Caporegime
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It is just a ploy to deflect attention of all the current corruption and tax dodging going on. Lol
why all the hate for hs2?
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It is just a ploy to deflect attention of all the current corruption and tax dodging going on. Lol
I thought that was PPE?!
yeah, people have saying this for decades. It's utterly ridiculous.
I trained from Nottingham to Liverpool a few years back. Friday afternoon. No delays. It took about 5 hours door to door. Half of which was on trains with no toilet. Over an hour of which was going from Nottingham up to Sheffield and then back down the same ****ing train track.
It's 2 hours in a car. Or at least it should be. But the M6 is always ****ed because the trains take days of your life.
Where's that HS2? East to West?
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Soldato
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Sunk cost fallacy
How is that possible? I used to regularly get from Norfolk to Liverpool on the train in 5 hours, its a direct train via Nottingham. The Nottingham to Liverpool leg is about 2.5 hours. The trains are rubbish and you do travel down the same bit of track twice in and out of Sheffield but I really can't see how it took 5 hours without delays.
Short of tunnelling under the peak district, I can't really see how you could make that journey any faster. Trains have to slow down when running through curvy valleys and up hills. Have you seen the opposition to HS2? The NIMBY population would never allow a flat, straight rail line to be ploughed through a national park, its just a complete non-starter.
They tunneled under (part of) the Peak District in the 19th century and the 20th century, if there was a bit of will behind it there's no reason we can't do it in the 21st century too! Or if the route from Manchester to Leeds and then Leeds to Sheffield was high speed then that would cut the time massively too.
That's the kind of transformational change that 'northern powerhouse rail' should have been, when it was still being called HS3 and hadn't been watered down to the homeopathic solution we're left with now.
Objections from 'environmental' campaigners would be a big issue, but again just a question of political will. Our laws give far too much power to small groups of noisy people campaigning against things that would benefit the vast majority,but that's nothing that couldn't be solved with some new laws to push a scheme through, or changed laws to raise the bar for objections a lot higher before they're allowed to slow things down.
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I think you missed the point there.
High speed trains need straight track, very straight track in fact. Have a look at the route that train line takes from Sheffield to Manchester. It’s about as straight as a pile of cooked spaghetti.
Yes there is a tunnel on the line but the rest of it curves through various valleys, cuttings, around villages etc.
For that line to be high speed, they’d essentially need to dig a tunnel from outside Sheffield to outside Manchester. There is no other way of getting rail track through there that is straight enough to enable high speed trains with all the terrain and obstacles.
That’s before factoring in the route through Manchester is incredibly slow, speeding that up will need demolishing thousands of buildings, many of which are listed.
It’s a complete non starter.
One of the reasons HS2 is so expensive is paying off all the land owners, compensating all those who lost their homes and fixing the habitat once they are done. They are also tunnelling under an area to save a load of old trees which has cost a sweet fortune.
If they just ploughed it though with little regard to anything, the cost would be a fraction of what it is.
High speed trains need straight track, very straight track in fact. Have a look at the route that train line takes from Sheffield to Manchester. It’s about as straight as a pile of cooked spaghetti.
Yes there is a tunnel on the line but the rest of it curves through various valleys, cuttings, around villages etc.
For that line to be high speed, they’d essentially need to dig a tunnel from outside Sheffield to outside Manchester. There is no other way of getting rail track through there that is straight enough to enable high speed trains with all the terrain and obstacles.
That’s before factoring in the route through Manchester is incredibly slow, speeding that up will need demolishing thousands of buildings, many of which are listed.
It’s a complete non starter.
One of the reasons HS2 is so expensive is paying off all the land owners, compensating all those who lost their homes and fixing the habitat once they are done. They are also tunnelling under an area to save a load of old trees which has cost a sweet fortune.
If they just ploughed it though with little regard to anything, the cost would be a fraction of what it is.
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So much of the cost that has to be incurred is not actually for engineering and construction- it’s paying everyone off and creating jobs.
My view was always, just bloody build the thing. Crossrail was over budget and late but it’s fantastic and the stations are amazing. We need new rail, so just build. The expense will be there in compensation and so on but just do it. So much money is wasted by London councils and local councils on nonsense which doesn’t benefit anyone.
Victorians and Japanese just got on with it all. We still use Victorian railways. Worth it.
My view was always, just bloody build the thing. Crossrail was over budget and late but it’s fantastic and the stations are amazing. We need new rail, so just build. The expense will be there in compensation and so on but just do it. So much money is wasted by London councils and local councils on nonsense which doesn’t benefit anyone.
Victorians and Japanese just got on with it all. We still use Victorian railways. Worth it.
A guy on the news yesterday, who was quite positive about the story about HS2 not going to central London, said the extra 5 miles from the West Station to Euston would cost about £15billion!?
Sort of makes the original budget of 30ish Billion for the whole thing seems ludicrously low balled
Sort of makes the original budget of 30ish Billion for the whole thing seems ludicrously low balled
Soldato
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Ah, gone are the days of the original underground. In those days they didn't have fancy tunnel boring machines, they just brought in a ton of workers with shovels who dug massive trenches for the brickies to jump in to and construct what would become the tunnels, then backfilling as they worked their way around London. If a house got in the way it just got knocked down. This is why there are so many false frontages in London - they are where houses got levelled as the underground worked it's way across the city. It's also why many of the lines follow the roads - the path with the fewest houses in the way - don't ever say they weren't considerate!!
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Having been on cross rail a few times now, it really shows up how utterly dire the existing network is. It’s great and adds a huge amount of much needed capacity to the existing network but also links up regional towns around London. They need to move onto cross rail 2-6 now very quickly.
if you have ever been on the R.E.R in Paris, you’ll soon realise how rubbish transport between towns that surround London actually is. The R.E.R. is essentially the equivalent of 5 or 6 cross rails running in all different directions and they use double deck trains, linking up all the regional towns around Paris with regular services.
It completely cuts out having to travel to some terminal station, get on a metro across the city to another terminal station to get another train massively cutting down journey times and increasing capacity though the suburbs of Paris. It’s fantastic.
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Agree with you about more crossrail and how much better it is than existing options. Overground is decent enough but…
I just think it’s irresponsible rhetoric to stir people up against HS2 due to cost- we can spend more on nhs and benefits if we don’t get it. Big whoop. We need better trains and infrastructure, build that first instead of just flushing it down the great benefit/nhs black hole.
I just think it’s irresponsible rhetoric to stir people up against HS2 due to cost- we can spend more on nhs and benefits if we don’t get it. Big whoop. We need better trains and infrastructure, build that first instead of just flushing it down the great benefit/nhs black hole.
Caporegime
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Inflation mate
Caporegime
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I think we should all go back to driving cars as clearly the rail system is rubbish
Soldato
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It's a question of timing. The government claims it has no money yet apparently can afford to spend billions on a railway? To me, there are other priorities. Now is not the time to spend that sort of money on a train track.
That’s a very odd way of looking at it.
The decision was made nearly a decade ago to build it and the borrowing was subsequently put aside.
Cancelling it now will not save a material amount of money, most of the expense has already been incurred.
Likewise there is a clear difference between borrowing to build infrastructure that is going to be in place for decades if not 100 years and for day to day living expenses which is what you are suggesting.
We don’t have the cash for this, it’s coming from borrowing and that is absolutely fine. Borrowing to invest is exactly what we should be doing and should have been doing the whole time at a much greater rate than we have done.
Borrowing to cover day to day costs is not a viable solution in the long term.
The rail system is rubbish for so many.
Its expensive. That's the worst part. It's sometimes cheaper to get the train as a single passenger. But soon as you add a second person.. Drive.
Its been years since ive used a train because its just not financially viable.
I obviously see the appeal when you're commuting busy city to busy city but really, you still need to be shortish distance from origin to station and especially station to destination.
Soon as you have to drive? For me it's car all the way.
Even to London it was cheaper to drive to the furthest out underground than get the train.
To the airport I get the national express bus. Sure its slower. But it's comfier, nicer, cleaner and 10x cheaper. No exaggeration. My last but trip was 10x cheaper to Gatwick from Cardiff!
I see the idea of a fleet of AI electric cars as more viable. Essentially like uber. But better. Obviously its a long way off and still might be more expensive than ownership. But seems more viable mid term
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Deleted member 68110
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Deleted member 68110
Aw, diddums. I see you're still smarting from when you insisted we mustn't worry about whether things are true or not when we debate them, and I dared to try and get you to realise why that was a bit silly...
What NIMBY opposition have you seen that's got in the way of HS2?
From what I've seen the opposition has mainly been about a £30bn railway that's now set to cost 5 times that without connecting half the destinations it was supposed to connect.
"Nimby opposition" just looks like a lazy and fallacious means of dismissing criticism.
Have you actually been somewhere where HS2 is being built?
The local populations have largely given up campaigning against it now it’s actually being built. In the run up there was huge local opposition to almost every meter of track being built.
Various sections of it were challenged several times each via the court system by local campaigners.
I don’t know what else to say other than ask if you have a short memory?
The local populations have largely given up campaigning against it now it’s actually being built. In the run up there was huge local opposition to almost every meter of track being built.
Various sections of it were challenged several times each via the court system by local campaigners.
I don’t know what else to say other than ask if you have a short memory?