I voted against the HS2 project when Parliament made the decision in principle to go ahead. I have always thought it a bad investment. I proposed alternative ways to increase rail capacity for a fraction of the cost with much speedier results.
I am told they are going ahead with one of those ideas. Improved digital on board signalling means a train can see what lies ahead and be warned of blocked lines in real time. Central controllers could slow or stop trains approaching danger if the driver has missed it. Ā It would be safe to run at least 25% more trains on a given line with smaller gaps between trains. As they are all going in the same direction on most tracks and if they see what lies ahead and what speed it is doing we can run more trains. We run far more vehicles with very little separation on busy roads just based on driver eyesight and judgement.
They could also do more to provide many more short sections of bypass track. Non stop express trains need to be able to overtake slow frequent stopper services when timetables get stressed. Again digital signals and intelligence on track positions would facilitate this.
The collapse of five day a week commuting post covid has undermined whatever business case there was for HS 2 . Much rail travel going forwards is going to be leisure and pleasure travel where high speed is less necessary and high cost cannot be repaid by premium business tickets. The government should reconsider the very expensive much delayed Euston and inner London part of the project. Spending a fortune on rail in London was always bizarre for a levelling up project to help the north.
Perhaps given the huge delays in construction and planning this should no longer be called High Speed 2. It is taking years of delay for the first train. HC 2 , High Cost 2, would be a more accurate description.
July 8, 2023
The big advantage of HS2 is that it will offer a high speed and fully electrified inter-city service. As such it will contribute to net zero as the electricity that it will use will come from the offshore wind energy Dogger Bank Array, particularly for overnight trains
HS2 was always going to be an inter-city service. Scheduling slow commuter trains to run on the same track will complicate operations and increase the risk of accidents, tho computerised signalling will mitigate these
We probably canāt afford HS2, but what is the point of it, if it if it doesnāt run into London Euston? Thatās where most if itās business case was made.
July 8, 2023
There was was and is no rational business case for HS2, so what drove the MPs and `Government to piss these taxes down the drain and to continue with this waste? Was it gross incompetence, corruption, lobbying, vested interest, stupidity, group think religionā¦ ? As to net zero masses of fossil fuels are being used to build it and also will be needed to deal with the end connection journeys often double journeys at each end by taxis or a family member drop off. We also have no spare low carbon electricity anyway to power it. HS trains use more energy per passenger mile too.
July 8, 2023
It was part of an EU Project: the Trans-National Transport Network. It should never have been given the green light and could and should have been scrapped in 2020 when we “left” the EU.
July 8, 2023
None of those – hubris. No wonder the project is so delayed when the government of the day won’t be able to claim they have delivered it.
July 8, 2023
Plus HS trains have to have fewer stops to be high speed, so longer end connections so often often door to door journeys are slower and less efficient anyway.
July 8, 2023
That will be the Dogger Bank Array which for 4 days last month was stationary producing 100% of f all
I know from reading your posts you actually inhabit a far off world but I really didn’t think you believed the excrement you post.
July 8, 2023
TBF to him he does have an BEV. Which no one will buy off him assuming he has bought it and not had it on 3 year lease.
July 8, 2023
This would be the Dogger Bank array being built in the _North Sea_ which, last I heard, has no secondary wave or tidal generation capacity for when the wind is not blowing…
July 17, 2023
āsecondary wave or tidal generationā?
AI, really?
July 8, 2023
It never had a viable business case, even as a superfast inter-city service. The geniuses at the DfT who carried out the cost/benefit analysis never factored in that the business people they expected to use it could work on the train.
Original estimated cost Ā£35 billion ….. and it didn’t have a business case then. Estimated cost now ….. Ā£100 billion and rising and it won’t even run between Birmingham and central London!
July 8, 2023
Donna : “Original estimated cost Ā£35 billion ā¦..”
At least it did have an initial costing even if it is now 3 times bigger.
The Climate Change/Net Zero Acts are the only acts which have never been costed and the Treasury refused to give the HoC Public Accounts Committeeās Net Zero Follow-Up Report dated 02/03/2022 any costing for Net Zero.
The unilateral and experimental attempt to reach net zero CO2 emissions is going to cost us Ā£ trillions because the technology simply does not exist.
As the NAO pointed out in their March report āDecarbonising the Power Sectorā the CCC/DES&NZ have no plan for storage when the wind doesnāt blow and the sun doesnāt shine and consequently we are heading for expensive and intermittent supplies of electricity.
This will destroy our economy, made even worse when coupled with the forced transition to expensive and impractical evs and heat pumps.
July 8, 2023
Sakara
Euston Station has been 8 years in design and planning, and apparently they are still concerned it will not be fit for purpose, and suitable for its original proposed needs, let alone now when needs are changing.
The Public Accounts Committee report earlier this week suggested it may need a complete re-think, and the build cost, could now be Ā£8 billion, more than double the original estimate.
All HS2 will do is ferry more workers into London from a lower cost living area, few people are going to travel from a high cost living area, to a lower wage area.
Is the so called time saving over 100 miles worth all of this huge disruption and cost ?
July 8, 2023
Sakara Gold
I donāt see much point in a railway that only works when the wind blows. Perhaps sails could be attached directly to the trains to save the cost of wiring!
July 8, 2023
On the other side of the coin the intention is to level up.If we continue to build where it has been built before, there is little chance of levelling.
July 8, 2023
SG :
Even with all the āweatherā (rain and thunderstorms) weāre experiencing today as I write the 28 GW of installed wind power is only producing 3.2 GW.
I also notice at 04:00hrs and 08:30hrs today we were exporting electricity at negative prices. This can only be the export of wind energy at prices less than the cost of the constraint payments.
Expensive, intermittent and unreliable wind and solar energy is a disaster. The fact that nuclear, the only low CO2 emission technology that can provide affordable, abundant and reliable power (and with a far smaller footprint and using 1000 times less concrete and steel than wind turbines per unit of power) is being deliberately ignored is proof that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have no effect on the climate and there is no crisis.
Note that RR nuclear SMRs are cheaper to build than wind estates per unit of supplied electrical energy.
July 15, 2023
Could you give us an update on how the Special Purpose Vehicle for Rolls Royce SMRs has been progressing, how much money has been put by the various partners, and how the timeline for the delivery of the first and subsequent SMRs has evolved since the first announcement in 2021. Thanks a lot in advance.
July 8, 2023
Good morning.
I am not too sure how far ‘down the rabbit hole’ we have gone and whether or not it would be better to stop now or continue to sink more and more money into the project. I suspect that it might prove to be a success in some respects although I have only heard the argument that such a project will free up space on other lines.
For me the issue has always been how successive governments have failed to properly manage the project. The flawed business case to the endless cost overruns it has proven to be a gigantic folly especially at a time when money is proving to be scarce and much needed elsewhere.
Truly a vanity project gone mad.
July 8, 2023
It would still be far better to cancel it even now.
July 8, 2023
LL
Yeah, but they have knocked down and built quite a lot.
July 8, 2023
Reversing is backward, yet the shortest path to better is a more sensible route.
July 8, 2023
Indeed, and if it does eventually get built, it will just continue to be a drain on public finances with debt interest and subsidies. Plus how many days a year will it be out of action due to rail strikes, system failure or the wrong type of snow or heat? Just another public service no one can rely on.
If the board of HS2 think it’s such a good idea, let them produce a business case and raise the finances privately.
July 8, 2023
Is the gauge such that is can only be used by High Speed Trains?
If not just use the stretches that have already been built as passing stretches as Sir Jon recommends and stop building the rest.
July 8, 2023
Ah – for parochial Londoners Euston is āthe northā.
July 8, 2023
but will it ever go that far? ‘Slums Terminus’ ?
July 8, 2023
Iāll be mighty happy if they all stay south of Euston.
July 11, 2023
London is full of people from the North, parochial and otherwise.
July 8, 2023
I hope someone makes certain that JR gets the kudos for his idea.
Wasnāt HS2 conceived as a (smart?) city connector of the greenest credentials?
Johnson or whoever just doing the bidding of the EU?
And think of the countryside decimated and the lives ruined and all that money!
There are more things than the greed and pride of politicians.
Still, people voted for them all!
July 8, 2023
HS2 was a rail transport plan devised by and for the EU ….and still is
July 8, 2023
Any plan which doesn’t involve scrapping the HS2 white elephant is just painting lipstick on the pig. We don’t need another rail line which will shave about 12 minutes off the journey between Old Oak Common and Birmingham. It looks likely it won’t even go into central London now, due to costs and design/civil engineering incompetence.
Meanwhile, the mainline between Waterloo and Exeter St Davids, when you get past Salisbury has stretches of single track rail. Pull out of Salisbury and a few minutes down the line you are likely to stop for anything up to 15 minutes waiting for a train coming in the opposite direction to clear the single track. The costs of providing a second track would be a tiny fraction of the Ā£gazillions they’re pouring into the HS2 black hole.
Meanwhile, does the government have any plans to stop the Railway Unions from making every (possible) journey in the south a gamble? People won’t use the service when there is no confidence that there’ll be a train running.
July 8, 2023
True.
Let’s rip up miles of countryside, spend an absolute fortune of taxpayers’ money and build a railway practically no-one will use. And please vote for us at the next election.
I think not.
July 8, 2023
Why support failure? It is quite obvious that HS2 is not going well and that it is sending us even deeper into debt. I cannot see why it is being built except for “levelling up” upon which subject fracking, coal mining and decent electricity provision would be much more effective (for steel, car manufacture and aluminium to take just three examples).
July 8, 2023
This issue is nowhere as important as the State’s enthusiastic embrace of authoritarian projects like ULEZ intended to control movement and raise funds for now infected local authorities and Mayors like Khan and the Burnhams of the world.
The silence from the Socialists on the government benches does suggest they are now aligned with Khan and other Mayors like Burnham who see an opportunity to exploit innocent people going about their lawful business
I know focus on what Tory MPs DO NOT SAY rather than what they do say and that in itself is very revealing and indeed very sinister
I see the regulators now controlled by Labour’s sympathetic troopers is once more targeting specific broadcasters who refuse to bend to the progressive, authoritarian narrative
Reply The Conservative Party is united and vocal in opposing the ULEZ expansion in London
July 8, 2023
āReply The Conservative Party is united and vocal in opposing the ULEZ expansion in Londonā well Sunak and thos government would easily stop Kahnās ULEZ with their Boris majority, but they clearly choose not to so. This they can blame Labour and Kahn. Few are fooled. Just another vast tax grab on top of all the others clearly supported by Sunak.
July 8, 2023
LL
The original instigator of ULEZ was one, Alexander Johnson. Shades of CMD and his faux anti-EU & Lisbon Treaty stance methinks š
Fool me once and all that.
Reply He has written today that ULEZ would not work in outer London and he did not impose it there.
July 8, 2023
“He has written today that ULEZ would not work in outer London and he did not impose it there.”
Then perhaps it is time for Parliamentary intervention, if there is the will. (I’m joking, of course. This would be wildly popular in South London, where locals are vandalising cameras to the extent that the ULEZ group can’t reveal their locations anymore, so the government wonlt do it. Decriminalising non-payment would do much to pull its teeth.)
July 8, 2023
Reply to reply
What’s the difference ? Still a tax grab.
July 8, 2023
So why does Sunak not stop ULEZ expansion as he clearly could do? He is surely a supporter of it pretending not to be. Pathetic!
July 8, 2023
Vocal, but doing SFA – just like everything else; all talk; all posturing – no action.
Sunak could stop it …. just like he was convinced to stop Sturgeon’s Trans-lunacy. He’s choosing not to do it for political reasons.
July 8, 2023
āReply The Conservative Party is united and vocal in opposing the ULEZ expansion in Londonā
Well change the bloody law today …get it done
July 8, 2023
Havenāt they really put the boot into normal rail travel now by closing 1000 ticket offices?
With no really workable alternative ( as far as I can see).
To misquote Marie Le Pen..
Quāont-ils fait de lāAngleterre?
The powers-that-be are over-complicating our lives to such a stifling degree.
( We used to be able to decide to travel, go and buy a ticket and jump on a train).
July 8, 2023
Still can using a vending machine, a ticket bought on you phone/computer or a credit card.
July 8, 2023
Ticket machine a great source of puzzlement for gaggles of folk milling round.
Seldom actually working here. So obviously can not rely on it.
Husband had bad experience with some sort of app purchased ticket.
You need to be able to turn up, buy a ticket and get on train.
Not complicated.
What they are doing is obviously, without doubt, an extremely retrograde step.
Like most of the stuff they do!
July 8, 2023
My mother is still complexed by her VHS ….she doesn’t use nor wants a smart-phone, cash is still king …like all her friends
July 8, 2023
We used to be able to do a lot of things simply. Since the onset of computers and online stuff – life is much slower and more complicated, and never straightforward any more!
July 8, 2023
Sharon absolutely agree.
July 8, 2023
So true!
And the frustration of it all!!
The hours of WORK ( that used to be easily done by employees). Now the consumer must work AND pay.
July 9, 2023
Culbono
Oops correction.
Agreed, family member and a friend wanted to get from Wokingham to Cheltenham by train (midweek, off peak), neither wanting to drive, they attempted to look at the train fares and were met with such an overwhelming set of prices with terms and conditions attached, they could not make head nor tail of any of it.
Eventually another friend completed the advance booking for them, but with locked in set times of travel on the train each way, but still over Ā£35.00 each from Reading Station with a Bus from Wokingham to Reading (using bus passes as the short extra journey by train Wokingham – Reading was even more money)
The train used to be a hop on hop off decision made on the moment for some journeys, now you are heavily penalised financially if you make that decision on the day, likewise the ticket vending machines at the station do not seem sensibly priced.
I have a choice to make next week, travel by train from Wokingham to Richmond, walking to and from both Stations, or go by car ( just on the edge of the existing ULEZ) and pay a big parking fee.
Too much complication in our lives already, so will probably end up going by car at 50 MPG, and more convenient.
July 15, 2023
Sorry but without āthe computerā (and associated devices) you all would not be able to share your invaluable thoughts on this blog.
July 9, 2023
Culdono
Agreed, family member and a friend wanted to get from Wokingham to Cheltenham by train (midweek, off peak), neither wanting to drive, they attempted to look at the train fares and were met with such an overwhelming set of prices with terms and conditions attached, they could not make head nor tail of any of it.
Eventually another friend completed the advance booking for them, but with locked in set times of travel on the train each way, but still over Ā£35.00 each.
The train used to be a hop on hop off decision made on the moment for some journeys, now you are heavily penalised financially if you make that decision on the day, likewise the ticket vending machines at the station do not seem sensibly priced.
I have a choice to make next week, travel by train from Wokingham to Richmond, walking to and from both Stations, or go by car ( just on the edge of the existing ULEZ) and pay a big parking fee.
Too much complication in our lives already, so will probably end up going by car at 50 MPG, and more convenient.
July 8, 2023
Your comments about signalling and other things in your opening comments probably indicates you know little about how our railways run at the moment. Yes, there are continuing improvements but most of the things you suggest to increase the frequency of trains on existing lines already exist. Putting in extra bypass loops however is an enormously expensive option and won’t happen except in a few cases.
HS2 construction, in case you had not noticed, is now well advanced. I have seen the work in the Colne Valley area and it is quite spectacular. We cannot just stop the whole thing now, that time has passed. But the delays at Euston show bad management at the top and delaying the London terminus is inexplicable. I shall be 92 in 2041 so unlikely to be interested in using the railway myself. Considering that HS1 was built relatively quickly without the issues HS2 seems to be suffering it is hard to see why the whole thing is taking so long and so way over contract. Somebody needs sacking for the incompetence but those who think the should just shut up shop at this stage and walk away are in a dream world.
Reply. As I said digital signalling projects are now being introduced in some places.
July 8, 2023
A few more trains at peak times means they and their staff sit doing nothing for most of the rest of the day. OFF PEAK (or going reverse commute directions) most trains have low occupancy. I recently caught a train with twelve carriages Newbury to PADDINTON about 4PM weekday just six people on it. How is this remotely green, energy or cost efficient. Must have cost about Ā£1000 plus per passenger to run it.
July 8, 2023
Time and Motion Man?
This is the sort of āNew Thinkā that destroyed our customs and border control.
Why not have people doing nothing if that is the nature of the job? ( Of getting it done properly)
And that will be the ultimate outcome ( UBI) now without a service being rendered, since the powers that be have destroyed so many useful institutions and so many will be without jobs.
( Oh dearā¦āUseless Eatersā)
Plusā¦guarantee. Run a cheap, flexible, ticket-at-the-ticket-office train service ā¦.
And there will be fewer cars on the road.
If thatās what they truly want!
Undo Beeching!
July 8, 2023
Yes, but it has to journey from Newbury to Paddington with 12 almost empty carriages, so that it can come back at 5.30 or thereabouts with 12 very full ones.
July 8, 2023
Indeed but average occupancy over 24 hours is low.
July 8, 2023
Sir John, you may want to qualify your view of post-lockdown reductions in commuting by train. Property specialists such as Savills point to numerous places in the home counties where rail passenger levels are now higher than they were pre-2020. Whether that affects the business case for HS2, I don’t know, but it is certainly not true that there has been a general ‘collapse’ in rail commuting.
July 8, 2023
Total passenger revenue was Ā£2.2bn in the three months between July and September 2022, the most recent quarter where there is available data, according to the Office of Rail and Road, the industry regulator. This is 71 per cent of the Ā£3.1bn in the same period in 2019, when adjusted for inflation. This despite a higher population.
July 8, 2023
Here are some more recent figures, LL:
‘A provisional estimate of 389 million journeys were made in Great Britain in the latest quarter (1 January to 31 March 2023). This is 88% of the 443 million journeys in the same quarter four years ago (pre-pandemic). Strike action affected large parts of the network during the latest quarter. ‘https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/2207/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2023.pdf
A reduction, not a collapse.
July 8, 2023
So subsidy is greater than the passenger revenue, and we don’t even get free tickets.
July 8, 2023
One of the main reasons HC2 is such a bad idea is its service will still be capable of being stopped arbitrarily by militant unions wishing to use it to hold the public to ransom. Any new investment in rail should be on unmanned trains and be subject to no-union or no-strike agreements.
July 8, 2023
+1
July 8, 2023
The government made a bad decision in the first place, then kept making it worse solely to avoid billions already spent being āwastedā. With an unknown magnitude beyond Ā£100bn it would have been better to waste 5% or even 15% in abandonment than to plough on to achieve wasting almost all of it.
British Rail used to have a space age type slogan for their trains promoted via national media: āThis is the Age of The Trainā. It hit the buffers when a comedian quipped that their doddery slow performance and stale sandwiches were due to the āage of the train!ā
Todayās waste is taking ages; AcheS too with the pain it causes.
July 8, 2023
White Elephant 2 might be more appropriate. Its colour has not diminished its appetite alas.
July 8, 2023
High speed is less important for leisure and pleasure. A resort in Japan became so popular that a bullet train service was introduced. Strangely the resort then declined because its location became too easy to reach, and lacked that āget away from it allā feeling that a lengthy journey provides.
July 8, 2023
If you really want to reduce emmissions – both carbon & particulate – then why not find intelligent ways to encourage heavy & long distant freight back onto the railways, most especially from foreign & bulk carriers. The railways should be much simpler to fully electrify than thousands of individual heavy lorries. With regards to driverless trains, I would think that freight is the better option to start automating, especially for overnight operation …
July 8, 2023
Freight companies won’t want to use it when it’s unreliable through system failure and rail strikes. HGVs can always find another way round roadworks.
July 8, 2023
Perhaps not Dave but start limiting the size and weight of lorries in this country (instead of increasing them) and that might begin to change but I agree that you do need to sort out the railways first. We are of course ‘theorising’ because it’s very unlikely we will get any government capable of intelligent thought in the near future. They are all (whoever it is) going to be mired in problems of their own making I’m afraid and there’s not too much we can do about it.
July 8, 2023
Integrated transport policy? Good idea but in UK? you must be joking!
July 8, 2023
Yes Peter, given a choice I’d much prefer to see some sort of coherent energy policy but that seems equally unlikely.
July 8, 2023
To me it seems odd that we are still developing a rail system that requires a driver. It is technically far simpler to implement driverless trains than for other forms of transport.
James Morley
July 8, 2023
Only brief periods of the day, 2 peak hours, could justify running more trains. Providing a faster through service by taking slower trains off into waiting zones would help.
Anyway the unions are determined to stop actually running trains, life’s better with all those days off!
July 8, 2023
In the navy we used to joke that it would run better without ships. No doubt the railways would run better with fewer rains.
July 8, 2023
We’ve nearly managed to the “no ships” part Peter, perhaps they will start on the “Less Admirals” bit soon.
July 8, 2023
Traditional railway control, signalling and track and station layout are based on few trains widely spaced. I would be very interested to know if anyone has experimented with the concept of driving trains so the one in front is always within sight. How to avoid queues of trains wait to get into a station platform? Not all trains could stop at the same stations. Stations without non-stop through tracks would be a problem. What would be considered a safe stopping distance just relying on eye-sight?
July 8, 2023
Sir John
As you say/infer the same money spent on the existing rail infrastructure would result in more people carried and taken off the road.
I still donāt get how a very expensive fast train service from West London(Acton) to somewhere well outside of Birmingham is considered even needed. Direct trains now are and will be considerably quicker.
At its inception Contractors wanted Ā£20 billion to complete the project, now according to reports it is at Ā£45 billion and no end in sight.
Someone has done extremely well from it and its not the taxpayer. The rolling stock will not even be UK Sourced, just assembled. Again the UK taxpayer is funding those that donāt contribute to the UKās wealth creation.
The cheapest quote? – pull the other one. It doesnāt even take into account the amount of taxpayer money being exported.
July 8, 2023
āImproved digital on board signalling means a train can see what lies ahead and be warned of blocked lines in real time.ā
Itās time we started to introduce driverless trains.
July 8, 2023
HS2 + Trains now estimated at Ā£120bn+
July 8, 2023
āThe collapse of five day a week commuting post covid has undermined whatever business case there was for HS 2ā
As I have posted before, HS2 should never have been the Concorde of rail where only an elite few, travelling on taxpayersā expense, could afford to use a service which will make only make a tiny difference to travel times.
This service needed to be the equivalent of Jumbo jets/Airbus which could carry large numbers of people up and down the country at very cheap prices.
This is going to be even more important as the Net Zero policy to ban the sales of new ices by 2030 produces the intended result of fewer people affording their own private transport
July 8, 2023
In the context of High Cost 2, a hypothetical question I always like to ask is this: “If, very hypothetically, HS2 opened tomorrow, what would the the price of an ordinary return ticket (standard class and first class) from Birmingham Curzon Street to London Euston, and how would this compare with the price of a current main line ordinary return (both classes) from Birmingham New Street to London Euston?” There would then be scope for a follow up question about footfall and anticipated revenue.
July 8, 2023
The data for immigrants on small boats for yesterday 7th July haven’t yet been published on the government website, but news outlets are reporting 300+
July 8, 2023
UPDATE
686 illegal immigrants in 13 boats ….and no one in France saw them leaving
July 8, 2023
Stopping all the boats …my arse
July 8, 2023
686 according to the Daily Mail. So much for Rishi stopping the boats.
The barge in Weymouth that’s causing so much fuss can only take 500. I expect they will be able to pack in more though, HMP style.
July 8, 2023
Sir John,
I thought that the entire concept of this high-speed rail line between London and the north was originally dreamt up by Andrew Adonis during the last Labour government. If so, that alone should have been reason enough to steer well clear of it.
If it really was meant to be a levelling up project to help the north, then it should have begun in the north.
July 8, 2023
Agreed – It is another white elephant – costing us dearly.
It is just another way of transferring money from those that don’t have very much, the taxpayer, to those that have plenty and grow richer by the day.
It seems HS2 was never about trains.
July 8, 2023
HS2 always was a mistake . The huge cost of the investment is – and continues to be a terrible error of judgement . Priorities should always be the first consideration of any Government and in this instance a terrible error was made .
July 8, 2023
Not sure HS2 was about improving rail travel. At the time unemployment was rising and my instinct told me that it was away of increasing jobs and investment. A bit like Route 66 in the US.
Problem is that the economy has changed in so many different ways over the years since it started and so no longer meets the need it was started for. But and here is the but having invested such large sums of money it surely would be wrong to drop it now.
July 8, 2023
Hi sir John
Good job the canal builders didn’t think like you , when building the bridge water canal the cost went so high they nearly cancelled it, and it took year over the completion date to finish,
Along with most other canals so where would we have been without forward thinking
for two hundred years we would still have been delivering goods on horse and cart
We should be now looking at getting more goods on trains taking lorries off the roads
Not making lorries bigger, this would also make the roads better for the ever expanding car use with the increasing population
Thank you
July 8, 2023
Why is it that, as I suspect, most of the electorate, are against this wasteful project? And many politicos and industrials too. I do believe the original chiefs of the HS2 plan now say it is a waste of tax payers money.
As it stands, it has become a Government vanity project with no end figure set as a budget maximum.
High Speed networks around the globe do not make regular profits and the predicted costs of HS2 far outweigh the potential ROI of the UK proposals. With video conferencing available 24/7 there is often no need to travel to work/business meetings and the actual time savings are so low they become irrelevant, just like HS2.
Just Stop HS2! And save us Ā£Ā£Ā£Bs. This is not rocket science, is it?
July 8, 2023
Agreed!
July 8, 2023
Absolutely
July 8, 2023
Totally agree with your comments. Why do we have people in power who do not have common sense anymore? Of course, this project was from the EU and we still have many supporters in local government as well as nationally who are pressing for extension.
July 8, 2023
Perfectly put!
July 8, 2023
Here’s some good news – HS2 will be cheaper as ticket desks are to be closed at current stations so none will be required on HS2. And they want to promote the doing away with cash in society too apparently.
Your party in government are really really clever people, proud and expert in the destruction of ordinary people who in their view do not matter, and are powerless. We are almost invisible from their elite heights.
July 8, 2023
HS2 is a Europhile project whose primary purpose is to provide a physical connection between the whole of the UK with continental Europe. We see the same agenda with elec, gas food imports etc etc…all designed to tie-in and all designed to create an unbreakable, physical bond.
HS2 is therefore political in nature and bugger all to do with economic growth
July 8, 2023
The āhigh speedā element of HS2 should at least be halted, not simply to stop throwing good money after bad to complete the project, but also to stop the money that will continue to be wasted on maintaining and running the high speed trains and track for decades afterwards.
July 8, 2023
Great news. The government has collapsed thanks to its immigration policy! Hooray! Oh wait, it’s the Dutch government.
Still, what goes around comes around.
July 8, 2023
Post-pandemic, the government must re-think its industrial strategy and how it relates to the rail network’s development.
With Zoom meetings commonplace around the world, Britain has the potential to become a services powerhouse. Exports in legal, professional services, film production, education and science are booming.
Hybrid working means commuters can live much further from their offices than previously. The major cities of England and South Wales have the potential to become a massive common economic area. Due to the agglomeration effect, they are now effectively closer together.
In addition, there is less demand for commenting on Mondays and Fridays. We also need to build more homes due to recent immigration.
All this results in very different rail network requirements, necessitating a complete re-think. Complete phase 1 of HS1, as we are where we are. But reconsider everything else based on the new circumstances, prioritising the projects with the best business case.
July 9, 2023
HS2 or HC2 is a total waste of resources and should have been scrapped years ago, it will require huge subsidies because otherwise the cost of tickets will be unaffordable.
HS2 (if constructed) be another outpost of militant rail unions, NUT, ASLEF striking for even more astronomical extortionate salaries.
Two alternatives: scrap it now, or change the design and build to a regular 125 train, which will be less disruptive and far less expensive.
July 9, 2023
In 1971 the then Heath government compared the benefits of the HGV trains in France (3 hours from Paris) to how the UK would benefit from a similar fast rail service. The conclusion was that the only benefit for the UK would be to cut the journey time from Birmingham by some 10 minutes, or 30 minutes from Manchester. Sadly the Brown Labour goverenment proposed the 23 billion pound HS2 scheme – speed being the benefit. That soon changed to the need for more capacity, speed as in 1971 seen to be irrelevant. Then came COVID which changed for ever the capacity needs of the rail system. We should have cancelled HS2 in 2021 when passenger volumes showed an enormous reduction in usage with Working From Home. Yet still we pour billions into a failed project. Absurd. As John Redwood indicated the enormous sums already spent would have transformed the urgent rail needs of the Northern Powerhouse. HS2 – a total waste of money!
July 9, 2023
On Friday I drove through the great scything cuts near the NEC and Birmingham Airport and alongside the M6. The destruction is enormous. Since the Net Zero plan is to close Birmingham Airport before HS2 will even be ready the station will lose one of its main reasons for existing. Traffic for the NEC is not going to justify it. Indeed, the NEC itself must be under some threat precisely because it encourages longer distance travel to attend its events. There is a very small capture area where HS2 might offer a faster journey than road travel. We should call a halt and repair the destruction.
July 10, 2023
Demand for rail services has contracted by between 20% and 25% since the pandemic, with little sign of recovery, so there is no need for extra capacity overall. By all means invest in moving block signalling along the lines you suggest but save wasteful expenditure by withdrawing loss making services and closing unprofitable lines in order to reduce track maintenance costs. The rail unions should be told that the Government will act on behalf of taxpayers to prevent future losses, including ordering Network Rail to stop incurring losses on their operations – this will involve raising track access charges. The promise of no compulsory redundancies should be taken off the table. It should also be made clear to the rail unions that if they continue strikes for a few days, the Government reserves the right to shut down railways for a month via a lock out – if necessary by changing the law.
Why should taxpayers be expected to prop up a loss making railway industry when the humble bus is a much more cost effective means of providing public transport access for the poor and physically handicapped?
Meanwhile HS2 will be a complete LEMON. How many journeys will there be between Manchester and Old Oak Common and between Birmingham and Old Oak Common? Do the authorities imagine that a lot of London businesses will relocate to Old Oak Common? The Reichman brothers tried that trick with Canary Wharf and went bankrupt.
July 11, 2023
“Demand for rail services has contracted by between 20% and 25% since the pandemic, with little sign of recovery”
You sure about that? Source please.
“With passenger levels having reached 103% of pre-COVID levels, the UK rail industry marks a successful post-pandemic recovery,”
https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/144702/uk-rail-passenger-numbers-exceed-pre-pandemic-levels/