I wonder if this line will be any advantage to the economy saving half a hr.From Birmingham to London.Will people be able to afford the cost of a tickett to travel on this train if it happens.
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>> I wonder if this line will be any advantage to the economy saving half a
>> hr.From Birmingham to London.Will people be able to afford the cost of a tickett to
>> travel on this train if it happens.
>>
The real issue is capacity, the exisiting line is full. HS2 will remove not just the Brum service but also services to Manchester, Liverpool the NW and Scotland from the southern section of the current line.
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I'm finding it difficult to visualise precisely what a typical passenger is doing in his saved half hour that will benefit the economy, after paying for his share of the capital and running costs.
Just talk me through a day in the life of one of these economy-boosters, and illustrate how the economy is being hampered at present because someone is being prevented from getting from A to B half an hour faster.
Just suppose that in a fantasy world he could get there instantly (eg by email, internet, telephone, video-conferencing, dematerialisation, etc), would the economy suddenly go out of control because it was growing so fast?
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>> I'm finding it difficult to visualise precisely what a typical passenger is doing in his
>> saved half hour that will benefit the economy, after paying for his share of the
>> capital and running costs.
As Brompy indicated, its not speed, its capacity. Its just an additional line to increase total throughput, that happens to be a bit faster.
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>>
>>
>> As Brompy indicated, its not speed, its capacity. Its just an additional line to increase
>> total throughput, that happens to be a bit faster.
>>
Then tell me about this missing throughput. Are there people queuing up to get from A to B, bursting with unused economic benefit, but frustrated because they can't get a seat before Easter? What precisely are they wanting to do, that can't be done already by other, almost instant, methods of communication?
I like the idea that it's nothing to do with speed. I don't think anyone would object to a puff-puff chugging its way through some of the loveliest unspoilt parts of Britain.
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The business case is just made up numbers as usual, choose one's assumptions to get the end result required. I suspect that the overall reduction in journey times would be greater by spending the money making strategic improvements to less high profile bottlenecks on the existing network, but that would require much more hard thinking and planning, and therefore doesn't appeal as a vanity project to the politicians.
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We could call it the great central railway, I bet no-one thought of that before.
Oh wait, didnt we have one of those before?
We could also do with a line across the centre, say from Oxford to Cambridge, that would be a good idea. Oh! I seem to recall we had one of those as well.
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>> We could also do with a line across the centre, say from Oxford to Cambridge
Steady on.
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>> We could also do with a line across the centre, say from Oxford to
>> Cambridge
Hasn't that one already been approved?
They're also trying to link the Grand Union canal to the river Great Ouse (Milton Keynes to Bedford). They celebrated the centenary of the idea last year.
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>> >> We could also do with a line across the centre, say from Oxford
>> to
>> >> Cambridge
>>
>> Hasn't that one already been approved?
At least in principle for the Oxford to Bedford section. That bit is a mix of exisiting and mothballed line and is reasonably easy.
East of Bedford much more difficult. Line was lifted post Beeching and route has been breached/built on at numerous points.
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There was a debate about this on local radio this morning. One of the main contributors was called Michael Hunt!
Along with John Humphries interviewing Ed Milliband on the Today program earlier. Described as the radio 4 version of Jedward.
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Quote
High-speed rail: A £250m lesson for Britain's rail enthusiasts
As the Government prepares to give the go-ahead to its hugely controversial London-Birmingham high speed rail project, its closest equivalent in Europe has had to be saved from bankruptcy with a £250 million government bailout."
Full article
tinyurl.com/6mo8jsd
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I can only see this being built as far as Birmingham and then Manchester and Leeds will be left to suffer.
It is needed though, from Manchester to London for example, there is three trains an hour, think they have 11 carriages now, and they are always full. They cannot increase the capacity because there is no more room left on the line.
I wonder if a proper coach service could help? We have Megabus but its too basic and National Express is far too slow.
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>> I wonder if a proper coach service could help? We have Megabus but its too basic and National Express is far too slow.
How would you define a proper coach service then? National Express coaches always seem to me (as an observer) to be swift and as efficient as can be.
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Too slow, for example 5:30 hours from Manchester to London, the train takes 2 hours and the Megabus around 4:30 hours.
There is far too many places in the county you can't easily get too by coach too, so at the moment I doubt the coach does much to free up the railways.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Tue 10 Jan 12 at 13:29
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>> Too slow
It's 200 miles from Manchester to London, 25 miles of that is on congested urban roads with an average traffic speed of less than 20mph and the rest is on motorways at 65mph tops, apart from when the coach gets stuck behind overtaking lorries or if there are holdups.
The current coach service has evolved as far as it can IMO, unless a speed-derestricted toll motorway is built in a straight line from the North West to the South East.
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Someone please prove me wrong.....
Cost £33billion for 90 miles. 1760 yards to a mile. Cost per yard £208k!
Is it made from gold!?
Last edited by: zippy on Tue 10 Jan 12 at 13:31
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>>Cost £33billion for 90 miles. 1760 yards to a mile. Cost per yard £208k!
...nothing compared to what it will actually cost...
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>.nothing compared to what it will actually cost...
I know - expect the cost to double!
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How many jobs will the building of the railway line create? It will take over ten years to build.
I hope it works brandnew line and trains.The Dutch build a highspeed rail line it has to be subsidesd now by the government not enough passengers are using the train to expensive.
The French highspeed line is populair.
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Given they can't even get the new Manchester Metrolink lines to work resulting in 60 brand new trams not being able to put into service, I doubt they will get this working in the projected time scale.
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What is wrong with the Metro lines Rattle.? I love travelling in Rotterdam on the Metro.they are linked to trams and busses.
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I mean the time tables..;)
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BBC radio news had an "Expert" saying that every £1 invested in HS2 would generate between £1.80 and £2.50. How a few hundred people a day cutting 25 minutes off a train journey will do that I can't work out, at today's cost of £32 billion
My long term forecast is that it will come in years late, way over budget and the trains will not actually run at the promised speeds, plus, if the existing route continues to run and if HS2 fares are higher, people will stick to what we have at the moment
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There's to be a station at Birmingham airport with a projected journey time of 45 minutes.
For international travellers going to central London, it will be quicker to fly to Birmingham and jump on a rocket train instead of using Heathrow and the tube.
Quicker, but not cheaper.
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I've written to Justine Greening to tell her that there's only one 'h' in aitch, unless she is a legitimate cockerney or Irish, which she isn't - she's from Rotherham, so she must be trying to sound posh.
It's bad enough that they're going to build the damned thing, but if I have to hear "HS2" at every verse end for the next fifteen years, I'd like it to be pronounced less annoyingly.
The fact that none of her colleagues has put her right shows what backstabbing types they are.
I know, I know.
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A lot of the capacity used by the WCML is freight. Had they not closed the last of the great main lines, the London extension of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, Goods could have been taken by this route up to Sheffield and then to Manchester/Liverpool via the Woodhead tunnel or up to Leeds and onward to Scotland via the Settle & Carlisle.
There is already some discussion in place about re-opening the tunnel and I'm sure containers of fridges, bicycles or whatever wouldn't come to any harm taking the long way round thus releasing capacity on the West Coast.
There is already a good link from Sheffield to Manchester via the Hope Valley...a good alternative for people in less of a hurry. What has also been discussed up here is the re-opening of the terminus at Manchester Mayfield which would be ideal for commuter trains, having 5 platforms.
Still, not my decision. All governments seem to want to leave their mark on the country with some big project. I'm sure this is Cameron's...even if we can't afford it.
Ted
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blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-why-the-numbers-dont-add-up-on-hs2/9048
......For that reason, Ms Greening’s assessment of economic pros and cons of HS2 are going to stay at the Fiction end of the FactCheck-ometer.
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Ted, that very idea was proposed some years ago by a company called Central Railway.
It came to naught for two reasons; lack of investor interest and local concern over the plight of wildlife in an abandoned canal in Northamptonshire IIRC.
Plus ca change.....
EDIT; found this on Wiki;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Railway_%28United_Kingdom%29
Last edited by: Harleyman on Tue 10 Jan 12 at 19:30
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I don't know, or care, which government did it but HS1 was sold to foreign investors for about half of what it cost to build.
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It will probably cost 30M just to get past the usual enviromental and planning objections. One strange newt or toad, and it will be held up for years.
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I think the strange newt in this case was a lady tory MP? They are tunnelling under her.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 10 Jan 12 at 22:15
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>> I think the strange newt in this case was a lady tory MP? They are
>> tunnelling under her.
Good one Zero.
I think there are three Conservative MPs, if not ministers, that have morphed into rare species.
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The newt is the hated secretary of state for Wales - the funny thing is she's threatened to resign if the project goes ahead. Fair enough.
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>> The newt is the hated secretary of state for Wales - the funny thing is
>> she's threatened to resign if the project goes ahead. Fair enough.
Now why is the SoS for Wales MP for a Chiltern rather then a Welsh constituency?
Welsh Tories lack experience perhaps? Still there are far more than 'blue' seats in Scotland.
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It caused much hilarity at the time of her appointment. Apparently she has some connection with Cardiff, Cameron has some particular able MPs who would have been a better choice, David Davies his MP for Monmouth would be one.
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>> Ted, that very idea was proposed some years ago by a company called Central Railway.
>>
I'd forgotten that HM. My cousin lives in Newton, near Rugby and I'm familiar with a little of the trackbed at the back of his house.
There is a new freight terminal at Daventry which I believe is rail connected.
Look at the quoted cost of the '80s scheme...£8billion !....Chickenfeed !
Ted
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>> There is a new freight terminal at Daventry which I believe is rail connected.
Known as DIRFT (Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal). Between M1/J18 and the WCML. Part of a massive logistics park.
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So - is this new line the equivalent of Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority , or is it a gigantic money pit?
I fear the latter. (Plus a large helping of politician's brown envelopes)
Here is one view (Guido Fawkes site, so not unbiased, but not pro Tory here!).
tinyurl.com/7dkazs4
Last edited by: Roger on Wed 11 Jan 12 at 10:46
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It follows great projects like the Humber Bridge,
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.....and the Minnellium Dome !
Ted
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>> It follows great projects like the Humber Bridge,
Estimated cost £7.5m, actual cost £95m IIRC. I suppose there was a bit of inflation around at the time ;-)
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and the spin goes on
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16502630
"....will create 8,000 jobs at two West Midlands sites, .....He said 22,000 jobs would be created throughout the West Midlands,
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4000 jobs at one station site ??
It'll be like China...everyone has a square yard of land to keep weeded and tidy !
That'll keep the unemployment figures down .
Ted
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Nothing wrong with the Humber Bridge,the governments should have carried the debt by general taxation.
Instead the cost was dumped on the local population where there.. is already high unemployement.
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>> Nothing wrong with the Humber Bridge,the governments should have carried the debt by general taxation.
>>
>> Instead the cost was dumped on the local population where there.. is already high unemployement.
>>
Quite right too, its of little damn use to the rest of the country, it goes from nowhere to nowhere.
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The plan was that is was going to be linked to the rest of the motorway system it never happened.Barbara Castle had a dream.
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>> The plan was that is was going to be linked to the rest of the
>> motorway system it never happened.Barbara Castle had a dream.
What the hell else was government going to do but build a bridge. The fact that it took loads of controversy and a by-election pork barrel contest speaks volumes about this country's attitude to infrastructure projects.
The ferries were shot long before the bridge opened. Farringford was obsolescent on the IoW route long before Sealink moved it to the Humber.
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The main problem has been the toll charges far to high for most people.The tolls are reduced in February to one pound fifty for a car..The majority of car drivers going south or north from Hull take the M18 or M62.No need to use the bridge.I know all about the Ferries Lincoln and Tattershal casle I was employed on the Pilot Launches at the time.
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>> What the hell else was government going to do but build a bridge. The fact
>> that it took loads of controversy and a by-election pork barrel contest speaks volumes about
>> this country's attitude to infrastructure projects.
Yeah but it didn't need to be built there. It could have been built, with much less height required, much less span, and link Hull and Grimsby to the rest of the uk by one motorway rather than two. It would be only 12 miles longer. It was WAY over the top.
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You mean not a single span bridge Zero and closer to the town.
We have a massive problem with traffic to the docks every day.If there is a traffic incident the town shuts down.We have been wating to have a tunnel build for over twenty years under Casle Street.Both governments Labour and Tory never bothered and we are still waiting for ever I think.When the bridge was build it was the longest single span in the world,a work of art but true a bridge to nowhere.
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No problem with the existing system, apart from being one of the most expensive light rail systems in the UK.
The problem is they need to introduce line of site for the extensions and they just cannot get it working. It means delays in opening new lines and any new lines may have to operate a reduced capacity until a fix can be found.
This was meant as a reply for Dutchie, about the Metrolink.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Wed 11 Jan 12 at 16:38
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Lets crack on and get it done.......
Then lets have some investment opening some of the ones that were closed by Beeching and electrification on smaller routes which up north is mainly diesel useage.
What we really need is engineereing plants and build our own trains again & make use of the existing railway plants we have and bring back jobs for people to be proud of.
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SFAIK the only train manufacturer we have in UK is Bombardier in Derby and they can't win contracts as they aren't the lowest bidders in an open tender (vide Thameslink contract.)
The costs of re-opening defunct lines would be horrendous; the conversion of 16 miles of an abandoned railway route from St Ives to Cambridge into a guided bus track cost an estimated £150 million and rose to £181 million by completion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway
Last edited by: Meldrew on Thu 12 Jan 12 at 10:42
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Interesting piece in this month's Modern Railways about tendering/contracts. The euro/banking shenanigans is seriuosly messing up the financing assumprions upon which tenders were made/accepted. Contractors are also trying to lay off the financial and other risks. Lot of midnight oil being burned.
On re-opening the guided busway could surely have been relaid with plain rail track or even light tramway stuff for considerably less. It woul also have gon all the way into cambridge instead of leaving the bus to join the raod just where the congestion gets bad. Boneheaded politics again.
The trick is to re-open stretches where the trackbed is still in good condition (Bletchley west towards Aylesbury is a case in point. The other is to develop short links between exisiting routes as Chiltern are doing so trains can run to Oxford from Marylebone.
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Boneheaded politics again
Right - Our European neighbours seem to manage these tasks so much better.
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>> The costs of re-opening defunct lines would be horrendous; the conversion of 16 miles of
>> an abandoned railway route from St Ives to Cambridge into a guided bus track cost
>> an estimated £150 million and rose to £181 million by completion.
>>
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway
the costs are huge because it was decided to build a guided busway, rather than refurbish it to light rail metro.
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They're doing a pretty big redevelopment of Reading station at the moment, and that's costing £850m. £33bn(?) for a whole new line doesn't sound too bad (although I'm not convinced it's the best option).
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Better to spend money on lasting infrastructure than on encouraging people to have children who otherwise cannot afford to have them.
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That is a bold statement Iffy.I see where you coming from .As a kid we used to live next to a family with 6 children.I was six at the time and this family was one of the happiest I could be with.
The parents where home every day.not like my old man who was always at sea and I did miss him.On the local radio station it was mentioned that 13000 children live here below the bread line.It is irresponsible parents who i object to,when you have children they should come first regarding clothing feeding and love.
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...That is a bold statement Iffy...
Yes, and over-simplified for the purpose of keeping the post short, but I think the general point is a valid one.
When I was younger, it was common to hear young married couples talk of saving up to start a family.
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>> Better to spend money on lasting infrastructure
I think a lot of people would agree - it's whether HS2 is the best way of doing it.
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High Speed Railway line from Birmingham to London. - Bromptonaut
