HS2

[saundra]

Has got the ok to go ahead
For those who can afford the fare ,
If it's ever finnished

[Suff]

I wonder when it will really begin?

Because from Jan 2021 we do not have to do open tender on the contracts. Something we may want to take advantage of.

If that is the case, then only preparation work will happen on short term contracts.

[saundra]

No idea suff I don't do technical

[Workingman]

Thank goodness for all those magic money trees Labour planted before the election; what would the Blond clam shell now do without them?

[TheOstrich]

I'm not a supporter of HS2, and I've signed petitions against it in the past, but I'm not going to man the barricades over today's decision. It won't be completed in my lifetime and I wouldn't be able to afford to travel on it anyway (although that said, I think the Eurostar fares are fairly reasonable but then they have to be because of competition from low-cost airlines - is that correct, Suff?).

I think the crucial thing to watch out for is whether or not this project subsumes everything else - WM's magic money tree complaint - because there's a heck of a lot of other infrastructure projects around the country, both great and small, which are arguably just as important.

[Workingman]

.... there's a heck of a lot of other infrastructure projects around the country, both great and small, which are arguably just as important.

A truism is that the great ones get a name attached to them for posterity whereas the small ones benefit the most people, ordinary people. That's why one lot get done and the other lot get binned. We all know which is which.

[Suff]

I'm not a supporter of HS2, and I've signed petitions against it in the past, but I'm not going to man the barricades over today's decision. It won't be completed in my lifetime and I wouldn't be able to afford to travel on it anyway (although that said, I think the Eurostar fares are fairly reasonable but then they have to be because of competition from low-cost airlines - is that correct, Suff?).

I think the crucial thing to watch out for is whether or not this project subsumes everything else - WM's magic money tree complaint - because there's a heck of a lot of other infrastructure projects around the country, both great and small, which are arguably just as important.

Os, Eurostar rates are bloody expensive. The number of trains have reduced and the interconnenctions in Paris/Brussels have also reduced radically over the last decade.

I can fly to Limoges and back 2-3 times for the equivalent cost of a Eurostar ticket. Also I'd need to leave early in the day, lose half the day and take over 7 hours to get home. Ryanair do the flight for me in just over an hour, I fly from Stansted and it is 30 minutes home from Limoges and I can get on an 07:50 flight on Friday morning and be at my desk working at 10:30 UK time.

Eurostar used to have some very cheap tickets. They have just about vanished. Eventually I had to stop looking unless flights became prohibitive or full. But when that happens I'm actually cheaper taking a ferry and driving.

It is true that HS2 will suck up a large chunk of funds that could be used for other things. But then we could have said that about the Channel Tunnel. After all we had ferries and they worked didn't they? Or the same for the M25 which continues to consume hundreds of millions per year and sporadic billions in upgrades. We had roads, they worked, sort of.

We will be spending around £4bn a year extra on the NHS over the next 5 years, some people think that money is wasted without a corresponding reorganisation of the money sinks in the NHS.

There was an interesting comment on the radio this morning. The last new mainline facility built into London (outside of the Eurostar), was in Victorian times.

Isn't it about time we started looking at how our country runs? If we do HS2 now, the later extensions of this infrastructure will span the country, up to Scotland and throughout England and Wales. If we do not do it now, we will be like London without the M25.

It just depends on your viewpoint.

[cromwell]

I'll put my hand up. I live just outside Wakefield, south of Leeds. At the moment HS2 is scheduled to pass within about a quarter of a mile from my house. Which is bad enough, but some houses in the village will be about 100 metres from it. Others have already been purchased for demolition.
It brings us nothing but negatives.
The noise it will make going at full speed will be awful. We will have years and years of disruption whilst it is being built. The main Doncaster Road will be closed for an unspecified period of time. Where is that traffic going to go? Let me guess - through our village. HS2 passes through a local nature reserve. We will lose footpaths forever, we will lose countryside, we will lose wildlife habitat. The countryside will be scarred with ugly great viaducts. House prices will collapse - who wants to live next HS2?
After it is built we will have a reduced non-HS2 service to London from Wakefield. Time saved by HS2 will be lost because we have to go to Leeds to catch it, that's if we can afford to buy a ticket which I sincerely doubt.
Additionally we are threatened with a massive HS2 service depot next to the village which will blight us with noise and light pollution 24/7.
"The North" is NOT clamouring for HS2. HS2 is a vote loser, as Boris Johnson is going to find out come the local elections. The people who want it in the North are ego driven city Mayors. "Oh yes. Important city us you know. We've got HS2. Oh yes". So next time you see Andy Burnham or Judith Blake on TV saying how essential HS2 is, remember that.
Politically speaking, it is a cretinous decision. London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are all mostly Labour voting. Everywhere inbetween them is mostly not. HS2 is going straight through old Tory strongholds and former "red wall" seats - if Johnson thinks ex-mining seats will be grateful for HS2 he is soon going to find out differently.
All this to knock some minutes off a trip to London? That argument has been dished so HS2 supporters are now saying "oh it was never about speed, it was always about freeing up capacity on the other lines". Never about speed, which is obviously why they called it High Speed 2.
Now that the capacity argument is being challenged, politicians are saying that HS2 will "regenerate the North". How? By allowing it's best and brightest to go and work in London? All HS2 is doing is extending the suburbs of London to Manchester and Leeds.
If the rationale for a project keeps changing, please allow me to doubt whether it is actually worthwhile.
So that's it. That's my perspective and if you lived where I live I think it might be yours as well.
It might never happen of course. HS2 may decide to lay the track somewhere else. Another government may cancel it (unlikely). Or it may dawn on them that using 50 year old technology might mean that HS2 will be obsolete by the time it is finished. In Nevada they have already built a third of a mile long Hyperloop test track.
But probably it will get built and the little people in the towns and villages will be the ones who get dumped on, as per usual.

[Workingman]

Cromwell, if I may say so that a cracking summary, especially your observation about the ever changing rationale. When such becomes fluid to meet the next challenge because all the previous ones have been proved to be correct you know that the grand scheme is a waste of time, money and effort.

Hyperloop will be the next white elephant.

[Suff]

Cromwell,

I understand your viewpoint. However I live in a country which already has these links. Whilst the LGV and the TGV that run on them do suck a lot of people into Paris, these lines also suck business out of Paris and to the connected cities. Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, all benefit greatly from the LGV.

The Government wants to extend the LGV to Limoges from Poitiers. The locals are up in arms, make all that noise in their nice quiet countryside? Not a chance. Whilst at the same time the Glilets Jeaunes in that area are very active because they have few jobs, low incomes and the whole area is falling apart with shops closing, infrastructure being delayed and a general sense of malaise.

You can't have both. Either you accept that growth and change comes with some unwelcome infrastructure or you put up with less business, less income and the fact that London and the SE, which tends to accept all of these changes, will get the lions share of the wealth and opportunity.

At least HS2 is designed to be mainly in cuttings to keep the noise down. LGV/TGV doesn't waste €0.01 on that. Noise? Your problem.

A very interesting point to note. Here in France internal flights are prohibitively expensive. However train fares are much cheaper than the UK, especially first class.

Something we have not experienced because our train infrastructure is simply too old and too slow to compete with the airlines. The only flights internally in France which are cheap cross the country where the rail lines don't go (they spur out from Paris).