why all the hate for hs2?

garnett said:
Risible stuff.

Time and again, you've been given the opportunity to show how Labour, moreso than the alternative, made matters worse.

You've failed to take up that opportunity.

Instead you've just listed a load of perceived failing about Labour, all of which were supported by, if not criticised by the Tories for not going far enough.

It's amazing how long it's taking you to realise this.

Yet you try and insist you've no leaning.

There's none so blind as those that will not see. You really don't realise your bias.
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Ok, so that's it - a bunch of repeated hyperbole and embroidery - you're not actually making any points...

You're so deep in your echoing room - just try and grasp one point: It is entirely normal to critique the ruling party for the ruling party's decisions.... and ridiculous to blame the opposition for them. Can you grasp even that?

Of course I'm therefore full of criticism for the Tories at the moment and I don't level any criticism of Starmer for the Tories decisions - because, as you are failing time and again to grasp - that would be ridiculous.

I won't hold my breath, but try - really try.....
 
Another year, another realisation this is going to end badly considering how it's being run so far.

So now they have run out of attempts to massively ramp up the budget. Cutting and scaling back is the new method, first Midlands and Northern connections and now rumours of the line not going to central London - instead West London suburbs.

This project is going to be so far from its initial concept. I'm envisaging a steam powered train, that runs once a week between West Drayton and Bradford.
 
doodah said:
Another year, another realisation this is going to end badly considering how it's being run so far.

So now they have run out of attempts to massively ramp up the budget. Cutting and scaling back is the new method, first Midlands and Northern connections and now rumours of the line not going to central London - instead West London suburbs.

This project is going to be so far from its initial concept. I'm envisaging a steam powered train, that runs once a week between West Drayton and Bradford.
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And we think corruption is only a concept abroad. It’s rife here too. What a colossal waste of money.
 
This is no surprise.

For every government project you must at least double the estimate. But this is in another league.

I'm one of those who's always been against this. It should have never been started. It should have been canned long ago.

Its now gone so far parties can't scrap it. So it will just end up costing ever more money.

Soon to be over 200bln. Just incredible. Such a bad use of public money.


It ones of those where people say "in hindsight". No. This was always going to go like this. Even I didn't think it would be this bad. But you know it was going to be bad.


Such a waste.
 
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katie279 said:
Ok, so that's it - a bunch of repeated hyperbole and embroidery - you're not actually making any points...

You're so deep in your echoing room - just try and grasp one point: It is entirely normal to critique the ruling party for the ruling party's decisions.... and ridiculous to blame the opposition for them. Can you grasp even that?

Of course I'm therefore full of criticism for the Tories at the moment and I don't level any criticism of Starmer for the Tories decisions - because, as you are failing time and again to grasp - that would be ridiculous.

I won't hold my breath, but try - really try.....
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Dont bother engaging with him, hes one of those posters who thinks hes smarter than everyone in the room but cant grasp any other concept than his own perfect view or opinion. You'll end up just going around in circles.
 
413x said:
This is no surprise.

For every government project you must at least double the estimate. But this is in another league.

I'm one of those who's always been against this. It should have never been started. It should have been canned long ago.

Its now gone so far parties can't scrap it. So it will just end up costing ever more money.

Soon to be over 200bln. Just incredible. Such a bad use of public money.


It ones of those where people say "in hindsight". No. This was always going to go like this. Even I didn't think it would be this bad. But you know it was going to be bad.


Such a waste.
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Just think how much more this country could have been if the 200 billion was actually invested in really levelling up the north instead of making a line to get the people to come down south. :o
 
Rilot said:
Trying to think what else they could have spent £200b on. How about solar panels and heat-pump heating for every home in the country? That would have been sensible and would have created a huge industry to fulfil it along with jobs.
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dont forget double glazing and building of council houses to deal with the rent extortion going on.

perhaps a couple more nuclear plants as well,
 
And add that to the tens (if not hundreds) of billions wasted through incompetence and **** poor governing.

Grossly simplistic but we probably could have paid for better local upgrades in the north (trains), a more expansive levelling up program, green initiatives, and in a better position to pay more to public sector workers.
 
Thing is, there is nothing stopping us from investing in those other things, even with HS2. We could still decide to do some proper 'levelling up' including for example building a new railway in the North, or build more nuclear plants, build new council houses etc. It's either not happening because the present ways of evaluating cost/benefit (flawed as they are) don't favour those projects, or because there is no political will. All a matter of priorities, economics, and political will...

I still think going ahead with HS2 is the only option that makes sense at this point. And it has to go all the way to Euston, stopping at OOC would cause major problems for onwards travel, and reduce its value as a transport link. Stopping at Crewe in the North wouldn't be so bad imo. Many of the travel time and capacity benefits would still be realised, and maybe it could allow better integration with a future Northern High speed railway (yes yes when pigs fly etc :p).
 
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Rilot said:
Trying to think what else they could have spent £200b on. How about solar panels and heat-pump heating for every home in the country? That would have been sensible and would have created a huge industry to fulfil it along with jobs.
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That's always been what I've said. Before it was a basic solar install. But as costs have ballooned its now a battery too.

Said same for years.


It would be life changing. And if you can't have solar, its a grant for insulation, new windows, etc etc
 
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Rilot said:
Trying to think what else they could have spent £200b on. How about solar panels and heat-pump heating for every home in the country? That would have been sensible and would have created a huge industry to fulfil it along with jobs.
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The thing that kills me about the government is it really doesn't take much effort to think of something way better.

Their existing heat-pump offer, no one wants, because it's too darn involved and doesn't cover the full cost anyway. They always manage to come up with plans no one wants or just don't make any sense at all.
 
SpellowHouse said:
The thing that kills me about the government is it really doesn't take much effort to think of something way better.
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Liverpool to Leeds line, with possibility of extending down to Sheffield, Nottingham etc.....would have been a vast improvement.

That would involve 'levelling up' being something other than empty promises/outright lies though.
 
mid_gen said:
Liverpool to Leeds line, with possibility of extending down to Sheffield, Nottingham etc.....would have been a vast improvement.

That would involve 'levelling up' being something other than empty promises/outright lies though.
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The daft thing about this potential change is that they've already spent so much of the cost and got the planning/geo surveys done, and we're pretty much always going to want more and better transport links, and the rail network desperately needs additional routes, if just to allow for work to be done on the exiting ones without shutting down/disrupting the entire network (not to mention if you put in additional lines you double, or more the capacity by being able not only to run on two sets of tracks but potentially run faster trains separate from slower ones meaning you can run many more trains on the tracks).
 
mid_gen said:
Liverpool to Leeds line, with possibility of extending down to Sheffield, Nottingham etc.....would have been a vast improvement.

That would involve 'levelling up' being something other than empty promises/outright lies though.
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The problem with "levelling up" is that all the politicians suddenly realised that they will get more votes if the money goes to their constituency.
 
dave28 said:
Could they not have improved all the slow as a 50cc moped train lines first, my local train takes an hour to go 28 miles
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One of the issues with upgrading our rail network is that to do it properly you need to shut the tracks down completely (preferably in both directions), which means no rail, or you can try and do it a bit at a time which means it's far more expensive and time consuming as you might spend 8 hours a night working on it, but only really do 2-3 hours of improvements because you need to fully prep and restore the track to safe working conditions for the next day (one of the reasons they try to do a lot over Christmas as it means they have several days they can shut down for).
All of which means it's probably nearly as expensive/as expensive as building a new line to bring a really old one up to modern standards, as if your line is averaging 30mph it means either it's got a lot of stops, or the line is really out of date and may need to basically be completely redone from the ground work up. About all you save by updating the current tracks is possibly the original purchase of the land, you still need to do all the planning, legal, geological surveys (to make sure the ground is stable enough for higher speeds), groundworks etc and do all that work around the needs of the trains.

IIRC it took something like 4 years for one of the main London stations (Clapham Junction?) to get passenger lifts installed, including something like a year between them getting the shell in place and putting the lift mechanisms in, and the main reason for that would have been that they couldn't work over the tracks except when they were off, and then only for very limited amounts of time.

Hence one of the main reasons we desperately need a lot more train lines, and for them to connect together more often, as at the moment if you want to improve even some of the "mainline" tracks you don't have any way to go around the works, hence very limited working hours, trains on neighbouring tracks having to go much slower or even running trains in both directions on one bit of track at times (with all the delays and safety issues that brings with it).
 
The news that the line might not even terminate in central london is the first time I’ve really doubted the validity of HS2. Our Victorian railways need upgrading, that is abundantly clear. Not actually connecting the cities is less so. Very confusing news.
 
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