That will increase even further by the end of it.
Just cancel the thing. It was a waste of time and money from the start.
why all the hate for hs2?
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Just cancel the thing. It was a waste of time and money from the start.
Soldato
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Interesting that the cost per metre of this project seems to be about double that of the Dublin port tunnel, which was built in past ten years and was built under a city.
What is the per metre cost of Crossrail?
What is the per metre cost of Crossrail?
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Based on a BBC report this morning, I believe that there are now suggestions that trains will NOT travel at high speed on half of the new line - meaning perhaps that it should be renamed SS2 (Same Speed 2).
There were also suggestions that significant donors to the Tory Party who just happen to be involved in the construction of HS2 have advised the Government that cancelling it will result in job losses
Oh, yes, and the next inspired plan is for a bridge and tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland; does paying for votes count as corruption?
There were also suggestions that significant donors to the Tory Party who just happen to be involved in the construction of HS2 have advised the Government that cancelling it will result in job losses
Oh, yes, and the next inspired plan is for a bridge and tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland; does paying for votes count as corruption?
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Soldato
We care about the people now? :'D
Soldato
The thing which bothers me -- apart from the usual widespread concerns -- is that we're on the verge of 'road trains' being feasible as almost totally automated transport. My gut instinct, as a lifelong non-driver and public transport user who's spent a lot of time and money on trains over the years, is that it's a very difficult time to be buying flagship infrastructure.
By all means improve some of the embarrassingly poor, slow cross country connections, but in another decade we might be looking at electric 'bus trains' for mass transit at affordable (rather than HS2 premium) prices. I think that will take a lot of capacity off many rail routes, because there are a lot of us out here that like the speed of the train, but struggle to justify the cost (unless you can plan three months ahead).
The west coast routes can be expensive and very crowded, especially if you have to travel on the first 'cheap' services, but I have no confidence whatsoever that HS2 will do anything to solve that. It gives us a seat at the "big boys' train set" table, but it's beginning to feel like yesterday's solution. To me anyway.
By all means improve some of the embarrassingly poor, slow cross country connections, but in another decade we might be looking at electric 'bus trains' for mass transit at affordable (rather than HS2 premium) prices. I think that will take a lot of capacity off many rail routes, because there are a lot of us out here that like the speed of the train, but struggle to justify the cost (unless you can plan three months ahead).
The west coast routes can be expensive and very crowded, especially if you have to travel on the first 'cheap' services, but I have no confidence whatsoever that HS2 will do anything to solve that. It gives us a seat at the "big boys' train set" table, but it's beginning to feel like yesterday's solution. To me anyway.
Course not I care about me primarily
The Birdlip link would knock half an hour off my journey between my new home and my old friends and change my life out of all recognition.
It would also do so for tens, even hundreds, of thousands of other people too.
The HS2 budget could pay for HUNDERDS of schemes like this!
And yet all HS2 will actually do is allow a relatively small number (Probably no more than 50,000 ) wealthy London workers to totally destroy the midlands property market for the people who actually live and work there!
Apart from "Big Business" Nobody in the Midlands/North wants HS2!
Really, they do Not!
Isn't most the cost due to buying up land though with HS2?
Soldato
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Didn't they buy up John Bishop's house, and he made about 4 million over what he paid for it? All out of the public purse. Wonderful.
Ours was.
The successful local Conservative campaign was essentially, "Fed up with the status quo? Register your discontent by returning a candidate from the party that's held the constituency since it was formed."
The town Facebook group will be entertaining.
"Thank God we played our part in that knife-edge election. Dangerous Corbyn would have built 2 HS2s."
Oh well, i'm sure Tory voters will forget all about it come election time, I guess that's the thing about giving majorities to people, they will use it against you. We'll see if the British public really is soft minded and brittle on principle if they just let this obvious betrayal pass them by, though i imagine there will be a lot of rationalising going on to accept this as 'good', even if they previously believed it wasn't purely on partisan grounds.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/05/01/public-still-oppose-hs2
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n...nt/jqswyhkdh3/ITVNewsCentral_190731_HS2_w.pdf
Personally looking forward to how the Tory propagandist papers attempt to square this circle, as Boris doesn't give a ****, hope he also does all those tax increases as well for extra lols.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/05/01/public-still-oppose-hs2
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n...nt/jqswyhkdh3/ITVNewsCentral_190731_HS2_w.pdf
Personally looking forward to how the Tory propagandist papers attempt to square this circle, as Boris doesn't give a ****, hope he also does all those tax increases as well for extra lols.
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HS2 is such a bizarre item though.
It seems set to be one of the worst ROI infrastructure projects ever conceived.
The main reason for proceeding is the claim they don't want to let down their new northern voters.
Most northern voters seem to hate HS2 and prefer linking up Northern cities.
The most likely outcome seems to be HS2 to Birmingham and then 2nd rate services past that point - ie, an uteer betrayal of the North.
It's like all the Tories want to do is save face, and to do so they can just continue the narrative about Northern voters long enough, even though it's untrue and nobody believes it.
Soldato
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Part of my not entirely ridiculous point was, if you build the ******* thing down underground, you buy up zero land, annoy no one, puts stations as often as you like, into existing infrastructure, and see how much more the cost will be.
What was the cost of Crossrail per km?
I'll see if I can find out and edit.
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Actually now i have looked.
Best you English build nothing....
Best outsource absolutely everything you do to foreign interests as I've absolutely no idea how you manage now slave labour is gone.
Has any of your governments ever build anything on time or on cost?
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from what I can tell Crossrail, even when it goes over time and budget is still only 186K per metre.
That's less than HS2.
HOW THE **** CAN YOU NOT BUILD A BLOODY RAIL LINE OVER THE GROUND FOR LESS THAN A TUNNEL BENEATH THE EARTH?
hold on The boring company are quoting a price of $10 million per mile HS2 is what 140 miles?
4 lines (2 each way i presume is what HS2 will have) is $40 million per mile, i make that $5.6 billion for the full 140 mile run or at curent exchange rates £4.3 billion give or take
what the juddering &&^£ are the uk government playing at?
phone Elon, cut him a cheque for £10 billion and promise him another £10 billion if he can complete it in 3 years
4 lines (2 each way i presume is what HS2 will have) is $40 million per mile, i make that $5.6 billion for the full 140 mile run or at curent exchange rates £4.3 billion give or take
what the juddering &&^£ are the uk government playing at?
phone Elon, cut him a cheque for £10 billion and promise him another £10 billion if he can complete it in 3 years
UK land rights are probably the biggest mine field. But at this cost surely you could improve nearly every mile of existing infrastructure or reopen old lines that are still viable. Projects that would actually benefit the areas they are in rather than letting Londoners wreck housing prices further afield.
Man of Honour
$10mil per mile would be an impressive cost, and blow all existing underground rail projects away for cost:benefit. If they can manage that figure for the spec of a rail tunnel then fair enough. They'd have to include the cost of larger tunnels (doubling the size of the tunnel for example increases costs by 3-4x), more infrastructure, stations (massive cost!), safety/service tunnels, connecting tunnels to the existing network, faster running with a heavier vehicle... If Musk and TBC are capable of doing all that, they might as well ditch hyperloop and loop, and build conventional railways for a fraction of the cost.
Depends what you mean by improve, electrification of the other 50+% of track for example would cost way more than the current HS2 budget, and for some areas have a negative cost:benefit. And that's before you account for the disruption closing existing lines would cause, one of the benefits of HS2 is not having to close large sections of track for construction.
I can get behind reversing Beeching cuts, however 8000km of track was lost to these cuts and even using a generous $17m per km would cost over £100bn, and that's before accounting for stations, buying back any land, clearing the land etc. Reopening existing lines, and electrifying viable routes needs to happen as well as HS2.
Associate
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Love trains. I say build it.
Improving existing lines typically involves closing or severely disrupting very busy commuter lines for extended periods, and those commuters then further saturate other already saturated commuter lines.
Eg. The idea of improving a stretch between Huddersfield and mirfield, which is a section of incredibly busy track between Leeds and Manchester.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news...allery/maps-reveal-finer-details-1bn-16896794
That's the plus of HS2, it frees up capacity on smaller lines as they are not sharing it with bigger trains.
That said, it would make more sense in my mind to start HS2 in leeds/Manchester and build South rather than the other way around.
Eg. The idea of improving a stretch between Huddersfield and mirfield, which is a section of incredibly busy track between Leeds and Manchester.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news...allery/maps-reveal-finer-details-1bn-16896794
That's the plus of HS2, it frees up capacity on smaller lines as they are not sharing it with bigger trains.
That said, it would make more sense in my mind to start HS2 in leeds/Manchester and build South rather than the other way around.
Soldato
I think if Boris goes ahead with HS2 its going to be a nail in his political coffin.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/transport/survey-results/daily/2020/01/21/39d16/1
Nobody I know wants HS2. According to that survey the only region that as voted in favour of it is London. Every other region is against it.
They should have started with HS3 first.
Or better still re-direct the money to increase the laying of full fibre so large amounts of people don't need to travel long distances just to sit at a desk somewhere else.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/transport/survey-results/daily/2020/01/21/39d16/1
Nobody I know wants HS2. According to that survey the only region that as voted in favour of it is London. Every other region is against it.
They should have started with HS3 first.
Or better still re-direct the money to increase the laying of full fibre so large amounts of people don't need to travel long distances just to sit at a desk somewhere else.
We would have billions of change left over after giving every building full fibre. I still can;t believe BJ is going to sign off on £150bn spend purely in order to save face over the £8bn they have spent and the 10 years pushing for it.
Party before Country every single time. Which is why a GE was a very very bad idea in order to resolve one subject - Brexit. Normally things like HS2 and who is for or against would come into play.
If you were dead against HS2 but majorly for Brexit and your local Tory MP was pro Brexit and pro HS2, who were you supposed to vote for?
Party before Country every single time. Which is why a GE was a very very bad idea in order to resolve one subject - Brexit. Normally things like HS2 and who is for or against would come into play.
If you were dead against HS2 but majorly for Brexit and your local Tory MP was pro Brexit and pro HS2, who were you supposed to vote for?