HS2 isn't worth it

[Globules]

I'm having a holiday in the Midlands.

I know the area pretty well, so have been appalled at the way HS2 has carved up the landscape. It looks awful.

Now that I've landed in my hotel, I've been reading up on HS2.

The minimum projected cost is £87.7 BILLION.

This is an absolutely shocking amount. What is the benefit? Is it that important that people arrive in Birmingham about 10 mins earlier?

Do you think we should cut our losses now and stop throwing cash that our country doesn't have at this money pit?

YABU - it'll be of huge benefit to the country
YANBU - we need to stop the work now and try to repair the damage already caused.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz6e0vplgldt?app-referrer=search

Where have you been since this shambles of a project started?! Of course it's not worth it. I don't think anyone is defending it.

The whole thing is a disgrace but that was clear from the start. I think i read something that said if they were to stop now it would probably cost them more than finishing it

The point never was about people getting to Birmingham 10 minutes earlier, it’s to increase capacity so that more trains can run across the network.

The project has been a complete shambles but the actually reasoning for it is sound.

It’s honestly grotesque - not just the cost in pure cash terms but the carving up of the beautiful countryside, the disruption etc. It should have been abandoned but no-one wants to make that decision due to the cost sunk already. But it’s throwing even more money at an already very bad situation

I absolutely agree it's a waste of money but this far in I can't see it's going to stop. I live close to one of the areas it's going through, we've already had years of constant road closures on the country roads around here which constantly change so just because you drove from A to B one route last week doesn't mean you can this week. The main roads are breaking up where HS2 lorries constantly drive over them but the worst bit is all the land that has been taken and livelihoods destroyed along the way. The powers that be will shout about all the new trees they are planting alongside the track but fail to mention the old established hedgerows and trees that have been ripped out or the extra farmland that's been taken out of production to make way for those new trees.
There is already 2 rail routes between London and Birmingham as well as the M40 so do we really need a 3rd rail route. At the end of the day it will be interesting to see how much it's used, not much is my guess.

It is not just about making journeys 10 mins shorter. It is about doubling capacity on the network so there are many more trains and more options in future.

and all that money, it mostly goes on jobs. Hiring engineers. Apprenticeships to train the next generation. Planners and designers. Cutting HS2 means cutting a lot of real jobs.

yes, this project it should have been done cheaper but in general investing in rail is a very good thing and there should be more of it.

There’s been so much written about this. I think the engineering was in places spectacular but it destroyed ancient woodland and habitat that’s irreplaceable. Christian Wolmar is a highly knowledgeable transport journalist and he’s been writing about this for some time.

So much money has been wasted but I do think it could have been a triumph. Though east / west links seem to me to be needed mich more.

CW has this to say at the end of his article on Substack:

”Surely there must be a list of particular works – a bridge here, a viaduct there – and an understanding of the time it will take to lay the tracks and install the signalling. But it seems not. After eighteen months, the new CEO Mark Wild was apparently unable to provide these details – or perhaps Alexander was unwilling to give them. Wild has explained that it is the uncerrtainty about the weather which means no clear date can be given.Work should normally be concentrated in the period March to November but wet conditions in that period could delay work. That seems pretty pathetic.Surely this should have been already taken into consideration and doesn’t explain why it is going to take ten years to get even the basic London to Birmingham railway working. It is a national disgrace.

I suspect that the malign influence of the Treasury may be in play here. The obvious way of completing the project would be to speed it up, throw money at it as fast as possible to ensure its early completion and the start of revenue generation. But the Treasury has, perhaps understandably, rather lost faith in the rail industry. Indeed the Treasury has never liked railways, taking the narrow and mistaken view that they are simply a money pit, rather than understanding they are a vital part of the nation’s infrastructure and deserving of government support in the same way as education, health or defence.

My new book Fast Track covers this failure in some detail but it also explains how China has built 30,000 of railway in broadly the same period that HS2 has been in progress. So the score in the high speed world cup is China 30,000 - UK 0. Some scoreline”.

Do you also complain that the country’s going to the dogs? That Britain needs investment? Things like high speed rail are exactly what other progressive western nations invested in decades ago. You can’t expect a thriving economy and business without infrastructure.

I agree the cost has gone way too far and that’s probably due to a knowledge gap, but unfortunately nice things cost money.

I know it’s become fashionable to say HS2 is pointless, but I don’t think that’s really true.
People keep focusing on the fact it saves some time between London and Birmingham, but that was never really the main reason for building it. The real issue is capacity. The West Coast Main Line is absolutely rammed - it’s actually hideous. You’ve got fast trains, stopping trains and freight all trying to use the same tracks, and that’s why delays spread so easily.

A new line means you move the long-distance trains off the existing railway, which frees up space for more commuter services and more freight. That’s the bit people seem to ignore, imo.

Yes, it’s been badly managed and it’s cost far too much. I don’t think many people would defend that. And cancelling the northern sections definitely made the business case less compelling than it orginally was.

But saying it’s pointless is a bit like saying the M25 & motorway network was pointless because it was expensive to build. We still use Victorian railways every day because infrastructure lasts for generations.

If we want a growing population, fewer lorries on the roads and a railway that actually has room to cope with demand, then at some point we have to build new infrastructure instead of expecting 19th century railways to do all the work.

You can absolutely criticise the way HS2 has been delivered. That’s fair enough and I’d agree in many areas. But that’s very different from saying Britain doesn’t need more railway capacity. I honestly think in 30 or 40 years people will just take HS2 for granted, a bit like they do the motorways now. Funny how nobody says they were a waste of money anymore, even though plenty of people did at the time.

@Globules initially a lot of people objected to it and I really thought it would be cancelled

I suppose it's a sunk cost thing now

But this has been going on for literally years! State of the countryside

I think increasing rail capacity on such a concentrated route doesn't make sense

I thought the initial plan was to get more people into London, but it's been going on for so long I can't remember

I read up on it a lot at the time

I had a family member who initially thought it was quite useful, but now he is also also puzzled

Was it originally meant to run up to Manchester as well?

I'm sure the rail network does need increased capacity, but I don't know why they're concentrated on that one route

Probably whatever the reasons were at the time are now long out of date

The trains running from Leeds to York used to be pretty awful, but they're much better now

I think there's probably loads of pockets of the country that need improvement but for some reason this was thought to be a major commercial benefit

I’m in the Chilterns - the northern exit of HS2 from a tunnel. It’s dire here. The destruction of the countryside for mile after mile and it’s just London to Birmingham! Everyone who commented when the idiot Lord Adonis put it forward wanted it. The North was desperate to get to London and back quicker. I remember Pete Waterman going mad for it. The fools didn’t realise they needed the railways better in the north! The rest of us don’t mind driving to Birmingham. It’s barely going to make a difference to the routes already serving Birmingham.

Capacity could have been increased by extending platforms and trains on the other routes. Even making bridges bigger for double decker trains.

The project was not fully designed before they started work and they are making design changes as they go along. It wasn’t needed and we are not China! Everyone knows how China treats its people. It’s awful here. The projected cost is upwards of £100 bn. We are such a stupid nation. That’s half the cost of the NHS for a year though.

Not this again!

It's not about arriving in B'ham 10 minutes earlier it is (or rather was) about moving massive amounts of freight from the North down to where it could go through the Tunnel and link with a rail network that literally runs to China.

That, however, would offend so many vested interests, (road haulage, airlines, NIMBYs) that they have managed to switch the argument and no Govt (of any party) has had the guts to stand up to them.

YABVVVU.

Re-instate the original plan in full and build it come what may. In the long term it will pay for itself

I'd sell my airline and road haulage shares if they do, though.

I agree about the destruction. The M42 is an absolute shambles and has been for years for construction work, from when they put a smart motorway on it to now with HS2 related work. The M6 connecting to it is no better either.

However the fact it will free up space on the other networks to be able to carry up to 11,000 HGV’s a day on freight trains is a no brainer in my mind.

That said, my local network is EMR and I wish they could have or would do something about how dire that is!

If it is about capacity then it should have gone a cheaper route along a motorway. We have been duped by HS2 the company who want to do complex engineering (takes longer and higher cost) and Boris's vanity wanting the fastest trains.

To compare - HS1 from central London to the kent coast cost under £10 billion, the difference was more than half of it runs beside the motorway.

I agree with pp, it's main job was to increase capacity, especially for freight. I do think it's been shockingly planned and handled and the costs just keep spiraling. I do think we need to invest in our crumbling infrastructure and public transport though. I can't help but get angry every time I see all these bloody unused electric car charging points in every village around here where you get one bus amd hour if you are lucky and nothing past 7pm. Imagine if they'd just invested that wasted money more buses.

There needs to be an investigation into Boris and Co and their HS2 related ill gotten gains. We know for a fact that Stanley Johnson bought up land in advance of HS2 compulsory purchase. How is that not corruption of the highest order?

Whether or not the project should continue is debatable. At the moment it seems a case of throwing good money after bad.

HS1 is barely fit for purpose. Theres not that many trains, its not particularly fast, its a stopping service, costs a bomb.

Phase 1 can't be stopped, it would cost more to remove and restore what is three quarters built. It's more expensive than it needed to be mainly because the design was forced to accommodate many extra requirements in the committee stage, from all the locals, that's where the bat tunnels etc came from. Otherwise it would just be a simple 2 track railway like any other.

Plenty of people spotted up front it was a bad investment. Now it just looks like an even worse one.
"We welcome the objectives the Government has set. We fully support investment in UK rail infrastructure. But the Government has not made a convincing case for why this particular project should go ahead. The analysis presented to justify the project is seriously deficient." 2015 publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldeconaf/134/13404.htm

The old railway infrastructure and viaducts and canals etc cutting across the English countryside are blending in now, but they were new once. Train tracks are almost a stereotype of the English pastoral landscape now. And people idealise IKB. There is a huge amount of complaining in the UK that we don't make stuff anymore, nostalgia for the golden days of engineering and big infrastructure projects. But if Kingdom Brunel was alive today those same people would be campaigning against all of his projects. You presumably drove to the midlands, along a massive motorway that also carved up the countryside.

I agree that the overspend on HS2 has been massive, but increasing rail capacity is important and railways are for more efficient than new roads/motorways in terms of how many people can travel on them versus countryside they take. The other thing about train tracks and cuttings is they do blend into the landscape in time. They sort of weather in.

The biggest issue with HS2 is the bad management that went into planning it and spending (especially Boris Johnson). The worst thing is if this feeds into an idea that we are really bad at infrastructure now so we just shouldn't bother. Because we need infrastructure.

Its a joke. People are sleeping on the streets and they've wasted billions on this. And the politicians involved are so self deluded they will feel no jot of conscience.

It was never worth it in the noughties when it was first muted. As always, those against it were called all kinds of names and insulted as being anti-progress, NIMBYs or whatever. But it was all blindingly obvious it was going to be yet another expensive waste of space. The benefits were NEVER there. Nothing has changed, the benefits are even less now that it'll never go north of Birmingham!

So many aspects were utterly stupid, such as the way it didn't link into HS1 meaning there'd never be direct trains from the North to the continent, not even being able to change at a single station but instead having to travel from one London station to another - utter stupidity!

Why spend tens of billions more to make it a super fast line to go such a short distance? A new line could have been built far quicker, far cheaper and with far less damage to the countryside etc if it had been built to the same standards as existing main lines.

No doubt there's a need for a new line to relieve the busy overcrowded West Coast main line, but we really didn't need it to be HS2. I understand there is most of the old track bed of the old Great Central line that could have been resurrected - granted some of it has been built on, but given the sheer destruction and devastation caused by HS2, the restoration of most of the old Great Central line where there had been little or no building/obstruction along with "by passes" around parts where there had been significant construction would have still been massively cheaper and quicker than HS2.

It was always the Northern end (Manchester/Leeds) where the main benefits would have been seen benefitting more people. Because that's been scrapped, we're now even another decade or two before improvements can be made around those cities, and between them and Liverpool/York/Newcastle, which have an utterly awful train system. The northern reaches of HS2 were supposed to cure all that and had it been done on time, we'd be close to seeing those improvements now. But, no, Northerners will need to wait another decade or two to get a half decent train system, if it ever happens.

It was never going to be a simple two track railway "like any other" because from the outset it was designed to be the fastest in Europe, not the same speed as other UK main lines. That meant it had to be straighter as very fast trains and curves don't mix. Likewise inclines had to be more level as again, very fast trains don't "do" hills and slopes. So not only did it have to be straight, it had to be level, meaning lots of bridges, tunnels, embankments etc that wouldn't have been needed at "normal" speeds as trains can go around curves and do inclines better and more safely. Right from the outset, being planned as the fastest in Europe, was it's failing point - it was just a political folly.

The North was desperate to get to London and back quicker. I remember Pete Waterman going mad for it. The fools didn’t realise they needed the railways better in the north! The rest of us don’t mind driving to Birmingham. It’s barely going to make a difference to the routes already serving Birmingham

Firstly, what a load of nonsense you’ve written down and secondly how insulting to call people who live in the north ‘fools’

There are many millions of people who would love to see major investment in rail in the north but the London centric Treasury runs its models and doesn’t see the right numbers so won’t do it.

HS2 is massively needed for capacity as others have said. The issue is having to tunnel so much of it to appease Tory heart lands and to do bat surveys to appease environmentalists. If we’d just built it without pandering to all that it’d be a) done by now and b) cost far far less.

Btw we need to build miles more railways and moterways due to population growth. Supermarkets and water companies estimate circa 80 million. No wonder everything is so bloody crowded.