HS2 Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

Devil#20 · October 2023

The question that was avoided by Rishi Sunak has now been answered. Years in the planning and across political parties has now been binned, thus preserving and probably even widening the North South divide. That decision shouldn't have been made by a single party and it's truly disgraceful. He's earmarked the money that would have been used for other transport projects around Birmingham and the North. Utter bullshit and just throwaway words. HS2 only worked properly if it connected North South and ideally HS3(long gone). So the money spent on it to Birmingham and surprise surprise now reinstated to central London from Old Oak Common is a waste of money. Picked his moment to announce it in Manchester at the Conservative Party conference with just enough time to pack his suitcase and head out of dodge. Coward.

euan · October 2023

The whole point of HS2 was to remove faster passenger trains off the lines so the slower commuter and freight trains could work better and increase capacity.

The new talking about about how HS2 was just for the London elite is just absolute bull

theatreanchor · October 2023

More Tory mess. Yet it won’t surprise me if they win the next election.

munckee · October 2023

Manchester to London is over 200 miles and takes 2 hrs 50 on the train. I live on the south coast 80 miles from London and it takes 2 hours on the direct train.

We should be getting the High Speed stuff!

SteveRobinson · October 2023

munckee said:

Manchester to London is over 200 miles and takes 2 hrs 50 on the train.

Just over 2 hours on a good day.

randella · October 2023

munckee said:

Manchester to London is over 200 miles and takes 2 hrs 50 on the train. I live on the south coast 80 miles from London and it takes 2 hours on the direct train.

We should be getting the High Speed stuff!

The current 'high speed' stuff for Manchester is fine if the only place you want to go is London. It's a pretty good service, but then you'd hope it would be at £370 quid return. The journey time's actually a bit quicker than that, I think it's about 2h 15m direct.

Sheffield's 38 miles away and the train takes anywhere between one and one and a half hours, predicated on the service actually bothering to turn up in the first place.

HS2 was about freeing capacity on the WCML which is now not going to happen. As for Sunak's promise of using the £38 billion to invest in transport, I think we can add that to the list of all the other bullshit he's promised (in the north, at least). So. Lose-lose.

The government has had control of Northern Rail for a few years now - I presume it was making a profit for Arriva/Deutschebahn before they took it back, so where's that money going now? The service is getting measurably shittier by the day.

Makes you want to cry.

Or buy another amplifier, whichever works.

munckee · October 2023

SteveRobinson said:

munckee said:

Manchester to London is over 200 miles and takes 2 hrs 50 on the train.

Just over 2 hours on a good day.

See, don’t know when you are well off you lot. How we dream of a train service that fast.

RaymondLin · October 2023

It still baffles me how Japan can build a Maglev between Osaka and Tokyo (1st phase Nagoya to Tokyo), with 70% of tunnels, in an earthquake prone country, from a private company (Japan Rail is a private company, they need to apply for a permit on every section of the track from all local governments on its route), for roughly same money (initially), $64bil for Maglev budgeted vs £55.7bil budgeted in 2015.

Considering Nagoya to Tokyo is further apart. Considering the difference in technology.

Is the bulk of it the wages? I am sure land in Japan is also expensive too, and tunnelling is also very expensive.

crunchman · October 2023

There is a shortage of engineering skills in this country. That means wages for good engineers are high.

Cancelling this will mean that young engineers won't work on it, and won't gain those skills, which will perpetuate the problem.

exocet · October 2023

crunchman said:

There is a shortage of engineering skills in this country. That means wages for good engineers are high.

Cancelling this will mean that young engineers won't work on it, and won't gain those skills, which will perpetuate the problem.

Definitely this ^. Norway has over 1000 tunnels - the majority over 1Km in length. Longest is 24 Kms (through mountain), they have around 10 undersea tunnels that are over 5 Kms (longest is 14 Kms). If you do lots of it, you build up skills / resources and you get more output per £ input.

TTony · October 2023

RaymondLin said:

It still baffles me

Really?

The UK has a world-leading track record in delivering* public sector projects across a wide range of high-cost critical services, proven over decades. Whether that be IT for the NHS or "track and trace" or basic infrastructure, or, or, or ...

* there might be a missing "not" in that sentence.

Public spending is politics-driven, not public-benefit driven. Hence supposed long-term strategic projects are bent and twisted to fit short-term (4-5yr) political expediency. All parties are guilty of that. Managing a project where the requirements and constraints are changed by your sponsor and paymaster (ie the Govt), regularly but with no underlying logic or rationale (other than "there are votes in it") is a recipe for disastrous non-delivery. Add to that a sprinkling of public/media examination (critique) of the money spent, and the delivery team are also tasked with doing it as-cheap-as-possible which generally means it falls apart shortly after the (non) delivery.

It's the UK's chef's-special recipe.

ICBM · October 2023

RaymondLin said:

It still baffles me how Japan can build a Maglift between Osaka and Tokyo (1st phase Nagoya to Tokyo), with 70% of tunnels, in an earthquake prone country, from a private company (Japan Rail is a private company, they need to apply for a permit on every section of the track from all local governments on its route), for roughly same money (initially), $64bil for Maglift budgeted vs £55.7bil budgeted in 2015.

Considering Nagoya to Tokyo is further apart. Considering the difference in technology.

Is the bulk of it the wages? I am sure land in Japan is also expensive too, and tunnelling is also very expensive.

And how can the Edinburgh tram line - which is currently just one line, and was originally only 9 miles long - have cost a *billion* pounds?

I think our civil engineering contracting companies have found ways to turn government projects into a licence to print money.

thecolourbox · October 2023

Whenever I think of HS2 it makes me think of the Hitchhiker's Guide Bypass scenario. It seems to want to get everybody between points A & B, forgetting that neither A nor B are particularly exciting to go to (quickly or otherwise) and we'd all be better thinking of going to places C through Z instead

Rob1742 · October 2023

I hate politicians with a passion, and also don’t like all this Tory v labour thing where one person will back one or the other even though both sides are crap.

But for me this is the right decision, been saying for months how ludicrous it is to spend so much money on one train line. I only said yesterday that money would be better spent on several medium sized projects as costs were just insane. Based on my view yesterday I am very happy that the guy has said what I thought.

Sporky · October 2023

Sunak has long had the tactic of leaking an idea to see how "the public" responds, and adjusting policy on that reaction.

PearlsPreserve · October 2023

A government has to invest in infrastructure. It's how America became the powerhouse that it is today, it's how China is becoming a powerhouse.

The cost of HS2 was a government failure, nothing else. This whole thing is a government failure.

The UK has the widest wealth gap between its first and second city in the developed world. By miles. And it's self-fulfilling as the London-centric politicians invest more in London because it's the golden goose so, guess what, London maintains that status whilst other cities fall further and further behind.

HS2 is needed, it's needed from top to bottom, but more importantly, it's needed from middle to top, the bit that has been scrapped.

And if you believe for one second that they will use the money 'saved' on other projects you are an idiot. I know that sounds harsh, but this is the government that has brought us austerity, track and trace, COVID fraud, cash for honours, contracts for mates, '£350 million a week for our NHS', and Brexit. So I stand by my comment, if you believe what he's said, you're an idiot.

randella · October 2023

Rob1742 said:

I hate politicians with a passion, and also don’t like all this Tory v labour thing where one person will back one or the other even though both sides are crap.

But for me this is the right decision, been saying for months how ludicrous it is to spend so much money on one train line. I only said yesterday that money would be better spent on several medium sized projects as costs were just insane. Based on my view yesterday I am very happy that the guy has said what I thought.

The problem is that now I suspect we'll get neither HS2 nor the promised 'other projects'. Sunak's Network North or whatever it's called includes lovely-looking promises of upgrades all over the country that need rail investment, but it's been ten years since Northern Powerhouse and look what that amounted to.

I don't know why HS2 had to focus on the mega high speed thing - 2h 15 minutes London-Manchester is fine, make the new line as reliable as that all the way to Glasgow and you've got a high speed rail link for (presumably) less cash whilst also taking the strain off the existing WCML.

Maybe I'm just old, and we do need the extra speed. I remember when the high speed trains used to rattle into London at a snail's pace. Makes me itchy to this day, hammering through Kilburn doing a ton or more

Reverend · October 2023

I dunno, the current administration have been nothing but reliable and truthful. I, for one, have every confidence they will deliver.

crunchman · October 2023

Rob1742 said:

I hate politicians with a passion, and also don’t like all this Tory v labour thing where one person will back one or the other even though both sides are crap.

But for me this is the right decision, been saying for months how ludicrous it is to spend so much money on one train line. I only said yesterday that money would be better spent on several medium sized projects as costs were just insane. Based on my view yesterday I am very happy that the guy has said what I thought.

It's not just one train line though. It gives a massive increase on capacity on the existing West Coast Main Line. Capacity is limited by the headways (essentially stopping distances) between trains. When you are trying to run slower services and freight trains on the same track, you have to leave huge gaps in front of the fast passenger trains, and behind the slower trains.

Take the fast passenger trains off the track, and you can fit a lot more slower trains on the existing line because you can get them a lot closer together. You are probably going to be close to doubling the capacity of the existing line as well as adding the new line.

You are also going to reduce the maintenance bills on the existing line. The existing lines were built in Victorian times, and aren't designed for the speeds that modern trains do. The headline example of that was Hatfield. You had trains doing 115mph around a curve that was designed for 60 or 80 mph. Lots of force on the outside rail, so it was wearing very quickly. They had the bright idea of using harder rail to slow the wear, but it was more brittle and broke - leading to the derailment. There were failings in management of the track, but the fundamental problem is that Victorian railways are not up to the speeds of modern trains. Take the express passenger trains off, and run those lines closer to their original design speed, and your maintenance bill goes right down.

Cancelling this was utter stupidity.

Kilgore · October 2023

I suspect that Sunak's idea of Northern rail investment amounts to a Greggs at every station and special provision on trains for whippets...

Not that he's out of touch or anything.

darthed1981 · October 2023

@crunchman is totally right.

The WCML has been desperately short of capacity for years, closing and then destroying callously the Great Central Main Line is one of the biggest infrastructure errors in this country's fine history of fucking things up, getting rid of a replacement that actually went to all the right places this time compounds it.

We have never needed the railways more, and the government has roundly fucked them, and the North of England, just for a few more votes. Lis Truss lost £36 billion down the sofa in 24 hours when they let the crazy ragdoll witch into Downing Street.

That red wall will turn red again pretty much for certain, no matter how much Cruella rants about immigrants (what was her speech, the Jews have all the money? Oh no, that was someone else...).

Get this bunch of entitled ponces out of power ASAP.

PS - he is right about the smoking though (insert joke about public school and fags here).

GuyBoden · October 2023

Yes, it's all total bollocks, a shambles of administration and government, a huge waste of planning money, but personally, I'm glad HS2 is cancelled, it would have dug up some nice parts of Cheshire, that I visit regularly on my bike.

Passenger rail use is still in decline.

2022

990 million passenger rail journeys were made, an increase of 155.2% on the previous year and a decrease of 43.1% on the year ending March 2020 (Office of Rail and Road (ORR) Passenger Rail Usage table 1220)

rze99 · October 2023

"HS" 2 only vaguely made sense (if not value for money) and only in theory, before working from home was an established thing. The project became a very expensive way to meet a demand that changed seemingly for ever when the first Covid lockdown happened.

Today is yet another day when I can't use the train (in London) as none are running again. It's a Government failure, because the quality of Government has been so dire.

The Tories have utterly destroyed rail by carving it into lots of privately owned parts that have enriched a few billionaire pockets, have only theoretical accountability to customers, disenfranchised the people that do day jobs on trains and have delivered truly terrible service and value for money. I can rarely predict that I can travel by rail successfully end to end without a hitch.

When you travel abroad, mostly, stuff just works. Here, you cannot go anywhere without having to check whether anything is working. Is there any other country that has fragmented it's rail network so dramatically that it no longer functions?

The Tories are proven liars the the extent that I automatically disregard everything they say by default. I literally automatically assume the opposite of whatever they say. I know enough people that have to work for them to know how utterly useless they really are. To watch Truss try to resurrect her leadership credentials is beyond any parody I could imagine.

Unfortunately, Starmer has already proved himself to be a liar too by going back on all his "pledges" to his own people, so we know for sure we can't trust him either. His main job appears to be appear right wing enough to not scare the small number of real power brokers in this country to get into power and not freak out the markets.

Wazmeister · October 2023

Ive said this before; ive had a small insight whilst delivering training with some of the HS2 staff.

An absolute shit show, in every sense.

Unlimited budgets, H&S restrictions, woke/PC approaches, poor incredibly poor management, and huge woke Environmental restrictions are some of the reasons for spiralling costs…

But you have to look at the top governance; they literally have no clue what they are doing.

ewal · October 2023

I'm recently back from a 2 week Interrail holiday. The Switzerland and Austria legs were predictably great. But Italy too. Milan to Verona on a train doing 300+ kmh. Ticket about £20. All electric everywhere. Plenty of regional double-decker trains in all three countries. Croatia was the only country with a rail network lagging behind. But there's reasons for that and their buses are good.

Meanwhile we chug about on crowed diesel trains, paying through the nose for services that are frequently cancelled...

hollywoodrox · October 2023

It was just an exercise in filling the pockets of rich contractors , it’s now left unfinished & they’ve made lots of money . They need to be held accountable

nero1701 · October 2023

hollywoodrox said:

It was just an exercise in filling the pockets of rich contractors , it’s now left unfinished & they’ve made lots of money . They need to be held accountable

In my mind contractors are employed to provide a paid service, they generally do as instructed no more no less. I'm not sure how they are accountable?

Can you share your explanation of how they are accountable?

Not a dig or a taunt, genuinely interested in your thinking of it.

roberty · October 2023

For a leader with no mandate he is making some hugely disruptive decisions. The sooner he is gone the better

euan · October 2023

Crunchman nailed it.

guitars4you · October 2023

I've used the train once in about the last 10 maybe 15 years - Derby to London - same day return - tickets booked 3/4 days before hand - Going to London fine around 8am in the morning and all okay - Booked to come home around 7pm so a) could have a bite to eat in town and b) hopefully not come back with the 'rush hour' gang- Train only had 3 carriages - Many many of us sat on the floor or left standing, be it in the isle/gangway or the connecting parts of the carriage ways - First stop was Leicester, so nigh on 3/4 of the way home so no chance to grab a seat - Few got off at Leicester so in the end I stood the whole journey

It was not as though they did not know that we, the customer, were coming - They just couldn't be bothered to look after us - Crap product - Crap service - So please tell me why I should be looking to use such a product/service again

Was chatting to a friend the other day whose daughter went from Manchester to Newcastle on the train via a change at Leeds - Nearly a 4 hour trip inc the change at Leeds - That 'new line' they dropped around 2021 , from Leeds to Manchester, the norths 2 largest cities, would have made such a difference - With then a strong link to the NE and Sheffield that should have been a popular route

dindude · October 2023

Isn’t this less about north south devide and more about recognising that the London to Birm leg has a been a shit show with no control but we’re too far in, but why would we extrapolate that further knowing what we know. A pretty ballsy decision I think.

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HS2 Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

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