More Delay for HS2, and how should we proceed?

[LNW-GW Joint]

I don't think this is quite true; while there is an upper limit on the total public spending, money *not* spent on HS2 doesn't then go to the rest of the network. That's not how business cases work.

I know that, but the wider public won't comprehend the nuance.
NR's maintenance budget is unaffected (since they took enhancements out of the CP cycles), but capital spend is now subject to other limits set by the government.
It suits them very well to have HS2 and NR in different silos for budget control.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

They've both been arguing against HS2 for years though as far as I'm aware so not much of a change. The problem with the 'cancel HS2 and spend it on other projects' is there aren't loads of large, shovel ready projects that the construction staff can be moved to. Cancelling phase 1 would just mean making a lot of people working on it redundant and then hoping that they want to come back in 5 years when the alternative upgrades are ready to start construction.

Cancelling phase 1 would be complete idiocy. Cancelling phase 2b and doing an alternative scheme would be possible because there's time for that to be designed ready for phase 1 staff to move on to it or new staff to be trained. Obviously phase 2b is an upgrade to the North's railways so cancelling a developed plan for some alternative northern upgrade seems pointless.

Sadly that is now the case so what needs to happen is either get on and build it as fast as possible now or bin it otherwise every project is so far in the future it becomes an irrelevance

 

[Energy]

When the article (from Larry Elliott) includes:


and the conclusions come from that one friend, one knows all one needs to know about the thought that goes into his writing.

The one friend, who again misunderstood the purpose to be journey times rather than the actual reason of capacity, rather than an industry expert shows the quality of the whole article. Its a one sided debate with citations missing.

And recent NR overspend on WCRM and GW/NW electrification is still impacting all electrification and upgrade proposals.

GW electrification isn't the only change, GWEP came about during a Labour government who were very pro rail spending. What followed them was the pro bimode and anti electrification Chris Grayling.

which set £96 billion as the budget for infrastructure changes in the midlands and north, including remaining spend oh HS2.

The £96 billion number isn't what the treasury scraped up as the absolute max. They know which programmes they will fund in this period and have come to the £96 billion from there. They can borrow more money if more projects with a good business case come up.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

GW electrification isn't the only change, GWEP came about during a Labour government who were very pro rail spending. What followed them was the pro bimode and anti electrification Chris Grayling.

NR screwed up GWEP and the fact the there was a BiMode option made it simple for Grayling to go down this road

The £96 billion number isn't what the treasury scraped up as the absolute max. They know which programmes they will fund in this period and have come to the £96 billion from there. They can borrow more money if more projects with a good business case come up.

Have they they use the excuse of not updating the RNEP as they need to work out what they can afford

 

[Energy]

NR screwed up GWEP and the fact the there was a BiMode option made it simple for Grayling to go down this road

GWEP undoubtedly had its issues but rather than learning from Grayling went the nuclear option of canceling Bristol, Oxford, and Swansea electrification. The former two were postponed due to remodeling but post remodeling these haven't been completed. Meanwhile, the expensive clearing works at Bristol got completed and there are unused OHLE supports by Chippenham.

Have they they use the excuse of not updating the RNEP as they need to work out what they can afford

Post Liz Truss I'm not sure the treasury knew for a while what their limit on public borrowing was.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

GWEP undoubtedly had its issues but rather than learning from Grayling went the nuclear option of canceling Bristol, Oxford, and Swansea electrification. The former two were postponed due to remodeling but post remodeling these haven't been completed. Meanwhile, the expensive clearing works at Bristol got completed and there are unused OHLE supports by Chippenham.

The point was with the BiModes already being part of the original IEP order so cutting short electrification was easy without losing the passenger benefits from new trains. Had it been an electric only fleet I suspect the extent of curtailment would have been less with perhaps only Swansea being affected.

Post Liz Truss I'm not sure the treasury knew for a while what their limit on public borrowing was.

DfT has had a 3 year spending plan since last Autumn but still hasn't come up with a revised RNEP. I suspect we will never see one as DfT doesn't want to nail its colours to the wall over anything now.

 

[Mikey C]

At the end of the day, if you cancelled HS2 and spent the money elsewhere, there would be winners and losers, and the losers wou

GW electrification isn't the only change, GWEP came about during a Labour government who were very pro rail spending. What followed them was the pro bimode and anti electrification Chris Grayling.

That's debatable, seeing that GW electrification only started right at the end of their time in power, and most of the money was spent when the coalition were in power.

 

[Napier]

At the end of the day, if you cancelled HS2 and spent the money elsewhere, there would be winners and losers, and the losers wou

That's debatable, seeing that GW electrification only started right at the end of their time in power, and most of the money was spent when the coalition were in power.

Two halves, those that want it to work for the great good of the people and those who want to make money from the conception to delivery to the public!

 

[NoRoute]

In any large infrastructure project there are always delays and cost overruns, and yet in most cases a few months after opening people can't imagine life without them.

Yes but that relies on the project actually finishing and delivering the benefits it promised, when the cost overrun is so vast and out of control that the project deliverables get torn-up and rewritten on the fly, such that many of the benefits get scrapped and will never materialise or if they do materialise, will be pushed several decades into the future, it rather undermines the whole case for the project.

 

[The Ham]

Yes but that relies on the project actually finishing and delivering the benefits it promised, when the cost overrun is so vast and out of control that the project deliverables get torn-up and rewritten on the fly, such that many of the benefits get scrapped and will never materialise or if they do materialise, will be pushed several decades into the future, it rather undermines the whole case for the project.

Indeed, however some examples (like the first attempt at the NHS computer system in the 90's) have those issues because the goalposts get moved again and again and again.

Each change adds cost, each changes adds delay, delay adds costs, which leads to looking at ways to change things to reduce costs (repeat several times over for good measure).

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the project cost overrun at Euston is down to changing from 11 to 10 platforms and then to 7 platforms all the whole that there's actual building works going on. As to that the delays will mean trains can't run as soon as otherwise would be the case (deferring income) and so the benefits are reduced.

If there's a parallel universe where the messing at Euston didn't happen, there's as good chance that it would have had fewer cost overruns and those which did happen are likely to be offset by the earlier start date.

 

[tomuk]

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the project cost overrun at Euston is down to changing from 11 to 10 platforms and then to 7 platforms all the whole that there's actual building works going on. As to that the delays will mean trains can't run as soon as otherwise would be the case (deferring income) and so the benefits are reduced.

There is no building work going on at Euston to the new station the current works on the station footprint are all preparatory, demolition\site prep etc they are all required however many platforms are built. The change in number of platforms is down to attempts to reduce the budget. The revised single stage 10 platform solution was aiming to be cheaper than the two stage 11 platform station. Common sense , simple is cheaper. However when 'proper' costings were applied it ended up even more expensive. This has increased design costs including nugatory spend but it will either reduce overall costs if a solution can be found or it will induce further funding if the cost can't be contained.

 

[JSBark]

Nothing of any note has been done at Handsacre. The plan should have been Crewe and binning off Handsacre a long time ago. Its mainly political with serving Stafford and Stoke that its still loitering.

I’d also look into splitting and join at Crewe to save infrastructure costs in Manchester - it might even make a through underground station worth looking at again… I think if improperly designed and automated, all the usual objections fall away. If there are only one or two stops on each branch (Chester, Liverpool, Preston, Manchester) the argument about Importing delays is also much diminished.

 

[Snow1964]

Hansard transcript of HS2 Cost questions 5th September

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-05/debates/A35A2471-9B54-4D46-99B3-AB5AB6B94DEA/HS2Cost

 

[tomuk]

Hansard transcript of HS2 Cost questions 5th September

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-05/debates/A35A2471-9B54-4D46-99B3-AB5AB6B94DEA/HS2Cost

Well that was a waste of a few minutes reading a few more of parliamentary time. The usual suspects making usual nonsense points and the government although disagreeing with not giving too much away lest it shed light on their own failings.

 

[chris2]

Nothing of any note has been done at Handsacre. The plan should have been Crewe and binning off Handsacre a long time ago. Its mainly political with serving Stafford and Stoke that its still loitering.

I don’t know if this has been pointed out before but I happened to notice recently that the junction at Handsacre appears in the Phase 2A colour scheme on HS2’s “in your area map”. The purple line (for 2A) runs over the top of the Phase 1 blue line, going east of the A515, for roughly 2 miles total.

Additionally, in the WCML released capacity options document referred to in another thread, completion of the Handsacre junction was assumed to happen some time after the initial opening but before completion of the extension to Crewe (2A).

So perhaps we should think of Handsacre as Phase 1B?

 

[HSTEd]

There is no building work going on at Euston to the new station the current works on the station footprint are all preparatory, demolition\site prep etc they are all required however many platforms are built. The change in number of platforms is down to attempts to reduce the budget. The revised single stage 10 platform solution was aiming to be cheaper than the two stage 11 platform station. Common sense , simple is cheaper. However when 'proper' costings were applied it ended up even more expensive. This has increased design costs including nugatory spend but it will either reduce overall costs if a solution can be found or it will induce further funding if the cost can't be contained.

That rather assumes that the 11 platform station costs were ever realistic.

Given what a mess the costings have been everywhere else I remain extremely skeptical of this.

 

[tomuk]

That rather assumes that the 11 platform station costs were ever realistic.

Given what a mess the costings have been everywhere else I remain extremely skeptical of this.

I think that is the whole point. The 11 platform costings weren't realistic despite being high enough to trigger the change in approach to 10 platforms. The properly worked out costings, well at least better, for the 10 platform just confirmed that neither approach is feasible within the current budget. So am impasse is reached unless the Treasury release some more budget or at least allow the over site development receipts to net out the building costs.

 

[CdBrux]

Did both of those have over site development and is therefore an option reducing costs to now have a (simpler design) 10 or even 11 design without over site development, i.e keep that part as simple as possible

 

[thomalex]

The one friend, who again misunderstood the purpose to be journey times rather than the actual reason of capacity, rather than an industry expert shows the quality of the whole article. Its a one sided debate with citations missing.

I hear this all the time but I will never criticise anyone for misunderstanding the project being for capacity rather than journey times. The project is called High Speed 2.

If the perception wanted was that it wasn’t mainly for faster journey times it should have been called something else. In fact given politically unpopular nature of HS2 and its much reduced scope it might be a good idea to change the name to better reflect its purpose.

 

[FormerBritInMe]

In fact given politically unpopular nature of HS2 and its much reduced scope it might be a good idea to change the name to better reflect its purpose.

It is puzzling to this outsider that a project to build what would be the first high speed line in the UK that actually runs from somewhere in the UK to somewhere in the UK, a line that would be a no brainer anywhere in continental Europe, should be so unpopular, at least outside of those constituencies that are directly impacted by the construction and not near enough to a station to benefit by it.

 

[Energy]

I hear this all the time but I will never criticise anyone for misunderstanding the project being for capacity rather than journey times. The project is called High Speed 2.

Agreed, if you only followed the advertising HS2 it's easy to get the misconception. However to publish it in an article without corrections is poor journalism.

If the perception wanted was that it wasn’t mainly for faster journey times it should have been called something else. In fact given politically unpopular nature of HS2 and its much reduced scope it might be a good idea to change the name to better reflect its purpose.

Splitting it up and calling bits names like "west midlands high speed rail bypass" and renaming later probably would have helped.

 

[The Ham]

I hear this all the time but I will never criticise anyone for misunderstanding the project being for capacity rather than journey times. The project is called High Speed 2.

If the perception wanted was that it wasn’t mainly for faster journey times it should have been called something else. In fact given politically unpopular nature of HS2 and its much reduced scope it might be a good idea to change the name to better reflect its purpose.

Those opposed to HS2 (at least those at the top) actually know it's been about capacity from the beginning, if they don't they clearly haven't reviewed all the information held on the StopHS2 website.

From another thread:

Just one small point, HS2 had always been about capacity, if you don't believe me StopHS2 have a letter on their website from February 2009:

http://stophs2.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/20090213_letter_to_lord_adonis_re_objectives_for_hs2.pdf

Capacity is mentioned as the driving consideration and even under speed it takes about "achievement of maximum capacity".

Early on the debate was often framed as "HS1 have met it's growth targets".

Unfortunately HS2 wasn't overly optimistic about passenger growth numbers, by assuming 2.5% growth each year, and when that was exceeded (by quite a margin) they then adjusted growth rates to (IIRC) 1.7% so the usage at opening wasn't higher than before.

In 2026 the model assumed something like 152 passengers for every 100 passengers in 2009. By 2019 London/North West and London/Scotland were both at about 170 passengers.

Now in 2021 that fell to 110 passengers (London /Northwest) which is very short of the 152 predicted - however rail use was still very much suppressed for much of that year.

Over the 5 years from 2021 to 2026 we'd only need to average 6.8% growth each year to be back on track. However in the year since March 2022 (the end of the 2021 data) to March 2023 there's been 11.47% growth at Avanti, meaning that the next time the regional data is released there's a good chance that there'll be about 125 passengers for every 100 in 2009.

That would mean growth rates of 5.8% each year to be on track to get to 152 in 2026, a figure which isn't so wildly out there that it could be discounted out of hand for being totally unachievable.

Even if in 2026 it's 149 passengers, that's not so far behind (-2%, or less than 1 year of the original growth predictions) to make it crazy to have built HS2. Reaching 149 would still be -12.5% on the pre pandemic values (expect a lot to be made of that fact if we get to that point, as it'll look good for them, even though the HS2 predictions were almost spot on - as few will know enough to understand that, even though some opposed to HS2 do understand this and will use any argument that they can to put the project down).

It's like when in 2019 rail growth rose by less than it had in the early part of that decade, much was made of that - even though the actual increase in the number of extra people was still broadly as the predictions had expected as the numbers were so far ahead. As 1.9% of 170 is more than 2.5% of 128.

Some of the regions set to benefit from HS2 even saw 0% growth in 2019, however that could have stayed like that until 2031 and it would have still been not behind the HS2 predictions.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Calling it the "New North Main Line" might have helped.
This has of course been used before, over a century ago (HS2 is burrowing under some of it as we speak).
Or perhaps "The Levelling Up Railway".
Chopping off the eastern leg and the Golborne link does make the marketing difficult, of course.
The "New West Coast Main Line" doesn't have quite the same degree of ambition.

 

[jfowkes]

It is puzzling to this outsider that a project to build what would be the first high speed line in the UK that actually runs from somewhere in the UK to somewhere in the UK, a line that would be a no brainer anywhere in continental Europe, should be so unpopular, at least outside of those constituencies that are directly impacted by the construction and not near enough to a station to benefit by it.

I've attempted to summarise what I see as the main arguments against HS2:

• With a sharp economic divide between the north and south of the UK, it's an easy target for those looking to score political points, claiming that it's another project that only benefits the south.
• The public perception of the project has been about speed, not capacity. This is both a result of terrible PR from HS2 Ltd and other public bodies and of the general reporting about HS2 in the media. This is where the "it only saves 20 minutes to Birmingham" attacks come from.
• The original estimate for the complete Y network was £31B to £36B in 2011/2012. Since then, adding the cost of rolling stock and inflation have increased the "headline" figure substantially. It's easy to spin this as "costs spiralling out of control".
• The continual government interference, cuts and changes make it seem like the project is badly managed and doomed to failure.
• Ever since the 2008 financial crisis there has been a general attitude in the UK that the government spending money is bad - a lot of the blame for crisis fell on the Labour government failing to control spending. So HS2 comes under fire, especially as austerity and cuts hit the existing network.
• Myths of being able to achieve the same results with upgrades to the existing network; or re-opening old lines; continue to persist. These appeal to people who want more local services and who want their particular local line re-opening (for whatever reason).
• Myths that high speed rail is redundant (or will be by the time HS2 opens) because maglev trains, driverless cars, electric cars, electric aircraft, hyperloop etc. are just around the corner continue to persist.

 

[LUYMun]

I've attempted to summarise what I see as the main arguments against HS2:

• With a sharp economic divide between the north and south of the UK, it's an easy target for those looking to score political points, claiming that it's another project that only benefits the south.
• The public perception of the project has been about speed, not capacity. This is both a result of terrible PR from HS2 Ltd and other public bodies and of the general reporting about HS2 in the media. This is where the "it only saves 20 minutes to Birmingham" attacks come from.
• The original estimate for the complete Y network was £31B to £36B in 2011/2012. Since then, adding the cost of rolling stock and inflation have increased the "headline" figure substantially. It's easy to spin this as "costs spiralling out of control".
• The continual government interference, cuts and changes make it seem like the project is badly managed and doomed to failure.
• Ever since the 2008 financial crisis there has been a general attitude in the UK that the government spending money is bad - a lot of the blame for crisis fell on the Labour government failing to control spending. So HS2 comes under fire, especially as austerity and cuts hit the existing network.
• Myths of being able to achieve the same results with upgrades to the existing network; or re-opening old lines; continue to persist. These appeal to people who want more local services and who want their particular local line re-opening (for whatever reason).
• Myths that high speed rail is redundant (or will be by the time HS2 opens) because maglev trains, driverless cars, electric cars, electric aircraft, hyperloop etc. are just around the corner continue to persist.

Myths involving incorrect calculations about the cost per track mile (supposedly that £100bn/140 miles = £714,285,714/mile) factoring in the entire cost rather than the base track cost should also be included.

 

[DoubleLemon]

Indeed, however some examples (like the first attempt at the NHS computer system in the 90's) have those issues because the goalposts get moved again and again and again

But off topic.
Connecting for heath. It delivered new pcs for pretty much every gp in the country and the only main part of the original plan that was actually delivered was electronic xrays.

Connecting for helth 2 was a bit more successful.

 

[Parjon]

Myths involving incorrect calculations about the cost per track mile (supposedly that £100bn/140 miles = £714,285,714/mile) factoring in the entire cost rather than the base track cost should also be included.

If you want to rid hs2 of myths then you're going to have to go to the original brief, and start there.

It's a political project born out of childish ambition and built on top of lies. It's so crudely - or willfully - designed that it has already economically damaged a major city's economy before a track in the north has even been laid, all the while masquerading as something good.

Not only was that unjustifiable (as demonstrated by recently leaked financial data) but that the major city involved also requires significant capacity uplift to allow for increased port functions, and gets zero thanks to this supposed capacity-adding infrastructure, is galling. Especially when mere service configuration changes were always more than feasible for our imperial neighbours to the east.

You may be interested to know that, in place of rail capacity, north Liverpool is set to have one of its few green spaces - Rimrose Valley Country Park - destroyed so that a road can be built through it instead. Again, cut price.

Frankly, I view waving the flag for hs2 as akin to waving the flag for everything and anything that's wrong about the way the country now operates.

 

[Xavi]

The 11 platform costings weren't realistic despite being high enough to trigger the change in approach to 10 platforms.

That’s incorrect. It was Treasury insisting on over site development, the proceeds from which would flow to Treasury (not assessed as a benefit of HS2), which led to the changes from the hybrid bill 2-phase, 11-platform station to the 10 platform. It was then the budget insufficient.

Government interference costing time and money.

 

[chris2]

You may be interested to know that, in place of rail capacity, north Liverpool is set to have one of its few green spaces - Rimrose Valley Country Park - destroyed so that a road can be built through it instead. Again, cut price.

I’m sorry to hear about this. I hope that those getting organised to fight the plans are successful and that the green space will be protected.

Liverpool is a great city and absolutely deserving of proper rail infrastructure.

 

[Xavi]

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis there has been a general attitude in the UK that the government spending money is bad - a lot of the blame for crisis fell on the Labour government failing to control spending.

Pure fiction. Financial institutions and sub-prime loans.