why all the hate for hs2?

[malachi]

HS2 is only there to serve and bring money into London and London only. The extra stops such as Birmingham and Manchester are just benefits to London, not the other cities. Yes, the train does go both ways but its going to bring more people into London than out of it (which is overpopulated already). Great for London as it generates more money but taking it away from others.

We have good broadband in many parts of England, 4G and 5G. The pandemic made people realise they can do their from job home instead of commuting on an expensive rail service which will become more expensive to use as time goes on. Just like our current infrastructure. Its now becoming a waste of money.

While other European countries spend money on creating jobs elsewhere in their country spreading the wealth and opportunities not only centred round their capital cities. England does the opposite and tries to bring everything into one place, why?

 

[mid_gen]

While other European countries spend money on creating jobs elsewhere in their country spreading the wealth and opportunities not only centred round their capital cities. England does the opposite and tries to bring everything into one place, why?

£££. Our class system is heavily intertwined with land ownership, that's why.

 

[adam cool dude]

I disagree, there are no other country on earth builds a new rail network out on a smaller town first, not that i know of.

If the question is....should we spend money upgrading our rail network across the country, yes....but if the question is...should the HS2 go from a different place like Manchester to Newcastle first....then no.

I don't think anyone disagrees with your statement. Obvious you upgrade rail to the major cities first but rather what a waste of tax payers money when it will benefit a small percentage whereas 200 billion spent on something countrywide would have been a million times better for the economy.

I can also bet when all the dust is settled half the building contracts were given to Tory mates anyway.

 

[Raymond Lin]

I don't think anyone disagrees with your statement. Obvious you upgrade rail to the major cities first but rather what a waste of tax payers money when it will benefit a small percentage whereas 200 billion spent on something countrywide would have been a million times better for the economy.

I can also bet when all the dust is settled half the building contracts were given to Tory mates anyway.

I don't have the answer to that question...i do wonder why it cost THAT much considering the Maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya (then Osaka), going about the same distance, next-gen tech, through more mountains, at an earthquake area on the planet, cost 1/3rd of ours...

That's probably the question i want answer to most.

 

[413x]

I don't have the answer to that question...i do wonder why it cost THAT much considering the Maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya (then Osaka), going about the same distance, next-gen tech, through more mountains, at an earthquake area on the planet, cost 1/3rd of ours...

That's probably the question i want answer to most.

I think as others have said it's probably buying land and the value of the stuff on the land.

If they just did a China and bulldozed through probably be 1/4 of the cost.

 

[chrcoluk]

I think as others have said it's probably buying land and the value of the stuff on the land.

If they just did a China and bulldozed through probably be 1/4 of the cost.

Asset owners the problem again?

Just seize, it job done.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

I think as others have said it's probably buying land and the value of the stuff on the land.

If they just did a China and bulldozed through probably be 1/4 of the cost.

Buying land, maintaining eco systems and woodland, digging tunnels to avoid bulldozing forests.

Those were the points I remembered from the B1M video.

 

[GreatAuk]

As well as the land prices & difficulty of the actual construction process I imagine the sheer amount of bureaucracy & legal overheads of responding to challenges etc will be costing a fair bit too. Each permit, legal challenge, consultation, wildlife survey, environmentalist protest tunnel etc adds cost, delay, and risk to the programme.

Plus the various contractors will be charging enough to cover the risk of all the investment they will be putting in to training & equipment etc (which will be significant, as HS2 is such a step change in investment compared to recent history) in the event that HS2 is cut back or cancelled, or they don't win as many contacts as they want to etc. Long term planning & investment in capability in the UK rail industry has always been risky due to the small and uncertain pipeline of work, with work droughts followed by gluts, and frequent scope changes / cuts during projects.

Some other countries invest in a much more planned & structured way (eg take German rail electrification which has been relatively steady compared to the UK where we did nothing for many years & then decided to electrify several routes all at the same time), and also have less bureaucratic risk for project like this (China being the top example, but I believe even other European countries manage to make life a bit easier for major infrastructure projects).

As well as the actual land prices, the population density must make it harder in the UK - more people to object at every stage of the route, more careful planning needed to avoid each little village, more roads & other infrastructure to cross etc.

Have heard some claims that the way the financing for HS2 is set up & reported is different to some other projects which makes it look more expensive, no idea if that's the case or not...

 

[Raymond Lin]

I think the bureaucracy and legal overheads in Japan is just as complicated, they LOVE their rules. You want permission for anything? you need to ask the manager and the manager asks his manager who asks his manager who asks his manager and so on. They still uses the Fax machine to do business....it's not quick, everything has more red tape than here, they prefer to do meetings in person, not on the phone or video call. The wildlife aspect isn't that much different, and they have bears and they treat their deer as messengers of gods. The landscape is certainly more challenging, they have to contend with earthquakes and how that will impact the entire line, not 1 section but all of it. One prefecture actually denied permission for construction in 2020 on part of the route.

Land prices, without comparing it inch by inch, Tokyo, like London, is not cheap...both are 2 of the most expensive places to live/rent for land cost wise.

I can only guess that is because of land cost as 90% of their route is tunneled...so less overland trains = less purchasing from owners. But as we know, tunneling is not cheap either.

 

[Penfold101]

Buying land, maintaining eco systems and woodland, digging tunnels to avoid bulldozing forests.

Those were the points I remembered from the B1M video.

Just get some of Elon Musk’s rocket powered boring machines. Job done.

 

[adam cool dude]

I think the bureaucracy and legal overheads in Japan is just as complicated, they LOVE their rules. You want permission for anything? you need to ask the manager and the manager asks his manager who asks his manager who asks his manager and so on. They still uses the Fax machine to do business....it's not quick, everything has more red tape than here, they prefer to do meetings in person, not on the phone or video call. The wildlife aspect isn't that much different, and they have bears and they treat their deer as messengers of gods. The landscape is certainly more challenging, they have to contend with earthquakes and how that will impact the entire line, not 1 section but all of it. One prefecture actually denied permission for construction in 2020 on part of the route.

Land prices, without comparing it inch by inch, Tokyo, like London, is not cheap...both are 2 of the most expensive places to live/rent for land cost wise.

I can only guess that is because of land cost as 90% of their route is tunneled...so less overland trains = less purchasing from owners. But as we know, tunneling is not cheap either.

Do Japan bureaucracy farm out contracts to their buddies to milk the tax payer? Would be interesting to see who is behind all the construction side of it.

Just googling some of the companies that were initially awarded contracts have wikipedia "controversy" sections. One got fined 10 million for their involvement in the Hatfield rail crash that killed 4 people and injured 70 others and others fined for blacklisting construction workers/contractors, one got done 60 odd million for fraud against the US government and another got done for bribery to get a gas pipe line contract in Argentina. Good to see HS2 in safe hands.

 

[Malevolence]

I wonder how many people in the higher echelons of government and HS2 planning/construction purchased land on the cheap in the knowledge that they'll make a hefty profit when it's compulsory purchased later on?

 

[adam cool dude]

I wonder how many people in the higher echelons of government and HS2 planning/construction purchased land on the cheap in the knowledge that they'll make a hefty profit when it's compulsory purchased later on?

I am sure there will be some Panorama episode on this ten years down the line.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Do Japan bureaucracy farm out contracts to their buddies to milk the tax payer? Would be interesting to see who is behind all the construction side of it.

Just googling some of the companies that were initially awarded contracts have wikipedia "controversy" sections. One got fined 10 million for their involvement in the Hatfield rail crash that killed 4 people and injured 70 others and others fined for blacklisting construction workers/contractors, one got done 60 odd million for fraud against the US government and another got done for bribery to get a gas pipe line contract in Argentina. Good to see HS2 in safe hands.

Technically JR Rail is a private company and the whole shebang is done without government subsidies! And ethical business is in their blood, I can't say there's no under the table deals done...humans are all weak after all, no matter who you are, but I don't see it on the Tory level...

 

[doodah]

A TLDR summary of the project. Damn at the London/Brum leg costing now costing more than the entire original budget.

And it gets worse with the cost per mile (definitely not an apples to apples as we are doing HS2 as one overarching project compared to sections in Europe so per unit costs are much higher. Begs the question, perhaps we should have thought about plan......in the planning stages).

 

[CaptainCaracaras]

The negativity around HS2 infuriates me. The UK is currently growing at the rate of a CITY THE SIZE OF NEWCASTLE, EVERY single year, year after year.
Just let that sink in.

It's likely been at LEAST the population of Norway and Denmark COMBINED since about 2003. It is utterly, utterly, utterly insane. If you think about the levels of infrastructure that both Norway and Denmark enjoy, it really brings into perspective just how far behind infrastructure and transport wise the UK is and has been for so many many years now, and that would just be with a static population number, let alone adding both Norway and Denmark into this tiny little island.

As a consequence, all these people, goods, and services need to be moved. Has the rail system been improved to take say an extra 10Million bodies in this time? I doubt it.

If actual adults were in charge of things, perhaps we might look at a rail link from Scotland over to Ireland like Boris was thinking. Then you would have an electrified low CO2 movement of goods solution, between both the Island of Ireland, the UK, and the wider European continent and over to Asia/China. Can you imagine the benefits to trade!

HS2 should be expanded to link up to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and give the UK a proper High Speed spine IMO. If 80% of it has to be in tunnels, who cares, get it done.
Folks don't seem to be able to see the wood for the trees, wailing and whining about infrastructure expansion, yet in the same breath welcoming with open arms anyone and their dog who happens to want to move to the UK and make it their home, whether legal or not. Well, the infrastructure to move all these people has to come from somewhere!

I remember all the same voices around the Channel Tunnel, well, we wouldn't be without it now. Who wants to go back to the noisy, stinking, sick inducing SR.N4 Hovercraft which used to make the channel journeys?!

The UK needs to buck its ideas up FAST, or face being left for dead compared to countries like Spain/Germany/France/Italy who all have train infrastructure the UK can only dream of currently.

 

[chrcoluk]

The negativity around HS2 infuriates me. The UK is currently growing at the rate of a CITY THE SIZE OF NEWCASTLE, EVERY single year, year after year.
Just let that sink in.

It's likely been at LEAST the population of Norway and Denmark COMBINED since about 2003. It is utterly, utterly, utterly insane. If you think about the levels of infrastructure that both Norway and Denmark enjoy, it really brings into perspective just how far behind infrastructure and transport wise the UK is and has been for so many many years now, and that would just be with a static population number, let alone adding both Norway and Denmark into this tiny little island.

As a consequence, all these people, goods, and services need to be moved. Has the rail system been improved to take say an extra 10Million bodies in this time? I doubt it.

If actual adults were in charge of things, perhaps we might look at a rail link from Scotland over to Ireland like Boris was thinking. Then you would have an electrified low CO2 movement of goods solution, between both the Island of Ireland, the UK, and the wider European continent and over to Asia/China. Can you imagine the benefits to trade!

HS2 should be expanded to link up to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and give the UK a proper High Speed spine IMO. If 80% of it has to be in tunnels, who cares, get it done.
Folks don't seem to be able to see the wood for the trees, wailing and whining about infrastructure expansion, yet in the same breath welcoming with open arms anyone and their dog who happens to want to move to the UK and make it their home, whether legal or not. Well, the infrastructure to move all these people has to come from somewhere!

I remember all the same voices around the Channel Tunnel, well, we wouldn't be without it now. Who wants to go back to the noisy, stinking, sick inducing SR.N4 Hovercraft which used to make the channel journeys?!

The UK needs to buck its ideas up FAST, or face being left for dead compared to countries like Spain/Germany/France/Italy who all have train infrastructure the UK can only dream of currently.

I am not against the principle of investment, if council houses were been built, investment in the NHS, as well as equal money going on rail capacity (because it barely stopping kills the capacity argument, the UK is much more than 2 cities), then maybe I would be swayed.

Also I feel this pulls more into the strongest economic areas already, instead I want to see things like extra rail links between areas that are not getting investment, including things like datacentres, as right now our economy is way too London heavy.

When GDP of locations like my city gets analysed its alarming how much of it is from things like BTL and retail, as any other industry is almost dead.

 

[Allnamestaken]

High Speed Poo

 

[ebilcake]

I'm generally pro large infrastructure project, unless they're ridiculous, like the bridge to Ireland.

I don't really get the negativity for HS2, if it was Labour project I'm sure many against it suddenly change their minds, so many opinions are politically weighted.

 

[CaptainCaracaras]

I'm generally pro large infrastructure project, unless they're ridiculous, like the bridge to Ireland.

I don't really get the negativity for HS2, if it was Labour project I'm sure many against it suddenly change their minds, so many opinions are politically weighted.

Let me ask, what makes you against a bridge to Ireland?
I personally think that a trans Ireland-UK-Europe-Asia rail link all electrified would be absolutely monumental.
Imagine all the goods taken off the roads, and the reduction of reliance on dirty shipping etc.
The ONLY question for me is whether such a bridge would pay for itself in x years or forever sustain a loss.