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HS2, unaffordable in ten steps?

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JamesT

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According to the BoE inflation calculator, £30 in 2010 would be £34.70 in 2015
 
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ainsworth74

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Wikipedia has a cited initial cost of between £15.8 and £17.4 billion with a total cost of £30bn for the Y-shape scheme. In November 2015 the Telegraph quotes a final cost of £42.6bn which must be for the whole scheme from start to finish.

Hmm, that is quite an increase (though as someone else mentioned a chunk of that will quite probably be inflation related). Not enough to make me want to throw the anchors out and stop the project just yet I'm sorry (from your point of view) to say!
 

najaB

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Hmm, that is quite an increase (though as someone else mentioned a chunk of that will quite probably be inflation related).
I'm also not convinced that it's a like-for-like comparison - e.g. the lower figure may be construction costs only and the other may include all costs.
 
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At some point the in the development of the scheme, Treasury changed it's "rules" such that the budget needed to be estimated with 95% certainty instead of 50% so a hefty amount of additional contingency funds were added.
 

Starmill

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Some of these things are complete nonsense.

You're concerned about the cost of a depot to maintain the new trains? Right, so, are you saying that over the next two decades we won't require any more trains than there are currently on the WCML? Even if we cancel HS2 tomorrow, we will still need more new trains! And those trains will need to be maintained somewhere. I don't say any fully kitted out depots lying idle anywhere on the route or enough spare capacity for more many intercity trains to be maintained to meet the needs of the next 20-30 years.

This suggests that a new depot might be required? HS2 or not.
 

Geezertronic

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I hate HS2. I will never use it. I will never accept it. I don't troll; I underline.

You can hate it, it's happening and that fact is backed up by the parliamentary process and Royal Assent.
You can never use it, that is your prerogative
You are welcome to your opinions but you are a troll if you persist in peddling factually incorrect lies as stated in your original post that started this thread. If you want to post crap like this, at least provide factually correct information backed up by proper statistics however StopHS2 (aka Joe Rukin) has never been one for providing links to references with his bile - it is akin to lighting the touchpaper and standing back which Joe seems to be very good for. People might actually take Joe and his concerns seriously but for his persistent trolling of inaccurate lies. People might take you seriously but for your original OP and the "Potholes not HS2" laughable thread etc...
 

tbtc

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But you'll be able to get a train from Preston to London Euston that uses HS2 and provides you with a quicker journey time than you have today just as I, another Northerner, will be able to get a train from Darlington to London Euston also using HS2 and also getting to London quicker. So how does it not benefit the North? How is not investment in the North?

As I posited earlier. A railway line, by definition, runs from one place (London Euston in this case) to another (Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds). It cannot just serve one station as then it would not be a line

I don't think we should have spent all of this money on electrifying the lines from Preston to Manchester (via Chat Moss), to Manchester (via Bolton) and to Blackpool.

Firstly, these schemes don't benefit the branch lines of East Anglia, so can't be said to benefit every single railway passenger in the country.

Secondly, electrifying the two lines from Preston to Manchester clearly only benefits Manchester and is of no use to Preston itself.

Thirdly, instead of spending all of this money on railway lines around Preston we could have spent the money on foodbanks/ potholes/ nurses/ starving puppies.

Fourthly, replacing Pacers/ Sprinters on the Blackpool - Preston - Manchester corridor with brand new (and longer) EMUs has meant new depot space was required - and surely the cost of additional depot space should be enough to sink an entire scheme?

Lastly, the the very concept of upgrading railways around Preston irritates and annoys, so my personal prejudice should be enough to have stopped it from happening.

(am I doing this right?)
 

tbtc

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You forgot to say that you'll never accept electric trains between Manchester and Preston and never use them.

:lol:

Apologies.

In hindsight, if only I'd have made my personal prejudice known, I'm sure they'd have scraped the entire plan - that's how it works, isn't it?

(maybe I should have said something about the brand new 100mph EMUs replacing 75mph 1980s DMUs being unnecessary on the Preston - Manchester line just because a businessman can get to Manchester a minute earlier?)
 

The Ham

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Scooter question for those that think that HS2 doesn't benefit the North; how many extra platforms does HS2 provide and how will this impact on the usage of the existing platforms?

As by removing long distance trains from existing platforms that then frees up more platforms for local services. This is especially true where long distance services start/end where trains could be blocking platforms for 20+ minutes.
 

Bantamzen

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It has always been something I have had a problem with. I'm a northener who sees the amount of money being spent on a new railway line which, yes actually, does serve London Euston, and I wonder why we up here lack anything like the same investment. The schemes you mention - ID cards and all - cost far too much without an end product to show for it, and quite rightly the government of the time was roundly criticised for the massive overspends in each cases. I wonder why similar care about project costs is apparently lacking in this case. At what point in HS2's current ever-increasing budget do we say "Enough is enough, to this amount of money and not a penny more"?

As a Northerner who not only has the occasional works travel to London, but more frequent Birmingham & Sheffield trips, I would love it if HS2 were already in place. Not only could I look forward to quicker journeys to the capital and the Midlands, but as the traffic is shifted onto HS2 so capacity and passengers are too so that I don't have to shoehorn myself onto a 4 four XC Voyager along with hundreds of other people travelling to Sheffield / Birmingham & other stops in between when heading to South Yorkshire. And this is just one example of many where people from the North will directly benefit from HS2, even if they aren't travelling to London.

Who knew? Oh wait........
 

deltic

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Scooter question for those that think that HS2 doesn't benefit the North; how many extra platforms does HS2 provide and how will this impact on the usage of the existing platforms?

As by removing long distance trains from existing platforms that then frees up more platforms for local services. This is especially true where long distance services start/end where trains could be blocking platforms for 20+ minutes.

About 15 extra platforms in central Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds?
 

deltic

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I don't think we should have spent all of this money on electrifying the lines from Preston to Manchester (via Chat Moss), to Manchester (via Bolton) and to Blackpool.

Firstly, these schemes don't benefit the branch lines of East Anglia, so can't be said to benefit every single railway passenger in the country.

Secondly, electrifying the two lines from Preston to Manchester clearly only benefits Manchester and is of no use to Preston itself.

Thirdly, instead of spending all of this money on railway lines around Preston we could have spent the money on foodbanks/ potholes/ nurses/ starving puppies.

Fourthly, replacing Pacers/ Sprinters on the Blackpool - Preston - Manchester corridor with brand new (and longer) EMUs has meant new depot space was required - and surely the cost of additional depot space should be enough to sink an entire scheme?

Lastly, the the very concept of upgrading railways around Preston irritates and annoys, so my personal prejudice should be enough to have stopped it from happening.

(am I doing this right?)
what happened to the like button!
 

The Ham

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I don't know Manchester very well, but according to Wikipedia (and I'm sure someone will correct me if this isn't accurate) before HS2 opens there'll be 16 (including the two which are planned) platforms however when HS2 opens it is due to add 5 more platforms.

That's circa 30% more platforms with the existing platforms with several long distance services moved over to the new platforms.
 

Chester1

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I don't know Manchester very well, but according to Wikipedia (and I'm sure someone will correct me if this isn't accurate) before HS2 opens there'll be 16 (including the two which are planned) platforms however when HS2 opens it is due to add 5 more platforms.

That's circa 30% more platforms with the existing platforms with several long distance services moved over to the new platforms.

The length of the platforms you are comparing mean it will be a bigger increase than 30%. If other stations have platform extensions then 12x20m commuter services into Piccadilly would become possible on a large scale and obviously a 400m HS2 set will fit more people than a Pendolino.
 

The Ham

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The length of the platforms you are comparing mean it will be a bigger increase than 30%. If other stations have platform extensions then 12x20m commuter services into Piccadilly would become possible on a large scale and obviously a 400m HS2 set will fit more people than a Pendolino.

Quite, yet the North isn't going to benefit from HS2!
 

keith1879

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"HS2 is important to me because I am so convinced that it will be the greatest disaster this country has ever known in peace time. That's not trolling. This is my honest and genuine concern."

Here are a few things that have happened to this country in peacetime.

The Black Death, The Great Fire of London; The inter war depression; Aberfan; Assorted terrorist atrocities.
Now if you seriously think that building a new railway line that will be available for use by any member of the public who chooses to pay will be worse than any of those I'm afraid that in my mind it undermines any credibility you might otherwise have had.
 

Mark62

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We are planning to spend an absurd amount of money at the same time when every rural area in the uk has had their rural bus services decimated by Spending cuts. The first thing David Cameron did was virtually abolish all the spending reforms the previous labour government brought in. And then he proposes to spend billions on a route duplication project.
The only area of Britain that hasn't seen their bus services slashed in London. What a surprise.
Thatcher brought in deregulation and then the Tories have progressively slashed the budgets for councils to provide socially necessary services. On the one hand councils have a legal duty to fund socially necessary services whilst on the other hand the government that introduced these legal obligations take away the means to do so.
And we have the same government spending billions on this duplicating existing rail routes.
Do the public have any say in this?
Apparently not. That's democracy uk style. Where the Tories paymasters get richer through this massive transfer of public money to the private sector and these in rural areas who rely of public transport due to poverty, age and disability literally don't matter.
All of this was planned a long time ago as the Tories plan well ahead.
Of course, London will always be funded.
 

The Ham

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We are planning to spend an absurd amount of money at the same time when every rural area in the uk has had their rural bus services decimated by Spending cuts. The first thing David Cameron did was virtually abolish all the spending reforms the previous labour government brought in. And then he proposes to spend billions on a route duplication project.
The only area of Britain that hasn't seen their bus services slashed in London. What a surprise.
Thatcher brought in deregulation and then the Tories have progressively slashed the budgets for councils to provide socially necessary services. On the one hand councils have a legal duty to fund socially necessary services whilst on the other hand the government that introduced these legal obligations take away the means to do so.
And we have the same government spending billions on this duplicating existing rail routes.
Do the public have any say in this?
Apparently not. That's democracy uk style. Where the Tories paymasters get richer through this massive transfer of public money to the private sector and these in rural areas who rely of public transport due to poverty, age and disability literally don't matter.
All of this was planned a long time ago as the Tories plan well ahead.
Of course, London will always be funded.

Part of the problem with public transport subsidy is that the government tends to only look at the amount of money that it provides and not at the amount of money that it receives through tax receipts through the extra jobs that it creates (I'm only taking about direct jobs and not those jobs which are made possible by the provision of the public transport, which would be in addition to this).

As such cutting subsidies for public transport doesn't mean that the government had more money to spend.

However you also be mindful that the more you improve ALL public the more people who will use public transport and so there would be less need for public funding.

Given people are more likely to use rail for infrequent public transport use (which can be the first steps towards using it for now general public transport use) then there is a need for investment in that as well.

Should we be building HS2? Yes

Should we be funding bus travel (or pot holes, the NHS, insert anything else the government should be doing)? Yes

Does doing one mean that we can't do the other? No

Should we all be paying more taxes to ensure that we can provide the high level of public services that we want? Yes, as long as those who can afford to pay more (and I include myself in that) do so.

For instance change the state pension so that it is like child benefit, in that those earning more than £50,000 a year aren't receiving it.

Alternatively as you increase the tax free threshold increase the basic tax rate, for instance £15,000 tax free but a tax rate of 32% there after.
 

Ianno87

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Do the public have any say in this?
Apparently not. That's democracy uk style.

The public did have a say, actually. All the main 3 parties have supported HS2 in their general election manifestos, which people voted for.
 

jon0844

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The public did have a say, actually. All the main 3 parties have supported HS2 in their general election manifestos, which people voted for.

Labour played a huge part in HS2 and you could have reasonably expected the Tories to axe it. They didn't, yet now people are moaning about that fact.
 

tbtc

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We are planning to spend an absurd amount of money at the same time when every rural area in the uk has had their rural bus services decimated by Spending cuts. The first thing David Cameron did was virtually abolish all the spending reforms the previous labour government brought in. And then he proposes to spend billions on a route duplication project.
The only area of Britain that hasn't seen their bus services slashed in London. What a surprise.
Thatcher brought in deregulation and then the Tories have progressively slashed the budgets for councils to provide socially necessary services. On the one hand councils have a legal duty to fund socially necessary services whilst on the other hand the government that introduced these legal obligations take away the means to do so.
And we have the same government spending billions on this duplicating existing rail routes.
Do the public have any say in this?
Apparently not. That's democracy uk style. Where the Tories paymasters get richer through this massive transfer of public money to the private sector and these in rural areas who rely of public transport due to poverty, age and disability literally don't matter.
All of this was planned a long time ago as the Tories plan well ahead.
Of course, London will always be funded.

A few points:

You don't want "a route duplication project" that is "duplicating existing rail routes"... HS2 is magic in that people criticise it for not following old Victorian alignments whilst also duplicating existing Victorian routes...

HS2 is a "route duplication project" because those routes are rather busy - and the WCML upgrade shows that it takes a lot of time and a lot of money (and a LOT of disruption) to make marginal improvements to existing lines - much easier to build it separately (whilst freeing up capacity on existing lines).

You don't think that London hasn't seen bus reductions? Compare the frequencies post-Crossrail to those back in the Ken Livingston days - there have been huge reductions in London - many "hidden" by the shuffling around of routes (e.g. extending one service to replace another, cutting a route back whilst replacing it with a lower frequency on the other section) - London buses will be in the weakest state once the Crossrail cuts happen but it doesn't get the same attention from enthusiasts as there's not a simple agenda of "First/Stagecoach are money-grabbing capitalist pigs".

"every rural area in the uk has had their rural bus services decimated by Spending cuts"? But the economics of running rural bus services isn't great (especially in an era of people drinking at home, working flexible hours, doing their shopping online). The economics of putting bums on seats between the biggest conurbations in the UK is a lot better.

If you want to improve rural bus services then focus on things within those rural areas, like the ENCTS nonsense.

And even if we were to improve rural bus services to every rural area, there'd be someone moaning about us doing this instead of the Nurses/ potholes/ starving puppies etc etc.

Lastly, "London will always be funded"? How is halving the journey time from Leeds to Birmingham (from two hours to one hour) only benefitting London? How is replacing four/five coach Voyagers from Manchester to Birmingham with regular 200m/400m trains (that will run significantly faster) only benefitting London?

The public did have a say, actually. All the main 3 parties have supported HS2 in their general election manifestos, which people voted for.

True.

If they wanted opposition to HS2 they could vote for UKIP (remember them!) who ever against HS2 - but UKIP were previously all in favour of building a High Speed line - albeit not to big places like Birmingham/ Manchester/ Leeds - instead to bustling Exeter (which is where their biggest donor used to reside).

Labour played a huge part in HS2 and you could have reasonably expected the Tories to axe it. They didn't, yet now people are moaning about that fact.

True - it's surprising that the Tories haven't cut HS2, given all of the other cuts, something we should be thankful for (but most "enthusiasts" aren't)
 

6Gman

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Yes it's an odd argument isn't it? "A new railway line for London Euston". But a line runs from one place to another place so how can it just be a "new railway line for London Euston"? .

In PR1Berske Land the line runs from Euston to Old Oak then in a tight loop to go back to Euston.

But also requires the demolition of a pub in Manchester.

:D
 

6Gman

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That would suggest you think me as a troll.

Let me assure you. I do not, and have not, not will never, support HS2. My posts come from opposition .Not from mischief or boredom or game playing. I post because the very concept irritates and annoys. Because I genuinely stay awake about it.

When countries all over the world have adopted High Speed Rail as an option why does "the very concept" annoy you?
 

PR1Berske

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When countries all over the world have adopted High Speed Rail as an option why does "the very concept" annoy you?
That was clumsy phrasing by me, the reference was specifically about HS2.

Long term forum members will know that I've always got heated against hs2. It annoys me because of it is a grossly inappropriate solution looking for a problem. We don't need and can't afford such sn expensive way to get to Euston all of ten minutes quicker. It's annoying to see high speed as an answer. There are so many other changes we could make to our infrastructure and broadband yet we must make everything else wait for high speed rail? Doesn't sit well with be. Never has.

You mention other countries. They have very different geographic concerns than we do. Context is all.
 

PR1Berske

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In PR1Berske Land the line runs from Euston to Old Oak then in a tight loop to go back to Euston.

But also requires the demolition of a pub in Manchester.

:D
Phase 1 is for Euston to get high speed rail and a wholesale revamp. It's London-centric. It has always been sold as a way to get into London ten minutes faster than now. The connection at Old Oak is beneficial to London travellers.
 
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