More Delay for HS2, and how should we proceed?

[Xavi]

I used to get flagged for posting links every time but the way the mods want it displayed is actually not that complicated. So for the OBR link, the mods suggest you post it as:




I think it's meant to make it clear that it's not your words and is for blind people? But I'm not 100% certain how its helps.

Thank you!

 

[Fazaar1889]

I believe you're meant to provide a summary of the relevant points of the article (or to quote the important statements) so that paywalls don't block people out, that people who use assistive technology aren't excluded and so that people don't have to wade through long documents searching for the right info.

Ah makes sense thanks.

 

[Mikey C]

I believe you're meant to provide a summary of the relevant points of the article (or to quote the important statements) so that paywalls don't block people out, that people who use assistive technology aren't excluded and so that people don't have to wade through long documents searching for the right info.

The issue of fair use does also come into play, if the publisher of the original article feels that you are repeating too much of it.

On a different (football) message board we are told not to quote too much from the local paper's articles, as they rely on the advertising revenue from people clicking onto their website.

 

[zwk500]

The issue of fair use does also come into play, if the publisher of the original article feels that you are repeating too much of it.

On a different (football) message board we are told not to quote too much from the local paper's articles, as they rely on the advertising revenue from people clicking onto their website.

From the Forum Rules:

• If referring to an external text-based source, you should put a suitable section of the text in QUOTE tags and provide, as appropriate, details of the source and a relevant comment to promote discussion.
• If posting an image or video, please provide, as appropriate: a brief summary or description; details of the source; and a relevant comment to promote discussion.

 

[WatcherZero]

The leaks been picked up by the Times and the Telegraph as well, its a Dft Q&A style memo to staff on how to respond to questions about the delay titled "What will the government do about construction companies that go bust because of this announcement?" it admits that jobs will be lost and contractors possibly go bankrupt from the cancellation of work, that costs will rise because of the delay and it also says they are considering cancelling HS2 services to Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford completely (cancellation of the Handsacre link).

 

[JonathanH]

it also says they are considering cancelling HS2 services to Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford completely (cancellation of the Handsacre link).

Does that just leave it as a Old Oak Common to Birmingham link for the foreseeable future, and destined never to reach Euston?

 

[LOL The Irony]

it also says they are considering cancelling HS2 services to Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford completely (cancellation of the Handsacre link).

So people wanting Stoke and Stafford would presumably have to change at Crewe and people wanting Macc will have to change wherever.

To be honest, I would also want extra barriers putting in place for travelling to those locations

 

[jfowkes]

Does that just leave it as a Old Oak Common to Birmingham link for the foreseeable future, and destined never to reach Euston?

It will reach Euston. Though delayed, even this government isn't stupid enough to cancel a major station this far into construction. And the next government is very likely to be Labour, who have committed to building HS2 in full and so at the very least will finish Euston.

 

[PG]

It will reach Euston. Though delayed, even this government isn't stupid enough to cancel a major station this far into construction. And the next government is very likely to be Labour, who have committed to building HS2 in full and so at the very least will finish Euston.

That of course assumes that Labour remains in government long enough for Euston to be delivered. Who knows what the country will be like in 2030?

 

[The Ham]

It will be interesting to see the next set of rail use data, specifically that for the travel between regions.

Whilst it's likely to be below 2019, what had to be remembered was that travel between London and West Midlands/North West/Scotland was at 170-175 passengers for every 100 in 2009, the model used to justify HS2 was that by 2026 it would be at 150 passengers for every 100 in 2009.

Whilst it's almost certainly to be below that for 2021/22 and a fair chance to be below that for 2022/23 there's still a good chance, especially if the strikes are resolved that it could exceed that by 2024/25.

 

[class26]

That of course assumes that Labour remains in government long enough for Euston to be delivered. Who knows what the country will be like in 2030?

but even one term (likely to be two) would mean HS2 getting far more advanced that it couldn`t be scrapped ?

 

[JonathanH]

but even one term (likely to be two) would mean HS2 getting far more advanced that it couldn`t be scrapped ?

They still have to find the money with an ever growing list of competing future funding needs.

That is going to be difficult if they commit to not significantly exceeding the current spending plans.

 

[zwk500]

It will reach Euston. Though delayed, even this government isn't stupid enough to cancel a major station this far into construction. And the next government is very likely to be Labour, who have committed to building HS2 in full and so at the very least will finish Euston.

Because no new government has ever walked back on infrastructure promises before....

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

and it also says they are considering cancelling HS2 services to Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford completely (cancellation of the Handsacre link).

Delaying Delta-Handsacre would make sense if effectively it becomes part of Phase 2a (Delta-Crewe), with the expensive (2 grade separations) Handsacre link scrapped.

Bill Cash will be grinding his teeth at the prospect.
He has been lobbying against HS2 from the start, and now wouldn't even have HS2 services serving Stafford as consolation.
Red Wall Stoke won't be best pleased either.

 

[Xavi]

They still have to find the money with an ever growing list of competing future funding needs.

That is going to be difficult if they commit to not significantly exceeding the current spending plans.

HS2 funding is 0.5% per year of government spending. A drop in the ocean. The delaying is about short-term cash (could easily have been raised by other means) to fund new policies (bungs to richest pension savers and young parents) and appeasing the right-wing media.

Delaying Delta-Handsacre would make sense if effectively it becomes part of Phase 2a (Delta-Crewe), with the expensive (2 grade separations) Handsacre link scrapped.

Bill Cash will be grinding his teeth at the prospect.
He has been lobbying against HS2 from the start, and now wouldn't even have HS2 services serving Stafford as consolation.
Red Wall Stoke won't be best pleased either.

From my sources, Handsacre will be reviewed alongside 2a.

 

[The Planner]

Never been convinced of the benefit of Handsacre once the time lines all shifted. If there was the original gap between 1 and 2A, yes, but if its just being built for 1tph its a lot of cash and infrastructure. Another solution that was drawn up a while back was a chord that joined the Stoke line around Meaford, near Stone. Wonder if anyone will dust that off as you could probably get away with that being on the flat on classic infrastructure.

 

[Nottingham59]

a chord that joined the Stoke line around Meaford, near Stone

Or a (grade-separated) chord to the Colwich-Stone line around Great Heywood. If everything on the WCML Trent Valley lines then went through Stafford, Colwich and the new (flat) junction near Hixon would not generate any pathing conflicts.

EDIT: According to the HS2 Full Business Case, there are only 3tph left on the Trent Valley lines in the PM peak (unless I have missed some freight). These could all go via Stafford.

 

[The Planner]

Or a (grade-separated) chord to the Colwich-Stone line around Great Heywood. If everything on the WCML Trent Valley lines then went through Stafford, Colwich and the new (flat) junction near Hixon would not generate any pathing conflicts.

EDIT: According to the HS2 Full Business Case, there are only 3tph left on the Trent Valley lines in the PM peak (unless I have missed some freight). These could all go via Stafford

I would genuinely ignore that, there are going to be so many iterations and re-writes of that service spec (including all those currently being looked at) that its not worth the paper its written on.

 

[Dan G]

The key point of Merriman's answer to the urgent question yesterday was that he refused to deny that Euston won't be delivered until the 2040s.

Does that just leave it as a Old Oak Common to Birmingham link for the foreseeable future, and destined never to reach Euston?

Well, not "never", but certainly for the foreseeable.

A different government with a different ideology would have two other options to the new and previous plans: stop work entirely, or get on with phase 2 and Euston as quickly as possible. Given that the benefit-cost ratio is well below 1, stopping work would be the rational choice.

Of course there are alternative to HS2 for rail investment, as laid out in the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline

Rail network enhancements pipeline

A new approach for rail network enhancement proposals that require government funding.

www.gov.uk

But that has mysteriously not been updated since being announced https://www.riagb.org.uk/RIA/Newsroom/Publications Folder/RIAs_October.aspx

 

[domcoop7]

HS2 funding is 0.5% per year of government spending. A drop in the ocean. The delaying is about short-term cash (could easily have been raised by other means) to fund new policies (bungs to richest pension savers and young parents) and appeasing the right-wing media.

£1 out of every £200 that the government spends - assuming that is correct when one takes account of inflation - is a huge amount. One a single railway line. In no way is that a drop in the ocean.

If you closed 0.5% of all the hospitals in the UK, that would be 63. If you closed 0.5% of all the schools that would be around 1,500. Etc, you get the picture.

This thread is not the place to debate if Modern Monetary Theory works (spoiler: it doesn't) or if the silly trope about "GoVeRnMeNt SpEnDiNg Is NoT LiKe A HoUsEhOlD BuDgEt" means they can spend what they want (spoiler: Liz Truss had a go at that - it didn't work out well for her or Kwasi Kwarteng).

In terms of politics, it would be an order of magnitude easier (which means an order of magnitude more likely) for an incoming Labour government to cancel it and blame it on the "incompetent Tories".

Labour would get a lot more electoral bang for their buck by using a bit of money to paint buses or trains in the colour of the local authority and saying they've "taken it under public control" and funding some additional trains on the Transpennine Route Upgrade than by continuing to fund HS2. Indeed the leader of the opposition himself personally campaigned against HS2 works in Camden as it affects his constituency.

 

[Xavi]

£1 out of every £200 that the government spends - assuming that is correct when one takes account of inflation - is a huge amount. One a single railway line. In no way is that a drop in the ocean.

If you closed 0.5% of all the hospitals in the UK, that would be 63. If you closed 0.5% of all the schools that would be around 1,500. Etc, you get the picture.

This thread is not the place to debate if Modern Monetary Theory works (spoiler: it doesn't) or if the silly trope about "GoVeRnMeNt SpEnDiNg Is NoT LiKe A HoUsEhOlD BuDgEt" means they can spend what they want (spoiler: Liz Truss had a go at that - it didn't work out well for her or Kwasi Kwarteng).

In terms of politics, it would be an order of magnitude easier (which means an order of magnitude more likely) for an incoming Labour government to cancel it and blame it on the "incompetent Tories".

Labour would get a lot more electoral bang for their buck by using a bit of money to paint buses or trains in the colour of the local authority and saying they've "taken it under public control" and funding some additional trains on the Transpennine Route Upgrade than by continuing to fund HS2. Indeed the leader of the opposition himself personally campaigned against HS2 works in Camden as it affects his constituency.

When others talk as though cancelling HS2 would be the answer to all our problems, facts need to be shared as today’s budget proves. £20bn for carbon capture and no increased fuel duty. Interesting choices.

 

[The Ham]

£1 out of every £200 that the government spends - assuming that is correct when one takes account of inflation - is a huge amount. One a single railway line. In no way is that a drop in the ocean.

If you closed 0.5% of all the hospitals in the UK, that would be 63. If you closed 0.5% of all the schools that would be around 1,500. Etc, you get the picture.

This thread is not the place to debate if Modern Monetary Theory works (spoiler: it doesn't) or if the silly trope about "GoVeRnMeNt SpEnDiNg Is NoT LiKe A HoUsEhOlD BuDgEt" means they can spend what they want (spoiler: Liz Truss had a go at that - it didn't work out well for her or Kwasi Kwarteng).

In terms of politics, it would be an order of magnitude easier (which means an order of magnitude more likely) for an incoming Labour government to cancel it and blame it on the "incompetent Tories".

Labour would get a lot more electoral bang for their buck by using a bit of money to paint buses or trains in the colour of the local authority and saying they've "taken it under public control" and funding some additional trains on the Transpennine Route Upgrade than by continuing to fund HS2. Indeed the leader of the opposition himself personally campaigned against HS2 works in Camden as it affects his constituency.

0.5% of schools being 1,500 would imply that there's 300,000 schools (there's about 32,000, so the number would be 160).

Likewise 63 hospitals would imply 12,600 hospitals (there's about 1,260, so the number would be about 6).

Whilst £1 in every £200 may sound a lot it really isn't that big a deal. To put 0.5% in terms of someone on £30,000 after tax (so about £38,200 total pay) that's £150 (or £12.50 a month).

For some, depending on their priorities, that's a significant amount. However if that's money going to a pension (in that some/all/more than invested is likely to be coming back to the individual, in the same way that HS2 will have at least some of the money coming back to them) that's different factor to if it's spending on chocolate.

Of course the other uncosted element is that of carbon emissions, in that rail has much lower carbon emissions than other modes of travel (yes HS2 isn't, under current travel predictors, likely to result in zero carbon emissions with various low single digets of millions of tonnes of CO2 being banded about, however that the total net value and should be compared to other factors, like Drax producing about 20 million tonnes of CO2 per year).

Arguably there should be a policy to build HS2 (and further rail enhancements to further reduce rail journey times) to then allow those internal flights which can be achieved within 3 hours by rail to be cut entirely and anything between 3 and 4 hours being taxed so that people try and limit their use of it. That would likely reduce further than the current model allows for, and so could reduce other costs (such as the reduced need for carbon capture, which has recently been given £20bn of government spending).

Whilst government spending on infrastructure isn't like household budgets, this isn't the case for government spending on costs which are ongoing. For example if I was borrowing £150 a year to buy chocolate it's perfectly reasonable to tell me that's a stupid thing to do. However if I were to be spending £150 a year for 5 years to insulate my house, that's a less stupid thing to do.

Even if they spending on insulation had no certainty that I would recover all my costs over a 15 year period. However, even if the insulation has no resale value after 15 years, it's still likely to be of benefit (even if that's a less draughty house).

 

[domcoop7]

0.5% of schools being 1,500 would imply that there's 300,000 schools (there's about 32,000, so the number would be 160).

Likewise 63 hospitals would imply 12,600 hospitals (there's about 1,260, so the number would be about 6).

Oops! Yes, I'm out by a factor of ten .

 

[Tezza1978]

In terms of politics, it would be an order of magnitude easier (which means an order of magnitude more likely) for an incoming Labour government to cancel it and blame it on the "incompetent Tories".

For quite possibly the 100th time on this thread by various posters including me - an incoming Labour government is NOT going to cancel a railway line where phase 1 is 40% complete already , will be 50%+ by the election and where they have committed to build 1, 2a and 2b in full in their election manifesto! As will the Tories make the same commitments.

The idea of leaving the tunnels and 1000s of acres of cleared land and building sites to be overgrown......It would be absolutely stupid, laughable and destroy their credibility with unions, Red wall voters , the transport sector and the media. I don't know why people persist with this fiction! (seemingly their wish fulfilment/what they are pointlessly praying for)

The public finances arent as in such a dire state as people claimed/ doom mongered about either. As the independent OBR figures outlined today in the Budget. And I'm NO fan of the Tories either!

 

[HSTEd]

but even one term (likely to be two) would mean HS2 getting far more advanced that it couldn`t be scrapped ?

Well the leak supposedly recommends at least two years of no construction at Euston. I think at this point it is very unlikely that the work will have restarted by the end of the next parliament (~2030).

No doubt the budget estimates for completion will continue to skyrocket and the design teams (once they recruit them again from scratch) will continue to fail to come up with an "affordable" design that achieves what they want it to.

Politically, the project looks to be on its last legs.

The document says the Manchester leg may not be completed until 2041, with “Euston delivered alongside high-speed infrastructure to Manchester”. Construction at Euston will not be continued “for the next two years … with the site made safe and maintained until construction works continue”. It says design teams on the site will be demobilised.

 

[Arkeeos]

But it's not true to say that there's no limit to capital spending, and the markets would allow us to borrow as much as we like. The borrowing limit might be higher than what the treasury is currently, but it's not infinite.

Plus there are resource constraints as well. If too much of the construction sector was given over to rail improvements, then that would impact on the available resources to build houses, hospitals, power stations etc.

Its my understand that borrowing is essentially infinite, it just becomes more expensive the more you borrow, provided that the projects being spent on yield sufficient value and there is the physical resources to do so.

And that peoples complaints are that the Treasury is institutionally setup up to prefer cost savings now, even if it might end up actually costing more in the end.

 

[Elecman]

£1 out of every £200 that the government spends - assuming that is correct when one takes account of inflation - is a huge amount. One a single railway line. In no way is that a drop in the ocean.

If you closed 0.5% of all the hospitals in the UK, that would be 63. If you closed 0.5% of all the schools that would be around 1,500. Etc, you get the picture.

This thread is not the place to debate if Modern Monetary Theory works (spoiler: it doesn't) or if the silly trope about "GoVeRnMeNt SpEnDiNg Is NoT LiKe A HoUsEhOlD BuDgEt" means they can spend what they want (spoiler: Liz Truss had a go at that - it didn't work out well for her or Kwasi Kwarteng).

In terms of politics, it would be an order of magnitude easier (which means an order of magnitude more likely) for an incoming Labour government to cancel it and blame it on the "incompetent Tories".

Labour would get a lot more electoral bang for their buck by using a bit of money to paint buses or trains in the colour of the local authority and saying they've "taken it under public control" and funding some additional trains on the Transpennine Route Upgrade than by continuing to fund HS2. Indeed the leader of the opposition himself personally campaigned against HS2 works in Camden as it affects his constituency.

Your figures are way out by some considerable margin

 

[domcoop7]

Your figures are way out by some considerable margin

By a factor of 10. As pointed out above, thanks to TheHam!

 

[Dan G]

For quite possibly the 100th time on this thread by various posters including me - an incoming Labour government is NOT going to cancel a railway line where phase 1 is 40% complete already , will be 50%+ by the election and where they have committed to build 1, 2a and 2b in full in their election manifesto! As will the Tories make the same commitments.

The idea of leaving the tunnels and 1000s of acres of cleared land and building sites to be overgrown......It would be absolutely stupid, laughable and destroy their credibility with unions, Red wall voters , the transport sector and the media. I don't know why people persist with this fiction! (seemingly their wish fulfilment/what they are pointlessly praying for)

The public finances arent as in such a dire state as people claimed/ doom mongered about either. As the independent OBR figures outlined today in the Budget. And I'm NO fan of the Tories either!

Sunk cost fallacy. If stopping HS2 and spending the money elsewhere brings more benefit, the rational choice is obvious. It's not as if HS2 is all that popular. Plenty of people would welcome the decision.

BTW, on Euston, a decent cost-effective station design had been established and the next step was to be the detailed design the phase. There were no "issues" to overcome. It's simply been scrapped so Hunt can have his "national debt to GDP ratio in year five lower than year four" moment.

 

[snowball]

Sunk cost fallacy. If stopping HS2 and spending the money elsewhere brings more benefit, the rational choice is obvious. It's not as if HS2 is all that popular. Plenty of people would welcome the decision.

There's another side to the sunk cost fallacy. When you're well into a project, a lot of the money has been spent and there's nothing you can do about it. The choice you then face is between

1) spending the rest of the money and getting all the benefits of the scheme

or

2) cancelling the scheme, having to pay the costs of cancelling it, and getting none of the benefits.

As the scheme progresses, the ratio of the benefits to the remaining costs gradually improves.