why all the hate for hs2?

Nasher said:
All this to make a train which will arrive in London about 10 minutes quicker. Assuming it turns up on time or isn't on strike.

We should have just bought the tech to make a maglev/bullet train from Japan. The US is building one which will hit 700kph. That's a true high speed train, even though the tech is old now. HS2 is just a regular train TBH.
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Do you have access to some alternative Wikipedia or something that's just completely wrong? Where do you come up with this stuff?
 
High speed maglevs are an awesome technology I'd like to see built here (although not if my taxes were paying for it), but they would also be incredibly expensive and much less flexible than regular high speed rail (no through-running to existing stations on normal tracks for one thing).

Also based on Japan's experience they aren't necessarily easy to build, and are far from proven technology. Small shuttles like the Shanghai maglev might be a proof of concept in some ways, but incidentally show some of the drawbacks you can end up with - the cost, power use, noise, and also the terminal being in a poor location, and doesn't have as many challenges as a proper long distance network (so isn't a full example to copy for our purposes). Am sure I read somewhere the reliability hasn't been great either.

Maybe there are good reasons that almost every country looking to build a modern high speed ground based transport system has gone with high speed rail rather than maglev, and the German maglev development industry seems to have pretty much closed down...

Any mention of stuff like hyperloop or other sorts of vacuum tube trains is just wishful thinking - a whole new level of unproven systems with massive risks and huge expenses there (the cost estimates given by proponents are almost certainly nonsense).

Regular high speed rail is definitely the sensible option.
 
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GreatAuk said:
Regular high speed rail is definitely the sensible option.
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Particularly in a country where every 1/3 mile there is a tree which hundreds of people will come out and protest the felling of let alone all the national parks that run up the middle of the country and all the towns and villages the lines need to snake round.

We are probably not that far off it just being easier and cheaper to dig one long tunnel to bury the entire line.
 
Murf said:
I assume there is some safety issue with this, as I expect the economics would be in favour of tunnelling en masse!
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There is no real safety issue as such, although I guess potentially more emergency escape infrastructure would be needed. The longest Phase 1 tunnel is the 16km Chiltern tunnel, which will have 5 ventilation & service shafts going to the surface, and emergency cross passages every 500m to allow evacuated passengers to move into the other train tunnel. I'd guess if it was tunneled the whole that they'd need more provision for getting people to the surface quickly in emergencies, possibly coupled with more access for heavy machinery at midpoint depots etc...

The main barrier is the cost of construction, as tunnels really are a lot more expensive to build. Also some other disadvantages like higher energy use (more air resistance).

For HS2 there might have been a bit less local opposition if the whole thing was tunneled, and therefore might have been easier to get political support with more certainty. Instead of endless wrangling about the route, and whether if was OK to go through a tiny bit of ancient woodland etc, they could have just got on with construction! - that's the (slightly tongue in cheek) theory at least.

In engineering terms tunnelling the whole way would have been crazy, but factoring in politics you never know!
 
The UK looks like a joke, can't do Heathrow runway, nor nuclear projects, now a rail project is getting canned... yet we want to consider ourselves an infrastructure powerhouse of Europe!? Pah! :D :D :D They're on another planet. We look pathetic to the rest of the world.

Instead of the vanity project of having the fastest trains in Europe of 400km/h, we should have stuck to 300km/h like HS1, and therefore we'd have the tried and tested experience, just needs a bit more modernising, and we'd have been able to take it to the north and scotland. In fact they should have started at Manchester and moved towards Leeds and Birmingham.

Our current fastest trains that go N/S are around 200km/h - so already 300km/h would have been an improvement.
 
Lets not forget - it cost us ~£50m to consider building a garden bridge in London. £50m!

Edit - apologies, clumsy conflating. Just highlighting how easy it is to spaf money in this country for legitimate and less legitimate projects.
 
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Puzzled said:
This is what that muppet Fabricant was proposing last night.

Don't see how it helps with capacity on the northern section
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It doesn't. The government's own report says so.


Parliament has already approved plans for building HS2 Phases One and 2a, bringing a new high speed line from London to Crewe.

Once completed, these sections of HS2 will reduce Manchester–London journey times to 91 minutes from typically 126 minutes today, based on the indicative trains service.

However, the 200 metre HS2 trains that can operate in Phase 2a will not provide more capacity into Manchester compared with the current Pendolino fleet, and there is no capacity for additional trains into the city.

Only when a new line and new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly are built can more services including both NPR and 400m HS2 services be accommodated. Journey times
between Birmingham and Manchester are currently poor compared with speeds to the capital. No improvement is possible without additional track capacity into Manchester, given the need to serve intermediate towns as well.
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