why all the hate for hs2?

if you follow the news ?
(perhaps every generation is an obscure phrase from Paul Simon so maybe pre-dates you,
equally Silicon valley one of the best tv series for a while - guess neither question will be on the citizenship test)
I would hope silicon valley wasn't on the citizenship test, I thought that show was awful, may as well have Will & Grace on it!!
 
I'm just impressed that it's speaking English this time.


Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish this thread a belated happy thirteenth anniversary.

Thirteen years. When this thread was started, we were looking forward to the 2012 Olympics. It was the year that the Costa Concordia sank, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee took place, and Whitney Houston died.

It's taken more than double the amount of time than it took to build the Channel Tunnel and it's been chopped back and the leftover scraps still aren't complete.

It's now surpassing the duration it took to build the Elizabeth line, the famously delayed Crossrail project under one of the most congested cities in the world, yet we can't run some tracks through the countryside.

Honestly it's like a comedy sketch, you couldn't script this stuff.

Still, I'm sure the brown envelopes have been bulging nicely.

I’ve spent parts of my career deployed in some of our friendly Middle Eastern countries, and each yeah I would go back and see huge difference in infrastructure.

I once got onto a motorway expecting to take the next exit just down the road, only to discover a massive flyover had been built in the 12 months since my last visit and it completely threw me off.

There’s something to be said for ‘Sultan Says’ and getting stuff done.

I agree with infrastructure projects, I want HS2 to exist and run from each corner of the country to the other at high speeds, but I just wish it didn’t take so long to do. It’s a bit like SpaceX and NASA - one gets things done quickly but with a lot of failures along the way, and the other usually gets things right first time but takes an age to do it…
 
I’ve spent parts of my career deployed in some of our friendly Middle Eastern countries, and each yeah I would go back and see huge difference in infrastructure.

I once got onto a motorway expecting to take the next exit just down the road, only to discover a massive flyover had been built in the 12 months since my last visit and it completely threw me off.

There’s something to be said for ‘Sultan Says’ and getting stuff done.
Yeah but its just desert nothing worth preserving anyhow. /s Want to build a new infrastructure project? Plough it through the already vastly distended urban sprawl that covers vast amounts of southern england but of course they won't unlike middle eastern countries they have voters who elect MP's to represent them. Build them some new houses somewhere else much easier to rebuild that than ancient woodland. Reeves and Starmer's ludicrous plan that somehow they're going to build Silicon Valley in Oxfordshire or building yet another runway is going to magically turn around the country from bust to boom is laughable in the highest order its utter desperation and clutching at straws in the finest.
 
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Sounds like a sound game on paper, no? Build infrastructure, invest in your country, positive investment, spend a pound get two back and all that. Bake in long term growth instead of short term tax cuts.

How do think China did it? Build build build. Alas, like most of Europe and the US, actually building these mega infra projects at anywhere close to initial budget and on time is virtually impossible, slowly turning it to negative investment (spend a pound, cost pound to service the debt etc).

I’d almost rather pay some firm aboard to build it, China basically, but I can understand why that’s highly controversial. Feels like it would require a once in a generation overhaul to our entire regs, laws to get it done.
 
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I think it is utterly stupid to expand Heathrow.

London is a clustered hell hole already and getting to both Heathrow and Gatwick is a nightmare for most. Imagine with another runway the M25 would be gridlocked 24/7.

It would be much more beneficial to put an extra runway in Stansted and invest in widening the M11 to accommodate the extra traffic.

Sorry, I disagree. Heathrow is the best and most viable airport to expand as it's the best connected to the rest of the UK. London is also one of the main reasons (business and tourism) people visit the UK so just because you think it's a hell hole doesn't make it so (I mean, you're from Boston ;)!)
 
Sorry, I disagree. Heathrow is the best and most viable airport to expand as it's the best connected to the rest of the UK. London is also one of the main reasons (business and tourism) people visit the UK so just because you think it's a hell hole doesn't make it so (I mean, you're from Boston ;)!)
This.

Hub airports only work when they are actually hubs and well connected to other airports.

The fact London has 4 international airports within an hour of central London is an outlier. The issue is that no one is getting a flight to Gatwick, a train into London, a train back out of London to pick up a connection at Stansted or Heathrow.

They’ll fly to another nearby hub airport like Amsterdam or Paris and change there instead.

The biggest and best hub airports all have far more capacity than Heathrow, it desperately needs more. The fact it’s been running at capacity forever tells you everything you need to know.
 
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Have they streamlined UK customs for the train tunnel access yet ? for eu tourism to the UK that should be more climate friendly than additional airline capacity.
or, a new premium tax on foreign tourist access to London tourist sites, like Macron just proposed for Mona-Lisa.
 
It’s the same it’s always been. I’ve used both quite a few times recently, not sure what there is to streamline.

You turn up, scan your ticket, scan bag, go through the passport gate, get a stamp for 90 days and get on the train.

For eurotunnel is the same except it’s a manual passport check and no bag scan but the French occasionally check you car for contraband.

At some point you’ll have to do an ESTA style biometric handover but you should only have to do that once.
 
Sorry, I disagree. Heathrow is the best and most viable airport to expand as it's the best connected to the rest of the UK. London is also one of the main reasons (business and tourism) people visit the UK so just because you think it's a hell hole doesn't make it so (I mean, you're from Boston ;)!)

Honestly I couldn't care less as all I use London for is the airports but put another runway in there without increasing capacity in the Wembley/Heathrow area and it is going to be fubar and with the M25 already a mess I don't see where the infrastructure can be put to cope with an increase in capacity.
 
Honestly I couldn't care less as all I use London for is the airports but put another runway in there without increasing capacity in the Wembley/Heathrow area and it is going to be fubar and with the M25 already a mess I don't see where the infrastructure can be put to cope with an increase in capacity.
Its about Heathrow being and maintaining its position as a global hub. Not necessarily going to put loads of strain on the M25. Quick rail links to central London is a biggie.
 
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I agree with infrastructure projects, I want HS2 to exist and run from each corner of the country to the other at high speeds, but I just wish it didn’t take so long to do. It’s a bit like SpaceX and NASA - one gets things done quickly but with a lot of failures along the way, and the other usually gets things right first time but takes an age to do it…
too many consultations and other clowns no doubt...


just get one guy and a map... draw a route.
get guy 2 to check elevation etc.
change route if needed.
prepurchase all property required.
build the damn train track.

It's really not that hard.

how much time was spent wasted looking for hedge hogs or mosquitos. oh no we might destroy a small width of habitat the world will end.

3rd world countries just get it done... we have to grease loads of palms and solicitors
 
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too many consultations and other clowns no doubt...


just get one guy and a map... draw a route.
get guy 2 to check elevation etc.
change route if needed.
prepurchase all property required.
build the damn train track.

It's really not that hard.

how much time was spent wasted looking for hedge hogs or mosquitos. oh no we might destroy a small width of habitat the world will end.

3rd world countries just get it done... we have to grease loads of palms and solicitors
Third world countries often don't give a flying fig about the rights of people, or the environment.
Nor do they usually have to run infrastructure through areas that have potentially thousands/tens of thousands of people living in houses that they've owned for decades and around existing infrastructure that's been in place for a couple of hundred years*, or the same laws regarding forcing people out of their property.
I won't mention that they also don't necessarily build to the same standard, or do the same testing for things that could cause problems....

It's amazing what you can do when you can just send the police (or private security) in to kick people out of their homes without any recourse, and oddly that's fairly close to what happened with some of our early railways and one of the reasons we have the laws we do now.

One of my friends worked on HS2 and one of the time consuming (and costly things) was that they had to do very careful ground surveys along much of the route because it passed over a lot of areas that were known to have either loose soils etc, or that were known to have things like old mine workings IIRC in some areas they were having to do those soil surveys/ground samples every few meters because they knew from previous incidents that there were loads of old tunnels etc often not far underground so you couldn't go "ah it's alright here, I can move 25 meters for the next test" when the tunnels were often only 5-10 meters wide at most and running a high speed train over one without knowing does not usually end well.
They also had to IIRC stop several times due to things like finding archaeological sites so they could be assessed, which is a real problem when you're working on land that has been inhabited and built upon/lived on continuously for a couple of thousand years or more.

*A lot of which might still be in use in the case of things like sewers, water pipes, gas and power, let alone telecoms, and even stuff that was only laid down in the last 25 years often isn't quite where it should be, let alone stuff that was put down 50+ years ago or was put in place by some local group rather than a national authority. I've mentioned it before, but my town had about 3 major power outages in a week due to construction work, they cut through the same cable in about 3 places on 3 different days on the same site.
 
too many consultations and other clowns no doubt...


just get one guy and a map... draw a route.
get guy 2 to check elevation etc.
change route if needed.
prepurchase all property required.
build the damn train track.

It's really not that hard.

how much time was spent wasted looking for hedge hogs or mosquitos. oh no we might destroy a small width of habitat the world will end.

3rd world countries just get it done... we have to grease loads of palms and solicitors

It is very hard.

The reason is that the government decided they wanted the fastest trains in Europe, which severely restricted the route the tracks could take. Had they opted for "fast" rather than "the fastest" they would have reduced the cost by billions.

Once again, it was the government making fundamentally wrong decisions. It always has been our governments problem. What they need to do is say "we have X billion and we want a railway for that, what can you give us?" instead they get too involved in taking a direction. Like aircraft carriers that can only use one aircraft. Like scrapping all our planes because we think missiles are the future. Like ..... well, so many other bad decisions.
 
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It is very hard.

The reason is that the government decided they wanted the fastest trains in Europe, which severely restricted the route the tracks could take. Had they opted for "fast" rather than "the fastest" they would have reduced the cost by billions.

Once again, it was the government making fundamentally wrong decisions. It always has been our governments problem. What they need to do is say "we have X billion and we want a railway for that, what can you give us?" instead they get too involved in taking a direction. Like aircraft carriers that can only use one aircraft. Like scrapping all our planes because we think missiles are the future. Like ..... well, so many other bad decisions.
There is little point in putting in infrastructure that is expected to last for 100+ years and using out of date versions during the initial construction. The cost to go for the current best standard is a lot lower than the cost of going for an older standard then trying to update it, which is a problem we're having with many of our lines.

Especially if you need a specific routing to get that performance, so you can't just go back in 20 years and swap out some signalling or put some new power lines up (a process that IIRC we're still doing to bring a lot of lines up from standards set in the 70's).
 
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This.

Hub airports only work when they are actually hubs and well connected to other airports.

The fact London has 4 international airports within an hour of central London is an outlier.
Don't forget the ones that are slightly outside the hour window, like Southend. It's slightly outside your hour window, but not massively so. Probably Luton too, but not sure the travel times to there

Honestly I couldn't care less as all I use London for is the airports but put another runway in there without increasing capacity in the Wembley/Heathrow area and it is going to be fubar and with the M25 already a mess I don't see where the infrastructure can be put to cope with an increase in capacity.
Why would heathrow affect specifically wembley? I would never drive/be driven to heathrow, public transport is too easy for it not to be used, and while I've been over wembley way and it's busy, I've not noticed it be significantly worse than elsewhere in London *side eyes north circular*.
 
Personally I left west of Paddington and use the Elizabeth line 3 days a week for my commute and it’s still going downhill fast. It’s embarrassing, I’ve had to take different routes twice this week alone because the whole line has seized up.

People already have shortened “west of Paddington “ to “WoP” in the local Facebook/station groups because there’s so commonly problems.

It’s already getting worse because of the stupid HS2 works at OOC, with no trains late in the evening, no trains at the weekend. Commuters “WoP” are going to go crazy if this continues until 2063 or whatever the latest projected finish date is.

Anyone involved in HS2 needs to be in jail for fraud and money laundering as far as I’m concerned.
 
Personally I left west of Paddington and use the Elizabeth line 3 days a week for my commute and it’s still going downhill fast. It’s embarrassing, I’ve had to take different routes twice this week alone because the whole line has seized up.
What do you mean by it's seized up? Too many people trying to use it? Issues with trains/tracks causing delays?
 
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There is little point in putting in infrastructure that is expected to last for 100+ years and using out of date versions during the initial construction. The cost to go for the current best standard is a lot lower than the cost of going for an older standard then trying to update it, which is a problem we're having with many of our lines.

Especially if you need a specific routing to get that performance, so you can't just go back in 20 years and swap out some signalling or put some new power lines up (a process that IIRC we're still doing to bring a lot of lines up from standards set in the 70's).

No one is talking about out of date. Just we didn't have to beat the rest of Europe here. It would have been fine had we matched the rest of Europe.
 
if you follow the news ?
(perhaps every generation is an obscure phrase from Paul Simon so maybe pre-dates you,
equally Silicon valley one of the best tv series for a while - guess neither question will be on the citizenship test)
The "...what?" is a reflection on your utterly incomprehensible "English". You seem to just type your thoughts as you think them, with no joining up, often switching thought mid-sentence and this is reflected in the absolute word-vomit you post all over the forums.
 
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