HS2 Review ongoing

[nidave]

Of course it's meaningful, at least he's seen the figures unlike those of us on this forum. There has obviously been a lot of economy with the truth over the costs of HS2 and just because this is a railway forum it doesn't mean that HS2 should be treated preferentially to any other project that involves cost to the taxpayers, if Lord Berkeley is telling things as they really are then Government should take notice and the taxpayers should have the right to know how and where their money is being invested/wasted

Man who is against HS2 cones out against HS2. I'm supprised he hasn't changed his views or his mind on the matter. supprised.

 

[mmh]

Nobody would get an existing XC service from Manchester/Leeds to Brum with how much faster the HS2 journey will be.

As Berkeley's report points out, that rather depends on the fare pricing of HS2, about which there's only been some vague "assurances" of common pricing with non-HS2. If there are pricing differentials then some people will actively choose a slower, cheaper route. It's hard to see how there wouldn't be differences given multiple operators all free to set their own prices.

 

[EM2]

Berkeley's view is that the review isn't sufficiently independent and there's been undue influence from the Treasury and DFT, and that's why he's broken ranks.

So again, it's his view against the rest of the committee. Why does his view have more credence?

 

[Glenn1969]

My view tends to be that HS2 fares will probably be lower because they have more seats to fill

I guess his view will have more credence for those that agree with it than those don't

 

[mmh]

And has a *huge* effect on journey times on those flows. E.g. Manchester-Birmingham reducing from 90 (pretty poor for the distance for the 2nd/3rd largest UK cities) to 40/45 minutes or so. Amazing for modal shift, I'm convinced.

Probably more amazing for creating new journeys rather than moving them from road to car. Making road less attractive (tax, toll charges etc), not that I think we should do that, will decrease car use, not a faster train.

 

[mmh]

So again, it's his view against the rest of the committee. Why does his view have more credence?

I'm not convinced it does, but I'm not the person saying his view can be disregarded as he's come to the wrong conclusions (now where have we heard that before?)

Have you read it?

 

[Howardh]

What's the latest figure, £100bn? If it gets spent, will we ever get that back? Looking at it from a distance, it's a project that looks like it will take the decade and beyond, people like myself may never get to see it and to me there are far more pressing issues the money should be spent on, such as social care.

That's not to say I don't want a fast link to London (although I'd prefer a fast link to the continent) and the freeing up of the WCML, but not at any price.

For argument's sake, what could half that (£50bn)do for the current rail links to London? To me you could have shorter stretches built of 125 bypassing/doubling up the WCML thus allowing "overtaking" the local trains, but when all's said and done, we can do Manchester - London in a snitch over two hours. £100bn to shave off, what, 45 minutes? Not worth it. And anyone form further north will still probably fly, HS2 from Glasgow and Edinburgh might still not be as fast as the plane, especially if you are starting within easy reach of the airport.

 

[The Ham]

You keep posting these large submissions and I'm sorry Ham, they do nothing for me.

The government could look at exactly the same info as you keep posting and decide "Don't care, we're axing it." At the end of the day, passenger numbers have peaked, the WCML is free of most congestion, and no justification exists for spending over £80bn on a subpar Heathrow express from Birmingham Airport.

Your repeated graphs and tables will count for nowt if the political reality dictates that the scheme had to be scrapped. And you know that.

It may well be that HS2 is ditched. The problem is that, whilst many state that we've reached peak train on the WCML they provide no evidence to the effect.

There are some which show (but only by stopping their graph a few years ago) that the rate of long distance rail growth is falling. However it's still growing. Unless you can provide evidence to prove that we are at peak train.

Whilst you're looking for something the last four quarters for Virgin trains have shown the following growth from the same quarter 12 months previously:
Q2 1.2%
Q1 0%
Q4 3.1%
Q3 3.0%

However that only part of the story, West Midlands Trains over the same timeframe have seen growth of:
Q2 11.5%
Q1 2.1%
Q4 5.1%
Q3 6.6%

Now not all of that will be on the WCML, but some of it is likely to be. Now in February is likely that there'll be an update to the data which informs my table and we'll see what they shows. However from the above it's unlikely that there'll be a fall.

The problem is that if we cancel HS2 and that growth continues then all that's going to happen is that it or something like it will get restarted a few years down the line.

Yes HS2 isn't run as well as many would like, yes it doesn't benefit every single rail journey, yes there's going to be people who will be able to suggest other options which may work. The problem is we come back to the same point, what is rail growth doing? Is it on track to meet expectations or is it not?

If it is what do we do to meet the demand from the about doubling of passengers which justified the building HS2?

Whilst there's schemes which could cater for that, what happens then if growth continues beyond that figure?

Until someone explains how reopening a branch line in (say) Wales or Cornwall or Yorkshire or Sussex is going to provide that capacity (and not actually make the problem worse by making rail travel to more places attractive) or explain how they're going to fit 14 coach trains into Liverpool station or whatever other when option they produce will cater for this demand, then HS2 looks like that it's the only scheme on the table.

 

[The Ham]

What's the latest figure, £100bn? If it gets spent, will we ever get that back? Looking at it from a distance, it's a project that looks like it will take the decade and beyond, people like myself may never get to see it and to me there are far more pressing issues the money should be spent on, such as social care.

That's not to say I don't want a fast link to London (although I'd prefer a fast link to the continent) and the freeing up of the WCML, but not at any price.

For argument's sake, what could half that (£50bn)do for the current rail links to London? To me you could have shorter stretches built of 125 bypassing/doubling up the WCML thus allowing "overtaking" the local trains, but when all's said and done, we can do Manchester - London in a snitch over two hours. £100bn to shave off, what, 45 minutes? Not worth it. And anyone form further north will still probably fly, HS2 from Glasgow and Edinburgh might still not be as fast as the plane, especially if you are starting within easy reach of the airport.

I can tell you what 9 years of spending £25 billion looks like in terms of enhancements to the rail network (excluding rolling stock):

View media item 3339
Exactly what we've got.

 

[mmh]

The problem is that if we cancel HS2 and that growth continues then all that's going to happen is that it or something like it will get restarted a few years down the line

Then we need to restrict growth. We shouldn't be encouraging new travel. I thought that was the accepted wisdom of our age? I don't understand why it doesn't apply to HS2.

 

[The Ham]

Go to Marylebone, you will see loads coming in at all hours.

Thank you, I've not got any experience of Marylebone Station, however I would point out that it's very much the exception to every other station in London which I've seen which regularly have 8+ coach trains, including quite a few 12 coach trains, and rarely have less than 4 coach trains (although they do exist, even into Waterloo and were not that uncommon into Paddington not that long ago).

However I was under the understanding that many of the longer distance services were run by the Locos and coaches (which aren't just 2 coaches long) and are as long as they can be without the need for platform lengthening.

That's not too say that we shouldn't be looking at doing something to resolve this, however I would suggest that there's quite a long list of projects which would also be beneficial to passengers into London (such as Crossrail 2) and into other cities.

However even if we fixed the Chiltern services so (as an example) that they were all 10 coach trains the capacity uplift between London and Birmingham wouldn't by all that much compared to the total current provision, nor would it allow all that many extra longer distance passengers to travel beyond Birmingham.

 

[The Ham]

Then we need to restrict growth. We shouldn't be encouraging new travel. I thought that was the accepted wisdom of our age? I don't understand why it doesn't apply to HS2.

Let's take a smaller scale example to explain. Let's say we want to stop people from driving between two towns and to encourage people to do so we build a cycle route and put a road toll in place.

That cycle route is likely to create new journeys as well as remove existing car trips off the existing road network. Even with some people no longer traveling, chances are you'll still end up with more people traveling between the two towns. However many more are now doing so by cycling than before. As such the overall benefit is better.

As such should we just leave the road as it is? If we do people are likely to pay the toll and carry on as before, or drive along a much longer route to avoid the toll. As such would this likely result in much of a reduction in traffic?

It is the same with HS2, if we want to stop people driving and flying we have give then an alternative. Whilst it makes sense to try and limit movements, is much better to try and limit then to use a mode of travel which is much more stainability so as to result in a bigger reduction in emissions even if it results in more travel overall.

The other thing to consider is that once you remove at least one additional journey from the "I can only do this by car" list then it increases the likelihood that people won't own a car and therefore they won't be able to use it for those short hops around where they live as it's more convenient.

Whilst rail continues to make up a fairly small percentage of total journeys there's a good care for providing extra capacity so as to encourage people out of their cars and off of aircraft.

It boils down to you could double rail travel, but if it resulted in 10% less car trips then you are still very much better off in terms of miles traveled by people.

 

[JonathanH]

Then we need to restrict growth. We shouldn't be encouraging new travel. I thought that was the accepted wisdom of our age? I don't understand why it doesn't apply to HS2.

Clearly we should be discouraging non-essential travel of any sort (along with domestic heating before anyone suggests that people should just work at home).

I think the conflict is that, really, part of what is now needed is slowing down and removing express services from all existing railways and prioritising local travel. HS2 provides the way of removing express services from a number of existing lines. Can we do without express services and add more stops to trains on the existing networks?

And, for anyone who suggests people will just drive, we can also limit fuel purchasing to the amount needed to get to a workplace and a small discretionary allowance on top of that.

 

[The Ham]

And, for anyone who suggests people will just drive, we can also limit fuel purchasing to the amount needed to get to a workplace and a small discretionary allowance on top of that.

That's fine with me, I'll claim my ~2 miles of fuel to get to/from work and then use it for making long distance car trips and carry on walking to/from work.

Others would be happy as they'll just carry on driving 100 miles a day for work.

Whilst it would impact those in rural areas (however you could provide other measures to give then a discount, such as a reduction in their council tax bill to compensate for the higher fuel costs) they actually make up a fairly small number of people within the UK.

 

[ExRes]

Man who is against HS2 cones out against HS2. I'm supprised he hasn't changed his views or his mind on the matter. supprised.

I understand the first part of your post, but why wouldn't someone who believes something speak out about it? I've no idea what the second part is about, why are you surprised that he hasn't changed either his views or his mind? do you change your views on things?

 

[B&I]

Joe Anderson was on it, he quit a year ago ironically enough in protest on this very topic, because he said he didnt think the government was committed to HS2 beyond Birmingham.

Is Joe Anderson in favour of something ? Is that something bad news for Liverpool ? Almost certainly.

 

[w1bbl3]

What's the latest figure, £100bn? If it gets spent, will we ever get that back? Looking at it from a distance, it's a project that looks like it will take the decade and beyond, people like myself may never get to see it and to me there are far more pressing issues the money should be spent on, such as social care.

That's not to say I don't want a fast link to London (although I'd prefer a fast link to the continent) and the freeing up of the WCML, but not at any price.

For argument's sake, what could half that (£50bn)do for the current rail links to London? To me you could have shorter stretches built of 125 bypassing/doubling up the WCML thus allowing "overtaking" the local trains, but when all's said and done, we can do Manchester - London in a snitch over two hours. £100bn to shave off, what, 45 minutes? Not worth it. And anyone form further north will still probably fly, HS2 from Glasgow and Edinburgh might still not be as fast as the plane, especially if you are starting within easy reach of the airport.

The Berkeley report puts HS2 (complete, so inc phase 2) at £106bn, then highlights to deliver all benefits regional upgrades are also needed to tune of £43bn for connections and local service upgrades at £39bn so a total of £187bn for HS2 + everything recommended. His alternative is actually not to cancel HS2 but to down scope the project considerably, new stations at OOC and Birmingham Curizon st still happen, Euston is still upgraded parts of the new line are still built but not all of it and not the OOC to Euston link.
I quote:

"To bring the benefits of rail investment to the parts of the UK covered by HS2, there is a clear choice for ministers between building the whole of HS2 or improving the existing lines. Both would require the construction of the parts of HS2 within the NPH area. Both require separate investment in local and regional lines to enable more capacity, connectivity and reduced journey times – for commuters, regional and intercity journeys. "

His alternative proposals come to £50bn (bits of HS2 that still happen and costs for alternatives, ECML and WCML upgrades primarily), £7bn write-off for costs of bits of HS2 that don't happen, City connections £22.5bn, local upgrades £39bn so a total of £128bn.

Notable in the report is number of weekend possessions estimated as required for ECML+WCML upgrades at 2,700, so 13 years of no weekend services. The economic impact of such isn't calculated which is curious.

It's in summary he's highlighted that there is a choice between spending £104bn for a new line which delivers 170k seats to London and reduced journey times or £50bn on upgrades to deliver 144k seats to London. Then the additional sums need to be spent anyway to cope with regional demand and provide improvements. It is worth considering that in an alternative world HS2 doesn't preclude the alternatives on a technical level so in a money no object world both could be done delivering 300k extra seats to London which is the major benefit of new infrastructure that your achieving new addition to overall capacity...

 

[Harold Hill]

Clearly we should be discouraging non-essential travel of any sort (along with domestic heating before anyone suggests that people should just work at home).

Should we, why's that, then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Clearly we should be discouraging non-essential travel of any sort (along with domestic heating before anyone suggests that people should just work at home).

Should we, why's that, then?

Moving heating from burning dead dinosaurs to heat pumps and "Passivhaus" level insulation and heat recovery is probably the way to go rather than just not heating. Similar for offices - a lot of money is wasted (and carbon emitted) from air-conditioning greenhouses at the moment.

 

[The Ham]

The Berkeley report puts HS2 (complete, so inc phase 2) at £106bn, then highlights to deliver all benefits regional upgrades are also needed to tune of £43bn for connections and local service upgrades at £39bn so a total of £187bn for HS2 + everything recommended. His alternative is actually not to cancel HS2 but to down scope the project considerably, new stations at OOC and Birmingham Curizon st still happen, Euston is still upgraded parts of the new line are still built but not all of it and not the OOC to Euston link.
I quote:


His alternative proposals come to £50bn (bits of HS2 that still happen and costs for alternatives, ECML and WCML upgrades primarily), £7bn write-off for costs of bits of HS2 that don't happen, City connections £22.5bn, local upgrades £39bn so a total of £128bn.

Notable in the report is number of weekend possessions estimated as required for ECML+WCML upgrades at 2,700, so 13 years of no weekend services. The economic impact of such isn't calculated which is curious.

It's in summary he's highlighted that there is a choice between spending £104bn for a new line which delivers 170k seats to London and reduced journey times or £50bn on upgrades to deliver 144k seats to London. Then the additional sums need to be spent anyway to cope with regional demand and provide improvements. It is worth considering that in an alternative world HS2 doesn't preclude the alternatives on a technical level so in a money no object world both could be done delivering 300k extra seats to London which is the major benefit of new infrastructure that your achieving new addition to overall capacity...

The £43bn and £39bn figures are for additional schemes, which will stand/fall on their own merits, these merits will be benefited by the building of HS2. However HS2 will also see additional benefits from the building of them.

The problem is that there will be many opposed to HS2 which will then claim that HS2 is going to cost £187 billion or £0.57 billion a mile.

However those other schemes and upgrades will create their own track milage and so obviously the cost per mile figure would be wrong.

The thing to note is that this isn't HS2 spending, this £43 billion is increased funding for cities through devolved infrastructure budgets.

Now whilst this brings benefits to HS2 and creates more bang for our buck. However those schemes would benefit a whole load of other people who may never use HS2, and so whilst the costs are higher there's also a whole load of additional benefits.


In fact the £43 billion is reported to be:

Ministers should agree significant new funding for major infrastructure programmes in the fastest growing and most congested cities, such as new trams and rapid bus networks, selecting the first for investment as early as 2019 and committing funding by 2020.

All this would mean the UK’s cities outside London receiving a £43 billion boost in funding up to 2040, on top of current spending levels, and in addition to investment in Northern Powerhouse Rail and Crossrail 2.

However to make his scheme cheaper he wipes out half of the £43 billion with no apparent comparison between the projects which would benefit from that funding and what is proposed.

Which leads to the question, what cities are not going to be able to get the teams or rapid bus networks which they otherwise would under this £43 billion of spending, and which cities are likely to end up with a much reduced increase in public transport provision over what they could otherwise have by not having this funding (so as to be able to halve the cost of this funding)?

It is arguably that this £43 billion should be spent regardless as to if HS2 goes ahead or not (although the benefits for those schemes would be lower without it).

One final point 50+22.5+7+39= 118.5, so where's the extra £10 billion being spend for the project to cost £128.5 billion?

 

[Carlisle]

Clearly we should be discouraging non-essential travel of any sort (along with domestic heating before anyone suggests that people should just work at home).

id think you’d need to hugely increase the NHS, Social services & Law & order budgets if your solution is to essentially ban travel , holidays & the right to a warm house, obviously that’ll be after everyone’s willingly observed the order to go Vegan first

 

[B&I]

Can I suggest that those in favour of HS2 stop posting on here, as many of the arguments mounted are so spectacularly counterproductive, disingenuous and downright wrong that they are in danger of burying any justification for HS2 ?

Among my personal favourites are how the project is necessary to provide additional capacity for commuter trains to Liverpool (despite HS2 providing no additional capacity whatsoever for routes to Liverpool); HS2 being a necessary pre-requisite to HS3 (when HS3 could be built entirely independently of HS2, and probably more cheaply and to a more sensible route); and HS2 being crucial to.wnable a big business park to be built in a field a couple of miles from Manchester Airport (where do you even begin with a mindset which thinks this is a socially or environmentally sensible project in the first place, let along that it forms any part whatsoever of the justification for a multibillion pound national railway project ?)

 

[B&I]

The £43bn and £39bn figures are for additional schemes, which will stand/fall on their own merits, these merits will be benefited by the building of HS2. However HS2 will also see additional benefits from the building of them.

The problem is that there will be many opposed to HS2 which will then claim that HS2 is going to cost £187 billion or £0.57 billion a mile.

However those other schemes and upgrades will create their own track milage and so obviously the cost per mile figure would be wrong.

The thing to note is that this isn't HS2 spending, this £43 billion is increased funding for cities through devolved infrastructure budgets.

Now whilst this brings benefits to HS2 and creates more bang for our buck. However those schemes would benefit a whole load of other people who may never use HS2, and so whilst the costs are higher there's also a whole load of additional benefits.


In fact the £43 billion is reported to be:



However to make his scheme cheaper he wipes out half of the £43 billion with no apparent comparison between the projects which would benefit from that funding and what is proposed.

Which leads to the question, what cities are not going to be able to get the teams or rapid bus networks which they otherwise would under this £43 billion of spending, and which cities are likely to end up with a much reduced increase in public transport provision over what they could otherwise have by not having this funding (so as to be able to halve the cost of this funding)?

It is arguably that this £43 billion should be spent regardless as to if HS2 goes ahead or not (although the benefits for those schemes would be lower without it).

One final point 50+22.5+7+39= 118.5, so where's the extra £10 billion being spend for the project to cost £128.5 billion?

Forgive me if I've missed something, but what cities were selected in 2019 for.any new infrastructure spending ?

 

[nidave]

Then we need to restrict growth. We shouldn't be encouraging new travel. I thought that was the accepted wisdom of our age? I don't understand why it doesn't apply to HS2.

Would you like to explain to my customers that I am not allowed to visit them? If that's what the customer wants then that's what the customer gets. (I travel on the WCML to London about 2-3 times a week)

 

[Aictos]

All of this is totally irrelevant to current commuters (and voters). Being optimistic, HS2 starting from London will reach Manchester and Leeds by 2040. So anyone over 48 now will be retired by then. By the time any NPR scheme is built (in the unlikely event it ever is) the vast majority now in work will be retired, or in many cases deceased.

Actually it is relevant, because not only is it going to benefit current generations but also future generations.

End of

 

[Aictos]

I'm with Berkeley on that, who points out its advantageous and commonly preferred to use existing stations with existing connections for town centre high speed rail rather than shunt them off to a separate station.

18tph. Say half of that doesn't leave HS2 and are Birmingham / Manchester / Leeds terminators. Which sounds massive overprovision, but for argument's sake. Where do the other 9 go? The existing WCML!

Who says the other 9 will leave HS2?

What will likely happen is the design will allow for 18tph but will likely see 14tph in regular service, it’s a bit like the Thameslink core having 30 or something tph but in regular service sees 24 or something tph.

 

[Alex McKenna]

"Is your journey really necessary?" Permission to Travel forms giving full details of your proposed journey are available at all post offices, and must be approved before Passes can be issued. Failure to show TFLE* Officers your Pass to Travel may result in a fine or imprisonment. (*Transport for Lesser England)

 

[AndrewE]

What's the latest figure, £100bn? If it gets spent, will we ever get that back? Looking at it from a distance, it's a project that looks like it will take the decade and beyond, people like myself may never get to see it and to me there are far more pressing issues the money should be spent on, such as social care.

If you have your house re-roofed, or tarmac a muddy path you use regularly, or build a granny flat do you get your money back? No, because it is simply infrastructure that you need, and you have gained an asset that you benefit from.

 

[Howardh]

"Is your journey really necessary?" Permission to Travel forms giving full details of your proposed journey are available at all post offices, and must be approved before Passes can be issued. Failure to show TFLE* Officers your Pass to Travel may result in a fine or imprisonment. (*Transport for Lesser England)

From removing our freedom of movement within the EU to now removing our freedom of travel within the UK, hmmph. Don't think many voted for that? If we have to reduce travel hours then surely it starts with businessmen/women - why do they have to travel when there's that newfangled Skype thing? Then of course that leaves leisure travellers who won't pay the high ticket prices expected of the "expenses" brigade so won't go anything towards paying off HS2 - that's of course if we are "allowed" to travel.
So a bankrupt country where everyone is forced to stay at home or drive a car until the electric runs out?

 

[si404]

Can I suggest that those in favour of HS2 stop posting on here

Why? Is it because you want an anti-HS2 safespace devoid of reality and facts butting in?

This thread is about a (as yet unpublished) review - a review allows both sides of the argument and subjects them to scrutiny, so why should the thread only allow one side of the argument?

Lord Berkeley was clearly put on the committee as a nay-sayer - which is a similar position to many people in this thread. His nay-saying goes to the point of disagreeing with the committee's verdict and so he has published a dissenting report - the topic of the current discussion. That's fine of Lord Berkeley, and of the posters here sharing his view - but we shouldn't take his word as the be all and end all. Nor the committee's. We should subject them to scrutiny and critical thinking. Lord Berkeley's report is being found wanting when it comes to logic and maths - but this shouldn't be a surprise as his job on the committee was to try and persuade them that HS2 shouldn't happen, and he failed to get anyone else - including other people selected for their dislike of HS2 like Tony Travers - to back his dissenting opinion (Travers has zero criticism of Oakervee and the fair-mindedness of the final report).