HS2 - Stupid? (High Speed 2 Rail Link)

[TheAnimus]

I get 280 miles to a tank of petrol in my car, Manchester to London would cost me around £90 in fuel

Fair enough, but you are driving a gas guzzler!

However, if the train journey was 1.2 hours i'd definitely consider using it over the car, hell i'd actually consider going to London full stop (as long as it's not for too long )

Fair enough, but we're not saying 1.2 hours, we talking about 2 hours 8 min, going to, 1 hour 40.

Then and only then after further investment, would we see a drop to 1 hour, 20 min. That is still more than 1.2 hours!

[redddraggon]

funily enough no, but next time we're in a densily populated area with 8 million+ people there each and every day, you will make some sense.

Well clearly that's why you have slow buses, but there's no reason for slow buses in the countryside where traffic density is low.

At least in London there is a viable alternative to a car, the public transport in most other places in the UK means there is not. London Public Transport might not be perfect, and nor anywhere near the best Europe, but it's still better than most of the rest of the country.

[Guy]

What rotting infrastructure? If you mean public transport, London's public transport is bloody marvelous compared to the rest of the country.

I cant say I have ever called it marvelous. (Technically not London, but close enough)

Seriously just get the train into London from Reading at commuter time.

£43 for a return travelcard! Overcrowding beyond belief, ancient rolling stock, usually delayed somewhere along the journey, then the same again once you get into Paddington and transfer to the tubes.
Add on top of that £20 to park for the day (more if you can even get into the station car park)

The journey works out at 50ppm which means even driving something doing barely double digit MPG would be cheaper, and a damn sight nicer place to be.

[Gerrard]

I think I've said this before, but the only hope to improve our rail network is for someone to invade this country and level it so we can start again. It's a pity we are stuck with the Victorian network and unable to get double-decker trains. I'm sure someone must have looked at the feasibility and cost of modifying the most heavily used lines to allow the extra headroom, even it involved years of delays trying the lower the track to fit the old listed bridges! It may need to be done eventually...

[Bugbait]

Well clearly that's why you have slow buses, but there's no reason for slow buses in the countryside where traffic density is low.

At least in London there is a viable alternative to a car, the public transport in most other places in the UK means there is not. London Public Transport might not be perfect, and nor anywhere near the best Europe, but it's still better than most of the rest of the country.

If it was viable to drive in the more central parts of London many would. There are a lot of people who use public transport in London because that makes more sense than the horrendous traffic, something that's not an issue in many areas outside of London (or major cities). Large parts of the UK arguably don't need a public transport system beyond buses (think I said this already though).

[Bugbait]

Seems a fair point to make. Perhaps if they moved some of the jobs elsewhere in the country the Tube wouldn't be so overcrowded? Maybe... Birmingham?

I'm not convinced an upgrade to an existing line would make Birmingham a notably more attractive place to live or work than it is now, atleast not enough to justify the huge expenditure. Then again, I haven't researched it so I could be talking out of my rear.

[Bugbait]

It's a pity we are stuck with the Victorian network and unable to get double-decker trains. I'm sure someone must have looked at the feasibility and cost of modifying the most heavily used lines to allow the extra headroom, even it involved years of delays trying the lower the track to fit the old listed bridges! It may need to be done eventually...

Not sure that would benefit as much as you might think. I've travelled on double decker trains in other countries (most recently France) and the bottleneck I see is the stairs between levels. Sure, you could fit more people on each carriage but the stop delay at each station would be longer as people squeezed between levels.

I'd focus upgrades on better maintenance, smoothing bottlenecks and improved control and monitoring systems so you could run the trains more tightly spaced. Apart from breakdowns, platform traffic can compound very quickly when gaps form in the service. I'm not saying it's as clear cut as this or that's it's an easy thing to fix but there are definitely areas where improvements for a large volume of commuters could be made.

[Splash]

I'm not convinced an upgrade to an existing line would make Birmingham a notably more attractive place to live or work than it is now, atleast not enough to justify the huge expenditure. Then again, I haven't researched it so I could be talking out of my rear.

My point being that perhaps if some of the larger employers didn't insist that they had to have their bases in London then perhaps the tubes wouldn't be so rammed all the time, as they'd have a less dense population to carry. I'm honestly not certain what they could do to get rid of the overcrowding - the sets are already as long as (and in a fair few places longer than) the platforms that they serve. I've hardly ever had to wait more than... say, 10 mins for a train in central London, and probably 25-30 in zones 3&4. I don't have too much experience travelling outside of those zones (maybe to an airport, or once or twice on business) but even then the services have been comparable to (if not still superior to) what we have oop north.

I'm not denying that some of the rolling stock could use some work and possibly even replacing, but in my experience the idea that public transport in London is massively inferior to that suffered by the rest of the UK rather laughable. HS2 isn't just about the link to Birmingham: it's about making it feasible and more attractive to travel by train over greater distances along the backbone of the UK and taking cars off the motorways.


edit - as for running trains more tightly spaced (I'm conscious that we seem to be focussing on trains, hopefully Rave can give some opinions from the buses side) it's just not feasible without introducing a significant risk in the form of SPADs. There's ATO on the Victoria and Central lines, so they're already running pretty much as tightly as they can. ATO is being implemented on the Jubilee line at the moment (should be almost complete), with a roadmap of a refresh of the system on Victoria next year (current system was the first installed, in the 60s), SSR (comprising Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City and Circle) in 2016-2018, Piccadilly sometime around 2018-2019 and Bakerloo in 2020. That's a lot of planned investment, and obviously these things can easily be affected by changes of government policy but as things stand they can't run the trains any closer together without the risk that a driver misses a red signal (thought to happen around 0.05% of the time) and that turning into another disaster.

[TheAnimus]

Splash London has a plathora of world class talent for many different kinds of industry, hence why people employ there.

Why on earth would someone move to Birmingham? Its not exactly renowned as a center for erm, anything, you can't just build a high speed rail link and expect it to address any of that.

[Splash]

Splash London has a plathora of world class talent for many different kinds of industry, hence why people employ there.

Why on earth would someone move to Birmingham? Its not exactly renowned as a center for erm, anything, you can't just build a high speed rail link and expect it to address any of that.

You know the bit where I said "it's not about the link to Birmingham, it's the bigger picture"? Twice?

London has a plethora of world class talent, a lot of it has moved there from all over the place. It's going to be crowded as long as people follow the Dick Whittington line. Businesses *can* base themselves elsewhere and still be highly succesful.

[Barrichello]

My point being that perhaps if some of the larger employers didn't insist that they had to have their bases in London then perhaps the tubes wouldn't be so rammed all the time, as they'd have a less dense population to carry.

As London is still deemed the financial centre of Europe, there will never be a great demand for many companies moving anywhere else in the UK (at least from the financial services sector) im not an expert on the other sectors but im sure many others such as advertising/media is still very London-centric as well?


In regard to the HS2 i think its a crazy idea when you factor in the cost of it as well, just dont see the demand for it tbh.

Also, all those saying that London transport is fine I really cant believe you travel every day to work on it

[Bugbait]

I'm not denying that some of the rolling stock could use some work and possibly even replacing, but in my experience the idea that public transport in London is massively inferior to that suffered by the rest of the UK rather laughable.

I'm not arguing that the London tube network is inferior, I take your word that it's superior to other areas in the UK but it could benefit from further investment that would (arguably) yield greater returns than if it was spent elsewhere.

[Splash]

There are industries other than banking... Pretty certain that there is a fair amount of creative media based outside the M25 though.

[DDY]

I think I've said this before, but the only hope to improve our rail network is for someone to invade this country and level it so we can start again. It's a pity we are stuck with the Victorian network and unable to get double-decker trains. I'm sure someone must have looked at the feasibility and cost of modifying the most heavily used lines to allow the extra headroom, even it involved years of delays trying the lower the track to fit the old listed bridges! It may need to be done eventually...

Network Rail’s ‘Route Utilisation Strategies’ report looks at various ways to make the most of the existing rail network, the idea of double decked trains have been brought up but always been unfavourable, I doubt double decked trains will ever be introduced. As you’ve mentioned, the need to increase the loading gauge (head room) is the main problem, the second problem is the increased dwell time a double decked train will incur.

how come the leading European city has its tube trains stop shortly after midnight.

You could say the early pioneers of the tube were short sighted in that it was never designed to be run 24 hours, most of the tube network consists of double track with few cross over points, it’s impractical to run trains while inspection and maintenance takes place, other networks which operate 24 hours have some redundancy with triple or quadruple tracks.

The people saying transport in London is great, its not. Buses are terribly slow, worse than a lot of other europian capitals thanks to a lack of carpet bombing or socialists bulldozing.

Some extreme ordnance will be needed to destroy London underground infrastructure some 65m below ground!

So that leaves the underground and the overground. The overground orbital is stupid ass pork barralleing because it goes nowhere people like. This is why its always empty. A rush hour train on the overground is less populated than a 4pm northern line service.

Not strictly true, the West London line as an example is currently operating at capacity and is predicted to be running at 186% by 2031!

A half hour faster link, on a link which is only constrained by rolling stock capacity (there is plenty on Chilterns etc) why?!?!?!

Why can't we have a cheaper rail service with investment going on the overcrowded routes to allow more transit and lower prices?
I've yet to see anything that really makes a good case for it. Can someone link me?

Capacity of London’s northerly termini are predicted to be operating at about 110% capacity by 2031, currently these termini run at about 90% capacity during peak hours. Additional rolling stock, increasing coach passenger capacity, lengthening platforms and increasing train frequency as some of the methods to further utilise existing rail infrastructure will only go so far in the long term. It will be interesting to see how Network Rail and TFL will deal with this problem, with or without HS2.

[Bugbait]

Also, all those saying that London transport is fine I really cant believe you travel every day to work on it

It's the thing I dislike most about my job . Need more work from home.

[Lucio]

I must agree with the points raised over the costs of this project, the return from the investment just doesn't compare with the costs of the project. I'd rather see the money funelled into new roads, or upgrading the existing tracks or stations to handle larger and/or faster trains.

I'd imagine that there's a hidden reason behind the project though, that once the link is in place they can consider expanding Birmingham airport, instead of adding yet another runway to Heathrow or Gatwick.