why all the hate for hs2?

For anyone saying we should spend the money on upgrading what we currently have...

- The West Coast Mainline recently finished a major (think it was £8b) upgrade which will be at full capacity by around 2025.

- There are many other major projects going on to upgrade / improve the network but these things take decades not years.

- A saving of 30 minutes per passenger per journey has HUGE economic benefits when you consider the amount of journeys per year.

- A newer line will be hugely cheaper to upgrade and maintain than the current infrastructure.

- This line will take massive amounts of pressure off the current route allowing better stopping services and more freight to run.

- HS1 was delivered on time and under budget and has been a huge success.

- Bullet trains are cool
 
I commute to London from NE Birmingham and you know what if you catch the train from Trent Valley it's already 60 mins to London and 50 mins back and you don't have to go into New St - double bonus.
 
xibinim said:
Genuine question, has it?
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I was coming from an operational point of you rather than a profit/utilisation one but i still think it has been successful - although happy to be proved wrong on this one.

The other point i didn't make is that this decision has been based on a review into spending the money on the current network. The WCML is going to hit capacity in just over 10 years - it's already packed at peak times.

The simple fact is something needs to be done and the research suggests this is the only long term strategy that will provide a solution.

Regardless of people wanting broadband in Cornwall or whatever it is (won't that be sorted by the 4G network anyway?) this doesn't make the problem go away. For the first time in 60 odd years the government is looking more than 5 years ahead and tackling the problem of an ageing network by planning for the future. It's a good thing for the country.
 
feedtheram said:
For the first time in 60 odd years the government is looking more than 5 years ahead and tackling the problem of an ageing network by planning for the future. It's a good thing for the country.
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Disclaimer, I was involved in the construction of HS1.

Yes it has to be good for the country if logically it is extended northwards in sections. London to Birmingham is only the first stage (or stop on the journey). It is the most contentious due to the countryside passed through.

I would like to see London | Birmingham | Leeds | Newcastle| Edinburgh and London | Birmingham | Manchester| Glasgow completed in the first half of this century.

Someone has to plan for the future and since the Victorians nobody has thought to expand the rail system significantly with new routes.
 
nkata said:
Someone has to plan for the future and since the Victorians nobody has thought to expand the rail system significantly with new routes.
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Indeed, so lets plan for a future with less travelling not more! Surely it can't be beyond the whit of man to find a way to live a happy, productive and fulfilling life without travelling hundreds of miles up and down the country?

Just building more transport infrastructure is the dumbest approach. We should be proactively working out how we can reduce the need for intercity travel, recognising that it's expensive, in time, money and energy.
 
clv101 said:
Indeed, so lets plan for a future with less travelling not more! Surely it can't be beyond the whit of man to find a way to live a happy, productive and fulfilling life without travelling hundreds of miles up and down the country?

Just building more transport infrastructure is the dumbest approach. We should be proactively working out how we can reduce the need for intercity travel, recognising that it's expensive, in time, money and energy.
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IMO its not possible, people travel. Fast Internet, Skype and so forth is not going to negate the need for travel. Infact even those Internet technologies only applie to some office staff and non of the other millions of workers. Let alone personal travel reasons. Be it Holliday or seeing family as wel no longer are born and die within a 20mile radius(made up figure, but it was something like that for most people) like used to be the norm.
 
Glaucus said:
IMO its not possible, people travel. Fast Internet, Skype and so forth is not going to negate the need for travel. Infact even those Internet technologies only applie to some office staff and non of the other millions of workers. Let alone personal travel reasons. Be it Holliday or seeing family as wel no longer are born and die within a 20mile radius like used to be the norm.
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Except that faster internet allows us to be competitive on a global scale, not simply an itsy bitsy scale (albeit if the entire route was built in one go, i might change my mind, but it isnt so too bad).

In fact many technologies cant be dealt with due to the pathetic nature of our connection speeds.
 
There are several Internet schemes.
Most of it can also be done privately. Just like BT is doing. There's also loads of wifi trials for easy mass broadband for lower population areas.
 
Glaucus said:
There are several Internet schemes.
Most of it can also be done privately. Just like BT is doing. There's also loads of wifi trials for easy mass broadband for lower population areas.
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BT is one of the reasons why we are so behind in this, with the monopoly they have on the lines, updating them should have been at least a decade ago.
 
StriderX said:
Doesn't detract from the point that it was only a recent development that forced them to change, but whatever, i am simply happy that we are moving even if a bit slow in upgrading.
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I find it hard to blame BT it wasn't there fault it was governments and it's still governments fault.
Every single new street should have several service pipes laid under the road which companies can rent. Meaning virgin media or others could just thread cables through and it would hardly cost anything when building a new estate and would make several times the cost back in rent.
 
Glaucus said:
I find it hard to blame BT it wasn't there fault it was governments and it's still governments fault.
Every single new street should have several service pipes laid under the road which companies can rent. Meaning virgin media or others could just thread cables through and it would hardly cost anything when building a new estate and would make several times the cost back in rent.
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I suppose that would be true, doesn't mean that BT didn't use its power to keep the status quo going.

Unless of course the politicians are mentally incapable, which i wont doubt.
 
Glaucus said:
Anyone got a graph of petrol vs train costs. I would if thought that petrol is rising faster than trains. So that 300 saving on just the petrol coast could swing the otherway in the decade it's going to take to build.
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I found this site which shows statistics up to 2009.

Check out the second graph for a comparison of train/bus/car costs.

It does say that it doesn't take into account the recent hikes in oil prices but if you consider the above-inflation rise in rail fares this month, it's doesn't take a huge leap to guess that the gap will either be the same or will have only reduced by a small amount.

I was going to do my own graph with current pricing but I'm having trouble finding the historical data for average rail fares.
 
feedtheram said:
- HS1 was delivered on time and under budget and has been a huge success.
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xibinim said:
Genuine question, has it?
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Not from usability point of view. In peak hours you will almost never find any seats on South Eastern trains from Kent to London terminals, and returning trains between 6 and 7 resemble pictures from Tokio. HS1 trains in the same time are always half empty. They are regularly slated by press from day one for prohibitive costs, taking rail track schedule away regular services and slow speeds and in the same time they are constantly slowed down/route reviewed to cover up for massive running costs. As a commuter tool, they are just too expensive and as a holiday transport feature they are just not stopping anywhere with anything worth seeing.

Panzerbjorn said:
It does say that it doesn't take into account the recent hikes in oil prices but if you consider the above-inflation rise in rail fares this month, it's doesn't take a huge leap to guess that the gap will either be the same or will have only reduced by a small amount.
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Well, below is screen shot of the current travel card prices for commuters going on 32 mile journey on HS1 line (second one is including london underground). Even before you add cost of parking around SE stations, it's not hard to see you with todays fuel prices any car owner could quite easily spend £1700 on 12,000 miles worth of fuel, pay years worth of parking or congestion charges for all 252 statistical working days and still be better off financially by not using HS1 to commute to capital.

hs2.jpg


This of course has much bigger impact. Let's say you are 19-21 and you are about to start your first job in capital as a P.A., receptionist, waiter, shop assistant, office runner, what have you. You are lucky and they offer you starting salary considerably above minimum wage - 16-17k per annum. It's not enough money to rent on London, so you'll have to stay with your parents for the moment. But the only problem is - nearly half of your monthly salary in hand will have to be handed over to South Eastern rail just to get you to work.
So.. the question is - would you waste 10 hours of your life a day between trains and work to bring back to your parents bedroom pocket money of approx £100 a week?
 
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^ I just checked the non-HS1 season ticket prices and they are pretty eye watering already!

£3,524 or £4,148 (with zones 1-6).

So it's an extra £1,000 a year to use the HS1 route —*no wonder the regular trains are packed and HS1 is half full!
 
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