investment into everything needed to improve the busy commuter networks in the Midlands and North. HS2 only tinkers at the edges in comparison.

Ianno87 · 24 Jan 2020

Robertj21a said:
I don't know but I would have thought that the reference to improving commuter networks wasn't meant to mean just freeing up a bit of capacity. Presumably, the writer was thinking of proper investment into everything needed to improve the busy commuter networks in the Midlands and North. HS2 only tinkers at the edges in comparison.

Take an example: The Coventry Corridor. "Commuter services" are currently a mish-mash of stopping patterns and frequencies in order to prioritise the 20 minute interval Pendolino service.

Remove the Pendolino service and you have an opportunity for proper 15/30 minute interval 'metro' services at local stations on the corridor.

That, to me, is the definition of "improving commuter networks".

TrafficEng · 24 Jan 2020

Ianno87 said:
Take an example: The Coventry Corridor. "Commuter services" are currently a mish-mash of stopping patterns and frequencies in order to prioritise the 20 minute interval Pendolino service.

Remove the Pendolino service and you have an opportunity for proper 15/30 minute interval 'metro' services at local stations on the corridor.

That, to me, is the definition of "improving commuter networks".

But the point Robertj21a is making (I think) is that although HS2 creates the opportunity to "improv[e] commuter networks" by freeing up track capacity, it doesn't deliver those improvements.

The improved commuter networks will only happen if there is a lot of additional investment in trains, drivers, maintenance workers, depots, station improvements etc etc. There is no promise or commitment this will happen.

And it isn't difficult to see how a sceptical public might take the view that having spent one or two hundred billion on building HS2 the pot of railway funding might be exhausted for a while.

The video camflyer posted is great and very well produced. But one of the flaws in the argument presented is it appears to be the view that our ability to build all the extra bits of railway is only limited by the number of rail infrastructure engineers we have.

Questions about all the other resources required to expand rail services are not being addressed.

Meerkat · 24 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
The improved commuter networks will only happen if there is a lot of additional investment in trains, drivers, maintenance workers, depots, station improvements etc etc. There is no promise or commitment this will happen.

The Pendolinos aren’t getting scrapped are they?
I assume they will become semi fast and won’t have long distance passengers on, which will add a lot of seats for commuting Cov to Brum for example.

The Planner · 24 Jan 2020

Neen Sollars said:
Only read the BBC news take on this NAO report, but looks as if the ducks are being lined up to support scrapping HS2 in its current form. But as stated previously my view is that HS2 should be constructed from Brum and Bham Intl. to the north first to tie into HS3 Northern Powerhouse rail. There should be a lot of connectivity with the existing network and top speed around 160 mph. Extra platform capacity at Euston to OOC and re-open the old GWR section to South Ruislip. Not long to wait now.

So you build north first, and as we always ask, where are the extra trains going when they get to Birmingham and how do they fit on the southern bit of the WCML?

Ianno87 · 24 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
But the point Robertj21a is making (I think) is that although HS2 creates the opportunity to "improv[e] commuter networks" by freeing up track capacity, it doesn't deliver those improvements.

The improved commuter networks will only happen if there is a lot of additional investment in trains, drivers, maintenance workers, depots, station improvements etc etc. There is no promise or commitment this will happen.

Fair point. Though HS2 creates the choice to do this or not. No HS2 (or insert A.N.Other capacity upgrade) means no choice.

HowardGWR · 24 Jan 2020

Keeping on the topic, Conservative voters in the Chilterns are not not going to vote Conservative next time because of HS2. On the other hand, the Midlands and Northern constituencies will be more likely to retain their switched support from this time with all the investment and jobs arising from design and construction. Thus it's a no-brainer for Johnson's Cabinet. The NAO report too seems rather to back up the scheme than not, as I read it.

Robertj21a · 24 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
But the point Robertj21a is making (I think) is that although HS2 creates the opportunity to "improv[e] commuter networks" by freeing up track capacity, it doesn't deliver those improvements.

The improved commuter networks will only happen if there is a lot of additional investment in trains, drivers, maintenance workers, depots, station improvements etc etc. There is no promise or commitment this will happen.

And it isn't difficult to see how a sceptical public might take the view that having spent one or two hundred billion on building HS2 the pot of railway funding might be exhausted for a while.

The video camflyer posted is great and very well produced. But one of the flaws in the argument presented is it appears to be the view that our ability to build all the extra bits of railway is only limited by the number of rail infrastructure engineers we have.

Questions about all the other resources required to expand rail services are not being addressed.

Precisely, thanks for the valued input.

Bletchleyite · 24 Jan 2020

Meerkat said:
The Pendolinos aren’t getting scrapped are they?
I assume they will become semi fast and won’t have long distance passengers on, which will add a lot of seats for commuting Cov to Brum for example.

Yes. I'd expect Pendolinos to operate services such as Euston-Watford Jn-MKC-Rugby-Coventry-International-New St, or all stations via the Trent Valley, with the fast "LNR" services being removed and that rolling stock used for more local services (for instance, all MKC<->Euston commuters would be carried on Pendolinos, and I would expect the "pick up/set down only" restrictions at Watford to be dropped too). No new stock required. As for staff, I'd expect the HS2 drivers and guards to be new recruits anyway.

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

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