HS2 - Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

Psychedelic Casual said:
The govt spent £410bn on Covid shite (half of which they didn’t need), yet now they’re shelving part of a £100m transport infrastructure that will help the country for decades?

Bunch of idiots this lot.

Even Johnson thinks it’s a stupid idea.

Both legs of the North should have been done, going up to Glasgow on the Manchester side and Newcastle then Edinburgh on the Leeds side. Then Liverpool to Manchester < Leeds+Sheffield > Hull should have been done. As well as Cardiff to London.

Yet they’ve already ditched it to Leeds and now they’re not even going to bother with the Manchester line.

They can afford it, get it fucking done… all of it!
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£100m? glad you're not doing the accounts
 
Genuine question what was HS2 targets ,just looked it tAkes 2hr .03 min express train from piccadilly.what were the supposed savings ?
 
Coud see this coming a mile away. Question is, what do we get instead? Trains and lines are already in a very sorry state, meaning that public transport for many is just not worthwhile, where really they should be front and centre on any green and sustainable policy we may have.

Personally I didn't warm to HS2 as I don't think it was ever going to be what the north needs. Never wished that London was twenty minutes closer, no use to me. Trouble is they could well throw out a whole host of upgrades alongside it now and widen the gap even further.
 
mrtwiceaseason said:
Genuine question what was HS2 targets ,just looked it tAkes 2hr .03 min express train from piccadilly.what were the supposed savings ?
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Original concept was more about freeing freight movement and capacity on existing lines and about tackling the crappy Northern connectivity. Lines are choked and passenger movements slower coz of the need to accommodate the freight. The lack of connectivity up and across the Country in the North has been a disgrace for years.

Saving a few mins to get to London in a bullet looking train was another advantage to those few who take the trip but was always a sexier headline.
 
BeerIsTheBest said:
Original concept was more about freeing freight movement and capacity on existing lines and about tackling the crappy Northern connectivity. Lines are choked and passenger movements slower coz of the need to accommodate the freight. The lack of connectivity up and across the Country in the North has been a disgrace for years.

Saving a few mins to get to London in a bullet looking train was another advantage to those few who take the trip but was always a sexier headline.
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Is it just too simplistic to run freight in the night and passengers in the day ?
 
BeerIsTheBest said:
Original concept was more about freeing freight movement and capacity on existing lines and about tackling the crappy Northern connectivity. Lines are choked and passenger movements slower coz of the need to accommodate the freight. The lack of connectivity up and across the Country in the North has been a disgrace for years.

Saving a few mins to get to London in a bullet looking train was another advantage to those few who take the trip but was always a sexier headline.
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The other selling point was meant to be around severely reducing the need for domestic air travel, with the subsequent environmental benefits.
In France, the development of the TGV network has made their internal airline "Air Inter" surplus to requirements.
Obviously, in the UK, there will always be the requirement to fly to Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Aberdeen, Inverness and the Scottish islands. However, the days of domestic flights from the North of England to London were meant to be numbered.
 
Birmingham will benefit hugely from HS2. Birmingham claims to be the 2nd City. In population size it is. But it is behind Manchester economically, and more importantly in atttacting inward investment, foreign investment, and creating new jobs. HS2 will give Birmingham a massive advantage and boost over Manchester in the future when companies look to invest in the regional cities, or deciding between Manchester and Birmingham.

Using the cost Ukraine War as one of the reasons to cancel the Manchester leg of HS2 is an absolute joke and nothing more than political spin.
 
west didsblue said:
Fucking disgrace if it gets cancelled. A huge fuck you to the whole of the north.

Whatever anyone’s personal opinions of the necessity of it, the fact that the plug is likely to be pulled will mark the loss of any confidence for any significant investment north of Birmingham.

I suspect that not only will the cunts cancel it they’ll hand out billions of pounds worth of contracts to companies to undo the work that’s already been done making it financially impossible for a future government to resurrect it.
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I wonder if John Bishop will buy back his house he made millions on at a knock down price, fucking joke of a country this.
 
staffsblue said:
If it does only get built to Birmingham, it will be a complete white elephant. It's purpose was to free up capacity on the south end of the West Coast Main Line in order to operate more outer suburban and freight services. Operating only to Birmingham will create only 3 paths per hour, some of which will still need to head to the West Midlands to serve Coventry and Wolverhampton.
If phase 1 construction is completed, and it's built to Handsacre (just north of Lichfield), joining up to the existing WCML, at least Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow services could use it.
However, not building phase 2 will mean that local services from south of Manchester will never increase in frequency, and may actually become worse if all HS2 services from London and Birmingham to Manchester have to use the existing Crewe to Manchester route.
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Not building phase 2 invalidates the economic case for phase 1. They don’t want it to be a white elephant but the current plan appears to assure it will be, especially if they don’t take it into central London.

All the BS about costs being out of control is what they always say before cancelling something, and that messaging is in full flow. I don’t see any prospect of the cancellation not happening unfortunately.
 
mrtwiceaseason said:
Genuine question what was HS2 targets ,just looked it tAkes 2hr .03 min express train from piccadilly.what were the supposed savings ?
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I got the train to London for the West Ham game. It was scheduled to take 2 hours 30 minutes. It was at Watford in well under 2 hours and took over half an hour for the last 10 miles with loads of stops and starts which demonstrates there is not sufficient capacity on the network, and this is the main thing that HS2 was supposed to help resolve. The fact that HS2 would save 20-30 minutes compared to the fastest current train is a minor point compared to the additional capacity freed up.
 
HS2 was never about just getting from Manchester to London 20mins quicker. It was about a huge increase in capacity along the west coast main line and transport and freight hubs. Without HS2 there will certainly be no HS3 or better travel from Liverpool via Manchester to Leeds. No better transport infrastructure hubs for the North West. Its a crying shame that the government and civil service are simply unable to manage any capital infrastructure project without massive overspend and programe overruns. This is essentially a railway comprised of earthworks, cuts embankments a bit of tunnelling and some bridges. Nothing really is that much unknown ground wise in this country, there are lietterally hundreds of thousands of boreholes all along it's route already plus the site investigation undertaken to date which should cost no more than a few million. Yet the government are seemingly unable to let the contract on any kind of fixed price basis. Therefore costs overrun and then they compound their errors by cancelling it. Shambolic.
 
jrb said:
Birmingham will benefit hugely from HS2. Birmingham claims to be the 2nd City. In population size it is. But it is behind Manchester economically, and more importantly in atttacting inward investment, foreign investment, and creating new jobs. HS2 will give Birmingham a massive advantage and boost over Manchester in the future when companies look to invest in the regional cities, or deciding between Manchester and Birmingham.

Using the cost Ukraine War as one of the reasons to cancel the Manchester leg of HS2 is an absolute joke and nothing more than political spin.
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I have lived near Birmingham all my life. I have no desire to get to London on a train quicker than it already takes from New Street or International.
The HS2 project should’ve started North and worked South. This shit show was always going to happen, but working down would’ve meant the project either didn’t start due to cost in the first place or got finished at a huge cost to complete the whole thing.
Rail infrastructure north of Bham needs a huge upgrade and sadly now it won’t be happening any time soon. It’s an absolute fkn disgrace!
 
Worked on HS2 until 5 years ago for a consultancy and the whole thing had been a total mess since the beginning.

HS2 sub out the work to JV’s and then have the ‘name’ in the JV - Kier, Balfour Beatty, Skanska - administer the parcel of works and without fail it’s administered utterly incompetently.

On a daily basis site surveys were scheduled by the ‘name’ in the JV but the landowner not notified, meaning no access and a rescheduled visit. The consultant gets paid twice on government dime and the ‘name’ has no penalty for their incompetence.

The ‘name’ then without fail argues over every single monthly submission of works - usually over a failure at their end to log a visit - withholds hundreds of £k over a £250 query which then goes to HS2 tribunal and a further £10k from the public purse in admin fees.

The project is then further held up as parcels of work get delayed indefinitely while the ‘name’ teeters on the brink of insolvency yet again.

A shambles from top to bottom and tens of £Bn could’ve been saved by cutting out the big boys, but HS2/the gov want their stamp on the completion of works documents.
 
Also worth stating that when I started on Hs2 7 years ago, nobody believed Northern Powerhouse would happen, despite unanimously believing it the most important part.

Crossrail 2 was also openly accepted as something that would never happen despite the enabling works being ordered.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
HS2 was never about just getting from Manchester to London 20mins quicker. It was about a huge increase in capacity along the west coast main line and transport and freight hubs. Without HS2 there will certainly be no HS3 or better travel from Liverpool via Manchester to Leeds. No better transport infrastructure hubs for the North West. Its a crying shame that the government and civil service are simply unable to manage any capital infrastructure project without massive overspend and programe overruns. This is essentially a railway comprised of earthworks, cuts embankments a bit of tunnelling and some bridges. Nothing really is that much unknown ground wise in this country, there are lietterally hundreds of thousands of boreholes all along it's route already plus the site investigation undertaken to date which should cost no more than a few million. Yet the government are seemingly unable to let the contract on any kind of fixed price basis. Therefore costs overrun and then they compound their errors by cancelling it. Shambolic.
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Between Middlewich and Northwich the old salt mines have been repurposed to become the UK's largest underground gas storage facility and HS2 was planned to run right along the length of it
 
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