why all the hate for hs2?

[Chuk_Chuk]

excuse me probably total naivety but............ cant they just put a few more carriages on the trains? maybe it is my memory failing me... but when i was a kid i used to go train spotting with my dad and i am sure the trains then usually had far more carriages than they do now.... so i am not convinced it is that the engines are already at their max rated pulling power.

A number of systems unrelated to the train would need to grow to cope with the increase in passengers, most of this would be on the station side. Also trains use block signals to separate them, so in certain areas you may reduce overall capacity as the trains would need to be spaced out further, due to longer trains overlapping multiple blocks. However there is only soo much juice you can squeeze.


Fun fact: From the podcast I mentioned, HS2 is the first new rail way line being built north of London in about 100 years.

 

[200sols]

I watched a decent vid showing how they do these project in Europe and how they manage to get them done in time and in budget

Really, because they also have many projects late and over budget. Lets not pretend this is a UK only problem.

 

[redeye]

i think i am right in saying the part going into the north east has been canned hasnt it? as usual then levelling up the north gets culled but the bit to london, the only place any government seems to care about gets the grease again.

Yes but not until after the work had started.

A typical UK infrastructure project... vast plans, sounds great, will actually really help the North. Gets started, huge amounts of money already spent... then suddenly out of nowhere budget doubles, tripples, time overruns, half the route gets canned... and then .. well what. What do you do? Stop it, lose all the money spent, fire the thousands of people being employed in the project and be left with nothing. Or plough on and put in the money it needs to get finished.. but is finished even worth it?

It's not like the UK is alone in this though, look at Germany, can't build an airport without taking decades and costing 3 times as much as budgeted. Their train system sounds great but if you live there it's a national joke (but still better than the UKs). What was the last thing that was completed on budget and on time? Probably the Channel Tunnel.

 

[200sols]

. What was the last thing that was completed on budget and on time? Probably the Channel Tunnel.

No, that was also late and over budget. If we pulled the plug on late or overbudget projects we would literally build nothing.

 

[bigmike20vt]

No, that was also late and over budget. If we pulled the plug on late or overbudget projects we would literally build nothing.

i would say however that time has shown that it has been a success.... its definitely made getting to the continent much easier (if you dont want to fly or you want your vehicle over there). maybe decades from now i will eat my hat and admit that HS2 was worth while after all................ but if i had to put money on it i know which way i would go.

I have only used it once, but when i did it was great and not too expensive either. (iirc the French side of the train ride however was much faster)

 

[Werewolf]

excuse me probably total naivety but............ cant they just put a few more carriages on the trains? maybe it is my memory failing me... but when i was a kid i used to go train spotting with my dad and i am sure the trains then usually had far more carriages than they do now.... so i am not convinced it is that the engines are already at their max rated pulling power.

As chukchuck says there are a lot of technical issues.

For example your typical railway station only has enough platform for between 6 and 8 carriages and no capacity to extend (or if there is, it might take several years per station to do so without shutting the line down for weeks), so if you add another say 4 carriages you then have the issue that that people cannot get on or off them directly to the station, which means you need to cram those people into the correct carriages so they can, or allow a lot more time at the station so people can walk through the train to reach doors that are on the platform.

This is already a major issue at some busy, but smaller stations where they might only have the platform for 4 carriages, and hence you'll hear announcements along the lines of "for passengers getting off at Little Dinky please ensure you are in the first four carriages". On the flip side it's also why at some of the big stations you have the confusing "platform 12 A" or similar, where they've got a long enough platform that they can have two or more trains pulled up on it.

The rail network is far more complicated to run, and far more limited in the changes you can make than most people think, in large part because it's pretty much running at maximum capacity for what it does already. One of the big things HS2 is/was meant to do was separate the faster long distance trains (which need more stopping time) from both the short run trains and the slow freight trains, and in the process probably more than doubling the capacity because if you've only got slow or fast trains on the track you can keep them running at their max speeds for longer and with shorter time intervals as you're not juggling the speeds of the fast and slow at once (you're only juggling "safe distances" for the same speed class of trains).

 

[Deep]

They've gutted this project because of the usual political BS, which caused major delays and budget overrun. I watched a decent vid showing how they do these project in Europe and how they manage to get them done in time and in budget - the TLDW; being that the government is fully committed to the project, which as I mentioned is not the case here.

I can't recall what's left of this project, but yes, most of it has been de-scoped and it's now just an extra line from Manchester to London. While it will help with capacity, the parts that have been removed would have helped connect other cities (to your point). I vaguely recall a planned route to cover Oxford, Bedford, Cambridge, etc. but who know whether that will happen and when. I also dislike this tube/underground-like structure where you have to go into central London before you can get anywhere else.

Have you got a link to the video?

 

[Nasher]

The whole thing is too London focused. What people have been wanting for decades (since they killed the local railways and replaced rail freight with lorries) is routes between towns. And it needs to be cheaper than driving otherwise what's the point.

If I want to go to the next town by train, which is only 10 miles away, I'd have to go all the way in to London and back. The bus is equally as useless.

They are never going to reduce the number of cars with projects like HS2. Or make an impact on anything really.

 

[200sols]

These days trains come in multiple unit sets, adding extra carriage is not as easy as it was back when they were loco hauled.

 

[Greebo]

The whole thing is too London focused. What people have been wanting for decades (since they killed the local railways and replaced rail freight with lorries) is routes between towns. And it needs to be cheaper than driving otherwise what's the point.

If I want to go to the next town by train, which is only 10 miles away, I'd have to go all the way in to London and back. The bus is equally as useless.

They are never going to reduce the number of cars with projects like HS2. Or make an impact on anything really.

This. I used to travel quite a bit by train for work and the amount of times it was actually quicker to get a train to London to then come up to 100 miles back North was a joke.

 

[bigmike20vt]

This. I used to travel quite a bit by train for work and the amount of times it was actually quicker to get a train to London to then come up to 100 miles back North was a joke.

similar for me, I mean it isnt going to happen as for me to get the train i would 1st have to get either a £40 taxi or an hr 15mins on the bus to get to the station, but IF i was to get the train to my folks who are near chester, whilst i could go up to peterborough and change there, its actually easier to go down to london 1st then get the train from there, up to manchester, then get another train from manchester, and then again i would rely on either a taxi or someone picking me up.....

and for that luxury journey which would take 6-8 hrs i would need to pay way WAY more than just jumping in my car and doing the journey in under 4 hrs...... i wont cost it with my EV as that may not be fair, but even in my diesel, single occupany it would cost under £60.................... add my wife and boy in and the economics then become hilarious.

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Not really, because if you don't spend sometime you're just kicking the can down the road. Can kicking just means even more expense in the future. Just look at converting all the roads to metric - should have been done in the 60s when everything else changed, but is constantly put off due to cost, yet putting it off just adds ever more costs due to more roads and more signs.

It wasnt started today in a time of 'extreme' financial stress was it? The worst thing about this project is how much it has been cut effectively rendering most of the actual benefits so watered down that people get angry about the cost.

Eh, large infrastructure projects are usually a good thing especially in harder times, they keep people employed and remember debt at the time was dirt cheap, it was the right thing to do. Also stop saying no one wants it, that just isn't true. The issue now here is cost and scaling back the project, that is what people don't want.

A lot of people just don't realise they need/want it. All they see is the cost, the fact it goes to London, and shaves a few minutes off a journey here and there, and write it off in their head as "not needed" or "waste of money".

It only takes a basic understanding of how hard it is to mix fast and slow trains to know that a proper, separate high speed rail system is needed in this country.

Most of HS2's proponents are (I suspect benefiting personally from the project, by being employed in its construction or similar, but also) seemingly fans regardless of cost.

Is there a reason why we can't use a cost:benefit ratio to determine whether this project is worth it?

It's easy to support a project when you insist on only looking at its benefits in isolation and insist people not look at the cost.

Doesn't matter now whether anyone wants it or not because the moment the Tories who've presided over this disaster are out of government they will start lambasting Labour for continuing to fund it and it will work.

Their decision to pause Euston is exactly that - increasing cost, but delaying the time that cost hits until after the next election:-

Delaying HS2 Euston could waste more billions, watchdog warns

Ministers told pressing pause on the highspeed link to central London will ramp up costs in the long term with inflationary pressures

www.telegraph.co.uk

As chukchuck says there are a lot of technical issues.

For example your typical railway station only has enough platform for between 6 and 8 carriages and no capacity to extend (or if there is, it might take several years per station to do so without shutting the line down for weeks), so if you add another say 4 carriages you then have the issue that that people cannot get on or off them directly to the station, which means you need to cram those people into the correct carriages so they can, or allow a lot more time at the station so people can walk through the train to reach doors that are on the platform.

This is already a major issue at some busy, but smaller stations where they might only have the platform for 4 carriages, and hence you'll hear announcements along the lines of "for passengers getting off at Little Dinky please ensure you are in the first four carriages". On the flip side it's also why at some of the big stations you have the confusing "platform 12 A" or similar, where they've got a long enough platform that they can have two or more trains pulled up on it.

The rail network is far more complicated to run, and far more limited in the changes you can make than most people think, in large part because it's pretty much running at maximum capacity for what it does already. One of the big things HS2 is/was meant to do was separate the faster long distance trains (which need more stopping time) from both the short run trains and the slow freight trains, and in the process probably more than doubling the capacity because if you've only got slow or fast trains on the track you can keep them running at their max speeds for longer and with shorter time intervals as you're not juggling the speeds of the fast and slow at once (you're only juggling "safe distances" for the same speed class of trains).

These technical issues were all apparent when they drew up that initial farcical construction figure that went to Parliament for a go-no-go vote.

The issue here is that there were plenty of better value projects that were just as long-sighted, but HS2 got the nod based on dodgy calcs.

 

[Mesai]

Have you got a link to the video?

I'll try find the more detailed one (it was part of a more general video), but this covers some of the key challenges when compared with how the EU approach this type of work.

 

[Deep]

I'll try find the more detailed one (it was part of a more general video), but this covers some of the key challenges when compared with how the EU approach this type of work.

Ha I actually watched this video while waiting for a reply.
It's really interesting and just a shame it's so over budget. Infrastructure in this country is dying a death and we need some cross party support and funding

 

[Mesai]

Ha I actually watched this video while waiting for a reply.
It's really interesting and just a shame it's so over budget. Infrastructure in this country is dying a death and we need some cross party support and funding

It's a massive shame, and even worse knowing that most of it is down to opposing government parties trying to sabotage each other at our expense.

 

[Deep]

It's a massive shame, and even worse knowing that most of it is down to opposing government parties trying to sabotage each other at our expense.

As a country we're becoming more and more of an embarrassment. We could be top tier but just mired in complete rubbish

 

[Lightnix]

Given how expensive it's gotten they might as well have tried to make it a full on maglev at this point. At least it would have been an impressive failure.

 

[Mr Badger]

HS2 massively over budget and increasingly unviable? It's enough to make you wonder if the original plan was realistically achievable...

Quoting myself from 4 years ago:

Anecdote incoming: I've got a mate who is really into trains and railways (spends his holidays travelling around the world to ride on them). A while back he told me that he had spoken with one of the top guys behind putting together the HS2 bid, who was apparently keen to explain that the numbers put to parliament were nothing like the actual figures he had signed off.

 

[doodah]

Huge tangent but another example of how the **** did it that high? Grenfell - nearly a quarter of a billion on the inquiry alone. Nearly half a billion the council has spent or budgeted for the response.

72 lives and hundreds of millions wasted for some cost cutting.

 

[Nasher]

As a country we're becoming more and more of an embarrassment. We could be top tier but just mired in complete rubbish

We've had maybe 2 good leaders since ww2. That's the issue.

The civil service/public sector are the ones holding the country together and the politicians are constantly try to kill it off, because they are the only ones who can tell the MPs no.