AIBU to think HS 2 is a monumental waste of money?

They did find some interesting Saxon skeletons at Wendover, so not all bad.

I can't tell you how horrendous the impact has been on our local area. What was once lovely countryside has been completely decimated by this absolute travesty and we'll still be living with the constant disruption for years to come with no actual benefits to anyone at the end of it, least of all those of us caught up in it day to day.

Of course I'm furious about this personal impact but the general destruction for no actual gains or positive outcomes for anyone regardless would be laughable if it weren't so utterly insane.

There are around 1.4 MILLION families on the waiting list for social housing and that number is only going to increase.

Imagine what 100 billion could have done for them?

It hasn't even created proper jobs, they are self employed. They finish them for the odd week here and there, so they can't be classed as employed. Absolute disgrace.

I used to live in 10 min walking distance from a station that could take me into Manchester in 30 minutes. Except there was only 1 train an hour a lot of the time, or it was rail replacement bus for months on end, or there were not enough carriages. It became a service I just couldn’t rely on regularly and therefore used it rarely even though it was practically on my doorstep.

Another station near me currently only has a tiny car park, so if that is full you can’t get the train. So you end up driving the whole journey.

imagine what all those billions could have been spent on improving the existing network in situations like the above. People need reliable, frequent and easily accessible train travel throughout the whole of the UK. HS2 makes me so cross.

This is what breaks my heart ,absolute destruction and no one will ever be held responsible and brought to account .
Alongside homes demolished pointlessly ,the whole thing is utterly shameful.
We must be a laughing stock over this.

We can’t take to the streets because it will take twenty minutes too long to get to the streets. We can take to the streets in 2039.

Think of what else we could have done with that money.

YANBU it's fucking atrocious.

They've carved up huge swathes of countryside around where i live, cut down ancient trees, built fucking great car parks for all the lorry's and 'segments' and cranes all lit up 24/7 like xmas trees giving light pollution, decimated all the roads through the villages, closed lanes permanently causing traffic problems and fucked up the housing market.

All to get between London and Birmingham a few minutes faster 😩 And we can't even get on the fucking thing cos it doesn't stop !! We have to go to London or Birmingham to get on it .... 🧐

the rail network is an embarrassment compared to other countries. It’s needed and we need more upgrades

Even worse, at the cost of bloody billions.

It’s an utter blot on the landscape, they’ve decimated so many important sites and beautiful landscapes for absolutely fuck all

Yes, indeed, the Northern end is where the main benefits would have occurred for more people. Back 20 years ago when it started to be first talked about/planned, people here up in the North doubted it would ever reach Manchester and wanted it to start at the Northern end as they feared it would be curtailed before it got North. All it's done is delayed improvements to the North (i.e. Liverpool<>Manchester<>Leeds<>Newcastle) corridor by 30+ years. Improvements were needed 20 years ago and it's going to be another 10-20 years before the Trans Pennine route sees any meaningful improvements (if ever) as all we're getting is a bit of piecemeal electrification every few years, the odd junction improvement, etc.

I'm on a couple of UK railway web forums and lots of industry insiders and "in the know" enthusiasts are struggling with the "links" North of Birmingham, i.e. where it rejoins the West coast main line as Crewe is already a major bottleneck and part of HS2 was re-design of Crewe which now seems to be watered down massively, and there's talk of a different "link" to the WCML from Birmingham which will just cause another bottleneck. Talk is really that it's likely to be little more than a new "shuttle" between Birmingham and London as all the proposed links from Birmingham North are severely problematic in one way or another.

General opinion is that a new "Normal" speed line to relieve the Southern end of the WCML congestion with proper links back to the WCML north of Crewe would have cost a fraction of HS2 and been a more flexible solution.

£100 billion for 100 miles is £1 BILLION per mile of track. It's utterly insane. Heads should roll and people should be in prison who benefitted from it yet contributed to the fiasco due to their incompetence or fraud.

They've scrapped the section that could have been a big improvement, across the Pennines from Manchester to Leeds. It's a hell of a lot of money to spend on cutting something like 25 minutes off journeys between London and Birmingham.

Came to say this but you put it very succinctly @MistressoftheDarkSide

My DH is convinced that vast swathes of the public sector solely exist to keep people employed (I am public sector).

And they slaughtered countryside and forests for this madness.

Assuming no leaves on the line, no strikes, no bad weather. The 100 billion will shave 20 mins off the old train journey.

So yeah, worth every penny. Especially when WFH is being pushed and the way business is being done now isn’t how it was being done when the thing was planned.

Absolutely.

Textbook sunk money fallacy.

While taking to the streets is very tempting, too many people seem to think that those with stupid wealth behind them are a class of demi-Gods who we need for their entrepreneurial skills regardless of the human cost associated with their "brilliant wheezes".

Been commenting on a couple of threads about the COL crisis and the alleged impossibility of taxing the growing numbers of billionaires to achieve some sort of sensible wealth redistribution, and the resistance and sycophancy is quite astonishing.

Apparently questioning the effects of late stage capitalism on the future well being of ordinary people is akin to heresy, and anyone being proactive in doing so is a dangerous naive socialist or Communist. The days of revolution appear to be long gone...

The current zeitgeist is extremely worrying on many many levels. And nothing is Elon's fault.

Not only the sheer cost, the ever-increasing timescales, and not even going North of Birmingham, they've now even reduced the design speeds, so it's not even going to be the "fastest in Europe" as originally planned for. And, of course, it was also stupid that it didn't directly connect to HS1 which would have actually been really useful.

They could have just laid a "Normal" railway line at normal speeds for a fraction of the cost that would have solved the capacity problem at the bottom end of the West Coast main line which is basically the only remaining benefit.

It’s the sunk cost fallacy, apparently politicians are too stupid to have taken any business courses 🤷‍♀️

Plus they’ve given the money to their mates to make their mates richer as billionaires are so great 🧐

Typical of our country though. 'oh 'ets get to London 5 mins quicker'. We are more then just the inside of the M25.

Because too many people are being paid stupid amounts of money to apoear to be doing something. Which is how the world works now apparently. I'm an old cynic and ask why things like this go on every day, and always it's down to funneling money around. Only money matters. As a species we appear to be fucked.