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Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)

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MarkyT

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Will Liverpool have a high-speed rail line? No. Next!
It doesn't matter if the new rail infrastructure doesn't fully reach the bufferstops; Liverpool is still getting a service that uses the new line to speed up journeys. In any case, NPR may eventually provide some dedicated high speed infrastructure entering the city which could also be used by HS2 trains, even a complete new station perhaps. Would a dedicated pair refettled in an existing alignment meet your exacting standards or is it entirely new construction or nothing? In many European networks high speed trains routinely use 'classic' stations, particularly at quieter extremities and accessing them via parts of the existing network.
 

PR1Berske

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It doesn't matter if the new rail infrastructure doesn't fully reach the bufferstops; Liverpool is still getting a service that uses the new line to speed up journeys.
It does matter. Liverpool is not getting HS2 - it is getting an annexe, an add-on, an afterthought. Like so much of the claims about HS2, the reality is very different from the headline news.

It does matter that a northern city is being ignored by HS2 Ltd because, hey, for £55bn+ you have to change at a outpost somewhere near but not quite Birmingham.
 

MarkyT

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HS2, in the First Phase, goes from London to Birmingham. It does not - and never will even with Phase 2 - go to Liverpool.
Even at Phase one there will be significantly more trains on the route than just those going to Birmingham. They will fan out across the existing WCML network north of Birmingham Interchange. You know this very well so don't be disingenuous.
 

PR1Berske

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Can you please explain why something which is likely to carry getting on for 100 million passenger movements a year is going to be a White Elephant (which by definition is something which is of little or no use)?

*There is no guarantee of those passenger numbers.
*There is no guarantee that 100m passengers are extra, they could be existing passengers moving from classic to HS, which means that every single penny of £55bn+ has been wasted
*There is no guarantee that 100m passengers want to go from London to Birmingham at high speed. They might want to go somewhere in between, but HS2 does not allow them to stop at intermediate stations, as there are no intermediate stations.
*There is no guarantee that the budget will stay at £55bn. Anything beyond £100bn would be, by any measure, a white elephant.
*There is no guarantee that ticket prices are going to be affordable for 100m passengers. If passengers are unable to afford tickets, then it is a white elephant.

*Not connecting London to Liverpool (where connections are required) but connecting London to Birmingham (where there are already countless per hour) is the very definition of a white elephant.
 

MarkyT

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It does matter. Liverpool is not getting HS2 - it is getting an annexe, an add-on, an afterthought. Like so much of the claims about HS2, the reality is very different from the headline news.
It does matter that a northern city is being ignored by HS2 Ltd because, hey, for £55bn+ you have to change at a outpost somewhere near but not quite Birmingham.
No you will not have to change, as I pointed out in my last post. Liverpool is not being ignored. One of the reasons that Manchester gets a new line all the way is because the approach through Stockport is completely full. That cannot be said to be the case on the multiple routes into Liverpool.
 

PR1Berske

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Even at Phase one there will be significantly more trains on the route than just those going to Birmingham. They will fan out across the existing WCML network north of Birmingham Interchange. You know this very well so don't be disingenuous.

HS2 trains are only for Euston to Birmingham, that's the whole point. If a train runs on WCML, it is not HS2. They will not "fan out", they're building a single HS line from Euston to Birmingham, nowhere else.
 

Tetchytyke

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In many European networks high speed trains routinely use 'classic' stations, particularly at quieter

We're not talking about Blackpool or Middlesbrough, though. We're talking about a city of 860,000 people. So yes, it does matter.

It doesn't matter if the new rail infrastructure doesn't fully reach the bufferstops

If it doesn't go to Liverpool, Liverpool doesn't have HS2. An afterthought on slow lines from a small market town 50 miles away (or, in phase one, a small marlet town 150 miles away) is not high speed rail.

It's just yet another example of HS2 tubthumpers trying desperately to claim "benefits" that simply do not exist.
 

PR1Berske

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We're not talking about Blackpool or Middlesbrough, though. We're talking about a city of 860,000 people. So yes, it does matter.



If it doesn't go to Liverpool, Liverpool doesn't have HS2. An afterthought on slow lines from a small market town 50 miles away is not high speed rail.

It's just yet another example of HS2 tubthumpers trying desperately to claim "benefits" that simply do not exist.

I remember some time ago being told that HS2 was not designed to benefit the entire country, so when I (as a opponent) used to say "It doesn't benefit X and that's a bad thing", the response was "It was not designed to, so your opposition is misplaced."

Sometime later I challenged supporters to make the case for places not connected to HS2. And suddenly my opposition was used in favour of their argument - oh, actually, by changing at Birmingham, passengers from Swansea will benefit, passengers from Carlisle will benefit, etc etc.

You have found, as I have during many years of being a constant and vocal opponent of HS2, that supporters have skipped from one justification to another like children on stepping stones. Many of the dubious benefits could be realised by using money far more responsibly: on air travel, on existing railways, on broadband, on all sorts of things, but when it suits them, supporters will suddenly fall back on any straw on the wind to make their case.
 

Tetchytyke

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You have found, as I have during many years of being a constant and vocal opponent of HS2, that supporters have skipped from one justification to another like children on stepping stones

Indeed.

Some major projects have a clear and obvious necessity. Crossrail is staggeringly expensive, but there is a clear need which isn't based on nebulous "benefits". Anyone who's ever used the Central Line in the peak knows what the clear need is.

There really isn't that for HS2.

"It'll clear space on the southern WCML". The outer-urban stations get 5tph already, how many more do they need?

"It'll speed journeys". To Birmingham, yes. But not many other places. I live in Newcastle, I've no desire to go via Birmingham to get to London. The ECML is plenty fast enough. Saying HS2 will benefit me is insulting my intelligence.

"It'll help freight". Freight doesn't go on HS2. The intermodal freight is to Scotland, and the extra freight paths can't be there because- north of Lichfield- HS2 trains will be running in the existing Pendolino paths. And as they won't tilt, they won't be as fast as the existing trains, so you get fewer paths.

As for cost, if there's change from £100bn I'll eat my other hat (grey twill). That's an awful lot of money for a project whose business case is already based on very weak financial arguments. The same Tory politicians gushing over HS2 will, naturally, say we can't afford free broadband.

The whole thing screams white elephant vanity project. The second they decided that OOC wasn't sexy enough to be a terminus, and spent all that money bulldozing half of Camden, it proved it to me.
 
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The Ham

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It does matter. Liverpool is not getting HS2 - it is getting an annexe, an add-on, an afterthought. Like so much of the claims about HS2, the reality is very different from the headline news.

It does matter that a northern city is being ignored by HS2 Ltd because, hey, for £55bn+ you have to change at a outpost somewhere near but not quite Birmingham.

Let's take another example the Southern Approach to Heathrow, it is proposed that there will be services to Guildford and Basingstoke. However there's currently no proposals for much new track (a bit around Woking in the form of changes to the junction) South or West of Weybridge.

Does Basingstoke or Guildford not benefit?

Likewise the building of Crossrail 2 doesn't go to Waterloo, yet Waterloo will benefit from extra medium/long distance services, or does it not because there's no new track being built?

How about the building of the new station and junction at Reading, does that not benefit Exeter by allowing the new Semi fast services between London and Exeter?
 

DynamicSpirit

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If those 100m passengers are all passengers who would have travelled on the classic lines anyway, then a shiny new line is, by definition, pointless.

This appears to show a misunderstanding of the main purpose of the Southern part of HS2. The main point is that many towns on the 'classic' lines - such as Watford, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Stevenage and Peterborough see rail services that are much poorer than need by because so many paths on the railway lines through those towns are taken up by long distance services that run through at 100+mph without stopping. By building HS2, you take those long distance trains off the classic lines, thereby allowing a better train service at stations on the classic lines.

(And of course, further North, HS2 will bring very welcome speed and capacity improvements, such as cutting the absurdly long 2-hour journey from Leeds to Birmingham to well under 1 hour.
 

MarkyT

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Putting this into a highway context, motorway slip roads don't have to lead directly to your driveway and office car park bypassing all local roads for you to benefit from its construction. HS2 from a customer perspective is a fast train from A to B. In reality users will not care one hoot whether it travels on existing track for part of the way, because it is still faster than current trains because it uses new infrastructure for a significant portion of its journey. All you antis can't even be consistent. You argue the project is too expensive yet complain it doesn't have enough new infrastructure branches which would make it even more expensive.
 

Tetchytyke

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The main point is that many towns on the 'classic' lines - such as Watford, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Stevenage and Peterborough see rail services that are much poorer than need by because so many paths on the railway lines through those towns are taken up by long distance services that run through at 100+mph without stopping.

Is that really the case, though? Don't forget I lived in Hemel Hempstead for years, I know what the service is like. During the day I had 5tph towards London (4 to Euston, 1 to the WLL) and a 10-minute frequency during the peak. I only failed to get a seat when London Midland, in their infinite wisdom, stuck a 4-car on a peak train. Does Hemel need more than 5tph? Is that worth £55-100bn?

Stevenage and Peterborough get excellent services, thanks to Thameslink (another expensive project with a clear aim and a clear benefit).

Nuneaton? When I criticised Virgin for abandoning the Trent Valley towns, I was told nobody used them and it was for The Greater Good. There's plenty of capacity for WCML expresses to stop at Lichfield, Tamworth, Rugby and Stafford. Virgin just didn't want to.

HS2 will bring very welcome speed and capacity improvements, such as cutting the absurdly long 2-hour journey from Leeds to Birmingham

Ironically many of those particular benefits were mostly there when EPS was installed on the MML for 221s to tilt. Arriva binned the equipment. Says a lot, really.
 

Tetchytyke

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you antis can't even be consistent. You argue the project is too expensive yet complain it doesn't have enough new infrastructure branches which would make it even more expensive.

It's too expensive for what it does. For the price, it should do more. For the current price, it should serve Liverpool, it should serve Sheffield, it shouldn't just stop with a shrug in a field just outside Lichfield.

The fact it doesn't, and you have to pretend that HS2 will go to somewhere it won't (captive trains, which were meant to deliver essential benefits, can't go on classic lines, so they've been binned off), shows just how much of a disaster the whole project really and truly is.

If a city doesn't have a high speed line to the city limits, it doesnt have high speed rail.
 

MarkyT

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If it doesn't go to Liverpool, Liverpool doesn't have HS2. An afterthought on slow lines from a small market town 50 miles away (or, in phase one, a small marlet town 150 miles away) is not high speed rail. It's just yet another example of HS2 tubthumpers trying desperately to claim "benefits" that simply do not exist.
Well I'm glad you cleared that one up for me. Clearly I now realise there is no TGV from Paris to Strasbourg at all because the last 7 miles are accomplished over conventional network track. In fact much of the French TGV network clearly doesn't exist for similar reasons. There's no HS service to Lyon for instance as its an existing station. Most of Germany's high speed network is a complete mirage as almost all routes share some infrastructure with other trains. Even Japanese mini shinkansens cease to exist when they exit the trunk main lines and proceed over gauge converted former narrow gauge branches. I see the light now!
 

The Ham

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If those 100m passengers are all passengers who would have travelled on the classic lines anyway, then a shiny new line is, by definition, pointless.

Are you trying to argue there's a massive untapped market to get from London to Birmingham which isn't currently met by the 8tph between the two cities?

Maybe there is a vast untapped market of people wanting to get to Birmingham 20 minutes faster, in which case I'll eat my hat. Harris Tweed trilby, since you ask.

Have you ever looked at the anticipated rail growth assumed in the HS2 business case?

Now as a whole annual growth was expected to be 2.5% per year, whilst London Birmingham was expected to be 1% per year as it was seen as a mature market.

That would mean that between 2009 and 2039 (30 years) growth was expected to grow by 34.8%, however by 2018 (9 years) it had grown by 70%.

As such it shows that even between two places well served that there's still plenty of scope for there being more rail travel.

Whilst a significant number of passengers will be from the existing network, even a 5% shift would be 5 million extra journeys being made by rail. Without HS2 those journeys would likely continue to be by other modes. In addition it allows for extra travel due to an increase in population.

What do we do as a country to facilitate for that increase in population? Do we build more roads and provide extra airport capacity (even though Heathrow carries less people by area than the existing rail network, which is an unfair comparison as Heathrow is a very dense example of air travel)? Do we provide more rail capacity?

In that, it should also be noted that HS2 also releases capacity on the existing network to allow for extra passengers.

Taking the example of a train traveling to Liverpool, many of them from London don't stop between London and Crewe. By removing them from the existing network it allows extra services to run serving the stations which currently see trains sailing through them. This could, as an example, see a new London to the North West service running from London via Coventry and Nuneaton.

Such a service would mean faster journey times between Coventry and the North West whilst opening up journey options which are currently slow and/or infrequent. With rail travel between Coventry and Nuneaton possibly seeing 3tph (at least in the peaks) which would make rail travel much more attractive.

Without HS2 chances are that there would be changes to trains so that more services stop at fewer stations to ensure that the trains don't get too busy.

Our rail network has seen a doubling of passenger numbers in the last 20 years. Even using the loading capacities from 2012 (average loading of 50% in the peak hour at Euston) of we see another doubling of passengers in the next 20, 30, or 40 years then there's a need for extra capacity.

Before anyone suggests that we build the capacity when we need it, well if we need it in 20 years time (and remember we're talking about every train being 100% loaded) then providing that extra capacity 5 years before that point is hardly wasteful. However it could be argued that it's 20 years from 2012 which would be 2032, so the Manchester trains would be full but with little scope for extra service.

Even if we assume that growth is in a straight line (so the amount of growth as a percentage per year will be shrinking as 5% of 50 is the same as 2.5% of 100) and rail growth will double over a 40 year period, then after 20 years (2032) the trains will be 75% full. Whilst after 25 years (2037) the trains would be 81% full. As such the amount of extra capacity which we are providing isn't excessive before the trains are totally full.
 

DynamicSpirit

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It's too expensive for what it does. For the price, it should do more.

Are you an expert in pricing up railway schemes?

The price would arguably be too high if there was a way to get comparable benefits by spending less money. But I don't believe any detailed and serious study has found any way of achieving that.

For comparison, on the current pricing, HS2 will come in at about 4-5 times the price of Crossrail. Recall that Crossrail involves building something like 15-20 miles of new railway line. HS2 for 4-5 times that price will build London-Birmingham, Birmingham Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds/York, which I make to be about 300 miles of double-track railway. Seems quite a bargain by comparison ;) (Obviously cheaper per mile because a lot of it is in countryside and there's only one underground station involved, but even so....
 

MarkyT

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It's too expensive for what it does. For the price, it should do more. For the current price, it should serve Liverpool, it should serve Sheffield, it shouldn't just stop with a shrug in a field just outside Lichfield.

The fact it doesn't, and you have to pretend that HS2 will go to somewhere it won't (captive trains, which were meant to deliver essential benefits, can't go on classic lines, so they've been binned off), shows just how much of a disaster the whole project really and truly is.

If a city doesn't have a high speed line to the city limits, it doesnt have high speed rail.

The service DOES go to Liverpool for goodness sake! That it doesn't go all the way on entirely new tracks is irrelevant to passengers who will nevertheless get a faster journey, and as I said earlier it is quite likely that a dedicated high speed approach to the city may be built later as part of NPR that could be shared with HS2 trains. Sheffield lobbied hard for a city centre station. They actively wanted what is now proposed, and that coincided with detailed engineering development of Ph2 E that identified the original route as being very difficult and expensive. The rerouting along the M1/18 corridor was found to be much cheaper, although introduced the politically embarrassing requirement to acquire parts of the new build Shimmer estate near Mexborough.
 

DynamicSpirit

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Is that really the case, though? Don't forget I lived in Hemel Hempstead for years, I know what the service is like. During the day I had 5tph towards London (4 to Euston, 1 to the WLL) and a 10-minute frequency during the peak. I only failed to get a seat when London Midland, in their infinite wisdom, stuck a 4-car on a peak train. Does Hemel need more than 5tph? Is that worth £55-100bn?

I have to admit I wouldn't expect Hemel Hempstead Southbound to be the main beneficiary (though it may get one or two extra tph to London). I would expect the biggest improvements on the Southern WCML to go to Watford Junction, Milton Keynes Central, Northampton and Rugby: Because most 'Virgin' trains currently pass through those stations without stopping (or in the case of Northampton, by-pass it altogether), whereas with HS2, most Virgin trains probably would stop (for Northampton, probably some, not most). Places like Hemel Hempstead would benefit indirectly by having better, much more frequent, connections at Milton Keynes to Birmingham and the North of England.

Nuneaton? When I criticised Virgin for abandoning the Trent Valley towns, I was told nobody used them and it was for The Greater Good. There's plenty of capacity for WCML expresses to stop at Lichfield, Tamworth, Rugby and Stafford. Virgin just didn't want to.

Well yes, they wouldn't want to stop at those places at the moment because their trains tend to be full of people going from London to Liverpool/Preston/Glasgow/Manchester/etc., and any benefit to local people from stopping would be far outweighed by the slower journey times experienced by those passengers. But with HS2, those London-to-the-North passengers will be on HS2 trains instead, so there's no longer a reason not to stop at least some 'Virgin' trains at those stations.

"I was told nobody used them and it was for The Greater Good" Read that as meaning 'far fewer people use those stations than there are travelling from London to Manchester etc.' And remember this was well over 10 years ago and rail travel has significantly increased since then.

Ironically many of those particular benefits were mostly there when EPS was installed on the MML for 221s to tilt. Arriva binned the equipment. Says a lot, really.

I wasn't aware of that. But I don't think it's that relevant: Putting tilt on the MML trains would doubtless save a few minutes on typical journeys. But it's not going to shave over an hour off the 2-hour Birmingham-Leeds journey!
 

Bald Rick

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If it doesn't go to Liverpool, Liverpool doesn't have HS2. An afterthought on slow lines from a small market town 50 miles away (or, in phase one, a small marlet town 150 miles away) is not high speed rail.

By that logic, Liverpool isn’t on the WCML, and doesnt have WCML services. I must have imagined the 1007 today.

Also, the first phase of HS2 goes a little further than Quainton, 44 miles from London.

They will not "fan out", they're building a single HS line from Euston to Birmingham, nowhere else.

Apart from Crewe, then Manchester and Leeds. But they’re suburbs of Birmingham, right?
 

PR1Berske

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Apart from Crewe, then Manchester and Leeds. But they’re suburbs of Birmingham, right?

Phase 1, the only phase guaranteed to be built (and even then...) is for HS trains to go from London to Birmingham. HS trains will go nowhere else.
 

DynamicSpirit

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Phase 1, the only phase guaranteed to be built (and even then...) is for HS trains to go from London to Birmingham. HS trains will go nowhere else.

That is simply not true. Phase 1 includes London to Birmingham and the connection to the WCML near Lichfield. So even in the (IMO, unlikely) event that if phase 1 was the only phase that was built, there would still be HS2 trains using that connection to run to destinations such as Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Glasgow. Phase 1 also allows trains to use that link to get from Birmingham to the North.
 
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The Ham

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It's too expensive for what it does. For the price, it should do more. For the current price, it should serve Liverpool, it should serve Sheffield, it shouldn't just stop with a shrug in a field just outside Lichfield.

The fact it doesn't, and you have to pretend that HS2 will go to somewhere it won't (captive trains, which were meant to deliver essential benefits, can't go on classic lines, so they've been binned off), shows just how much of a disaster the whole project really and truly is.

If a city doesn't have a high speed line to the city limits, it doesnt have high speed rail.

In the 9 years since HS2 was announced £25 billion had been spent on infrastructure improvements in the existing network (this doesn't include the new build of Crossrail) chances are over the next 9 it'll bring the total to over £65 billion.

That cost won't improve the rail network by a significant amount for everyone, although there will be many who are some benefit.

Rail projects are by their nature expensive and so it's unsurprising that HS2 isn't cheap. However if you combine what's expected to be provided, including the amount of extra seats provided, by HS2 and NPR for the cost they look very good value.

I will ask again, if we don't provide HS2 what do we provide? How will that cope of we see a doubling of passengers in the next 20, 30 or 40 years?

To double passenger numbers you'd need to see the following amount of rail growth:
3.6% per year for 20 years
2.4% per year for 30 years
1.8% per year for 40 years

Given that green issues are apparently the third highest issue in this election with lots of talk of extra rail capacity to facilitate less air and road travel, then it is likely that we could well see some fairly high levels of growth (where there's capacity to provide it).
 

Aictos

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Ironically many of those particular benefits were mostly there when EPS was installed on the MML for 221s to tilt. Arriva binned the equipment. Says a lot, really.

EPS has never been installed on the Midland Mainline nor have 221s operated on the line except for the part between Sheffield and Derby.
 

The Ham

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Indeed.

Some major projects have a clear and obvious necessity. Crossrail is staggeringly expensive, but there is a clear need which isn't based on nebulous "benefits". Anyone who's ever used the Central Line in the peak knows what the clear need is.

There really isn't that for HS2.

"It'll clear space on the southern WCML". The outer-urban stations get 5tph already, how many more do they need?

Given that in this section you say that one line (with over 12tph) needs more capacity yet a route with 5tph couldn't possibly need any extra capacity, you do kind of contradict yourself. Now whilst the outer urban sections wouldn't need the same level of frequencies providing extra capacity between key locations (such as London/Birmingham or London/Manchester) whilst improving also providing some extra capacity for those local services is unlikely to be a bad thing.

No one is suggesting that the frequent would go from 5tph to 12tph, but rather maybe to 7tph.

"It'll speed journeys". To Birmingham, yes. But not many other places. I live in Newcastle, I've no desire to go via Birmingham to get to London. The ECML is plenty fast enough. Saying HS2 will benefit me is insulting my intelligence.

Even if you have no desire to go via Birmingham to get to London and continue using the ECML saying that HS2 will not benefit you is a simplistic view.

For instance by redirecting the Scottish passengers traveling to/from London away from Newcastle it creates extra capacity for those traveling to or from Newcastle. Not just long distance passengers, but also allowing the trains to call at a few more places to provide more places with direct connections to Newcastle.

"It'll help freight". Freight doesn't go on HS2. The intermodal freight is to Scotland, and the extra freight paths can't be there because- north of Lichfield- HS2 trains will be running in the existing Pendolino paths. And as they won't tilt, they won't be as fast as the existing trains, so you get fewer paths.

Actually by removing 125mph trains you increase the number of paths, as the slowest trains are not much slower than the fastest trains which means you can fit in more trains.

As for cost, if there's change from £100bn I'll eat my other hat (grey twill). That's an awful lot of money for a project whose business case is already based on very weak financial arguments. The same Tory politicians gushing over HS2 will, naturally, say we can't afford free broadband.

The whole thing screams white elephant vanity project. The second they decided that OOC wasn't sexy enough to be a terminus, and spent all that money bulldozing half of Camden, it proved it to me.

So stopping HS2 a few miles outside London is fine, but not fine for Liverpool?
 

Chester1

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The easiest way of proving the necessity of HS2 would be to get all the legislation finished but pause construction until the demand is obvious to Joe Public. He can then wait 7 years for construction! I am surprised the Tories didn't propose a 5 year pause until after the next general election (in theory December 2024). Avoids the political damage of cancellation or spiralling construction costs.
 

AM9

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The easiest way of proving the necessity of HS2 would be to get all the legislation finished but pause construction until the demand is obvious to Joe Public. He can then wait 7 years for construction! I am surprised the Tories didn't propose a 5 year pause until after the next general election (in theory December 2024). Avoids the political damage of cancellation or spiralling construction costs.
Even the most avid supporters of HS2 wouldn't advocate leaving full planning permission and financial provision on the shelf for five years. For a start, the costs would escalate iaw inflation*, which the uninitiated public (and dishonest media) would scream such rubbish as "HS2 costs out of control" and "eye-watering waste of money that could have been avoided four years ago with smart timetabling". As HS2 moves forward into full scale construction, we can expect the irrational rants from the few to reach a crescendo, - no political party would deliberately give time to that.
* Economic conditions cost baselines are always underpinning the true cost of any project. There are those (some on here) who either don't know that, or intentionally ignore it to use normal inflation-based escalation figures to create the myth of some cost rises in their arguments.
 

The Planner

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"It'll help freight". Freight doesn't go on HS2. The intermodal freight is to Scotland, and the extra freight paths can't be there because- north of Lichfield- HS2 trains will be running in the existing Pendolino paths. And as they won't tilt, they won't be as fast as the existing trains, so you get fewer paths.
Possibly for only a short time, once open to Crewe (which it will likely do from day 1 with the delays) then there will be extra freight paths to Crewe as it is very rare for them not to end up in Basford Hall. As for Intermodals on the WCML only going to Scotland, try adding in Trafford Park, Lawley St, Hams Hall, Ditton and other freight to Garston etc..

Is that really the case, though? Don't forget I lived in Hemel Hempstead for years, I know what the service is like. During the day I had 5tph towards London (4 to Euston, 1 to the WLL) and a 10-minute frequency during the peak. I only failed to get a seat when London Midland, in their infinite wisdom, stuck a 4-car on a peak train. Does Hemel need more than 5tph? Is that worth £55-100bn?

Stevenage and Peterborough get excellent services, thanks to Thameslink (another expensive project with a clear aim and a clear benefit).
Are you considering that is enough now, or 20, 30 years from now?

Nuneaton? When I criticised Virgin for abandoning the Trent Valley towns, I was told nobody used them and it was for The Greater Good. There's plenty of capacity for WCML expresses to stop at Lichfield, Tamworth, Rugby and Stafford. Virgin just didn't want to.
Believe me, there isn't
 

Bald Rick

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Phase 1, the only phase guaranteed to be built (and even then...) is for HS trains to go from London to Birmingham. HS trains will go nowhere else.

I really don’t know what you’ve been drinking / smoking, but this is patently incorrect. You keep saying it, and you keep being shown why it’s wrong, but yet you keep saying it so you must be deliberately lying.

Phase 1 is Lichfield to Handsacre (near Lichfield) with a branch to Birmingham. It is primarily for traffic to Manchester, Liverpool, the North West and Scotland.

As it happens, Phase 2A, from Handsacre to Crewe, will be built and opened at the same time as Phase 1. Which means that when HS2 poems, there will be a high speed line to within around 30 miles of Manchester Piccadilly and 35 miles of Liverpool Lime Street. It’s worth noting that the first LGV in France barely got to within 20 miles of Gare de Lyon in Paris, and was nearly 200 miles from Marseille or Montpellier - some of the prime destinations that TGVs served from day one.
 
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