HS2 yay or nay?

[BloodyHellKen]

With the recent discussion re: HS2 all over the news I've been wondering what the general consensus is and MN seems like a good place to start.

Do people feel it should:
a) have been stopped years ago
b) stopped now
c) completed

Personally I think it should have been stopped years ago as I always suspected it was a lot of money for very little gain (in fact I wouldn't even have started it). The money could have been better spent elsewhere IMO (eg a reliable service from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester) and I don't understand why both Labour and Conservatives have been so wedded to it.

Anyone?

It's an utter mess. Give the North some reliable transport, what need for more trains from London to Birmingham? I live in the South, always have done, but the way the North has been abandoned progressively since 1979 is a bloody disgrace. Move parliament and the civil service to the North. As if. Won't hold my breath.

I disagree. I think it will negatively affect the north and northern transport and should be scrapped.

it’s being approached from a London-centric view. Actually living near a proposed hub we won’t benefit at all, and our current transport links will be downgraded as we’ll have HS2 🙄.

”levelling up” would be better incentivising businesses to set up outside London and the se. Not by providing a marginally faster way to get to London. And nowhere else.

@BloodyHellKen To be fair, didn't HS2 first emerge in the early 2000's as an idea and from what I can see Labour are just as keen on throwing away money on it.

HS2 was pioneered by Labour in early 2009 by Andrew Adonis, though I recall that Alistair Darling the then Chancellor was the main announcer.

In the Summer and Autumn of that year detailed drawings down to half a metre were produced. This clearly shows the line was never a pipedream but a serious undertaking. The details were published in January 2010 to great surprise. It had been kept well under wraps and it was clear a lot of work including compensation assessments had taken place (since proven to be woefully too low). Many people had worked on the project in great secrecy both within government and the consultants who were (at least initially) Arup if I recall correctly. The scheme had general cross party support. The coalition government did not come to power until early June 2010 and so it is very clear now that the Tories had paid no part in founding the scheme.

It's turned an annual profit once in 20 years - last year. So maybe it is finally on the up? It was losing £20+ million per year for the first ten years though, so I don't know if last year's profit takes into account the first 18 years of loss, or if it's just "This year we earned more than we spent"!

But it also failed to relieve congestion on the M6, which was supposed to be the point of it ('the Birmingham Northern Relief Road') - not enough drivers pick it as an option, which is why they keep hiking the price, whilst reducing features/not improving their tech (removing manned booths, so also reducing promised jobs, removing the ability to pay with cash, not upgrading their systems to allow phone Google /Apple Pay phone payment).

The other scheme that was touted in the late 1990's / early 2000's was the reopening of the Central Railway from east London through to Leicestershire with spurs off to Hams Hall and DIRFT. The proposal was to reduce the volume of freight transported by road onto rail to what was then expected to be the main distribution hubs serving some 60% of England. It was a private equity scheme without any government funding at all.

It ran into two problems. The first was the amount of nature reserves that had sprung up on the old line, including bats in the long abandoned tunnels, since the line was axed by Beeching in the 1960's. Second, the scheme laid as a private members bill was defeated in the House of Commons with one of the largest (if not the largest) No Votes of all time. Though the private backers wanted to purse the case the final nail came when the main drive, Andrew Gritten, died of a heart attack at 51 around 2004. That put paid to the scheme.

Thank you @Seychal . I didn't know all that but I did recall it had been around since about when our oldest was born in 2003 so knew it had started with Labour.

What I don't understand is why the Conservatives continued with it when it seemed to be developing into such a catastrophe (IMO)

@BloodyHellKen Well then your recollection is wrong. Worrying really that it is within 2 hours of my post, or maybe you did not read it properly? This is what you said:

I did recall it had been around since about when our oldest was born in 2003

I gave you chapter and verse on the historical context of HS2. Your eldest was at least 6 when HS2 was announced. Just to be clear it was January 2010.

I am not sure what you are trying to post, but you want to blame the Tories for its construction and problems. Well you cannot blame them alone. If you want to know who is to blame for its failures you can start with all political parties. You can finish with 60 inept politicians whose constituents they have not served at all well. Maybe one or two saw the shit coming and got a good deal for their constituents, but most focused on a very vague party line. Sitting on fences gets you splinters.

Rather than praising @DanielsDancingMonkey post on the basis it was 'for' HS2 you could have objectively approached it. 'Just get HS2 finished' they said - and what would that achieve exactly in 30 years at the expense of creating a northern circuit in the meantime? Many, many posters have said this yet you make special mention of a HS2 supporter with zero argument.

I actually think HS2 should come up to Carlisle and Glasgow.

If we are serious about cutting the number of flights then they need to cut the numbers of people jumping on internal flights, people flying up and down to London, Birmingham, Manchester from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen for one and two day trips.

It's bonkers rail needs to be a serious competitor

Go one further than HS2 Limited. Tell us what are your passenger numbers?

OK Glasgow departures alone has 9 London flights tomorrow morning before 10.35.

What does that contribute to greenhouse gases vs one or two trains?

Add in a few more to Bristol, Birmingham and Southampton.

Edinburgh has 16 internal flights going south before 10.30 tomorrow too.

OK some of those people will be flying on elsewhere but a heck of a lot will be short UK business trips.

Wasn't one of the original aims of the channel tunnel project to provide high speed rail freight (and passenger) from the North straight through. Load your lorry on in Scotland take it of in Europe. Of course the London part was done first and then paused. By the time it restarted the original goals had vanished. Like a lot of infrastructure projects they benefit the nation but we'll do London and the South East first (then stop).

@BigFatLiar there is a Eurocentral Fraight terminal near Motherwell sort of half way between Glasgow and Edinburgh. How much it is used I don't know but it does exist.

Google tells me it's operated by a branch of the German rail company.

Well why don't you work it all out and come back and tell us. Add up all those flights, passengers, work out how many would switch to rail if they had a choice, then work out the CO2 emissions saved, less CO2 to produce the trace, cutting, levelling and tunnelling etc, then let us know the payback period. It is easy to look up the flight schedule tomorrow but that tells us nothing. Do the hard work.

If we’re ripping up HS2 or should never have started it, then what exactly is the plan for dealing with the capacity issues on the line between London and the Midlands? It can’t really be fixed on the existing infrastructure.

Why don't you work it out.

Rail has to be cleaner and more sustainable than flying. 28 flights south before 10.35 between Glasgow & Edinburgh. That cannot be good for the environment.

The UK needs to invest in rail like every other country in Europe. But instead we never seem to want to invest in anything.
Far too many things are run for profit with the profits going elsewhere.

(C) should have been completed years ago.

I travel all over the country for work and the train network in the north of England is a disaster generally. It's ridiculous how poorly connected Manchester is to other major cities given its size. We need HS2.

I'm a northerner living in London and in the time I can do London to York I can do York to Liverpool it's shocking the transport across the north.

it's not either or it's both imo.

theres a graph on twitter showing the vast amount of railways built in china and it's better than us

The Chinese students in my city are horrified by Uzk trains. They call them tractors.

I looked at visiting a friend in Cornwall.

It was cheaper and faster to fly to Newquay than catch a train.

Hs2 was always bonkers

You do need
The overnight sleeper from Inverness connecting to the Eurostar and much faster trains to London from the north

Better trains services especially cross country

Much cheaper trains and that means subsidies for trains not oil

As usual the government started in London when the hs2 should have started up north first. I live in Cheshire and the homes in the path of the expected route that have been purchased and are now abandoned.
Don't know if it's true but the rumours at the time that a famous TV person was paid £6 million. That house is now abandoned and in disrepair.
Waste of money in my opinion. Upgrade what we already have.

Agreed its faster and cheaper to fly, that's why there are so many flights out of Glasgow and Edinburgh everyday going south.

I never looked at the number of flights from Inverness or Aberdeen, but its crazy. And remember you have the same in reverse.

The UK needs a better rail infrastructure and its daft to cancel HS2 now.

@Seychal I think you need to calm down at bit.

IMO 6 years is a very short space of time and yes, 2003 is 'around' 2009 in my opinion - you are welcome to set your own criteria for around the same time.

For example, my friend is 5.5 years older than me. I consider her the same age as me because we were born around the same time.

No I definitely DON'T want to blame the Conservatives for it's construction and problems. I have stressed the cross party support lots of times in this thread. I do wish the Conservatives had parked it when they inherited it from the Labour govt though because as I said previously I think HS2 was a bad idea from the start.

I gave a mention to @DanielsDancingMonkey because they were the only one who commented to defend HS2 and I thought their points were interesting and well put across, despite not agreeing with them.

It's called polite debate, as opposed to ranting misunderstanding.

Internal flights have been drastically cut as well though and smaller airports closed.

when I was a post grad student we could pretty much fly between uni’s for lectures and courses. Airlines like British midland and Lufthansa flew lots of routes- I remember flying from Edinburgh to dundee on one occasion!

I’ve often thought of flying but the flights just don’t exist. Limited to Edinburgh or Manchester to Heathrow.