HS2....who/what should we believe?....

[eighthobstruction]

No sooner does one lobby provide 'evidence'/hypothesis' that HS2 is a poor option - than does another produce a rosy view. I'm opposed to it essentially on gut feeling (though having seen both sides of the evidence) being a 'Slow Down' person rather than 'Speed Up', Sustainability rather than a rush for constant growth....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24040674

....Also HS2 is constantly vaunted in the govt's plans as a contemporary infastructure project, whereas it is nothing of the sort....

[Richard Barrett]

I would have thought a higher priority would be to invest in an efficient, affordable and comprehensive (and renationalised) railway system for the entire country in order to reduce road congestion, help the environment and create more employment, rather than a limited prestige project like this which will take 20 years (and the rest! allowing for the inevitable delays and cockups) to complete.

[Richard Barrett]

... and as usual I think we can assume that anything being pushed like this by the Tories is overwhelmingly likely to be for reasons connected with fat profits for their friends (and in many cases themselves), rather than benefitting anyone else except perhaps incidentally, as we see from the NHS privatisation programme.

[aeolium]

One guideline might be not to look so much at claims and counter-claims about the merits of the project but to look at the history of other major infrastructure and technological projects. Almost invariably they have come in well over budget and in some cases have had to be scrapped as they have been not fit for purpose (NHS IT project). The Olympics which is now touted as having come in within its £9bn budget was initially, IIRC, pitched on the basis of a £2bn cost. Projections for passenger journeys through the Channel Tunnel in its first year were put at nearly 16 million, though in reality turned out to be below 3 million. Unsurprisingly Eurotunnel who had the concession for building and operating the tunnel route had to be rescued fom the threat of bankruptcy in 1995 (Mrs Thatcher having been far more canny about putting public money on the line than the present government, requiring the Chunnel to be built with private funds). Some of the claims to justify HS2 are just as ludicrous as those for the Chunnel (which incidentally gained parliamentary approval partly on the basis of proposed extensive connections to the regions which never materialised). The idea that all time spent on the train is considered time taken away from work is only the most obvious example of massaging the figures to improve the case. And the claim that nothing else can be done to improve capacity if this line is not built is not convincing.

Like RB I am very cynical about any project now that involves public money and private companies, such is the extent of the revolving door between politics and business and the ubiquity of lobbying. To me it just seems like a grandiose scheme to benefit VIPs and rich businessmen - who else could afford to travel on HS2? - at the expense of everyone else.

[ahinton]

I would have thought a higher priority would be to invest in an efficient, affordable and comprehensive (and renationalised) railway system for the entire country in order to reduce road congestion, help the environment and create more employment, rather than a limited prestige project like this which will take 20 years (and the rest! allowing for the inevitable delays and cockups) to complete.

Of course! Why on earth anyone would even think of allocating so many tens of billions of taxpayers' money on such a project - let alone try to trumpet its alleged virtues - especially in an economic climate such as the present one I have not the slightest idea (and, Mr Osborne, far from having "turned the corner", there remains not a speck of light at the end of the as yet unbuilt tunnel). The closing phases of it are supposed to take it up to Glasgow and Edinburgh and, although no dates for the completion of that have been suggested, I imagine that it would be at best some 35 years hence. It is claimed that its phases 1 & 2 will generate annual profits in the order of £15bn; how? - from whom? - where's the hard evidence?

You mention the matter of affordability; as it is, most train travel on the existing network isn't affordable for many people and the levels of passenger fare required to get HS2 ever to break even, let alone generate a profit, will almost certainly be so eye-wateringly high as to prohibit all but the wealthiest from using it, from which I can only conclude that the claims for its anticipated income are so improbable as to be utterly and transparently fatuous.

I have no idea how an efficient, affordable and comprehensive rail system for the entire country could be made possible, whoever owns it, as fares for train travel hardly go any nearer to meeting the total costs of running and maintaning such a system (let alone developing and improving it) than concert and opera tickets do to meet the overall costs of live performances, but that's hardly the point; HS2, in wilfully ignoring this crucial fact, risks rubbing our noses in it and creating a rail system that's massively more indebted than the one that we have now.

Many vociferous critics of the project have defended their positions by stating that money allocated to train travel should be spent on improving the current system rather than on some absurd pipe-dream such as HS2; I cannot imagine how they could be wrong. I'm not too worried about it right now, though, because I just cannot predict the fate of this ridiculous idea as being other than a quiet shunting into the sidings.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Of course! Why on earth anyone would even think of allocating so many tens of billions of taxpayers' money on such a project - let alone try to trumpet its alleged virtues - especially in an economic climate such as the present one I have not the slightest idea (and, Mr Osborne, far from having "turned the corner", there remains not a speck of light at the end of the as yet unbuilt tunnel). The closing phases of it are supposed to take it up to Glasgow and Edinburgh and, although no dates for the completion of that have been suggested, I imagine that it would be at best some 35 years hence. It is claimed that its phases 1 & 2 will generate annual profits in the order of £15bn; how? - from whom? - where's the hard evidence?

You mention the matter of affordability; as it is, most train travel on the existing network isn't affordable for many people and the levels of passenger fare required to get HS2 ever to break even, let alone generate a profit, will almost certainly be so eye-wateringly high as to prohibit all but the wealthiest from using it, from which I can only conclude that the claims for its anticipated income are so improbable as to be utterly and transparently fatuous.

I have no idea how an efficient, affordable and comprehensive rail system for the entire country could be made possible, whoever owns it, as fares for train travel hardly go any nearer to meeting the total costs of running and maintaning such a system (let alone developing and improving it) than concert and opera tickets do to meet the overall costs of live performances, but that's hardly the point; HS2, in wilfully ignoring this crucial fact, risks rubbing our noses in it and creating a rail system that's massively more indebted than the one that we have now.

Many vociferous critics of the project have defended their positions by stating that money allocated to train travel should be spent on improving the current system rather than on some absurd pipe-dream such as HS2; I cannot imagine how they could be wrong. I'm not too worried about it right now, though, because I just cannot predict the fate of this ridiculous idea as being other than a quiet shunting into the sidings.

I just wish the French would build it for us, in half the time and with less hysteria.

[Mr Pee]

I would have thought a higher priority would be to invest in an efficient, affordable and comprehensive (and renationalised) railway system for the entire country in order to reduce road congestion, help the environment and create more employment, rather than a limited prestige project like this which will take 20 years (and the rest! allowing for the inevitable delays and cockups) to complete.

Agreed, (apart from the renationalisation part). This whole HS2 project seems to me to be a "big boy's toys" scenario. There is no need for it and the money would be far better spent on our existing transport infrastructure.

We really don't need it in this country. We are small island. Nowhere is so far from anywhere else. To cross Europe, yes, but to get from London to Birmingham 20 minutes more quickly?

Just get an earlier train......the result will be the same....

[french frank]

I just wish the French would build it for us, in half the time and with less hysteria.

Mmmm ...

As a once frequent traveller on the trains of Europe who frequently enjoyed the modern, high-speed trains/routes (in France, Spain, Austria - and Poland!!), I have to say that I just don't think this country has even got the travel basics right to proceed towards this kind of project, leave alone the ability to manage the finances.

Public transport should be for 'the public' - and that means ordinary people who want to get from A to B, with reasonable levels of convenience and comfort, and who don't get their fares paid for by their company. When we can provide that we can look to the vanity projects (much as it pains me that other countries do things better than us).

[ahinton]

I just wish the French would build it for us, in half the time and with less hysteria.

Very good point! Mind you, I don't know how much the TGV lines cost them to build or how much it costs to run the whole system there...

[ahinton]

Agreed, (apart from the renationalisation part). This whole HS2 project seems to me to be a "big boy's toys" scenario. There is no need for it and the money would be far better spent on our existing transport infrastructure.

We really don't need it in this country. We are small island. Nowhere is so far from anywhere else. To cross Europe, yes, but to get from London to Birmingham 20 minutes more quickly?

Just get an earlier train......the result will be the same....

That's if there is one! (and in the case of London to Birmingham and back, there would be at most times of day and night, I presume). I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that there's no actual need for the HS2 project - by which I don;t just mean the London to Birmingham Phase 1 bit but the whole thing - but what I do believe is that it's absurd beyond belief to seek to prioritise a massively unaffordable white elephant above the modernisation (and, in many cases, electrification) of as much as possible of the current decrepit network as is so obviously needed.

[ahinton]

Mmmm ...

As a once frequent traveller on the trains of Europe who frequently enjoyed the modern, high-speed trains/routes (in France, Spain, Austria - and Poland!!), I have to say that I just don't think this country has even got the travel basics right to proceed towards this kind of project, leave alone the ability to manage the finances.

Public transport should be for 'the public' - and that means ordinary people who want to get from A to B, with reasonable levels of convenience and comfort, and who don't get their fares paid for by their company. When we can provide that we can look to the vanity projects (much as it pains me that other countries do things better than us).

I agree entirely - except that it remains unclear to me how train travel can be made affordable as well as efficient. The network and fare structure in Britain needs much simplification, too (on the rare occasions when I travel by train I always go first class because I can find a far less expensive than the "standard" class fare if I make enought effort to do so); in what other European nation does the national rail timetable extend to a 76.5MB .pdf file comprising a whopping 3,565 pages?

I don't care who owns the network, trains and all the rest as long as what's on offer does the job.

[jean]

At the moment, there is a comparable service in time and frequency between both Liverpool and Manchester and London, though we no longer have through trains to Scotland.

If this development goes ahead, Manchester will get all the fast trains and Liverpool will be further sidelined.

That alone is enough to make it a really bad idea.

(Unless of course the effect of HS2 is to draw yet more people into London instead of regenerating the regions it passes through. Then we'll be laughing.)

[jean]

Mmmm ...

As a once frequent traveller on the trains of Europe who frequently enjoyed the modern, high-speed trains/routes (in France, Spain, Austria - and Poland!!)...

I have travelled a lot by train in France and was full of praise for the TGV, but I have recently found myself attempting shorter journeys and I have concluded that local public transport is dismal.

As for Poland - not many high-speed lines when I was there, but I grew very fond of the overnight services that trundled all over the country, on which I could get a bed with proper cotton sheets, and soap, towel and toothbrush, for next to nothing.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have travelled a lot by train in France and was full of praise for the TGV, but I have recently found myself attempting shorter journeys and I have concluded that local public transport is dismal.

As for Poland - not many high-speed lines when I was there, but I grew very fond of the overnight services that trundled all over the country, on which I could get a bed with proper cotton sheets, and soap, towel and toothbrush, for next to nothing.

Currently one of the anomalies of the TGV system is for east-west travel (e.g. Bordeaux-Lyon) there is no suitable line between the two, so the TGV travels northwards and skirts just south of Paris before turning south again. It's still fairly quick, but not ideal. It reminds me of the man who didn't know the way from Chesterfield to Bristol, so he drove down the M1 to London, and then took the M4.

[teamsaint]

the results in just small investments in local train services can be spectacular.
The resumption of an hourly service from a small station near me resulted in a doubling of passenger numbers in under two years.

Inprovements CAN happen if people lobby hard. At the risk of repeating myself, the potentially very useful Transwilts service has a proper 10 trains a day service from December. its a no brainer in terms of investment compared to possible benefits, since the line already operates a skeleton service.
Similar opportunities elsewhere must be numerous.
I am sceptical of big projects. THe crossrail scheme(£15 Bn) looks like a big spend for modest benefit, but I would be happy to be wrong.