Do we need HS2?

[TBirdFrank]

Mr Hunter

Victorian engineering was built with considerable excess so that it can be used well beyond the speeds of those days - even 125mph I believe - so your point is???

Please say where I have suggested a tunnel - or abandoning Victoria - if your point of view is to be taken seriously I expect you to respond to the points made - not your tired prejudices.

So steel rails cannot bend or curve to pass north of the MacDonald hotel, and installed bhp cannot climb between grades - please consider the real world before hitting the keyboard.

Everyone who was around at the time knows full well that Project Rio was just starting to wash its face when Branson was handed back his trainset. The rest of your tirade does not answer one iota of replacing lost routes or capacity - it merely points out certain well known constraints.

The UK does not extend beyond multiple time zones. British technology had got London to Glasgow down to four hours on the existing infrastructure before the Tories sold it to the competition. Britain needs a railway for the whole country - not a lucky five per cent - and a five per cent who will no doubt be paying premium fares.

 

[snowball]

Mr Hunter

Victorian engineering was built with considerable excess so that it can be used well beyond the speeds of those days - even 125mph I believe

Bits of it were.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

Victorian engineering was built with considerable excess so that it can be used well beyond the speeds of those days - even 125mph I believe - so your point is???

When I'm on a Pendolino running non-stop from Warrington to London I must be imagining all those occasions where in spite of the train's tilting capability it's still necessary to slow down for a permanent speed restriction thanks to the benefit of the Victorian engineering. That won't be necessary on HS2.

Please say where I have suggested a tunnel - or abandoning Victoria - if your point of view is to be taken seriously I expect you to respond to the points made - not your tired prejudices.

You said:

The failure to establish Piccadilly as Manchester's central rail hub will go down as the biggest mistake of the privatisation years.

Quite apart from the fact that Piccadilly is less central to Manchester than Victoria the statement is a clear suggestion that Victoria should have been significantly downgraded or closed altogether. In fact the Picc-Vic scheme would have come close to that but was cancelled on grounds of cost.

So steel rails cannot bend or curve to pass north of the MacDonald hotel, and installed bhp cannot climb between grades - please consider the real world before hitting the keyboard.

Of course it might be possible to engineer such a connection around the Macdonald Hotel but only with Victorian standards of curvature and speed (and the noise of squealing wheelsets).

And then we had:

The flyover argument used to refuse the use of the Blind Lane curve is defeated by raising the horizon as far as Gorton - take the Fallowfield loop and the airport line at Burnage.

Blind Lane curve, a more than 90 degree turn with curvature so tight that even 15mph might be an ambitious speed. The curve at Gorton is not much better. As for connecting the Fallowfield loop to the Styal line it is obvious that you do not know that area. Any connection would involve demolition of residential properties and also have to clear a dual carriageway in the process: it would never get past the local planners, and rightly so.

Everyone who was around at the time knows full well that Project Rio was just starting to wash its face when Branson was handed back his trainset. The rest of your tirade does not answer one iota of replacing lost routes or capacity - it merely points out certain well known constraints.

Project Rio was only possible by using existing Midland Mainline paths and replacing them with services very much less well used. Your arguments seem to be based entirely on the suggestion that no new rail routes should be built until a lot of abandoned ones are re-instated. I call that living in the past. Nicely illustrated by your position of support for Mark Whitby's opposition to the Ordsall Chord, though in your case because you seemed to think a connection to the national network from a museum, which isn't even specifically a railway museum, should have preference over improving regional connectivity.

The UK does not extend beyond multiple time zones. British technology had got London to Glasgow down to four hours on the existing infrastructure before the Tories sold it to the competition. Britain needs a railway for the whole country - not a lucky five per cent - and a five per cent who will no doubt be paying premium fares.

That was APT, an unreliable technology driven by aerospace engineers who knew little of the railways. Its development took so long that traditional railway engineers were able to start from scratch and get HST into service before APT was anywhere near ready to carry passengers. No doubt a shame that the government of the day pulled the plug on the project allowing the Italians to end up with the working parts of the technology. But, in modern terms, its project management was diabolical and its monetary needs had become a bottomless pit.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that fares on HS2 will be affordable only for the richest 5%. As usual for railways bulk will be the key, ie decent length trains with lots of seats so there will be plenty of opportunity for discounted fares. Just as happens with similar railways around the world.

 

[The Ham]

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that fares on HS2 will be affordable only for the richest 5%. As usual for railways bulk will be the key, ie decent length trains with lots of seats so there will be plenty of opportunity for discounted fares. Just as happens with similar railways around the world.

It is generally that 5% of travel is by rail, that does not mean that only that those are the richest 5% are those that can use rail.

In fact as someone who uses rail to get to work, it is cheaper to do so than drive. Although there is a possibility that I am in the top 5% of the richest in the whole world I certainly am not in the top 5% in the UK. In fact I would argue that for some (like my experience) that it is cheaper to use the train than drive and so certainly wouldn't necessarily be in the top 5%.

In fact because of the Public Transport nature of rail that for some rich people they don't want to mix with the "great unwashed" and so won't use trains (even HS2).

 

[po8crg]

In Italy, the Milan-Rome trains have resulted in no flights between those cities (other than private jets). People who used to turn left when getting on the planes objected to going by train, which has resulted in a super-premium half-carriage of airline first class type seating. IIRC, it's about a thousand euros each way.



The rest of the train is a normal train with normal standard class and first class ("business class") seating, and has cheap tickets down to about thirty euros.