HS2 - Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

It's all a load of bollocks, money in different pots, there's plenty available for much more pertinent things if it's not wasted in shite like this....£Xbillion per one minute of travel time saved.
 
domalino said:
In 10 years people will be looking back at this like Nick Clegg's genius idea to not build nuclear power plants in 2010 because they were expensive and wouldn't come online until 2022.

We need high speed rail infrastructure in this country, and it will never be cheaper to build in the future.
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Fully agree re the Nuclear build programme, its criminal that energy security, which has been talked about for years as a major threat, hasn't been properly addressed.

We do have an issue in the UK in particular around electrification and new railways and thats the cost per single track km which is as much as double that in Germany and France. Most of the cost is down to fragmentation of the design and build across too many companies along with the rules around land purchase.
 
domalino said:
In 10 years people will be looking back at this like Nick Clegg's genius idea to not build nuclear power plants in 2010 because they were expensive and wouldn't come online until 2022.

We need high speed rail infrastructure in this country, and it will never be cheaper to build in the future.
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I think it's better not to invest in anything too expensive at the moment. I'd wait for alien technology.
 
Blue Llama said:
Whole thing a daft idea to start with. What was the potential saving in time? Was it about 15 minutes off a 1 hour journey to Birmingham and 30 minutes of 2 hour one to Manchester?
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I think this was one of the main problems with HS2 from the start. Basically terrible marketing. They decided to make this faster journey times claim their central argument when that was never the main reason for doing it in the first place.

The business case for HS2 centres on increasing capacity for commerce, freeing up road networks by encouraging companies to move freight to railway and also improving capacity on local rail services.

I’m not making an argument for or against building the thing as I leave that to the experts, but the government has done an unbelievably fucking woeful job of explaining the value of infrastructure like this to the public.

Once again it looks like this misalignment of government messaging and public understanding is going to just leave the North worse off in the long run while London and the South reap the benefits. It’s an absolute shambles.
 
west didsblue said:
Anyone who has travelled on the train at peak times will tell you why an increase in capacity is desperately needed. The time savings aren’t as important but that’s not a significant factor in increasing the cost.
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Id disagree a bit with that, the cost of building a railway with a high linespeed similar to HS2 is significantly more, particularly with the design of the trackbed and any tunnels. Not to mention the increased power requirements to run the trains remembering that aerodynamic drag increases with the square of speed.
 
west didsblue said:
Anyone who has travelled on the train at peak times will tell you why an increase in capacity is desperately needed. The time savings aren’t as important but that’s not a significant factor in increasing the cost.
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I do not disagree that an increase in capacity is required
The current lines aren't being maximised. Manchester/London trains are only full at certain times due to pricing policy

I live in Northwich, 25 miles from the centre of Manchester
I catch a train to Piccadilly, the journey takes an hour
 
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