Soldato
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Powered by its own nuclear reactor?
why all the hate for hs2?
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Powered by its own nuclear reactor?
Soldato
Written by a former colleague of mine. Suggests tunnelling the whole route of HS2.
Don’t “Stop HS2”, “Tunnel HS2” instead.
It would be much cheaper to put the whole of Phase 1 (and possibly much of Phase 2) in tunnel. Bill Grose and Aleister Hellier did a study of tunnelling costs for the Infrastructure Projects Authority (published in 2019), and for these size tunnels we should expect a cost of around £25m/km. In fact for long tunnels the cost should come down, but let’s stick with that figure. For two tunnels (one for each direction) over the 140km route from London to Birmingham this would mean £7bn.
For HS2 Phase 1, the costs published in 2013 show that bridges, tunnels, viaducts and earthworks together cost £7.599bn. With the whole route in tunnel, you would also expect to save a good portion of the land acquisition cost (£2.788bn), you don’t need to divert most of the utilities and overhead power lines (£0.924bn), and there is little need for new roads, road and pedestrian bridges and new sewers (£0.912bn). The total saved could easily be £11-12bn based on the 2013 estimate, and we know the cost has gone up 2-3 fold since then.
The reason for this is that tunnelling costs have remained fairly stable over the last couple of decades, only really moving with inflation. On the other hand, the cost of building a high speed line at the surface has gone up and up, due to environmental mitigations, but also land costs going up much faster than inflation. There are also the long-term maintenance costs such as the need for fencing and security for public safety, terrorism, and to minimise theft and vandalism. Also, the need for maintenance of structures, embankments and cuttings. The maintenance cost of a tunnel is much lower and security is only needed at shaft locations.
A further benefit (if the cost savings are not enough to persuade you!) of putting the whole route in tunnel would be environmental. Virtually no noise and vibration for residents along the route. No long linear barrier cutting communities off from amenities and disturbing and hindering wildlife. No trees need to be cut down. Far fewer houses to demolish.
Don’t “Stop HS2”, “Tunnel HS2” instead.
Don’t “Stop HS2”, “Tunnel HS2” instead.
It would be much cheaper to put the whole of Phase 1 (and possibly much of Phase 2) in tunnel. Bill Grose and Aleister Hellier did a study of tunnelling costs for the Infrastructure Projects Authority (published in 2019), and for these size tunnels we should expect a cost of around £25m/km. In fact for long tunnels the cost should come down, but let’s stick with that figure. For two tunnels (one for each direction) over the 140km route from London to Birmingham this would mean £7bn.
For HS2 Phase 1, the costs published in 2013 show that bridges, tunnels, viaducts and earthworks together cost £7.599bn. With the whole route in tunnel, you would also expect to save a good portion of the land acquisition cost (£2.788bn), you don’t need to divert most of the utilities and overhead power lines (£0.924bn), and there is little need for new roads, road and pedestrian bridges and new sewers (£0.912bn). The total saved could easily be £11-12bn based on the 2013 estimate, and we know the cost has gone up 2-3 fold since then.
The reason for this is that tunnelling costs have remained fairly stable over the last couple of decades, only really moving with inflation. On the other hand, the cost of building a high speed line at the surface has gone up and up, due to environmental mitigations, but also land costs going up much faster than inflation. There are also the long-term maintenance costs such as the need for fencing and security for public safety, terrorism, and to minimise theft and vandalism. Also, the need for maintenance of structures, embankments and cuttings. The maintenance cost of a tunnel is much lower and security is only needed at shaft locations.
A further benefit (if the cost savings are not enough to persuade you!) of putting the whole route in tunnel would be environmental. Virtually no noise and vibration for residents along the route. No long linear barrier cutting communities off from amenities and disturbing and hindering wildlife. No trees need to be cut down. Far fewer houses to demolish.
Don’t “Stop HS2”, “Tunnel HS2” instead.
Fantastic idea. I am all for it if we have to have have HS2. Even with the reduced costs of tunnelling its still a project which will now give less money back in the economy than money spent. Awful ratio for infratrur spend.
Giving everybody free fibre gives you £3 back for every £1 spent and people called Corbyn a looney for even suggesting that.
Giving everybody free fibre gives you £3 back for every £1 spent and people called Corbyn a looney for even suggesting that.
Have you got a source for that? I'm genuinely curious as that's a significant return on any investment.
Soldato
Well said. If HS2 was being built on a undeveloped, empty, and flat countryside then fine, build it above ground, but the UK is far too cluttered now to build massive projects like this, this is why anything built these days snakes all over the place and can rarely go straight. Tunnels will pretty much void all those issues, and would pretty much be able to straight to the destination (depending on faults and rock layers). Only issue with tunnels is heat, especially with high speed trains.
That idea sounds much too sensible and harder to for cronies to make money from.
Just read that The Institute for Government has estimated the benefit-cost ratio is around 1.0 if it costs ~£100bn, matching what I thought I'd read a while back about that figure been 1.30 @ a cost of ~£80bn. Though it reckons there are further benefits not included in this ratio. It also states....
Just read that The Institute for Government has estimated the benefit-cost ratio is around 1.0 if it costs ~£100bn, matching what I thought I'd read a while back about that figure been 1.30 @ a cost of ~£80bn. Though it reckons there are further benefits not included in this ratio. It also states....
Call me a cynic but wouldn't this have been prudent from the start? Didn't they say, when it was costing around £55bn, that it included contingencies? I believe the Olympics went from an original budget of just shy of £2bn to nearly £10bn.
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Caporegime
UK: "Hello Mr Musk, how much for a 140 mile long tunnel wide enough for 2 tracks?"
Musk: "About $15bn"
UK: "Here's the cheque."
UK: "Hello Japan Railway Company, how much are those 370mph SCMaglev trains you're making"
JR: "Ermm... around ..."
UK: "Shut up and take my money!!"
Musk: "About $15bn"
UK: "Here's the cheque."
UK: "Hello Japan Railway Company, how much are those 370mph SCMaglev trains you're making"
JR: "Ermm... around ..."
UK: "Shut up and take my money!!"
And yet we all know that no matter how sensible an idea any of that might be, it won't happen.
It will get built the most expensive and disruptive way possible.
Cant find it again atm, it was in a paper somewhere listing all the things you could do for the same (original cost) of HS2 and their return on investment.
However, I did find this from 2014 relating to a HoC briefing which stated that the return on investment for giving the whole country superfast broandband for £1.7bn was 20 to 1.
https://www.computerweekly.com/blog...s-a-return-on-investment-10-times-that-of-HS2
Full fibre to every house would cost £33.4bn so even if it was the same total benefit as superfast broandband was it would be a 1:1 return which is still better than HS2 is now that it is less than £1 for every pound spent.
I am pretty sure the benefit to Uk business and the GDP of full fibre would be more than superfast broadband.
And there are lots of projects which offer better returns than HS2. Electrifying and upgrading the whole northern rail network was £6.95 for every pound spent from memory.
I will keep searching for the original article.
It was only £32.7Bn in 2010. It kept getting revised upwards every year thereafter.
Soldato
There would be shafts constructed at intervals, probably 10 to 15km as it would be impractical to tunnel much more than this without inspection and maintenance of the TBM. The shafts would provide access and ventilation long term and egress in an emergency. Like the channel tunnel there would also be a smaller diameter service tunnel and crossovers to allow track closures for maintenance.
The surest sign it's going to get the go-ahead...
We all know the way things go when Tory governments are faced with a choice between saving the UK from massive damage by admitting a mistake and brazening something out at catastrophic cost to their country.
We all know the way things go when Tory governments are faced with a choice between saving the UK from massive damage by admitting a mistake and brazening something out at catastrophic cost to their country.
The Guardian blaming the Tories? Surely not.
Not the report blames the Tories. I don;t think the Guardian wrote the report........
This project will be good for my wage packet and take me through to retirement, I don't care how much it costs
And therein lies the problem. Shortsightedness and everybody is out for what they can make. If your thinking this, the bigger fish creaming in billions off the back of it are also thinking it. Its a colossal waste of money but it lines peoples pockets, therefor it will go ahead.
Thanks for that, an interesting and slightly worrying read considering how badly the Labour party was slated for thinking of such a thing.
Funnily enough I remember talking about just this sort of thing nearly 40 years ago.
The idea was that we should have a SW Surrey light railway network to service what some call the SW Surrey industrial Zone
Everybody thinks of this sort of area as being posh commuterland, but it isn't. A lot of people live and a lot of industries operate in the A331 corridor from Farnham/Aldershot in the south, through Farnborough to Camberley in the north.
Public transport links are surprisingly poor and a sort of tramway would work well, but for the fact that there is nowhere to actually build one.
So back then I suggested making it an underground one.
Single bore tunnel (to keep costs down) crossovers at stations, and automated trains (My idea at the time was to controll it like a giant train set, IE by controlling power to the lines rather than controlling the trains as such so that head on collisions would be impossible)
Hey ho, wonderful what one can come up with after the eighth Pint!
Soldato
Hey ho, wonderful what one can come up with after the eighth Pint!
Definitely, lubricates the soul.