To wonder what benefits (if any) HS2 will bring?

[IceRebel]

New reports have been released and it seems like it's going to have a much bigger impact than first stated. I know we need to improve our rail network, but it just seems like a huge waste of money for such little benefit.

Am I missing something, are there going to be any positives from building HS2?

Well it's going to wipe out 91% of the wildlife habitat where we live (which is really really well utilised by the local community), going to (I've read the report and sobbed) require the bulldozing of one pub which is a very active well used one, a community centre (which has a preschool running out of it every day of the week and is booked up to the rafters with various community groups), JW kingdom hall, a viaduct which has grown another 4 foot since the last report on it all right the way through one of the local towns, take 10% of the playing fields nearest us (but it's OK as we can move the football pitch onto the other bit, which is a flipping steep hill so that's going to be interesting for a penalty kick), destroy half of the local high street in this suburb and the next suburb across... it's going to now they've admitted raise noise levels above the acceptable levels around here... oh yeah and they've now estimated it's going to cost/displace 1004 jobs locally. That's just in this local area and is the highlights from the nearest 4 suburbs to where I live.

Can you guess which side of this I'm on?! (And yes if you've read the latest impact statements it's now very obvious where I am)

We need extra capacity to run more trains between London and the North. There is no more space to safety run more trains.

We can't just add an extra line to the existing track, there isn't enough space - buildings, houses etc are up to the edge.

HS2 makes the West Coast lines in effect 6 lines instead of 4 which it is currently.
It is a marginal cost to upgrade a train line from 125km to being high speed. But the high speed element isn't actually the important part, it's the ability to run more trains with different stopping patterns.

@TheSteakBakeOfAwesome

I have family in the area you live and it's going to cut their town in half. Not to mention businesses / JW hall / Community centre having to close down as they're being demolished. It's madness that their lives are going to be changed so much and they have no say on the proposals. It's all well and good HS2 making these decisions but how many of them will be affected?

It's not NIMBYism for people to say we don't want a huge viaduct which will tower over a town, or I don't want my business to close as someone else has decided to demolish the building.

It is a marginal cost to upgrade a train line from 125km to being high speed

The cost in monetary terms is a huge amount, although I do not claim to know if it's cheap for the actual work they are proposing to carry out. However the cost to people's lives is devastating. Would you say it's a marginal cost if it was your house that was being demolished?

I missed this part of your post before, so apologies for a separate reply.

But the high speed element isn't actually the important part, it's the ability to run more trains with different stopping patterns.

If the high speed part isn't important why are they insistent on it being high speed? Surely normal trains would require less infrastructure, be less noisy and cheaper to implement?

I understand that trains are; in some ares, over crowded. However this isn't the case for all trains, so to someone like me and other who also don't travel down South on a regular basis it seems like madness to demolish homes just to add additional routes.

The other issue is we've been completely and consistently lied to over the impact on this.

The original route came out... yes it was awful how close it was going to run to us, but roughly followed existing rail lines through the area so yeah - bad but tolerable.

Then the detailed plans - where the M1 needing to be moved was discussed and some "junction realignment" works... looked more horrific

Then the station details... think we're up to a 4000 space carpark now as well.

Now we're onto moving the dual carriageway and basically plonking a spaghetti junction type arrangement to get on and off the rearranged dual carriageway all right at the bottom of the housing estate we live on, and completely bulldozing through the middle of our local highstreet.

Likewise the viaduct... started off at 12 foot - and that was a horrific prospect (imagine that essentially running through the centre of your local town and that's what we're faced with)... now we're up to 14 foot with an additional 4 foot or so sound barrier on top of that.

We were going to lose "some" of the local nature reserve... now we're going to lose ALL of it and 91% of the local wildlife habitat (and their definition of this is sketchy as fuck to keep that figure that low - they're claiming things like a kids' play area as wildlife habitat).

Every report that comes out widens the decimation around here - it would be easier if they just said "you know what - fuck it - we're going to bulldoze all these suburbs completely - move" than this continual sets of bombshells. But of course they're doing it this way so we kind of get our heads around one set of it, grieve for the idea of that and when we've finished grieving for a 12 foot high viaduct running through the middle of the community, oh well whacking another 8 foot on top isn't going to matter that much is it? And the "oh yeah sorry - we lied about the noise estimates as well".

It is totally fucking awful - we don't want to move from the area, we're established here - but if much more gets claimed by the HS2 juggernaut - there's going to be nowt left. We can't afford to buy another home, we bought this at the very bottom of the market as it was and even starter homes have risen ahead of our finances - so we're stuck watching the destruction get closer and closer to us - it's now only 2 or so streets away.

Rail passenger numbers have more than doubled in the past 20 years, the network is over capacity. HS2 is cheaper, faster and easier than massively upgrading the existing mainlines to the North and Midlands. If we want to continue to reduce car usage and city centre air pollution, then this is the way forward.

If the high speed part isn't important why are they insistent on it being high speed? Surely normal trains would require less infrastructure, be less noisy and cheaper to implement?

Conventional trains still need 99% of the same stuff as a high speed trains. You've still got to lay tracks, install overhead wires, bridges etc.
To make it high speed it's a marginal (in the grand scheme of spending billions) additional cost at installation stage, rather than building it and upgrading it at a later stage.
You can't mix high speed and conventional trains as the slower ones get in the way of the faster ones. Bullet trains in Japan run on different lines.

That sounds awful @TheSteakBakeOfAwesome I can't believe they're allowed to get away with changing the terms in such a drastic way.

2 streets away is so close, i'm sorry you aren't able to get out. I don't suppose you'd be able to get the value back on your house if you were to sell?

Amateurish I understand that rail numbers have increased, but I had no idea that HS2 was cheaper than upgrading existing lines. Although I assume they will need to be upgraded eventually?

Glitteryfrog Apologies I didn't realise the requirements were almost identical, do regular trains need as much of a sound barrier?

If you can't mix them does that mean the HS2 route will always have high speed trains, even when the technology is outdated, or could these trains be replaced with alternatives in the future?

HS2 is cheaper, faster and easier than massively upgrading the existing mainlines to the North and Midlands

Yet it manages to all but entirely skip the East Midlands. We get a station at Toton, eight miles from Nottingham city centre. No one is going to travel for 40 mins to get a train that only cuts ten minutes from the journey time.

The cost of electrification of the EMT network would have been c. £1bn. That would have actually benefitted people in the East Midlands, but has now been cancelled.

We're better off than a lot of people have found they're going to be with the latest report - we just get a nice dual carriageway relocated up our backside - they've basically found their newly purchased house that bordered a nature reserve they knew part of was going to be sacrificed to the project is now essentially going to be ON the boundary of it all. None of which has been coming up on property searches because the latest impact statements have moved the goalposts from what we'd been previously led to believe was happening so drastically.

No one is going to travel for 40 mins to get a train that only cuts ten minutes from the journey time.

But it's HS2, so let's ignore all logic.

It does seem like such a lot of upheaval and destruction to communities, wildlife and people's lives (jobs lost / houses demolished / businesses being closed.) reading TheSteakBakeOfAwesome post makes me feel so sorry for all those who will be affected but have had no say in the matter.

It's also my top 2 favourite bloody dog walks! (Bit more trivial)

That must have been such a shock TheSteakBakeOfAwesome are you being reimbursed at all or is it a case of put up and shut up?

I can't imagine the stress this has caused, and I doubt you'd have purchased a property in such close proximity to a dual carriageway, and I can see it putting others off in the future if you want to sell.

As I currently understand it we get nothing because we're just outside the boundaries for compensation based on distance from the physical train track. We're now affected by the relocation of the dual carriageway and, judging by the map work, the attempt to devise a new road junction to beat Spaghetti Junction in terms of length and excessive twirlyness. Quite if/how they'll do compensation for that I don't know but my hopes are minimal to say the least.

Thankfully at least we bought absolutely at the bottom of the market - wouldn't be able to buy anywhere else anywhere near here for the kids' schooling if we moved though - we'd have to go back into rental.

do regular trains need as much of a sound barrier?

Not much new track has been built recently, I'm not sure if they've had to provide sound barriers?
But the old railway which has been there for 100+ years doesn't have sound barriers. If you buy a house close to existing railway you're expected to do your own research.

No one is going to travel for 40 mins to get a train that only cuts ten minutes from the journey time.

This is the bit which is never explained. The government tried to promote it as a speed thing... when actually we've run out of capacity, we need to do something because there are more passengers and more freight and by moving the faster trains (with limited stops) on to a different line you can then rearrange the other services to serve the local population better.

As I currently understand it we get nothing because we're just outside the boundaries for compensation based on distance from the physical train track

I've been looking more into this and it seems even people who live across the road aren't even entitled to compensation. I can't imagine how much this will affect yours and your neighbours lives TheSteakBakeOfAwesome, it must be so frustrating to have these changes foisted upon you, and your local MP is in total denial.

She actually said

"“There are clearly those people who want to focus on the hypothetical negatives of the project"

Yeah because the points you've previously made @TheSteakBakeOfAwesome are all hypothetical.