why all the hate for hs2?

BowdonUK said:
The Northern Powerhouse was supposed to be about leveling up the North of England. Not trying to drain more people to London.
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That ship sailed a long time ago. The government made a big song and dance about levelling up, but then didn't follow it up with anywhere near enough action or additional funding. They did a good job of sticking the logo on things which were already being funded using different pots of money though, like the 'smart motorway' roadworks signs on the M6...

Northern Powerhouse rail is a good example. It started out as this 'hs3' idea which would have been revolutionary in east-west train travel in the North, particularly for places like Bradford which aren't well connected. That soon got chucked by the wayside and what they're calling northern Powerhouse rail these days is some rather poorly defined upgrades to the existing routes which won't deliver anywhere near the originally promised connectivity, capacity or speed benefits.

Whatever happens to HS2 there's no way the government will actually use the money to fund HS3 or some other revolutionary 'levelling up' project, it'll just disappear.
 
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It’s always been about increasing capacity and moving the high speed services that don’t stop off the existing lines onto dedicated lines.

That allows more freight and ‘local’ trains onto the existing lines as they can pack them closer together where they are moving slower.
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
They are trying to save as much of the environment as possible which is why the cost are huge for this project.
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Indeed... Would be a lot cheaper to go straight through a lot of protected sites rather than bend the route round and dig massive tunnels...

Also considering that for every acre of nature reserve etc lost three will be created as part of the project I'm not sure how it can be claimed to have a net destructive impact.
 
*weren't

Meh. I think there are many other wastes of money, which provide no benefit to the country at all, that need resolving to ease our taxation.
 
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  1. Rail travel has taken a total hit post covid (and was in decline before as a proportion), so the idea of HS2 is nuts before you even ask the public.
  2. Then you ask the public what they want from the Birmingham/Manchester route to encourage them to use and it's 'high speed wifi', which you ignore and build a TGV like it's 1970.
  3. Then Covid means huge proportion of people start working from home/hybrid so commutes fall through the floor - and you still plough on.
  4. Now we have a massive financial black hole due to a) Labour's 2008 Banking Crisis b) Covid c) Ukraine and d) the Tory furlough scheme and even the first phase of HS2 would cover the entire country's 'black hole', but no.... let's just ramp up taxes.....

It's hard to see logic at any dimension.....
 
NVP said:
Do you mean happened under Labour or because of Labour?
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I'd say both - deregulation, castrating of the regulators, extending credit provision, capital rule changes, counter cycle activity, expanded public spending etc etc certainly sits heavily on Labour and then factors such as the US contagion would be environmental.
 
HS2 is an absolute waste of money and more like a vanity project, there is no way this thing comes in anywhere close to its budget, the whole thing should be scraped and money put into far more needy projects
 
Suddenly loads of people I know are coming around to scrapping this now, realising a lot of the current tax hit could be relieved by ditching the vanity project.
 
The capacity argument no longer makes sense and we should be encouraging remote work where possible to limit the environmental damage of commuting. The money saved would be far better spent creating a functional transport network in the north which joins up cities here and enables them to better compete with London. The way in which we have subsidised travel and infrastructure spend in the south east for years is an utter joke - an equivalent length journey from Manchester to Leeds (c£25) is £5.50 on TFL. No wonder the country only grows where all the money is spent.
 
233 said:
watching this on sky news atm and there seems to be an out and out hate campaign towards this.

couple of things i'm confused about.



why do labour seem to be against it? were they not the ones that initially introduced hs2?

why all the hate towards a project that will bring a huge benefit to the country as a whole. I can understand opposition from someone who is going to find hs2 running through their back garden but it seems that more than just people on the route that are against it.


i see it as a major infrastructure building project that is going to get the country moving create tens of thousands of jobs and from the figures i've read be a boost to the economy overall (well long term anyway)
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Tom0 said:
Some of it people thinking money could be put to better use (stuff like the olympics trollololol)

Mostly though it is NIMBYs. From what I've seen anyway.
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Glaucus said:
People hate new things, save the country side, let's all go live back in mud huts.

It's the old, I want it, but not in my back garden nonsense.
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elmarko said:
This.

Stupid NIMBY people who want all the benefits of modern society with none of the negatives.

Hopefully they will be ignored.

So far this plan is the only good idea to come out of either political parties in the last 10 years - our infrastructure needs to improve & has needed it for the last 50 years.

As it extends from London/Birmingham to the other cities (as per the plan) it will encourage businesses/people to move away from London - which will be good for the nation as a whole.

I find the fact that we have trains at the same standard as third world country's a little embarrassing.
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233 said:
hate to burst your bubble but it was a labour project, they started it before the tories came into power
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Most of the people saying HS2 opponents are just NIMBYs are people who are employed or profiting as the result of HS2. Seems even more disingenuous than what they're accusing others of.

Labour supported a £30bn proposal that offered many times its cost in terms of what it would return to the economy. The Tories have overseen that turn into a £150-200bn project that delivers a fraction of the benefits it originally promised.
 
My original post hasn’t exactly aged well in 10 years

Hs2 does indeed seem to be an absolute farce over time over budget and looking like a gross waste of money these days.

How could something that promised so much deliver to little for such an exorbitant price
 
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