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[Varche]

HS2 is a white elephant.

It is going to cost more than 32 billion for sure. When it does no one will get sacked.

What to do with the cost. Borrow more and blame it on the last government?

Hand it over at a knock down price to private company to complete and then charge exhorbitant rates to users who as a result desert the service and use............cars

sadly the time for High Speed networks in NIMBY Britain has gone.

Spain got theirs just in time and excellent it is too. second largest network of high speed track in the world after China of course.

London Airport.  Years ago my solution to this was to build an airport out in the sea East of London with a high speed links. Boris Johnson is right. There is a small problem with a sunken WW2 ship loaded with unexploded bombs. No problem. Controlled mother and father of an explosion to mark the start of the Olympics. 

[tunnie]

Chiltern will remain & be more popular I think due to lower fares. HS1 withdrew high speed services due to extra cost of fares, people were not prepared to pay the extra, HS2 is also non-stop to London.

[TheBoy]

I had no particular views on HS2 before I went to the consultation. Its going to be about 0.75m from here, as the crow flies, and in a slight cutting, so unlikely it'll affect me, beyond construction work.

However, having been to the consultation, I am now very anti it. Even there own business case figures don't add up.  So that £32b is barely touching the surface for Phase 1.  And remember, until Phase 2 is built (it never will be), its a rather pointless exercise, except to get that "less than an hour" Birmingham to London moniker. As opposed to the 1hr17 it used to be before the consultation started (I note that Birmingham to Euston times are increasing, despite the rail bypasses they have built around many statsions such as Milton Keynes - cynical??).

The business case makes out this will be cost neutral, due to 'easier' travel between Birmingham and London. Without explaining where the financial benefits come from.


With face to face meetings slowly becoming a thing of the past, technology allowing office workers to be based anywhere, is there going to be a need for such a link in 15yrs time when its built (if on time)?

The only people who physically need to travel - shop workers, factory workers, cleaning services etc - are the ones who will not be able to afford to use it.  They will be forced to use East Coast mainline or Slug line. Although I suspect Network Rail, to hide their blushes, will force those operators not to do non stop Birmingham to London services.  These services that actually stop at stations on route can only be run with approx 40% subsidies (that the governament already imply is unsustainable), so what chance does HS2 have of being able to be anything other than a moneypit. Unless they offer a premium 1st class service, Concord style, purely for the rich...

[TheBoy]

Chiltern will remain & be more popular I think due to lower fares. HS1 withdrew high speed services due to extra cost of fares, people were not prepared to pay the extra, HS2 is also non-stop to London.

Added to that, unless you want to be in the wrong end of London, nobody in their right mind would choose the Slug from Birmingham to London, when there is a faster, same priced service into the right part of London (Euston is universally more useful than Marylebone)

[Rods2]

Good to see the government is so keen to waste invest such large sums of money in Victorian technology. Conventional railways are expensive to maintain and this is reflected in the cost of fares.

This should have been built using magnetic levitation trains. They can go much faster where there is no physical contact with the ground. They are much quieter as you don't get the low frequency ground rumble that travels long distances. If you are going to try to compete with aircraft then you need to be approaching aircraft speeds! But I think all high speed travel will be a thing of the past by the time this opens due to CO2 emission levies. The faster something goes the energy used goes up by a square law. It will be too expensive to go anywhere at more than 10mph. 

In the 1950's we were in the forefront is so many ground breaking technologies. Now the all the Governments seem to want to be in the forefront for, is useless green technologies, PC correctness and many other socially worthless projects. 

Ten years ago I had to regularly fly to Paris for work meetings, so I used to aim to get a flight for about 7am arrive Paris with the time difference at about 9pm and be at the company for about 9:30. That was the theory. Now Paris and Charles deGaulle airport suffer fog problems in the spring and autumn. This would cause flight delays, but where Heathrow airport runways run at near to 100% capacity, it was quite normal to be stuck sitting on the aircraft for up to 4 hours, just waiting for takeoff slot. I have also had similar delay experiences at Gatwick. 

I must admit if I was looking to setup a business which involved much flying to be successful, I wouldn't set it up in the UK. Ireland or the Netherlands would make more sense to me.

A white elephant railway line does not solve these problems.

The reason train journeys now take much longer than they used to is due to late train penalties, levied by the Government. The train companies have massively extended journey times, so if a train is running late, it can catch up, so at journeys end there is a much bigger chance it is within the no late penalty timing. I saw a newspaper article on this in The Daily Telegraph about 5 years ago. Where they compared many current journey times over the years and proved many were much faster during Victorian times, got faster as train technology improved and have now gone backwards. Typical Government law of unintended consequences. 

[Terbs]

Once, we had a thing called Concorde....necessary for businessmen to get across the pond in double quick time......billions of pounds.
Now there is no Concorde, and no plans for the same speed to cross. Business continues....
So why the hell do we need a train to get to Birmingham 17mins quicker. Remember, you still have to get to London to catch it, so where is the time saving
What is the point of going to London from Wycombe , about an hour, when you could get a train at Wycombe to Birmingham in the first place
Regards,
Baffled

[Kevin Wood]

So why the hell do we need a train to get to Birmingham 17mins quicker. Remember, you still have to get to London to catch it, so where is the time saving

.. and this is why all investment in rail links is pointless. You can't get to where you need to be to get on the rather train unless you happen to live in London. Beeching might as well have gone the whole hog back in the 60's and scrapped the lot once he'd ensured that there won't be a rail link within easy reach of most settlements in the UK. If I have to get in my car to get to the station I might as well just drive it to Birmingham, thanks.

[henryd]

HS2 is a white elephant.

It is going to cost more than 32 billion for sure. When it does no one will get sacked.

What to do with the cost. Borrow more and blame it on the last government?

Hand it over at a knock down price to private company to complete and then charge exhorbitant rates to users who as a result desert the service and use............cars

sadly the time for High Speed networks in NIMBY Britain has gone.

Spain got theirs just in time and excellent it is too. second largest network of high speed track in the world after China of course.

London Airport.  Years ago my solution to this was to build an airport out in the sea East of London with a high speed links. Boris Johnson is right. There is a small problem with a sunken WW2 ship loaded with unexploded bombs. No problem. Controlled mother and father of an explosion to mark the start of the Olympics.

That must be the one off sheppey,they seem very reluctant to do anything about that one

[Dishevelled Den]

Once, we had a thing called Concorde....necessary for businessmen to get across the pond in double quick time......billions of pounds.
Now there is no Concorde, and no plans for the same speed to cross. Business continues....
So why the hell do we need a train to get to Birmingham 17mins quicker. Remember, you still have to get to London to catch it, so where is the time saving
What is the point of going to London from Wycombe , about an hour, when you could get a train at Wycombe to Birmingham in the first place
Regards,
Baffled

Dear Baffled,

Please don't be as the answer is quite simple.

Stupidity, a lack of any degree of 'horse-sense', a complete disconnect from practical reality, acute political awareness (in terms of looking after their own arses) and an uncanny ability to be led by the snouts by unelected 'experts' who are able to bamboozle these doe-eyed legislators with slick presentation, bright colours, massaged financial projections and the promise of adulation from a fawning, ever-so-grateful public for yet another prestige project conceived and implemented with their welfare and convenience uppermost in mind.

Best regards,

Cynical (and mad as hell that these Muppets are drawing a generous salary for what amounts to having opps-all ability to think of anything outside the confines of Westminster)


Eyethangyew!