More Delay for HS2, and how should we proceed?

[Dan G]

Robert Peston on Twitter

I am told the PM has now taken the decision to shelve the Manchester leg of HS2.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Mark Harper has given his speech to Tory conference and not one mention of HS2 in fact rail got minimal mention other than it was the union barons who are wrecking the industry majority of speech was largely about the motorist with a little mention for buses.

 

[Dan G]

As the majority of expenditure on the Manchester section of HS2 won't happen for a few years, it's not as if the money can be released to spend or cut taxes now anyway.

The Tories use a made-up "fiscal rule" of "debt should be on course to fall as a share of national income in five years’ time", so axing phase 2 gives room promising tax cuts

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Tories use a made-up "fiscal rule" of "debt should be on course to fall as a share of national income in five years’ time", so axing phase 2 gives room promising tax cuts

How wonderfully dishonest.

To what extent is it going to be irrevocably scrapped, i.e. will they resell land etc quickly? That is, can Labour reinstate it?

If not, stop Phase 1 now and resell the land too. "Aston to Acton" just isn't worthwhile alone post COVID with south WCML commuting permanently well down.

 

[HSTEd]

How wonderfully dishonest.

To what extent is it going to be irrevocably scrapped, i.e. will they resell land etc quickly? That is, can Labour reinstate it?

No doubt they will put it beyond Labour's ability to bring it back.
And even if they could reinstate it, Labour probably won't want to.

If not, stop Phase 1 now and resell the land too.

You won't get any significant amount of money back from selling the land.
THe expensive part was seizing it and clearing it in the first place, now its almost worthless.

The only part worth anything will be the cleared area adjacent to Euston.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The only part worth anything will be the cleared area adjacent to Euston.

Which will be worth an absolute fortune. Prime development land with little restriction right next to the most important railway station in the UK.

Would be nice if they could put platforms 16-18 back though.

 

[RobShipway]

How wonderfully dishonest.

To what extent is it going to be irrevocably scrapped, i.e. will they resell land etc quickly? That is, can Labour reinstate it?

If not, stop Phase 1 now and resell the land too. "Aston to Acton" just isn't worthwhile alone post COVID with south WCML commuting permanently well down.

If it is going to be just Old Oak common with three trains per hour up to Birmingham Curzon street station, then it is not worth building the 7 platform station for Curzon street station as mentioned in the Rail Focus video on Youtube:

 

[Bletchleyite]

If it is going to be just Old Oak common with three trains per hour up to Birmingham Curzon street station, then it is not worth building the 7 platform station for Curzon street station as mentioned in the Rail Focus video on Youtube:

Indeed.

And that land would be quite valuable now too - Birmingham city centre is expanding out that way now, despite it having been formerly derelict land.

 

[HSTEd]

Which will be worth an absolute fortune. Prime development land with little restriction right next to the most important railway station in the UK.

Trying to sell it is likely to trigger Land Value Capture claims (as it was compulsorily purchased) that will eat up a tonne of money and court time.
I'm not sure how much money the Government would actually get.

If it is going to be just Old Oak common with three trains per hour up to Birmingham Curzon street station, then it is not worth building the 7 platform station for Curzon street station as mentioned in the Rail Focus video on Youtube:

Unless they kill Handsacre too, there is plenty of scope for more than three trains to London at Curzon Street.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Unless they kill Handsacre too, there is plenty of scope for more than three trains to London at Curzon Street.

Questionable if there's demand for more than 3-4 at 400m though. And not much point moving the Manchester classic line services there. Fixing XC simply requires an order of LNER spec 9-car 80x, there's no need to fiddle with much else about it.

 

[Harvey B]

How wonderfully dishonest.

To what extent is it going to be irrevocably scrapped, i.e. will they resell land etc quickly? That is, can Labour reinstate it?

If not, stop Phase 1 now and resell the land too. "Aston to Acton" just isn't worthwhile alone post COVID with south WCML commuting permanently well down.

Agreed. HS2 only works if built in Full. We might aswell scrap it altogether now as the Manchester leg is now off the cards.

Either build it in full as originally proposed (including reinstating the Leeds leg) or don't build it at all

 

[HSTEd]

Either build it in full as originally proposed (including reinstating the Leeds leg) or don't build it at all

The Leeds leg died when Sheffield decided the most important thing was maintaining its regional hegemony and keeping Rotherham in its place.

Once the Meadowhall station was gone, the Y lost its primary advantage over the reverse-S.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Oct 2023 ==

Questionable if there's demand for more than 3-4 at 400m though. And not much point moving the Manchester classic line services there. Fixing XC simply requires an order of LNER spec 9-car 80x, there's no need to fiddle with much else about it.

It would substantially ease the mess that is timetabling New Street though, and probably reduce journey times by escaping the long slow drag through Wolverhampton and that highly congested mess of track.

And obviously there is nothing stopping them flooding the market with cheap tickets on the Birmingham OOC section.
The marginal cost of running trains into OOC is probably low enough to take bites out of the Long distance coach market.

 

[OhNoAPacer]

When HS2 was first planned there were lots of comments about spending billions just to knock 20 minutes off the journey from Birmingham to Euston. Looks like we are now spending billions to not even get that!
What a waste of time money and effort it has been.
I was in favour of HS2 as originally proposed but not the shambles it has become.

 

[Bletchleyite]

And obviously there is nothing stopping them flooding the market with cheap tickets on the Birmingham OOC section.

They could do that, but then it won't pay its costs back any time soon. And taking people out of coaches isn't a significant environmental benefit given that they're pretty good environmentally now and will soon all be electric; you need to get people out of cars. And the leisure market which now makes up most of those cars isn't that time sensitive - wiring the Chiltern and running three 12-car EMUs an hour from Birmingham to London that way at cheap fares would attract most of those people.

 

[Dan G]

ITV News reporting that it is both phase 2a and phase 2b being scrapped

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-02/hs2-to-manchester-shelved-itv-news-understands

The Leeds leg had already been cancelled and now all lines beyond Birmingham have been abandoned, meaning Crewe will also miss out on high speed rail.

 

[JonathanH]

Which will be worth an absolute fortune. Prime development land with little restriction right next to the most important railway station in the UK.

Yes, other than the sightline issue.

The marginal cost of running trains into OOC is probably low enough to take bites out of the Long distance coach market.

Why does the railway even need to concern itself with the 'long distance coach market'? That market is now so small it is barely existent.

 

[Sussex Star]

ITV News reporting that it is both phase 2a and phase 2b being scrapped

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-02/hs2-to-manchester-shelved-itv-news-understands

So what happens to Curzon St? Is the whole station is needed if there's no HS track north of Birmingham. Can it be curtailed, or is it too far gone? Or would they still switch Birmingham-Manchester trains to Curzon St anyway? The recent drone video shows work is well underway.

 

[HSTEd]

Why does the railway even need to concern itself with the 'long distance coach market'? That market is no so small it is barely existent.

Because the cost of grabbing it will be negligible and there is precious (little) else to do with the capacity.

 

[JonathanH]

Because the cost of grabbing it will be negligible and there is precious else to do with the capacity.

Yes, but HS2 will only run to Birmingham, if that. That is only one coach route.

 

[HSTEd]

Yes, but HS2 will only run to Birmingham, if that. That is only one coach route.

For a long time Stagecoach ran a scheme where Megabus routes ran to East Midlands Parkway and connected with off peak trains.

Birmingham Airport is a significant coach route hub as it is.

It is likely that a similar arrangement would emerge, even if Megabus and NatEx tried to resist it.

 

[The Planner]

Indeed.

And that land would be quite valuable now too - Birmingham city centre is expanding out that way now, despite it having been formerly derelict land.

Its expanding out that way on speculation on HS2.

It would substantially ease the mess that is timetabling New Street though, and probably reduce journey times by escaping the long slow drag through Wolverhampton and that highly congested mess of track.

Only to a small extent, New St isn't difficult or a mess, its just full. It doesnt solve the fact that any space released on the Cov corridor would get back filled anyway, it would make that part easier as you could go to a 30 minute pattern.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

When HS2 was first planned there were lots of comments about spending billions just to knock 20 minutes off the journey from Birmingham to Euston. Looks like we are now spending billions to not even get that!
What a waste of time money and effort it has been.
I was in favour of HS2 as originally proposed but not the shambles it has become.

It never made sense in the first place the sunk cost could have vastly improved transport infrastructure in the major UK cities let alone the remaining committed cost to phase 1. Now we will be left with a white elephant and no funding for regional transport improvement. Dream on if you believe Labour will change anything.

 

[Blindtraveler]

It never made sense in the first place the sunk cost could have vastly improved transport infrastructure in the major UK cities let alone the remaining committed cost to phase 1. Now we will be left with a white elephant and no funding for regional transport improvement. Dream on if you believe Labour will change anything.

Well said. If labor come to power they will try and resurrect it and soon realize how expensive it all is, what we actually need is someone with the balls to stop it all completely dead now and whilst that might cost them an election it would at least stop casting the country money.

 

[HSTEd]

It never made sense in the first place the sunk cost could have vastly improved transport infrastructure in the major UK cities let alone the remaining committed cost to phase 1. Now we will be left with a white elephant and no funding for regional transport improvement. Dream on if you believe Labour will change anything.

It wouldn't have got you very much at all in regional transport development.

It might have bought you one Merseyrail (probably far less), given that most of the money would be burned up on operational subsidies. Even for just Merseyrail, even pre coronavirus, it was £200m a year, for the rest of time (likely to increase faster than inflation).

 

[AndrewE]

It never made sense in the first place the sunk cost could have vastly improved transport infrastructure in the major UK cities let alone the remaining committed cost to phase 1. Now we will be left with a white elephant and no funding for regional transport improvement. Dream on if you believe Labour will change anything.

Well said. If labor come to power they will try and resurrect it and soon realize how expensive it all is, what we actually need is someone with the balls to stop it all completely dead now and whilst that might cost them an election it would at least stop casting the country money.

... and leave the country's main artery as the basic Victorian network of lines mostly dating from before WW2. Railtrack's half-delivered "upgrade" has left us with ongoing inadequate capacity, but the one thing it did achieve was to show us that you can't just expand a busy railway while you are using it.

Hopefully the Tories won't try to destroy HS2's future (they keep saying they are only "pausing" it) but I do despair when they wilfully ignore the consequences for companies in the supply chains and distort economics to pretend instead that they are steering a "wise course!"

In the same way as their chopping and changing with green initiatives (e.g. housing energy improvements,) all they succeed in doing is paying millions to consultants and bankrupting all the small firms which gear up to deliver what is clearly a common-sense long-term goal.

You could see this as just what a 5th column would do to sabotage our economic future... every change of (agreed) policy wastes the country's money and harms businesses.

 

[JonathanH]

You could see this as just what a 5th column would do to sabotage our economic future... every change of (agreed) policy wastes the country's money and harms businesses.

The same as many arguments. Most decisions are made in terms on what a course of action costs now, rather than what it will cost not to take a course of action in the future.

 

[Fazaar1889]

I am whelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed. It's not surprising the tories decided to scrap it...

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It wouldn't have got you very much at all in regional transport development.

It might have bought you one Merseyrail (probably far less), given that most of the money would be burned up on operational subsidies. Even for just Merseyrail, even pre coronavirus, it was £200m a year, for the rest of time (likely to increase faster than inflation).

They've spent 20B already for a half built phase 1 and prep works for phase 2. Even with the hyper NR costs these days that could have provided plenty of enhancements around our major cities. It would be interesting to see whether the Northern Mayors would have wanted the money spent on HS2 or given to them for local transport improvements. The other wider issue here is how DafT have allowed this project to just spiral so far out of control despite its being filled with an army of consultants.

 

[stuu]

This is a video showing the under-construction Verona-Padova high speed line in Italy. The land-take is extraordinarily less than the land take for HS2:

Must be the odd cost-saving not ploughing up square kilometres of the countryside

 

[zwk500]

The land-take is extraordinarily less than the land take for HS2:

When you account for the topography, is it really that much less? The ballast looks to be twice as wide as the final width, I think the perspective and confirmation bias may be playing tricks here. Also worth pointing out a fair amount of that first half looks to be on viaducts, which take up inherently less land than tunnelling but were politically unfavoured if tunnels were an option.