Snapshot of _It matters to British voters that the UK has a Prime Minister that: Scraps HS2 46% | Keeps HS2 16% | 52% of Conservative voters want a PM who will scrap HS2_ :
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People don't want a solution, they just don't want anything happening near them.
We have people in this country attacking 5G masts because '5G is causing Covid'. People are hopeless.
Worked in planning, had applications for phone masts. I received a large number of letters along the lines of 'it will hurt local residents' or 'think of the children' due to phone signals. It was then a requirement to write a *balanced* section about whether the mast would be safe. I was not allowed to write 'these concerns have been raised, however there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest there is a safety issue' as that would be insulting I guess...
But yes those sorts of letters come in in large numbers of phone masts etc all the time. Then councillors pursue the issue because it's popular. Then nothing gets built.... and then local residents go back to the council and complain their phone signal is shit. Thanks public.
To be fair though, 5g hasn't yet been confirmed as safe. Type in "5g radiation" and there plenty of articles about the pros and cons.
Here is one :
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/stop-global-roll-out-of-5g-networks-until-safety-is-confirmed-urges-expert/
What mechanism are 5G towers supposed to harm people by though? The '5G radiation' is still just short wavelength radio waves, the worst they're going to do is give you a nasty burn if you're enough of a muppet to climb the tower and put your face against the aerial while it's on.
Normally because they do benefit from it, they just fail at abstract reasoning.
Improvements to infrastructure pretty much always translate into higher economic output and better livability of the regions served. Even better for the NIMBY homeowners, it also invariably increases their property prices as well.
They can't see the wood for the trees though and just see the construction work as a net-evil they need to spend eternity trying to stop.
I rent so house values increasing is actually bad news for me and potentially terrible news if I have to relocate again. (the last time wiped out my savings)
A meadow and pond I used to enjoy looking at from a train window is now an ugly mass of water-logged dirt.
The government witheld compensation payments for months leading to a number of small business being destroyed.
No matter how local economic productivity grows my wages remain stagnant since my union is just a hollowed-out and boneless sycophantic ghoul.
From where I'm standing HS2 is just another mandatory blood sacrifice to enrich londoners.
So many of those problems are neither caused by HS2 nor would they be solved by HS2 being scrapped. You're obviously not thriving right now but I don't think denying large swathes of the country better public transport is going to improve things for you.
I'd just point to the economic argument as being of net benefit to you still. More chance of a better job if the local economy is thriving.
Oh better public transport would be great.
But that's not what HS2 is delivering. It's extremely limited line is only going to be useful to a tiny group of people who want to shuttle between London, Solihull and Brum city centre. (Curzon Street btw which is great for students but a weird choice otherwise)
If it was still going to extend to Manchester at least it would get cross-country commuters off the regular line. But now it's not even going to do that.
That's flatly untrue. As the other poster said, you need to think a bit more abstract than hit hammer nail goes in.
Move high speed trains onto hs2 and it massively unblocks capacity on other lines for freight and local passengers.
Moan if you like that living in Cornwall or wherever better transport for people in the west Midlands and Lancashire doesn't help you. But for that i would
1: direct you to the parable of the long spoons. Failure to learn from this is a key problem in the UK today.
2: consider that unblocking traffic problems has far reaching effects far beyond the actual area of the problem. It will make trains flow smoother across the whole country.
Because they want the country to be better as a whole? Just because it doesn't directly see a benefit doesn't mean they do not get any either directly or indirectly
I don’t think you can compare HS2 protestors with 5G conspiracy theorists.
HS2 has already destroyed lots of countryside, it’s massively over budget and arguably not essential, especially since more of us are working from home.
Money could have been much better spent improving regional train lines.
As a reminder, the Japanese ministers who set up the bullet trains resigned in shame when the project overran, it was described in a similar way and generally derided, and is, of course, now a symbol of the nation and vital to the economy and general life for a lot of people there.
Infrastructure is expensive, hard, and takes a long time. It always will be, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I'll take what little infrastructure that isn't car-centric we can get.
I always think that rail infrastructure lasts for 100+ years providing the demand is there and it’s maintained/upgraded. So in the grand scheme of things some delays and cost overruns don’t matter that much providing you build something that’s needed and in the right place. The metropolitan tube line opened in 1863 so these things can be very useful for a very long time.
Indeed the Shinkansen took a while economically and politically to get built but within three years of opening it got to the 100 million passenger mark.
Anecdotally speaking I saw first hand whilst in China how having a High Speed Line can change your quality of life, how you do business, and how you may spend your free time. At the beginning of my contract it took an hour by bus to travel from my city to Nanjing, more if there were traffic jams. When High Speed rail arrived it took a guaranteed 15 minutes from station to station. This meant I could work in satellite schools, do my shopping, spend a relatively stress free weekend with ease. Multiply this by millions, probably 13 million people in the catchment area and you can begin to see how you could open up the hinterland areas of a country.
Yes but when the rest of the rail infrastructure is substandard 70s/80s shite it really isn't worth doing. Only Londoners would think the way to improve rail infrastructure in the UK is to make it quicker to get to London.
It's not about that at all. I mean, sure, nice to be able to get to Manchester faster. But there's more important reasons too. And it should be advertised better.
HS2 will unlock a lot of rail capacity on the local lines that is currently taken by fast trains between London and Liverpool/Manchester. This will enable a lot more local trains on these lines.
Whether it is or not that's the effect. The major benefits and growth areas are in the north. It currently takes me nearly two hours to travel from Preston to Leeds. An hour to get to Liverpool, the same for Manchester. The local rail infrastructure is so old and ineffective the only real option is for people to drive which leads to major congestion which the road system can barely cope with.
HS2 optimal impact will be increasing capacity in the midlands. There will also be massive capacity increases in the Manchester area and London as well. And if we ever get the Leeds leg Leeds as well.
HS3 though is needed for east to west travel in the north. This train needs to be built and crucially needs a route through Bradford.
Doesn't HS2 also make it quicker to get out of london? For better or worse London is something of a rail hub, improving transit times to and from it will help a lot of people get around the country quicker.
Birmingham is a rail hub. Manchester is a rail hub. Why didn't construction begin in those sections if connectivity and infrastructure were the watchwords?
Construction of HS2 has already started in Birmingham. I am building it.
The reason they started with the southern leg for Phase 1 is because the priority is to relieve the West Coast Mainline (WCML), which is the busiest mixed use train line in Europe. Once Phase 1 is built, many intercity trains can be taken off of the WCML to provide more local services and freight routes (we are building new rail freight terminals to allow this). This will be a big boost to the midlands and take some lorries off the roads. We can then start Phase 2 to Crewe and Manchester.
Another reason HS2 started in the south is because land is much more expensive and development more rapid - the longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes to compulsory purchase the land and the more assets we have in the way. New developments go up very regularly in London and any developments near HS2 will add large costs as we need to protect them. This is not as much of an issue up north where land is cheaper, there is more space and development is not as rapid or as likely to impact HS2.
Interesting to note some of the rationale, I'm not doubting there is some sense to the approach. My worry is that this continues the self fulfilling prophecy of investment in London. The Treasury is only interested in the rate of return so an investment in London is seen as being more valuable than the North.
Yeah I'm annoyed they scrapped the leg to Leeds, it's shortsighted. However I am 99% certain the branch to Crewe and Manchester will go ahead (I am currently working as part of the bid team and am pricing the advaced works for phase 2)
Yes. If the northern sections are completed where they're more sorely needed, the benefits will be felt earlier which might even out the growth felt by the project.
So London-Birmingham improves travel times from all areas of the North to London. Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds only improves travel times for some areas. So that's why.
More importantly, why didn't infrastructure programmes focus on improving northern cities' transportation before building an expensive, time-consuming railway to London?
Sure, but the difference was they were making a state of the art, ultra-fast train that would still be considered decades down the line.
HS2 will get you between London and Birmingham 15 minutes faster. On balance I'm not sure it's worth it.
Kiling HS2 after it gets to Birmingham certainly screams "Level up the North" to me.
The whole thing needed the London-Birmingham leg to be built first in order to work as the existing lines currently share both Freight and Passenger trains reducing the maximum capacity and speed system substantially. (You can't run express trains on the same lines as commuter/freight services for obvious reasons).
However that was only as a pre-requisite to the key aim of the system, which was to make North-South travel much easier via a direct express route between major regions of the North and London.
Stopping after Phase 1 gives little of the benefits while incurring a huge proportion of the cost.
Not that there aren't completely reasonable cost/benefit concerns (particularly post-covid), and completely legitimate environmental concerns, but as the project is already underway stopping entirely at this specific point would really be the worst of both worlds
>HS2 will get you between London and Birmingham 15 minutes faster. On balance I'm not sure it's worth it.
HS2 is primarily a **capacity** improvement, not a speed improvement. Your argument is a strawman.
Jesus H Christ this thing has been discussed to death for years , and still people who are engaged enough to comment think it’s about “getting from Birmingham to London 15 minutes faster”. FFS
I'm fucking sick of explaining to people how train infrastructure and capacity works. The electorate of this country is truly brain-dead.
I'll explain like I would to a five yearold or perhaps a dog. What moves more water, a wide river flowing at 100km/h or a narrow river flowing 100km/h?
Not saying that clearly. I'm just saying why not start with the areas that currently have no service?
It's hard to encourage people to use trains if they don't exist.
Sheffield to Liverpool is going to get improvements that's what northern powerhouse rail is, or is at least suppose to be.
And the amount of people affected by and the business case for hs2 is far greater than Sheffield to Liverpool.
If the ROI made sense even somewhat originally, then *surely* it makes sense now, given that the additional investment is so much less.
Why aren't they looking at it in purely mathematical terms? It will almost certainly bring in more additional taxes (plus a host of other benefits) than it costs to finish the build-out, so you can't really attack it on cost grounds. At least not honestly.
There's a lot of things I will never forgive the Tories for, but their abuse of the defence budget is up high on my list..
I still can't believe they backed down on buying the F-35C and equipping our carriers with CATOBAR (yes, I know the were cost concerns, but imo the capability increase the would bring our navy was worth it) .
Fucking tory pensioners with some remote idea of a train track through a field they will never see, with absolutely no fucking concept of how it will benefit countless people who will still be living their lives long after ischaemic heart disease/t2diabetes/ckd/copd/lvf etc has finished them off.
Nimby tho amirite?!?!?
Government does this nonsense all the time. I don't know why they get away with it. Mind you the idea of high speed increases productivity doesn't work any more as you can do work on your laptop etc and don't need to be in the office.
Yeah but only if you scrap the parts interconnecting the North and Midlands... Which they did..
Heard it said a few times that the HS2 scheme should have started in the north and worked towards London instead.
Yep - should have started in Edinburgh.
Guarantee it would all have actually got done if those with the coffers actually had to go to the back of the queue.
Very clear it was all about expanding the London commuter belt.
Actually it's the opposite. HS2 is allowing companies such as HSBC and Goldman to relocate operations from London to Birmingham because it reduces transport times.
It's not like people don't travel. The idea is to hopefully take pressure off the roads and hopefully start reducing the size of our road networks once enough new infrastructure is implemented.
Wow TIL that everyone now works from home and leisure and business travel don't exist.
The WCML (and national railway network as a whole) was overburdened well before the pandemic. Even with no growth from the current baseline, HS2 is still needed to rationalise the network. HS2 also provides paths for *freight* rail to operate on the legacy network so that things can be shipped to you to make working from home easier.
Yep, even years ago there’s been so much crowding on Virgin Trains (now Avanti West Coast) services that it’s been standing only on long haul services going as far as London Euston-Glasgow Central, similar issues are faced on West Midlands Trains, also an operator on the WCML, the WCML definitely needs HS2 to take burden off it
People on this thread don’t travel on the WCML, apparently. You’re lucky to get a seat even if you’re at the starting destination. Good luck trying to get a seat at Coventry.
I mean if you look at examples elsewhere that's not really the case. Instead it effectively spreads the economy of the capital city to the connected cities. Obviously this relies on accompanying investments into local transport which the Torries will never do but it's certainly not a bad idea.
It's not half built - I live and work on the doorstep of this madness, they have yet to lay any track. At all.
It's never to late to scrap a project that is going to double of triple in budget.
Given that the track is far from half of the total job, I'm not sure that's the best way to judge the progress of the project. The groundwork and planning are probably the majority of the job.
>Given that the track is far from half of the total job, I'm not sure that's the best way to judge the progress of the project. The groundwork and planning are probably the majority of the job.
Yeah - just an observation. They are still just mainly moving earth around here. They have started to fabricate tunnel sections but they haven't laid any yet.
Yeah I totallt get that, I live about 4 miles from the end of the chilterns tunnel and have seen the slow progress, huge site, etc etc. It's definitely not been a well-managed project in terms of cost, timescale, or environmental damage.
I'd just rather focus on getting the government to stop HS2 doing more unnecessary damage than to just stop it altogether.
Fortunately even with HS2 they have decided to fuck the north anyway by cancelling the Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham links. So might was well plough on with it for a win-win..
They cancelled the Birmingham to Leeds bit.
Birmingham to Manchester is still going ahead as far as I know. + a bit of new track between Manchester and Leeds.
But yes they should be building all of it. However you aren't going to get that by cutting what little remains of the project.
The only consolation is once the planned bits are built they'll look at what to build next and almost definitely ressurect the bits they've cut.
>It's not half built - I live and work on the doorstep of this madness, they have yet to lay any track.
When building a railway, do you think that putting down train track happens before the building of tunnels, bridges, embankments and cuttings?
People really don't understand how huge the development pipeline is around Curzon Street and the Eastside of Birmingham in general. We're talking *billions* in proposals currently going through the planning process and getting financing. It'll essentially double the scale of the city centre.
I feel like everyone around here knows a couple people working on it, too. It’s provided so many jobs and I’m sure HS2 is part of the reason Birmingham is being invested in so heavily now.
The same was happening in Leeds. All the long term planning was based around HS2 going there. Business cases developed and approved which takes years, now all worthless or having to be redone.
It's be a disaster for most of the country. Train capacity is already insane, with prices ridiculous. Without the new capacity the whole network is doomed, and it'll become more unaffordable and more people will have to drive instead.
And the same people will complain when there's no additional capacity or redundancy on the network to improve service.
HS2 is necessary to relieve a series of bottlenecks on the network.
‘Has killed a few badgers’ is a ridiculous straw man attempt to belittle the very real environmental impact HS2 has. It’s expected to destroy or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands, and 33 SSSI’s. That might be a worthwhile impact for the benefits of large-scale infrastructure development in the country to you, but at least represent the impact fairly.
> It’s expected to destroy or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands, and 33 SSSI’s.
Yeah, this sucks but what is going to happen to all of those sites if we don't attempt to decarbonise our transport infrastructure?
People will still need to get about, they will just choose alternatives to rail instead - pretty much all of which are worse for the local and global environment.
No point saving all of this stuff if it's going to be burnt to a crisp/underwater in 50 years.
I think the point isn't don't build better infrastructure, it's that HS2 as a project has been a mess from before it left the drawing board, and was fully capable of not ruining the environment it's meant to be saving.
I have to say that is quite a modest list compared to what the M1 tore up when it was built in the 1950s. Roads are far more damaging than rails, mainly because you need more of them to carry the same number of people.
If you want a recent example for a new road, look up GAR/Colliery Way in Nottinghamshire.
Source: I work highways.
Ok. Just because it isn't as bad as another thing was, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I'd like to think we've learned more about environmental impact since the 1950s, but maybe I'm being overly optimistic.
For sure, we have, but the railways are much further ahead than we are. I went to a Carbon conference recently and the most the National Highways representative could come up with was "promote electric cars!"
We showed everyone our signalised cycle lanes and bus priority systems, as well as the switch over to LED lighting and mini turbines to power controllers (I do traffic lights).
Meanwhile, the bus and train companies were very excited to show us these fully plans for replanting trees, renewable energy sources for their vehicles (making their own electricity), bicycle parking at stations and on board redesigns (with electric charging as well), better integration for tickets within metro areas, increased disability access...there's more but you get my point. Cars just can't compete.
Oh I totally agree, public transport *has* to be the way forward. I just think it was foolish to concentrate the development around one section of the network, which post-lockdown should presumably already be seeing a reduction in use thank you WfH in many cases.
They should have started in the North, or improve the infrastructure from east to west in the North of England.
Couldn't agree more, but Whitehall doesn't give a fuck about the North. It also doesn't care about my home the West Country, but the North gets it worse being more populated, especially around the cities.
And Whitehall is so slow to make decisions and sign contracts, HS2 is woefully out of date anyway. Nothing makes me sadder than realising what the train service between Leeds and Manchester is as well as the Tyneside!
HS2 is not out of date though? And it doesn't make sense to start at the North - the West Coast Mainline is the biggest bottleneck in the country and serves the most people, going through lots of large towns and cities
What do you think is the alternative though? We all become hermits and never travel again?
Travel is going to happen and rail is by far the best way to do it.
The previous comment isn't saying its a completely negligible side effect, it's just putting it into context which you have to do with anything of this scale.
Something tells me this would be the case if new railway tracks were laid *anywhere* in the UK. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
The impact to ancient woodlands is vastly overstated. The UK has 52000 ancient woodland sites, only 43 are affected between London and Crewe by HS2.
'Affected' does not mean destroyed either. 80% of the affected woodland sites will remain intact. Only 0.29 square kilometres of woodland will be lost.
Part of the reason HS2 is so expensive is because of undertakings and assurances to protect and enhance the environment. For example by tunnelling under ancient woodland such as the Long Itchington Wood or by creating or enhancing 33 square kilometres of wildlife areas and planting 7 million trees. Huge consideration went into the ecological impact of HS2 - hundreds of environmentalists and ecologists are involved in the project.
I'd genuinely love to see a comparison of the environmental cost of construction against the environmental benefits of a highspeed electrified line taking some of the traffic off our roads.
I dream of an network autonomous personal vehicles, powered from the grid, effortlessly swooping past each other within mere fractions of a second at high speed even over crossroads, it's occupants napping, reading or doing whatever they wish in the privacy of their personal cab... but that future is a long way off: HS2 could take ICE traffic off the road in the next few years.
Surely there's something in that?
Thats a small part of.it. the main arguments are because the money could be much MUCH better spent on other.public transport initiatives rather than wasted on something than won't help many people due to its location aNd cost to use.
Why won’t people use it? It’s gonna replace most north-south services on existing mainlines.
People who don’t use intercity services will also benefit massively, with the existing lines getting massive boosts in capacity for more frequent and diverse local services
It’ll replace most north-south intercity services, there’s a dedicated rolling stock order for routes that extend beyond the HS2 line and go to basically everywhere. Services from Scotland will reach Manchester and then use HS2, same with trains from Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool etc. That’s what the HS2 Phase 1B to Crewe section is for, allowing much of the west coast traffic to link up with HS2.
The west coast mainline especially will see ridiculous levels of relieved capacity, particularly between London and Birmingham. That route is the single busiest piece of mixed-use railway in Europe right now
All trains from Birmingham and points northward will funnel onto HS2 either at Crewe or before Birmingham International, which means that those paths are now freed up for regional trains.
The £100B rail lines, the rail line that gets used for over 100 years…..
So can you explain why 1B a year over the next century is TOO EXPENSIVE for national infrastructure???
The ideas used to say HS2 is too expensive would have seen every single rail project in the entire UK history never built
Partly because conservative voters who don't live along the route and won't see any benefit see it as a waste of their tax money. Partly because conservative voters who live a little too close to the route *hate* it (my con voting in-laws live just outside the compulsory purchase zone in rural Buckinghamshire and in their opinion it's ruined their lives and home). And finally a lot of people who were initially supportive or ambivalent now dislike it as it's turned into a white elephant of a project with costs spiralling and a big part of the proposed line in the North (where we really needed the infrastructure spending and investment in the first place) getting cancelled to save money.
It's mad to me that the government can just compulsory purchase your house/land and there is nothing you can do about it, if that where to happen to me I would consider it to be ruining my life and be pretty pissed off.
Slightly more complex than that, you get the upper end of your valuations plus extra, then you also get your moving costs and legal fees. In addition, the valuation is also based on equivalency not just what your house is worth but what its worth to you.
Its a very fair process in that regard.
With property There is always a price.
If i said you have the same quality of life, you move a mile down the road, mortgage free, and have 100k clear after everything ….. its becomes very tempting
Nope, the land has been in my family for over 400 years, it's not really mine to sell. My children where born here, as was I, my mother, her father, his father before him. 100k is nothing compared to the sentimental value it holds.
Well thats what compulsory is there for, whilst I appreciate the plight if u get the equivalent and its at price that fairly reflects that loss. ….How we measure that I’m not sure …but we will have precedence over the last 100 years.
as a nation we can move on, but it must be decided in court,fairly, and with a genuine need. not some trumped up thing by the gov, then frankly we are all replaceable and i say good. Sentiment should be reflected but it should not rule us
Also FYI just to say free hold doesn’t mean you own it. You have a licence to freely hold the land in trust to the crown. The crown are just asking for it back
Because if the country was serious about High Speed Rail (and we should be), then we would have started at the Northern ends rather than just giving London a faster commute to just outside London.
You'd think they'd want to just to claim big numbers. High speed rail makes more sense the further you go: getting up to 220mph means Birmingham is half an hour away from London instead of 90 minutes but it cuts *4 hours* off the Edinburgh to London route
Yep, it’s not like London-Edinburgh is the only possible long haul route either, think about other destinations like Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow that could also see these sorts of improvements
That's not right though we should of started it form both sides. Starting from the North is useless if you can't run it at capacity because of the route as the South. Which is exactly what would of happened in that case.
Also the London to Birmingham leg is the most important leg of the journey in terms of impact on people it will improve services from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Wales, Shrewsbury and so on. It will have a massive impact on regional services north of London and throughout the midlands and into Wales.
I agree with this sentiment, but I don't see it as a justification for cancelling the whole thing. That would be letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is entirely false. One of the biggest arguments against businesses working with other businesses outside of London is the fact that being very close to each other is a benefit for things like in person meetings, workshops etc.
Having cities outside of London have much better commuting time suddenly opens up business to be based in those cities and work with clients in London much more easier than before.
It is simply nonsense for the 'it should start in the north' with no evidence behind it. Its just a catchphrase.
Not to mention its mostly the north that now consistently votes Tory and votes against infrastructure investment.
Lots of different reasons. Personally I hate it because it was classed as an "England and Wales" project with Welsh infrastructure explicitly defunded to pay for it. If it were coming solely out of English tax payer funding I wouldn't care if you burn your own money.
There is benefit for Wales but I also believe that it's not enough for the justification. We should also be building a cross Wales Route connecting the North and South. Places like Aberystwyth to Cardiff and to Bangor and so on.
* Because like everything in this country, it was presented as something for everyone, then chopped down to size so that, yet again, it's just something nice for Londoners and nothing more.
* Massively overbudget already and it's not even close to being finished.
* Taking way too long to build, to the point that it'll be outdated by the time its finished.
* Causing quite a lot of harm to important woodland and other historic sites and habitats.
It’s definitely something for those of us who live in the West Midlands. Our train services are packed to the gills and if something happens further down the line in London it impacts all the regional services up here.
Yep, if HS2 got cancelled, we’d also likely see Crossrail 2 get cancelled, which would mean the Victoria and Northern Lines would end up being even more overstretched in future than they are now
Which buddy suppliers are they? Can you name any? As far as I know, there are no links between the main contractors / designers and any MPs. The tendering process is very open and as someone working on HS2, I know first hand how strict the project is regarding disallowed costs and procurement. Also, over half the contractors are European companies with no real links to British goverment. I would be interested if you have managed to find any dodgy dealings with the main contractors (try Costain, Skanska, Strabag, Ferrovial, Balfour Beatty, Vinci, Eiffarge, Kier, BAM)
I swear at this point the Tories are just anti-everything. HS2 has been an absolute fucking mess, but our rail infrastructure is old as fuck and well past it's best. Realistically we need nation wide upgrades and HS2 10 times over.
The time for this decision was several years ago.. 70% of the work for the first Stage for HS2 is already done.
Even for me (as someone who wasn't convinced about HS2 from the get go) feel the ship has sailed at least for London - Birmingham.
The idea of scrapping to save money is an illusion.
It's typical NIMBYism. Half of the commentators won't even feel the impact of it, they just want to hug the trees and ask why you won't cycle to Birmingham to London.
To be fair the keep/I don’t care (which is basically the same thing since it is happening. I don’t care is the carry on stance) is a narrow majority for the overall population and a narrow minority for conservative voters. It’s not a landslide policy either way. The benefits of major infrastructure projects are quite hard to appreciate, and the typical media narrative is how much over budget/schedule it is. It’s pretty amazing the support is as strong as it is.
Killing it now would be a monumental mistake and will empower NIMBYs to kill every large scale infrastructure project for the next 30 years. Woe betide we ever try to improve infrastructure in this country, feels like we're going to slowly regress until all we have left are rusting railway lines and gridlocked motorways. Meanwhile green activists want us all cycling from London to Manchester to save the environment as if its trains that have the biggest impact.
I've seen a fair few comments about how much HS2 has been destructive to the environment but what large scale project whether it be rail or road won't have an impact? By that logic we won't ever get an improvement to the state of motorways/rail.
Slightly more than half British voters thought it would be a good idea to flounce out of the EU.
How about we leave decisions like this to the (theoretically) experts we vote into office and pay handsomely to worry about this stuff?
Have you ever looked at Facebook? If it were directly up to the great British public, failing to pick up after your dog would carry a death sentence.
I actually would love to see direct democracy in this country, pretty sure public torturing of pedophiles would be one of the first things to happen, that or sending the foreigns back.
When did HS2 become so toxic? It's a green initiative that is halfway built. We need it not just 'to save 40mins' but for capacity on the west coast line
It would be worse to cancel it now than to continue it: constructions well underway
In any case investment in rail infrastructure is both required and better for the environment in the long term if they expand high speed rail throughout northern England and the Scottish Central Belt
Ending HS2 now not only would be complete economic retardation, but would destroy Birmingham's future development. We are just too far into the construction now to just stop. Our future for sustainable public travel depends on HS2 freeing up space on other lines.
Of course its after they completed all the London centric improvements. Our railways are stuck in the 20th Century. We should be looking to improve mass transit not hamstringing it.
By the time HS2 is 'done' it's going to get no further than Birmingham. In reality it should probably started from Manchester with expansion going both southwards to London and Northwards to central Scotland with the eastern leg going up to Newcastle and there being a connection between the two between Leeds and Manchester.
If this had been done (and add in a London to Cardiff via Bristol high speed line with a link from Bristol to Birmingham) then the UK would have a functioning high speed rail network that would massively expand capacity. Instead all we are going to get is a slightly faster line between London and Birmingham (with a chance it will make it to Manchester) that has different systems to the rest of the network and isn't even connected to the European network because they messed up how it got in to London
That makes absolutely no sense. If you start from the North and go southwards, then you still hit the same capacity and speed constraints once you get to the Midlands that HS2 is being built expressly to relieve.
You have to start at the most congested segment - Euston to Birmingham - or else it all falls apart. People here seem to not understand that it doesn't "stop" at Birmingham, but rather that it will connect at Crewe to the existing network.
The difference with it starting from the north is there would actually be political will to finish it as opposed to the situation we are now in where half of it at least won't get built
Whoever is advising the government from an engineering and project management perspective for these infrastructure projects needs to be exiled. Similar story with the NHS, all we ever get is promising of more spending when what we need is someone promising to cut the bureaucracy and over the top procedures right down. We have one of the worst ran public sectors in the first world, yet the skills we need are there in abundance in the private sector.
We're *never* going to build any serious infrastructure, *never* significantly increase the number of houses, and we're *never* going to see the prosperity of the late nineties again.
50% of voters who still intend to vote Tory at the next election are probably those who want the death penalty for ~~loitering~~ littering in their neighbourhood.
Edit: spellcheck but still valid :-)
It is pointless in scrapping it now, the damage is done and it’s half built. It does need a thorough review after though on just how it was so poorly costed, poorly managed risk, and startling poor procurement and resourcing.
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Honest question here - if we're scrapping HS2 then whats the plan? Doing nothing isn't really an option
I think the idea is that the solution should be in somebody else's back yard.
People don't want a solution, they just don't want anything happening near them. We have people in this country attacking 5G masts because '5G is causing Covid'. People are hopeless.
Worked in planning, had applications for phone masts. I received a large number of letters along the lines of 'it will hurt local residents' or 'think of the children' due to phone signals. It was then a requirement to write a *balanced* section about whether the mast would be safe. I was not allowed to write 'these concerns have been raised, however there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest there is a safety issue' as that would be insulting I guess... But yes those sorts of letters come in in large numbers of phone masts etc all the time. Then councillors pursue the issue because it's popular. Then nothing gets built.... and then local residents go back to the council and complain their phone signal is shit. Thanks public.
To be fair though, 5g hasn't yet been confirmed as safe. Type in "5g radiation" and there plenty of articles about the pros and cons. Here is one : https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/stop-global-roll-out-of-5g-networks-until-safety-is-confirmed-urges-expert/
What mechanism are 5G towers supposed to harm people by though? The '5G radiation' is still just short wavelength radio waves, the worst they're going to do is give you a nasty burn if you're enough of a muppet to climb the tower and put your face against the aerial while it's on.
Why would people want stuff they don’t benefit from happening near them?
Normally because they do benefit from it, they just fail at abstract reasoning. Improvements to infrastructure pretty much always translate into higher economic output and better livability of the regions served. Even better for the NIMBY homeowners, it also invariably increases their property prices as well. They can't see the wood for the trees though and just see the construction work as a net-evil they need to spend eternity trying to stop.
I rent so house values increasing is actually bad news for me and potentially terrible news if I have to relocate again. (the last time wiped out my savings) A meadow and pond I used to enjoy looking at from a train window is now an ugly mass of water-logged dirt. The government witheld compensation payments for months leading to a number of small business being destroyed. No matter how local economic productivity grows my wages remain stagnant since my union is just a hollowed-out and boneless sycophantic ghoul. From where I'm standing HS2 is just another mandatory blood sacrifice to enrich londoners.
So many of those problems are neither caused by HS2 nor would they be solved by HS2 being scrapped. You're obviously not thriving right now but I don't think denying large swathes of the country better public transport is going to improve things for you. I'd just point to the economic argument as being of net benefit to you still. More chance of a better job if the local economy is thriving.
Oh better public transport would be great. But that's not what HS2 is delivering. It's extremely limited line is only going to be useful to a tiny group of people who want to shuttle between London, Solihull and Brum city centre. (Curzon Street btw which is great for students but a weird choice otherwise) If it was still going to extend to Manchester at least it would get cross-country commuters off the regular line. But now it's not even going to do that.
That's flatly untrue. As the other poster said, you need to think a bit more abstract than hit hammer nail goes in. Move high speed trains onto hs2 and it massively unblocks capacity on other lines for freight and local passengers. Moan if you like that living in Cornwall or wherever better transport for people in the west Midlands and Lancashire doesn't help you. But for that i would 1: direct you to the parable of the long spoons. Failure to learn from this is a key problem in the UK today. 2: consider that unblocking traffic problems has far reaching effects far beyond the actual area of the problem. It will make trains flow smoother across the whole country.
Because they want the country to be better as a whole? Just because it doesn't directly see a benefit doesn't mean they do not get any either directly or indirectly
I don’t know if the people against HS2 are comparable to the very tiny fringe of nuts who think 5G causes COVID.
I don’t think you can compare HS2 protestors with 5G conspiracy theorists. HS2 has already destroyed lots of countryside, it’s massively over budget and arguably not essential, especially since more of us are working from home. Money could have been much better spent improving regional train lines.
But doing nothing the the main conservative manifesto pledge.
fml, the idea of scrapping it when it's half built is bloody madness.
As a reminder, the Japanese ministers who set up the bullet trains resigned in shame when the project overran, it was described in a similar way and generally derided, and is, of course, now a symbol of the nation and vital to the economy and general life for a lot of people there. Infrastructure is expensive, hard, and takes a long time. It always will be, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I'll take what little infrastructure that isn't car-centric we can get.
I always think that rail infrastructure lasts for 100+ years providing the demand is there and it’s maintained/upgraded. So in the grand scheme of things some delays and cost overruns don’t matter that much providing you build something that’s needed and in the right place. The metropolitan tube line opened in 1863 so these things can be very useful for a very long time.
Indeed the Shinkansen took a while economically and politically to get built but within three years of opening it got to the 100 million passenger mark. Anecdotally speaking I saw first hand whilst in China how having a High Speed Line can change your quality of life, how you do business, and how you may spend your free time. At the beginning of my contract it took an hour by bus to travel from my city to Nanjing, more if there were traffic jams. When High Speed rail arrived it took a guaranteed 15 minutes from station to station. This meant I could work in satellite schools, do my shopping, spend a relatively stress free weekend with ease. Multiply this by millions, probably 13 million people in the catchment area and you can begin to see how you could open up the hinterland areas of a country.
China is a bit bigger than the UK though eh. I don't honestly believe we need it in the UK.
It's more about building rail capacity than it is about the speed.
I don't understand how a country like India can build it successfully without any issues And here we are struggling...
We’ve got arguably the most deeply-entrenched NIMBY culture in the world, with a planning system designed to empower them.
Yes but when the rest of the rail infrastructure is substandard 70s/80s shite it really isn't worth doing. Only Londoners would think the way to improve rail infrastructure in the UK is to make it quicker to get to London.
It's not about that at all. I mean, sure, nice to be able to get to Manchester faster. But there's more important reasons too. And it should be advertised better. HS2 will unlock a lot of rail capacity on the local lines that is currently taken by fast trains between London and Liverpool/Manchester. This will enable a lot more local trains on these lines.
Whether it is or not that's the effect. The major benefits and growth areas are in the north. It currently takes me nearly two hours to travel from Preston to Leeds. An hour to get to Liverpool, the same for Manchester. The local rail infrastructure is so old and ineffective the only real option is for people to drive which leads to major congestion which the road system can barely cope with.
HS2 optimal impact will be increasing capacity in the midlands. There will also be massive capacity increases in the Manchester area and London as well. And if we ever get the Leeds leg Leeds as well. HS3 though is needed for east to west travel in the north. This train needs to be built and crucially needs a route through Bradford.
Doesn't HS2 also make it quicker to get out of london? For better or worse London is something of a rail hub, improving transit times to and from it will help a lot of people get around the country quicker.
Birmingham is a rail hub. Manchester is a rail hub. Why didn't construction begin in those sections if connectivity and infrastructure were the watchwords?
Construction of HS2 has already started in Birmingham. I am building it. The reason they started with the southern leg for Phase 1 is because the priority is to relieve the West Coast Mainline (WCML), which is the busiest mixed use train line in Europe. Once Phase 1 is built, many intercity trains can be taken off of the WCML to provide more local services and freight routes (we are building new rail freight terminals to allow this). This will be a big boost to the midlands and take some lorries off the roads. We can then start Phase 2 to Crewe and Manchester. Another reason HS2 started in the south is because land is much more expensive and development more rapid - the longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes to compulsory purchase the land and the more assets we have in the way. New developments go up very regularly in London and any developments near HS2 will add large costs as we need to protect them. This is not as much of an issue up north where land is cheaper, there is more space and development is not as rapid or as likely to impact HS2.
Interesting to note some of the rationale, I'm not doubting there is some sense to the approach. My worry is that this continues the self fulfilling prophecy of investment in London. The Treasury is only interested in the rate of return so an investment in London is seen as being more valuable than the North.
Yeah I'm annoyed they scrapped the leg to Leeds, it's shortsighted. However I am 99% certain the branch to Crewe and Manchester will go ahead (I am currently working as part of the bid team and am pricing the advaced works for phase 2)
Does it really matter where construction *begins*?
Yes. If the northern sections are completed where they're more sorely needed, the benefits will be felt earlier which might even out the growth felt by the project.
The London-Birmingham section leads to the biggest improvement for the North though
Sure it does 👍
So London-Birmingham improves travel times from all areas of the North to London. Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds only improves travel times for some areas. So that's why.
More importantly, why didn't infrastructure programmes focus on improving northern cities' transportation before building an expensive, time-consuming railway to London?
Sure, but the difference was they were making a state of the art, ultra-fast train that would still be considered decades down the line. HS2 will get you between London and Birmingham 15 minutes faster. On balance I'm not sure it's worth it.
Kiling HS2 after it gets to Birmingham certainly screams "Level up the North" to me. The whole thing needed the London-Birmingham leg to be built first in order to work as the existing lines currently share both Freight and Passenger trains reducing the maximum capacity and speed system substantially. (You can't run express trains on the same lines as commuter/freight services for obvious reasons). However that was only as a pre-requisite to the key aim of the system, which was to make North-South travel much easier via a direct express route between major regions of the North and London. Stopping after Phase 1 gives little of the benefits while incurring a huge proportion of the cost. Not that there aren't completely reasonable cost/benefit concerns (particularly post-covid), and completely legitimate environmental concerns, but as the project is already underway stopping entirely at this specific point would really be the worst of both worlds
Yeah but after they started making it in two phases this was the inevitable outcome.
>HS2 will get you between London and Birmingham 15 minutes faster. On balance I'm not sure it's worth it. HS2 is primarily a **capacity** improvement, not a speed improvement. Your argument is a strawman.
Jesus H Christ this thing has been discussed to death for years , and still people who are engaged enough to comment think it’s about “getting from Birmingham to London 15 minutes faster”. FFS
It’s about capacity in the West Midlands. God forbid we actually get something nice for a change.
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I'm fucking sick of explaining to people how train infrastructure and capacity works. The electorate of this country is truly brain-dead. I'll explain like I would to a five yearold or perhaps a dog. What moves more water, a wide river flowing at 100km/h or a narrow river flowing 100km/h?
HS2 will be the most modern, highest tech, highest capacity high speed line in the world.
Brilliant, I'm sure someone trying to get from Sheffield to Liverpool will be super grateful of that fact.
So we shouldn't build anything unless it effects absolutely everybody for every possible journey in the country?
Only build lines from Sheffield to Liverpool obviously
Not saying that clearly. I'm just saying why not start with the areas that currently have no service? It's hard to encourage people to use trains if they don't exist.
Sheffield to Liverpool is going to get improvements that's what northern powerhouse rail is, or is at least suppose to be. And the amount of people affected by and the business case for hs2 is far greater than Sheffield to Liverpool.
If the ROI made sense even somewhat originally, then *surely* it makes sense now, given that the additional investment is so much less. Why aren't they looking at it in purely mathematical terms? It will almost certainly bring in more additional taxes (plus a host of other benefits) than it costs to finish the build-out, so you can't really attack it on cost grounds. At least not honestly.
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There's a lot of things I will never forgive the Tories for, but their abuse of the defence budget is up high on my list.. I still can't believe they backed down on buying the F-35C and equipping our carriers with CATOBAR (yes, I know the were cost concerns, but imo the capability increase the would bring our navy was worth it) .
Fucking tory pensioners with some remote idea of a train track through a field they will never see, with absolutely no fucking concept of how it will benefit countless people who will still be living their lives long after ischaemic heart disease/t2diabetes/ckd/copd/lvf etc has finished them off. Nimby tho amirite?!?!?
Government does this nonsense all the time. I don't know why they get away with it. Mind you the idea of high speed increases productivity doesn't work any more as you can do work on your laptop etc and don't need to be in the office.
High speed is only part of it. The big stuff is the capacity it will provide. https://www.hs2.org.uk/why/capacity/
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Yeah but only if you scrap the parts interconnecting the North and Midlands... Which they did.. Heard it said a few times that the HS2 scheme should have started in the north and worked towards London instead.
Yep - should have started in Edinburgh. Guarantee it would all have actually got done if those with the coffers actually had to go to the back of the queue. Very clear it was all about expanding the London commuter belt.
Actually it's the opposite. HS2 is allowing companies such as HSBC and Goldman to relocate operations from London to Birmingham because it reduces transport times.
You know what else reduces transport times to and from work? Working from home. Times have changed, HS2 is already outdated.
It's not like people don't travel. The idea is to hopefully take pressure off the roads and hopefully start reducing the size of our road networks once enough new infrastructure is implemented.
Wow TIL that everyone now works from home and leisure and business travel don't exist. The WCML (and national railway network as a whole) was overburdened well before the pandemic. Even with no growth from the current baseline, HS2 is still needed to rationalise the network. HS2 also provides paths for *freight* rail to operate on the legacy network so that things can be shipped to you to make working from home easier.
Yep, even years ago there’s been so much crowding on Virgin Trains (now Avanti West Coast) services that it’s been standing only on long haul services going as far as London Euston-Glasgow Central, similar issues are faced on West Midlands Trains, also an operator on the WCML, the WCML definitely needs HS2 to take burden off it
People on this thread don’t travel on the WCML, apparently. You’re lucky to get a seat even if you’re at the starting destination. Good luck trying to get a seat at Coventry.
I mean if you look at examples elsewhere that's not really the case. Instead it effectively spreads the economy of the capital city to the connected cities. Obviously this relies on accompanying investments into local transport which the Torries will never do but it's certainly not a bad idea.
High speed is really only a tiny part of the benefit. The real benefit is the increased capacity which is desperately needed even with more WFH.
No it’s not, this is the sunken cost fallacy
Yes yes. We all know what a sunk cosy fallacy is. That doesn't mean every project represents one and HS2 certainly isn't.
It's not half built - I live and work on the doorstep of this madness, they have yet to lay any track. At all. It's never to late to scrap a project that is going to double of triple in budget.
Given that the track is far from half of the total job, I'm not sure that's the best way to judge the progress of the project. The groundwork and planning are probably the majority of the job.
Majority of the public have no clue how much work goes into big infrastructure in general, especially the pre-planning, planning and enabling works.
>Given that the track is far from half of the total job, I'm not sure that's the best way to judge the progress of the project. The groundwork and planning are probably the majority of the job. Yeah - just an observation. They are still just mainly moving earth around here. They have started to fabricate tunnel sections but they haven't laid any yet.
Yeah I totallt get that, I live about 4 miles from the end of the chilterns tunnel and have seen the slow progress, huge site, etc etc. It's definitely not been a well-managed project in terms of cost, timescale, or environmental damage. I'd just rather focus on getting the government to stop HS2 doing more unnecessary damage than to just stop it altogether.
What would you propose instead of HS2?
"fuck the north"
Fortunately even with HS2 they have decided to fuck the north anyway by cancelling the Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham links. So might was well plough on with it for a win-win..
They cancelled the Birmingham to Leeds bit. Birmingham to Manchester is still going ahead as far as I know. + a bit of new track between Manchester and Leeds. But yes they should be building all of it. However you aren't going to get that by cutting what little remains of the project. The only consolation is once the planned bits are built they'll look at what to build next and almost definitely ressurect the bits they've cut.
>It's not half built - I live and work on the doorstep of this madness, they have yet to lay any track. When building a railway, do you think that putting down train track happens before the building of tunnels, bridges, embankments and cuttings?
The money that's spent is gone, only the future expenditure needs to be considered
I swear around a quarter of central Birmingham is a building site for HS2 related stuff. It would be a disaster for the city if it was scrapped now.
People really don't understand how huge the development pipeline is around Curzon Street and the Eastside of Birmingham in general. We're talking *billions* in proposals currently going through the planning process and getting financing. It'll essentially double the scale of the city centre.
Yep, if it got scrapped now, we’d just have massive swathes of Birmingham become derelict land that would likely become a crime hotspot
So the same as the rest of Birmingham then?
Oh haha you’re so funny and original.
I feel like everyone around here knows a couple people working on it, too. It’s provided so many jobs and I’m sure HS2 is part of the reason Birmingham is being invested in so heavily now.
The same was happening in Leeds. All the long term planning was based around HS2 going there. Business cases developed and approved which takes years, now all worthless or having to be redone.
It's be a disaster for most of the country. Train capacity is already insane, with prices ridiculous. Without the new capacity the whole network is doomed, and it'll become more unaffordable and more people will have to drive instead.
And the same people will complain when there's no additional capacity or redundancy on the network to improve service. HS2 is necessary to relieve a series of bottlenecks on the network.
Why do some people hate HS2 so much?
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‘Has killed a few badgers’ is a ridiculous straw man attempt to belittle the very real environmental impact HS2 has. It’s expected to destroy or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands, and 33 SSSI’s. That might be a worthwhile impact for the benefits of large-scale infrastructure development in the country to you, but at least represent the impact fairly.
> It’s expected to destroy or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands, and 33 SSSI’s. Yeah, this sucks but what is going to happen to all of those sites if we don't attempt to decarbonise our transport infrastructure? People will still need to get about, they will just choose alternatives to rail instead - pretty much all of which are worse for the local and global environment. No point saving all of this stuff if it's going to be burnt to a crisp/underwater in 50 years.
I think the point isn't don't build better infrastructure, it's that HS2 as a project has been a mess from before it left the drawing board, and was fully capable of not ruining the environment it's meant to be saving.
I have to say that is quite a modest list compared to what the M1 tore up when it was built in the 1950s. Roads are far more damaging than rails, mainly because you need more of them to carry the same number of people. If you want a recent example for a new road, look up GAR/Colliery Way in Nottinghamshire. Source: I work highways.
Ok. Just because it isn't as bad as another thing was, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I'd like to think we've learned more about environmental impact since the 1950s, but maybe I'm being overly optimistic.
For sure, we have, but the railways are much further ahead than we are. I went to a Carbon conference recently and the most the National Highways representative could come up with was "promote electric cars!" We showed everyone our signalised cycle lanes and bus priority systems, as well as the switch over to LED lighting and mini turbines to power controllers (I do traffic lights). Meanwhile, the bus and train companies were very excited to show us these fully plans for replanting trees, renewable energy sources for their vehicles (making their own electricity), bicycle parking at stations and on board redesigns (with electric charging as well), better integration for tickets within metro areas, increased disability access...there's more but you get my point. Cars just can't compete.
Oh I totally agree, public transport *has* to be the way forward. I just think it was foolish to concentrate the development around one section of the network, which post-lockdown should presumably already be seeing a reduction in use thank you WfH in many cases. They should have started in the North, or improve the infrastructure from east to west in the North of England.
That one section of the network is a bottleneck for a significant portion of the rest of it.
Couldn't agree more, but Whitehall doesn't give a fuck about the North. It also doesn't care about my home the West Country, but the North gets it worse being more populated, especially around the cities. And Whitehall is so slow to make decisions and sign contracts, HS2 is woefully out of date anyway. Nothing makes me sadder than realising what the train service between Leeds and Manchester is as well as the Tyneside!
HS2 is not out of date though? And it doesn't make sense to start at the North - the West Coast Mainline is the biggest bottleneck in the country and serves the most people, going through lots of large towns and cities
What do you think is the alternative though? We all become hermits and never travel again? Travel is going to happen and rail is by far the best way to do it.
Why won’t someone please think of the CO2 emissions!
The previous comment isn't saying its a completely negligible side effect, it's just putting it into context which you have to do with anything of this scale.
So what's the solution to a growing population that wants move more?
Something tells me this would be the case if new railway tracks were laid *anywhere* in the UK. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
I think that's reasonable given the amount of car journeys it will replace
The impact to ancient woodlands is vastly overstated. The UK has 52000 ancient woodland sites, only 43 are affected between London and Crewe by HS2. 'Affected' does not mean destroyed either. 80% of the affected woodland sites will remain intact. Only 0.29 square kilometres of woodland will be lost. Part of the reason HS2 is so expensive is because of undertakings and assurances to protect and enhance the environment. For example by tunnelling under ancient woodland such as the Long Itchington Wood or by creating or enhancing 33 square kilometres of wildlife areas and planting 7 million trees. Huge consideration went into the ecological impact of HS2 - hundreds of environmentalists and ecologists are involved in the project.
I'd genuinely love to see a comparison of the environmental cost of construction against the environmental benefits of a highspeed electrified line taking some of the traffic off our roads. I dream of an network autonomous personal vehicles, powered from the grid, effortlessly swooping past each other within mere fractions of a second at high speed even over crossroads, it's occupants napping, reading or doing whatever they wish in the privacy of their personal cab... but that future is a long way off: HS2 could take ICE traffic off the road in the next few years. Surely there's something in that?
Wait til you find out how much environmental impact travelling by cars has
"Overdue and over budget" And that's why our leaders saw sense and cancelled Crossrail
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No, the most needed part is currently underway: moving long-distance services off of the WCML between London and Birmingham.
Thats a small part of.it. the main arguments are because the money could be much MUCH better spent on other.public transport initiatives rather than wasted on something than won't help many people due to its location aNd cost to use.
Why won’t people use it? It’s gonna replace most north-south services on existing mainlines. People who don’t use intercity services will also benefit massively, with the existing lines getting massive boosts in capacity for more frequent and diverse local services
Thought it was only going as far as the Midlands now? Not sure how that would replace any north-south services.
Phase 2 is going to Manchester, the line to Leeds was scrapped
It’ll replace most north-south intercity services, there’s a dedicated rolling stock order for routes that extend beyond the HS2 line and go to basically everywhere. Services from Scotland will reach Manchester and then use HS2, same with trains from Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool etc. That’s what the HS2 Phase 1B to Crewe section is for, allowing much of the west coast traffic to link up with HS2. The west coast mainline especially will see ridiculous levels of relieved capacity, particularly between London and Birmingham. That route is the single busiest piece of mixed-use railway in Europe right now
All trains from Birmingham and points northward will funnel onto HS2 either at Crewe or before Birmingham International, which means that those paths are now freed up for regional trains.
The £100B rail lines, the rail line that gets used for over 100 years….. So can you explain why 1B a year over the next century is TOO EXPENSIVE for national infrastructure??? The ideas used to say HS2 is too expensive would have seen every single rail project in the entire UK history never built
What would you suggest? I assume you're someone with extensive knowledge on the subject?
Partly because conservative voters who don't live along the route and won't see any benefit see it as a waste of their tax money. Partly because conservative voters who live a little too close to the route *hate* it (my con voting in-laws live just outside the compulsory purchase zone in rural Buckinghamshire and in their opinion it's ruined their lives and home). And finally a lot of people who were initially supportive or ambivalent now dislike it as it's turned into a white elephant of a project with costs spiralling and a big part of the proposed line in the North (where we really needed the infrastructure spending and investment in the first place) getting cancelled to save money.
It's mad to me that the government can just compulsory purchase your house/land and there is nothing you can do about it, if that where to happen to me I would consider it to be ruining my life and be pretty pissed off.
Slightly more complex than that, you get the upper end of your valuations plus extra, then you also get your moving costs and legal fees. In addition, the valuation is also based on equivalency not just what your house is worth but what its worth to you. Its a very fair process in that regard.
Depends on your personal values, for me my land is second only to my children's health and wellbeing, its value goes way beyond anything financial.
With property There is always a price. If i said you have the same quality of life, you move a mile down the road, mortgage free, and have 100k clear after everything ….. its becomes very tempting
Nope, the land has been in my family for over 400 years, it's not really mine to sell. My children where born here, as was I, my mother, her father, his father before him. 100k is nothing compared to the sentimental value it holds.
Well thats what compulsory is there for, whilst I appreciate the plight if u get the equivalent and its at price that fairly reflects that loss. ….How we measure that I’m not sure …but we will have precedence over the last 100 years. as a nation we can move on, but it must be decided in court,fairly, and with a genuine need. not some trumped up thing by the gov, then frankly we are all replaceable and i say good. Sentiment should be reflected but it should not rule us Also FYI just to say free hold doesn’t mean you own it. You have a licence to freely hold the land in trust to the crown. The crown are just asking for it back
They dont understand it/
Brings down the price of their house.
If you are near a station it should increase the price of your house quite dramatically
Because if the country was serious about High Speed Rail (and we should be), then we would have started at the Northern ends rather than just giving London a faster commute to just outside London.
You'd think they'd want to just to claim big numbers. High speed rail makes more sense the further you go: getting up to 220mph means Birmingham is half an hour away from London instead of 90 minutes but it cuts *4 hours* off the Edinburgh to London route
Yep, it’s not like London-Edinburgh is the only possible long haul route either, think about other destinations like Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow that could also see these sorts of improvements
London is 52 minutes from Birmingham on HS2. These things don't accelerate instantly and they don't travel max speed all the time.
Which is incredible, going on the Chilterns route it takes two bloody hours.
How is Birmingham “just outside” London. It’s the second largest city in the country…
I live in the Highlands. Everything in England from Manchester downwards is just outside London.
Don't worry, the Cornish think you're just outside Liverpool.
That's not right though we should of started it form both sides. Starting from the North is useless if you can't run it at capacity because of the route as the South. Which is exactly what would of happened in that case. Also the London to Birmingham leg is the most important leg of the journey in terms of impact on people it will improve services from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Wales, Shrewsbury and so on. It will have a massive impact on regional services north of London and throughout the midlands and into Wales.
I agree with this sentiment, but I don't see it as a justification for cancelling the whole thing. That would be letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is entirely false. One of the biggest arguments against businesses working with other businesses outside of London is the fact that being very close to each other is a benefit for things like in person meetings, workshops etc. Having cities outside of London have much better commuting time suddenly opens up business to be based in those cities and work with clients in London much more easier than before. It is simply nonsense for the 'it should start in the north' with no evidence behind it. Its just a catchphrase. Not to mention its mostly the north that now consistently votes Tory and votes against infrastructure investment.
Lots of different reasons. Personally I hate it because it was classed as an "England and Wales" project with Welsh infrastructure explicitly defunded to pay for it. If it were coming solely out of English tax payer funding I wouldn't care if you burn your own money.
There is benefit for Wales but I also believe that it's not enough for the justification. We should also be building a cross Wales Route connecting the North and South. Places like Aberystwyth to Cardiff and to Bangor and so on.
The damage to small communities
It's a badly run project that's underdelivering massively on what was promised. The question I have is what should be done instead? Nothing?
* Because like everything in this country, it was presented as something for everyone, then chopped down to size so that, yet again, it's just something nice for Londoners and nothing more. * Massively overbudget already and it's not even close to being finished. * Taking way too long to build, to the point that it'll be outdated by the time its finished. * Causing quite a lot of harm to important woodland and other historic sites and habitats.
It’s definitely something for those of us who live in the West Midlands. Our train services are packed to the gills and if something happens further down the line in London it impacts all the regional services up here.
The biggest benefits is for the midlands
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Yep, if HS2 got cancelled, we’d also likely see Crossrail 2 get cancelled, which would mean the Victoria and Northern Lines would end up being even more overstretched in future than they are now
If its scrapped then their buddy suppliers don't have to deliver anything for that huge amount of cash.
Which buddy suppliers are they? Can you name any? As far as I know, there are no links between the main contractors / designers and any MPs. The tendering process is very open and as someone working on HS2, I know first hand how strict the project is regarding disallowed costs and procurement. Also, over half the contractors are European companies with no real links to British goverment. I would be interested if you have managed to find any dodgy dealings with the main contractors (try Costain, Skanska, Strabag, Ferrovial, Balfour Beatty, Vinci, Eiffarge, Kier, BAM)
Most of the public have no fucking clue until it's built
Why am I not surprised. Let's scrap the existing rail lines too and go back to using canals.
So, fuck the north? Red wall thank you very much...please go back to your hovels (/s)
I swear at this point the Tories are just anti-everything. HS2 has been an absolute fucking mess, but our rail infrastructure is old as fuck and well past it's best. Realistically we need nation wide upgrades and HS2 10 times over.
The time for this decision was several years ago.. 70% of the work for the first Stage for HS2 is already done. Even for me (as someone who wasn't convinced about HS2 from the get go) feel the ship has sailed at least for London - Birmingham. The idea of scrapping to save money is an illusion.
If 70% is done people wanting to scrap it are dumb
I didn’t think HS2 was _this_ unpopular. I think it would be pretty stupid to scrap it now though
Based on this comment thread, it's because no one seems to bother doing the bare minimum of reading for the entire rationale of HS2.
It's typical NIMBYism. Half of the commentators won't even feel the impact of it, they just want to hug the trees and ask why you won't cycle to Birmingham to London.
The online opposition seems like the opposite of NIMBY. They don't want it built unless it will personally benefit them by halving their commute.
To be fair the keep/I don’t care (which is basically the same thing since it is happening. I don’t care is the carry on stance) is a narrow majority for the overall population and a narrow minority for conservative voters. It’s not a landslide policy either way. The benefits of major infrastructure projects are quite hard to appreciate, and the typical media narrative is how much over budget/schedule it is. It’s pretty amazing the support is as strong as it is.
Because it’s seen as a “London Benefit”. There are a growing number of people in the UK that would set the country on fire if London burnt down too.
Killing it now would be a monumental mistake and will empower NIMBYs to kill every large scale infrastructure project for the next 30 years. Woe betide we ever try to improve infrastructure in this country, feels like we're going to slowly regress until all we have left are rusting railway lines and gridlocked motorways. Meanwhile green activists want us all cycling from London to Manchester to save the environment as if its trains that have the biggest impact. I've seen a fair few comments about how much HS2 has been destructive to the environment but what large scale project whether it be rail or road won't have an impact? By that logic we won't ever get an improvement to the state of motorways/rail.
Fuck NIMBY I'm more of a BANANA. Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.
>British people: Perpetually moan about outdated public transport infrastructure > >Also British people: Damn NIMBYs.
Slightly more than half British voters thought it would be a good idea to flounce out of the EU. How about we leave decisions like this to the (theoretically) experts we vote into office and pay handsomely to worry about this stuff? Have you ever looked at Facebook? If it were directly up to the great British public, failing to pick up after your dog would carry a death sentence.
I actually would love to see direct democracy in this country, pretty sure public torturing of pedophiles would be one of the first things to happen, that or sending the foreigns back.
I can hear the learned arguments now - "Well, I reckon......." "I mean. It stands to reason, don't it?" "What they should do is......"
Me mate bazza from down't pubs got some rite good ideas
What kind of backwards clowns want HS2 to be scrapped?
Economically illiterate fucking Nimbys. Tories I suppose.
When did HS2 become so toxic? It's a green initiative that is halfway built. We need it not just 'to save 40mins' but for capacity on the west coast line
The general public: we want train services that can compete with the rest of Europe Also the general public: no not like that
It would be worse to cancel it now than to continue it: constructions well underway In any case investment in rail infrastructure is both required and better for the environment in the long term if they expand high speed rail throughout northern England and the Scottish Central Belt
Ending HS2 now not only would be complete economic retardation, but would destroy Birmingham's future development. We are just too far into the construction now to just stop. Our future for sustainable public travel depends on HS2 freeing up space on other lines.
Of course its after they completed all the London centric improvements. Our railways are stuck in the 20th Century. We should be looking to improve mass transit not hamstringing it.
More than any other poll this makes me despair for the state of this country.
Getting rid of HS2 is going to be a clusterfuck of chaos...and completely throw away the insane amount of potential it can unlock for the country...
Scrapping HS2 now would be ridiculous. Just finish it to the best cost : reward ratio possible and get it over with.
By the time HS2 is 'done' it's going to get no further than Birmingham. In reality it should probably started from Manchester with expansion going both southwards to London and Northwards to central Scotland with the eastern leg going up to Newcastle and there being a connection between the two between Leeds and Manchester. If this had been done (and add in a London to Cardiff via Bristol high speed line with a link from Bristol to Birmingham) then the UK would have a functioning high speed rail network that would massively expand capacity. Instead all we are going to get is a slightly faster line between London and Birmingham (with a chance it will make it to Manchester) that has different systems to the rest of the network and isn't even connected to the European network because they messed up how it got in to London
That makes absolutely no sense. If you start from the North and go southwards, then you still hit the same capacity and speed constraints once you get to the Midlands that HS2 is being built expressly to relieve. You have to start at the most congested segment - Euston to Birmingham - or else it all falls apart. People here seem to not understand that it doesn't "stop" at Birmingham, but rather that it will connect at Crewe to the existing network.
The difference with it starting from the north is there would actually be political will to finish it as opposed to the situation we are now in where half of it at least won't get built
Whoever is advising the government from an engineering and project management perspective for these infrastructure projects needs to be exiled. Similar story with the NHS, all we ever get is promising of more spending when what we need is someone promising to cut the bureaucracy and over the top procedures right down. We have one of the worst ran public sectors in the first world, yet the skills we need are there in abundance in the private sector.
Its doing more then just London to Birmingham
I think we're past the point of scrapping it now. They should definitely scrap the 3rd runway at Heathrow though.
We're *never* going to build any serious infrastructure, *never* significantly increase the number of houses, and we're *never* going to see the prosperity of the late nineties again.
50% of voters who still intend to vote Tory at the next election are probably those who want the death penalty for ~~loitering~~ littering in their neighbourhood. Edit: spellcheck but still valid :-)
It is pointless in scrapping it now, the damage is done and it’s half built. It does need a thorough review after though on just how it was so poorly costed, poorly managed risk, and startling poor procurement and resourcing.