HS2 Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

exocet · October 2023

I love large infrastructure...don't know why, I'm not a Civil Engineer but I marvel when I see big stuff done well. It appears to me that they completely failed to decide upon the correct "selling point" as to why it was being built I.e. "capacity first, with speed coming as a secondary benefit". I still don't understand why they didn't procure double decker trains to run on the line - a missed opportunity?

What I don't know is what money was already committed/ spent on the Northern link. Have they already purchased the land / impacted properties? If so, they should keep hold of that- by all means rent / lease it back but surely someone will need to finish the project at some point in next 30 years and the price of land is only going one way.

hollywoodrox · October 2023

nero1701 said:

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.

My view is that lots of these contracts are gained through being mutually beneficial to whoever procures them . Look at the thing Gove was involved in during Brexit with shipping & transport and the scandals of PPE contracts to people with no experience a lot of this public money is taken and never heard of again and we are left with half or less of a solution.

Various government IT rollouts like in the NHS or public services where systems are found unfit for purpose . Public money is being frittered away while we can’t get nhs dentists, appointments with Doctors & cuts to services . Even in the horror days of the Thatcher administration we never saw such levels of ineptitude & self serving as the current lot & that’s saying something .

I gather in the real world companies are rewarded probably for beating deadlines but should they fail to meet them there will be penalties .

hollywoodrox · October 2023

Also , to the majority of plebs like me this high speed train thing is irrelevant especially with the endless cuts to services and years of austerity Cutting 20 minutes or an hour off a train journey just appears as a nonsense to us when we only use them for a special day out or to relocate somewhere. It seems like a vanity project to us

darthed1981 · October 2023

hollywoodrox said:

Also , to the majority of plebs like me this high speed train thing is irrelevant especially with the endless cuts to services and years of austerity Cutting 20 minutes or an hour off a train journey just appears as a nonsense to us when we only use them for a special day out or to relocate somewhere. It seems like a vanity project to us

That's one of the daftest things about the project - it was "sold" on speed.

It was about taking fast trains off the WCML so you could cram on more freight and more commuter trains.

Plus taking the strain off victorian infrastructure built when trains topped off at about 75mph now struggling with trains doing 125mph.

Now with the Northern section cancelled, it sadly won't achieve any of those things for the North.

euan · October 2023

Yep an instead you'll get money spent on roads what will cause induced demand and solve none of the problems

elstoof · October 2023

He’s pledged to spend the money on extending metro link to Manchester airport which already exists, Nottingham trams to Clifton which also already exists, and build a new station at Bradford which he scrapped last year after Truss pledged it, which was after Johnson scrapped it first

mikeyrob73 · October 2023

Did you know Boris Johnson’s dad, Stanley, received a multi-million pound compensation payout over HS2 after he had to sell his home in London?

Or even about Johnson’s brother, Max, who works for a firm which is set to gain from a £7 billion Euston HS2 land grab?

Small world

euan · October 2023

I remember one of the initial HS2 scandals long forgotten was in the initial costing people were under valuing the cost of buying land and properties so it would go ahead. Then once it was all committed they had to purchase at the actual values.

TTony · October 2023

mikeyrob73 said:

Did you know Boris Johnson’s dad, Stanley, received a multi-million pound compensation payout over HS2 after he had to sell his home in London?

Or even about Johnson’s brother, Max, who works for a firm which is set to gain from a £7 billion Euston HS2 land grab?

Some good has come of it then.

Philly_Q · October 2023

Well I for one am shocked. This news has come out of nowhere.

Tannin · October 2023

GuyBoden said:

Passenger rail use is still in decline.

Given the UK's gross, utterly mind-boggling, over-charging for the exact same basic rail travel that practically every other country in Europe manages to deliver for vastly less, it's a bloody miracle there is still any passenger rail use in the United Kingdom.

I mean stone the flamin' crows, there has been plenty of time to copy it and get it right. It's not as if it hasn't been more than 100 years since railways were invented by the Germans, French, Austrians Swedes, Americans, Africans, Dutch ... oh I dunno. Someone once told me that the British invented railways, which was obviously a lie. Maybe it was the Japanese.

Bod · October 2023

mikeyrob73 said:

Did you know Boris Johnson’s dad, Stanley, received a multi-million pound compensation payout over HS2 after he had to sell his home in London?

Or even about Johnson’s brother, Max, who works for a firm which is set to gain from a £7 billion Euston HS2 land grab?

Small world

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

TTony · October 2023

Philly_Q said:

Well I for one am shocked. This news has come out of nowhere.

Well, it was due in at 09:21 but has been delayed until 10:23 because of votes on the track.

Brio · October 2023

The wrong sort of votes on the track.

exocet · October 2023

Answering my own question. Just heard that land / properties on planned northern route are being sold. Just to make it really expensive for anyone who tries the same in the future.

ICBM · October 2023

Ever wondered what it must have been like living during the decline of the Roman empire? Things getting slowly worse, infrastructure falling apart and no-one repairing it properly, great projects left unfinished, corruption on a colossal scale, a rapid succession of useless emperors...

I wonder if it was like that for them too.

Kilgore · October 2023

ICBM said:

Ever wondered what it must have been like living during the decline of the Roman empire? Things getting slowly worse, infrastructure falling apart and no-one repairing it properly, great projects left unfinished, corruption on a colossal scale, a rapid succession of useless emperors...

I wonder if it was like that for them too.

At least the Romans could make decent concrete that lasts. None of this raac rubbish.

TTony · October 2023

ICBM said:

Ever wondered what it must have been like living during the decline of the Roman empire?

That might be taken as a joke, but the UK has been living beyond its means, and on the fading memory of the empire days, for a long time. There isn't the money to pay for the services we expect, let alone to invest in creating new infrastructure.

"The social care provision of Europe with the tax rates of the US" .... errrm, that's really not going to work, and the sooner we wake up from the something-for-nothing level of expectation and get through the painful readjustment, the better for future generations.

It doesn't matter which colour of politician is in power, they all have the same problem to solve, which is (together with their general incompetence and self-interest-first approach) why none of them have.

ICBM · October 2023

exocet said:

Answering my own question. Just heard that land / properties on planned northern route are being sold. Just to make it really expensive for anyone who tries the same in the future.

Or not, if property prices crash… they’re vastly over-valued now, so it may actually be a sensible decision.

The question is, would you buy now, knowing that a future government may revive the project and force you to sell at the then current market price?

(Speaking as someone who lives on a former railway station site!)

TTony said:

That might be taken as a joke, but the UK has been living beyond its means, and on the fading memory of the empire days, for a long time. There isn't the money to pay for the services we expect, let alone to invest in creating new infrastructure.

"The social care provision of Europe with the tax rates of the US" .... errrm, that's really not going to work, and the sooner we wake up from the something-for-nothing level of expectation and get through the painful readjustment, the better for future generations.

Exactly, although it doesn’t quite explain why other countries can apparently build similar infrastructure more competently and for much lower prices.

GoFish · October 2023

The kicker is that nothing has been *saved* - the money contracted out to cronies construction and engineering, feasibility and procurement, will still be paid. HS2 has delivered, alright. On a grander scale than envisaged, and now with zero commitment to complete. And no pesky oversight or comparisons with our former trading bloc. Like PPE all over again.

Tannin · October 2023

How much tax do the rich actually pay? (As opposed to dodge, avoid, hide in an offshore trust, etc.)

I'll bet you London to a brick it's sweet f-all.

That is what has happened to many countries over the last few decades: the wealthy have carved themselves out a massive tax exemption (via a hundred sneaky routes) and no longer pay their way. Gigantic (mostly American) companies like Google, Amazon and Uber laugh their way around local laws and national sovereignty, extracting the profits that used to be generated on-shore and taxed. Result: the shrinking middle classes are expected to pay for every damn thing and there is not enough money to go round.

In fact there is plenty of money. There are just too many loopholes in the tax system.

crunchman · October 2023

ICBM said:

Exactly, although it doesn’t quite explain why other countries can apparently build similar infrastructure more competently and for much lower prices.

Some of that is because there has been continual investment there so they keep the institutional experience and knowledge.

The railway industry in this country has a really bad age profile among its staff, and very little succession planning in my experience. Where I work, two people retired earlier in the year, and now the track geometry recording train is broken and nobody in their team knows how to fix it. In my office, all the key people are in their 50's or older. We have one 69 year old, and a couple of others who are 60ish.

There has been also been a brain drain of good engineers. We had a really good young guy who got a job in Australia. That was self-inflicted stupidity as the company's corporate bean counter pay structure wouldn't pay him anywhere near market rates. There have been others who have gone to build railways in the middle East for tax free pay. A lot of the time, the ones who stick around are the ones who aren't any good and can't get a job elsewhere. The older guys stick around because they are settled and have families, and years in the pension scheme - which the government wants to kill off.

Places like Dubai and Saudi Arabia poaching staff do mean that pay for good civil engineers and railway engineers is high, which is part of the reason why things are expensive to build. We will probably never be able to compete with that pay, but we could help by making the railways a good place to work. The problem now is the fragmented, privatised culture and idiot political bosses mean that they aren't that good place to work any more. For example, most of the good pension schemes that kept people around have gone.

GoFish · October 2023

Britain is ripe for a high speed network. Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds. Newcastle. Each of these cities is short changed. Sure, lets have another along the South Coast. We are, or used to be, the third, fourth fifth, sixth, eighth largest economy in the World. All this is manifestly achieveable. But so is a consistently high quality of education / health / IT infrastructure etc and we can't do any of those either. I shake my head at what we have allowed ourselves to become.

euan · October 2023

Yeah but that said, France has excellent worker conditions but their high speed rail cost a tenth per mile as to what HS2 costs

Tannin · October 2023

ICBM said:

Ever wondered what it must have been like living during the decline of the Roman empire? Things getting slowly worse, infrastructure falling apart and no-one repairing it properly, great projects left unfinished, corruption on a colossal scale, a rapid succession of useless emperors...

Hmmmm ..... not bad.

Cameron = Caligula
May = Claudius
Johnson = Nero
Truss = Galba
Sunak = Otho

^ Overly kind to Theresa May, but a fairly reasonable fit.

Next up, we have Vitellius for about 5 minutes, followed by the highly competent Vespasian for a decade of recovery and progress.

Don't ask what happened to Vitellius. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vitellius*.html

digitalscream · October 2023

ICBM said:

TTony said:

That might be taken as a joke, but the UK has been living beyond its means, and on the fading memory of the empire days, for a long time. There isn't the money to pay for the services we expect, let alone to invest in creating new infrastructure.

"The social care provision of Europe with the tax rates of the US" .... errrm, that's really not going to work, and the sooner we wake up from the something-for-nothing level of expectation and get through the painful readjustment, the better for future generations.

Exactly, although it doesn’t quite explain why other countries can apparently build similar infrastructure more competently and for much lower prices.

It's simple - in this country, government contracts are a licence to print money through ludicrous initial costs and loose controls that allow the suppliers to constantly move the goalposts. In European and Asian countries, the governments just say, "No, actually this is how much we're going to pay you" and actually keep control of the projects to stop the inadequacy of the project management from inflating the cost.

rsvmark · October 2023

digitalscream said:

ICBM said:

TTony said:

That might be taken as a joke, but the UK has been living beyond its means, and on the fading memory of the empire days, for a long time. There isn't the money to pay for the services we expect, let alone to invest in creating new infrastructure.

"The social care provision of Europe with the tax rates of the US" .... errrm, that's really not going to work, and the sooner we wake up from the something-for-nothing level of expectation and get through the painful readjustment, the better for future generations.

Exactly, although it doesn’t quite explain why other countries can apparently build similar infrastructure more competently and for much lower prices.

It's simple - in this country, government contracts are a licence to print money through ludicrous initial costs and loose controls that allow the suppliers to constantly move the goalposts. In European and Asian countries, the governments just say, "No, actually this is how much we're going to pay you" and actually keep control of the projects to stop the inadequacy of the project management from inflating the cost.

Not wholly true. Major contracts in the uk will be procured under regulations and administrated using terms of those contracts. The level of risk transfer by government is large and therefore the market has the right to price that risk as they see fit. They will get burned otherwise. In particular the target driven obsession of successive administrations is such that because major contracts can fail (Millenium stadium, Bath spa, Wobbly bridge, Wembley stadium, Scottish parliament….) it’s not always the contractor that is to blame. So while the government feels they need to limit their risk (blame others) and others need to pick up the tab, they resort to excessive risk transfer as the contractual safety net. It’s not an enlightened approach as a premium is payable for that risk transfer.

why has phase 1 costs gone up? Significant costs have been added due changes from increased levels of tunnelling and cutting to take the visual impact down as a result of so much pressure to avoid this wood, don’t spoil that view, and avoid the political implications of the train running though someone’s garden in the Chilterns. Building a straight flat line at ground level is a shit load cheaper than an up and down curvy route around protected trees and newts. Also there is a lot of bs flying around as to who was pricing what.

Costs have also gone up from consultants costs. The genius (sic) in government decided to set up HS2 as a lean organisation. One which has no inherent capacity or capability and therefore needed to outsource its work to consulting organisations who are making a profit.

Arguably they are not to blame for construction inflation which has soared post Covid- it’s higher than CPI. I say arguably.

As many have said, the original case was all about capacity and miss sold to the public under the high speed moniker. I do wonder how the post Covid working from home culture we now have had influenced the underlying business case but it’s probably way too early for any empirical data.

in conclusion- nothing but politics from all parties as iirc it previously enjoyed cross party support?

darthed1981 · October 2023

rsvmark said:

in conclusion- nothing but politics from all parties as iirc it previously enjoyed cross party support?

If we are serious about Net Zero, we need to reduce transport emissions.
We cannot replace each car one-for-one with an EV, too expensive, not enough lithium etc etc.
We therefore must increase availability of public transport for journeys over five miles, or fundamentally restrict people's freedom to move with capacity issues.
We therefore need more fucking trains.

The cross-party consensus was based on this simple logic, like all of Rishi's recent nonsense, he's just desperate to try and get some idiot somewhere to vote for the worst government in living memory.

Also...

rsvmark said:
why has phase 1 costs gone up? Significant costs have been added due changes from increased levels of tunnelling and cutting to take the visual impact down as a result of so much pressure to avoid this wood, don’t spoil that view, and avoid the political implications of the train running though someone’s garden in the Chilterns. Building a straight flat line at ground level is a shit load cheaper than an up and down curvy route around protected trees and newts. Also there is a lot of bs flying around as to who was pricing what.

Costs have also gone up from consultants costs. The genius (sic) in government decided to set up HS2 as a lean organisation. One which has no inherent capacity or capability and therefore needed to outsource its work to consulting organisations who are making a profit.

Yup.

Also of course, as Private Eye has reported, HS2 was never properly costed before it was announced as Gordon Brown was desperate to announce something positive in a context of nothing but bad economic news.

That he could have probably just avoided calling an old woman a bigot and kept a tiny majority and avoided austerity altogether... ah fuck it.

euan · October 2023

To be fair. She was a bigot, and Brown’s flaw was not realising how much of the country were also bigots.

darthed1981 · October 2023

euan said:

To be fair. She was a bigot, and Brown’s flaw was not realising how much of the country were also bigots.

Yeah for some reason people don't like being told they are what they are.

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HS2 Birmingham to Manchester scrapped.

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