Soldato
Its not only on the WCML but would have helped the `at maximum capacity` MML as well.
why all the hate for hs2?
- Thread starter 233
- Start date
Its not only on the WCML but would have helped the `at maximum capacity` MML as well.
We can't get enough freight trains running cargo up and down the country. Once they can, it'll take dozens of lorries off the road, freeing up road capacity and reducing overall emissions as trains are far more efficient.
Soldato
Soldato
I think someone said you need to leave 10 miles (and 20 minutes) free for an express train to have a green lane. What most people dont actually realise it that once away from towns / cities - the railway is single track in either direction with limited passing loops!
Caporegime
No it will not you still need those lorries to offload at either end and take where they need to go. In fact you will end up with more clogg as you will need more lorries to keep up with the extra capacity of the trains.
Train cargo doesn't just magically deliver itself. What trains should be used for is for reducing the need for passenger cars but that will never happen as trains are massively unreliable and expensive.
Last edited:
Ok thanks for that reply, although I consider road congestion less important than housing and health problems.
I think one of the projects approved locally here, was the reopening of an old route, the money magically became available when HS2 was cancelled by Sunak. (prior it kept getting rejected for several years, and maintenance kept getting cut back also).
I think if HS2 funding wasn't causing other parts of the transportation network to rot, and we had proper funding for new social housing and healthcare, I wouldnt be so bothered, but we simply dont have the money which is why I have an issue with it.
That video I have a different take on it, here it comes. Slow down those fast trains that dont stop, and you get that same capacity increase without spending 40 billion on a special new line for them. Also instead of running a completely new route, is there a reason they cant just add an extra set of rails next to existing ones and make that fast trains only, the existing ones slow trains only? A bit like adding an extra lane to a road.
Bus and cycle lanes popping up in my city its similar type of waste. An obsession of making sure certain types of transport dont get held up in general traffic.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,645
perhaps not but i find it hard to belive it is more efficient having lorrys going all over europe. yes you still will need them to delivery the last X number of miles to depots, but surely better that then driving over the entire country. freight trains work in other countries, why not the uk?
i do agree however that passenger trains need to run better and be more affordable.
That it is cheaper for me to drive a single occupancy petrol car anywhere in the country, and a hell of a lot faster and more convenient than get public transport is depressing.
add in the wife and child and the cost of public transport vs a car is a joke.
of course.... be careful what you wish for because am sure some people would see the above and instantly think that means....... increase the cost of driving a car (but without improving and reducing the cost of public transport)
Last edited:
What makes you think that would have delivered positive benefits?
Soldato
Social housing isnt delivered the way the media portray, which is the problem.
Case point - I live in Sussex, and at Ringmer a new housing estate was built. A certain percentage was social housing *affordable* but, Lewes District Council couldnt actually afford the 25% of homes they had planned in for - the builder sells the houses at `affordable` rate, which for the area was £200,000 each (market rate was double that).
Thats what happens, the council has to buy them, unless the entire estate is built as affordable, and only large housing associations or large councils do that (another case point is Croydon has built an entire estate in Sussex for its own housing lists)
Soldato
Its back to capacity issue - sending an express down the lane needs clear tracks and time. Freight runs on a hub and spoke anyway -
Tesco's Rail Network: A Sustainable Solution for Deliveries - New Food Magazine
Tesco has announced the launch of its tenth rail service, which will transport an additional 31 million cases of goods annually across the UK.
www.newfoodmagazine.com
By doing so you're removing high speed rail from the UK, increasing longer route journey times and more people will choose to fly. We need less people flying and more people using a train.
Might impact on the existing line? Maybe there are parts that are not high speed friendly - we've got tilting trains for a reason AFAIK. I'm fairly sure that after the conservatives cancelled parts of hs2 there were articles talking about how the new trains will now have to run slower than the old trains on the sections that they were 'reusing' because, presumably cornering, so they're unable to run as fast and certainly not as fast as they could on their own line.
HS2 has definitely had funding issues - and I don't think anyone will say otherwise. But it needs doing, and it needs doing right, otherwise we'll be continuing with broken britain with a half ***** train line that fulfills *something* but not what it was meant and needed to.
Soldato
High Speed services are already being cancelled (as in all ending) on the Midlands Main Line due to no longer having clear lanes to run at 125mph.
Didn't know that. That's depressing.
Soldato
I agree with a statement made in the video you posted. By moving the bulk of the high speed stuff of ECML/MML and WCML onto HS2, that frees up capacity for slower passenger services and freight. So effectively getting 3 new railways for the price of one. But that means building all of phase 2, across to Leeds and to Manchester.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 11 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 5,501
It's going through our village. Eye sore
Yea I think the video was done before they started cutting bits. I remember Gareth being on the news pretty much saying that it's dependent on it all being built and by cutting things it's daft.
Commissario
Yup
They should really have pushed that aspect of it in the information/PR from day one, instead they pushed the "it'll speed things up very slightly for one journey" type stuff. If I had a marginally more suspicious mind I'd be wondering if there was an element of the last government that really didn't want to have it built at all and they were in charge of it.
I've said it before, many times, we need a lot more HS2's so we have a proper rail network with redundancy and many more interconnects with the ability to do work on a section of track and not have to either cancel all the trains on it for the entire duration, or have trains go through slowly during the day whilst they spend 3 hours a night working on improvements followed by 4 hours getting it ready for the trains the next day.
At the moment a lot of our rail system has in many places absolutely no redundancy, so any thing that affects a short stretch of track potentially causes the entire line to grind to a halt - the planners work very hard to avoid that sort of thing with the road network as for some reason it's understood that it's bad to have a single failure point in your transport "network".