Will HS2 Fail or Succeed?

The key to making this work is a properly integrated transport system. Andy mentioned the pleasure of using the ticket machine on the Oslo Metro which simply did what was required. That should work everywhere. Here in Switzerland I can either at the station or online buy one ticket for a journey that can include buses, trams, trains, ferries and mountain railways. The timetables will generally be planned to minimise tranfer times (except for some obscure routes). A single route from A to B is not much use without the feeder networks. This was one of the problems with Beeching's report. The feeder lines may not have been directly profitable but they delivered passengers to the trunk routes to allow them to run profitably. Remove the feeders and the passenger numbers on the trunks drop. Once I have to drive some distance to a central railway station and then have to pay for parking I might as well make the whole journey by car.

I am stil not convinced by the Maglev system. The line in Shanghai is fun but not actually very helpful as it adds further transfers. Even the Chinese were not able to cut a path for it to Shanghai Central so you have to go to another station and use the metro or a taxi for the transfer. The great benefit of conventional rail is that it already has a pathway into most town and city centres which can also be used by the high speed rolling stock.


Best regards


Roger

The cost of £106 billion and the time scales will massively over run. Public servants are no match for big business so the tax payer can expect to be comprehensively shafted. I think the final cost wil be double that with ministers and civil servants being told frequently just another £5 billion needed to finish the job due to unforeseen problems. 


The proposed cost for the Olypics started out at £3 billion for 3 weeks of hop skipping and jumping. It finished up at around £25 billion with all costs taken into account. That wonderful infrastructure left behind is still consuming tax payer subsidies. One of the first big spends was to book all the best rooms in the Park Lane hotels and the special traffic lanes so that the officials could travel to the event without being impeded by all those tax payers trying to get to work.


Cross Rail is another example of massive cost overrun and years behind programme with consultants and contractors milking the tax payer for what should have already been done having been paid for first time around. 

I make these comments as a retired northerner who has traveled to London on the west cost main line since the '60s when it was British Rail and having witnessed and experienced  the  incompetence and London centric policies of politicians and civil servants since the 50's. This includes periods of being a weekly commuter to London for many years and a couple of years as a senior civil servant. I have also traveled around Europe and the US by train and plane.


I would probably have been a supporter of HS2 if they had started building it in Scotland. It would then have stood a chance of reaching London and if cancelled would have generated the most gains in time saved from Scotland to Manchester or the midlands. Given the time it has now taken and the cost overruns I do not expect it to make it past Birmingham. I remember when people north of London complained that the fast trains to the continent terminated in London, a senior politician said that they would be extended north, but when push came to shove we were told they had run out of money!


The change in behaviour that will result from the current crisis and the resultant government borrowing will focus minds on what is required and I cannot see HS2 surviving. It will not however result in any improvements anywhere else. 


The northern train network and the rolling stock on most of it remind me of Southern region in the 60's, I will believe the Northern Powerhouse improvements when I see them. A 30 mile train journey takes about an hour and is packed at peak times. The west coast mainline is standing room only at peak times and I have often been on it when the reserved seat signs on the pedalo trains have not been working - chaos. Why are we so incompetent at running railways compared with the rest of the world? The incompetent privatisation has not helped.


I see no evidence of joined up thinking/planning in any aspect of HS2 or any other Government policies and it has a major impact on the competitiveness of this country. 


And the final part of my rant is the attitude towards engineers and manufacturing by our politicians. Engineers appear to be regarded as the guys and gals who fix your car and manufacturing? - horribly dirty places that we need to outsource to other countries. We are told that we need to be  a knowledge economy but our education ratings are dropping in the world wide rankings and we sell off our successful knowledge based companies to foreign competitors.


Postscript. A friend who had a 10 acre smallholding near Crewe is near the route for HS2 and his holding has been purchased for HS2, not for the track but so they can plant trees on it as part of the greening programme. He had lived there for 25 years built a large garage, barns, stables, etc and got everything how he wanted it. He was being offered "comparable" houses on new build estates as a price comparison for his holding. After 5 years of silly offers and delaying tactics from HS2 he gave in and accepted a low offer for the holding and has started again with a holding well away from train lines.

Given how economy is looking I think its not the right time for this project , and if we did build it , could affect other things in that it wont make rail travel cheaper ?

The contrary is true, the government has decided to borrow to spend its way if of recession, by investing in infrastructure. There is never a right time for a project of this duration. Now is as good a time as any. 


I do agree it it would have been better to start in Glasgow and Edinburgh and build south. Maybe that is still possible, parallel build from Scotland to Manchester & Liverpool, while building London to Birmingham, then just join up the middle

Post on, we need a review and bonfire of the dinosaur and white elephant projects: HS2; 3rd London runway; etc. By the time they are built, using 20th Centre thinking and technology, they will be overpriced, under-performing, and obsolete.

Just a thought being as railway engineers will be looking at this post , see a lot of buzz about hydrogen trains , and just posted that a hydrogen fuel cell car will emitt 240ml of water every 4 km , a hydrogen train would need far more hydrogen than a car so on sub zero days need to retain the water to stop rail icing .