What they have opened is but a small part of the overall plan. It is seriously late and seriously over budget.
It demonstrates either a complete lack of ability to plan major projects, or a similar level of incompetence when it comes to actual delivery.
The budget and timescales for HS2 have also been an exercise in self delusion. Is it too late for cancellation - we may have spent lots of money already but there is no point in wasting more.
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No it's not too late to cancel HS2, but the sunk-cost fallacy will ensure that it gets built, even though it is a massive waste of resources and environmentally disastrous. Many more people's lives will be adversely affected by it than will be improved.
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>> No it's not too late to cancel HS2, but the sunk-cost fallacy will ensure that
>> it gets built, even though it is a massive waste of resources and environmentally disastrous.
>> Many more people's lives will be adversely affected by it than will be improved.
Wow! that's the eco warriors line swallowed complete with hook and sinker. All completely way off the mark.
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>> Wow! that's the eco warriors line swallowed complete with hook and sinker. All completely way
>> off the mark.
Aren't we we all eco-warriors? if not, why not?
The case for HS2 is very uncertain, and amounts to "we might need it". Old fashioned, unconnected, unaffordable, and an environmental disaster. It will be yonks before it's built and as a solution to today's problems it's irrelevant.
It seems likely it will make the UK even more London-centric. No doubt the seats will be filled, in the same way that motorways create traffic. London is a dump, rich people will push up house prices in the Midlands and commute. Those living en route won't be using it, because it won't stop.
There's probably more value in connecting the major Northern cities. The Leeds leg has already been amputated, there will be no HS connection from Leeds to Sheffield or Manchester, 30 and 40 miles away respectively.
I've done about as much objective research (i.e. none) as has been used to justify HS2 (and cost it at £33bn., which I'd guess won't even be 25% of what it will actually cost.)
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Environmental disaster again. Simply untrue. London centric? howso when it joins the two major cities. And the fact seats will be filled means its not needed? Weird logic that.
Sounds like a rant from a person on the route to me, More value in connecting northern cities?NIMBYISM.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 4 May 22 at 16:39
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>> Environmental disaster again. Simply untrue. London centric? howso when it joins the two major cities.
>> And the fact seats will be filled means its not needed? Weird logic that.
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>> Sounds like a rant from a person on the route to me, More value in
>> connecting northern cities?NIMBYISM.
Yes, just uninformed opinion I'm afraid, coloured with my prejudices. It's also pretty obvious that it was conceived as a vanity project and the case was made to fit the objective.
I don't live on the route, and I still think of myself as a northerner. And I'd like to see the north work better. Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester are like separate countries, the rail journeys between them are mostly an hour or more and the road journey isn't much better especially Sheffield-Manchester.
Not nimbyism. But I know a lot of places that are going to be badly despoiled and I just don't see the general benefit. Commuting should surely reduce, not increase, from now?
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Its not a vanity project, the route is as valid as it was when first built as the great central railway.
Its required because slots on the East and West coast lines are full and strangling freight expansion, TOC competitiveness, and high speed operations. If you need a new route (sorry rebuilt a route that was axed in error) then you might as well make it fast. Its a huge tragedy that the northern reaches of the plan have been canned, for that you can thank Brexit and Covid.
Hopefully it can be reinstated later.
The environmentalists over this issue make me spit and cover them with the stupidity they deserve. A project that takes traffic - oil based transport and pollution away gets the same treatment from them. They want nothing more than to drive us back into the stone age. Laughingly they wouldn't survive that, the wild animals would eat all the vegan humans.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 4 May 22 at 18:03
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> There's probably more value in connecting the major Northern cities. The Leeds leg has already
>> been amputated, there will be no HS connection from Leeds to Sheffield or Manchester, 30
>> and 40 miles away respectively.
The only way to get HS3 built would have been to do it first, then HS2.
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>> What they have opened is but a small part of the overall plan. It is
>> seriously late and seriously over budget.
>>
>> It demonstrates either a complete lack of ability to plan major projects, or a similar
>> level of incompetence when it comes to actual delivery.
Not restricted to the UK, Berlins new airport is an eye watering example of appaling major infrastructure delivery.
TBF the mayor tricky part of the Lizzy line, the tunnels, was delivered more or less much on time and to budget. Signaling however has been a nightmare, no-one considered the complexity of integrating automated trains with non automated infrastructure on the interconnecting existing lines.
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>> TBF the mayor tricky part of the Lizzy line, the tunnels, was delivered more or
>> less much on time and to budget.
There have been some interesting documentaries re the tunnels and new stations.
In several places the phrase "threading the needle" has been used where tunnels run both above and below (so that's in-between) existing infrastructure and the clearance is measured in inches.
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>> In several places the phrase "threading the needle" has been used where tunnels run both
>> above and below (so that's in-between) existing infrastructure and the clearance is measured in inches.
>>
Much expertise exists in the UK for London tunneling, and because they are more or less doing it all the time, that expertise does not get diluted elsewhere.
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Completion may well be a technological triumph given the challenges posed by integration with the existing infrastructure.
But it is still late and over budget. They must have been aware at the project planning stage of these complexities, and included a contingency for then unknown problems.
That an explanation can be given for the cost/time over-run does not justify the outcome.
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>> That an explanation can be given for the cost/time over-run does not justify the outcome.
I didnt say it was justification, merely the area where they went seriously wrong, and one that could have been foreseen when you realise two infrastructure authorities were involved - TFL and Railtrack.
Every state sponsored infrastructure project in every corner of the earth is late and over budget.
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I have been interested in this phenomenon ever since the Humber Bridge.
If prudent assumptions and forecasts were used when the cases were presented, very few of these very large projects would get the go ahead. That isn't just my opinion, quite a lot of work has been done on it.
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The humber bridge was unique, Everyone knew it was useless.
As far as large projects goes? Take The Severn Bridge(s). Justifiable and successful by any yardstick. Qe2 bridge, ditto (dont tell me it created traffic, did you have to suffer the days of 1 dartford tunnel? no agro conveniently ignored by the stoneage enablers). Lets go back in time, London Underground, Tamar bridge(s) Forth Rail bridge, the list is endless, all the "old" projects conveniently forgotten by the modern complainers.
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Of course they aren't all rubbish, many were and are sensible. But favourable appraisals are nothing new. You will I'm sure be aware that the original railways were heavily oversold to investors.
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I am sure that there was a study, and it was even mentioned here some time ago, that said something along the lines of major infrastructure projects help an economy and society, even if ultimately the project fails to deliver.
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>> Of course they aren't all rubbish, many were and are sensible. But favourable appraisals are
>> nothing new. You will I'm sure be aware that the original railways were heavily oversold
>> to investors.
And made many rich investors in their day, but I'll give you it was hit and miss.
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The Humber bridge now carries ~25-30,000 vehicles a day compared to the QE2 Dartford crossing carrying 130-180,000 per day.
QE2 carried high volumes from its initial opening - a project meeting a proven demand. Humber Bridge carried low traffic levels for many years - volumes grew through commercial development as capacity was there, not because it was originally foreseen or needed.
HS2 was originally justified on the basis of journey times saved. It was marginal at best and assumed (mistakenly IMHO) that reduced journey times can be expressed as a financial saving - only justified if something useful is done with the time.
It then morphed into a capacity increase project. However retaining the high speed element made the cost much higher than simply a capacity upgrade.
To attain high speeds it can only make limited stops en-route. The proposition that journey times is important is questionable - a 30min saving on a 1hr 30min journey sounds great at 33% - but door to door turns a (say) 3hr journey into 2hr 30min - 15% is far less convincing.
HS2 is a testament to the power of political manoeuvring and vested interests over objective sense.
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I think there's proposals for a second crossing.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-60306832
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Elizabeth line opens 24May - Terry
