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UK Green Lights HS2 High Speed Rail Line
An anonymous reader writes "The United Kingdom has given the green light to the first phase of its proposed High Speed Two train line. In response to environmental concerns, the route for HS2 will now include extra tunneling in the first 90 miles, so not to disrupt the natural beauty of the English countryside. The first phase will connect London to Birmingham and could be functional by 2026."
...any chance they'll ever fix the horrible mess they've made of the non-high speed lucky-if-you-get-there-alive train service in the UK?
14 years to complete just part of it?? It took only six years for the greatest mobilization in world history to defeat the Axis.
Lots of beautiful English countryside south of Manchester. Also lots of stockbrokers / rich city types who don't want their countryside fantasy shattered by noisy development work. A bit like the rich lords and ladies 150 years ago who complained about their views being ruined the first time they put railway lines across the land.
Though to be fair there are ecological concerns to be taken into account this time round seeing as we've got less countryside left.
Save 50% of the cost and make it a one way southbound line.
I don't know a single Londoner who voluntarily would want to travel to the grim north.
You probably haven't been to much south of Manchester either. There's the peak district, dartmoor, norfolk, The chilterns (the ones that the HS2 protesters worry about), and the south downs to name just a few.
Which is why it is funny in a way that Lord Astor has suggested that HS2 is unnecessary and an improved Internet backbone for better video conferencing would be a more sensible use of the money. The fibre link from London to Birmingham could easily be laid along the existing railway or canal network.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Its capacity and cost. A return from Leeds to london tomorrow will cost £123 off peak. That's just under 200 miles so its chaper to drive. If you want the chapest travel then you would go by coach for £9.50. It seems to me that for the same or less than HS2 they could have longer platforms, double decker coaches (like in France) and get the cost down. I would rather have a 2 hour service for about £30 that I could actually use than a 50 minute one for £200.
It is of dubious value anyway. They say that it'll cut the journey time down to 50 minutes. It's only 100 miles or 160 km. That's a little over 100 miles per hour, but in theory the current trains are capable of 125 miles per hour which means the journey should take 48 minutes *with the current trains*. But on a 100 mile journey most of the time is spent stopping and starting or stopping at intermediate stations. Perhaps they should consider simply improving the current track, or running express trains?
Closer to 120 miles. Then again, we've had trains capable of running at 140mph since the 90's. Track and signalling are the problem.
Upgrading the line track isn't all that easy. We need to run trains while we're doing it. And there's no improvement to capacity. We need new lines. Building a brand new high capacity line that can take double decker trains will add capacity, while still allowing relatively slow trains on the stopping routes.
I think the other limiting factor is passenger comfort. Takes about 10 minutes for a TGV to get from 0-200mph. Slow down at the same rate and that's 33 miles covered at 100mph. that leaves 90 miles at 200mph. 36 minutes worth.
England south and east of Manchester is so overcrowded that there is not one square foot of wilderness left.
Wilderness? You must be American. Southern England hasn't had any wilderness for hundreds of years, and it's to do with farming not houses. You may find the English countryside rather tame compared with the Rocky Mountains or whatever, but we like it.
The wild bits of Britain are basically where farming is impractical.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, transport in general in the UK is a mess...
As was reported recently, trains cost massively more in the UK than in other european countries, and if you live outside of a large city public transport is even worse or may be entirely lacking.
Concorde cut the journey time to new york in half, and yet it's no longer flying... Faster transport isn't whats needed, we need to decrease distances, decrease congestion and most importantly decrease the need to travel.
Encourage home working... Most office jobs can be done from anywhere with an internet connection and phoneline...
Stagger working hours - don't have everyone travel in for 9am, that just causes mass congestion at specific times and creates a horrendously inefficient transport system where the extra capacity to handle peak traffic is simply wasted at other times. Many staff never need to interact directly with third parties and so have no reason to be at work 9-5.
Convince businesses to get over this stupid obsession of having offices in central london (or other large cities), it doesn't make your company look prestigious it just increases costs and hinders your recruitment process because people are put off by the horrendous commute and will usually demand more money for working there. Instead, build your offices in small business parks located outside the centre of cities, not only are these considerably cheaper but there is generally affordable housing within a short distance. I personally have turned down several job offers that required commuting to central london.
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Southern England hasn't had any wilderness for hundreds of years, and it's to do with farming not houses.
It's got a moral and spiritual wilderness. Will that do?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Saving 20 mins between Birmingham and London is not the point of HS2. The reason for HS2 is to get Birmingham London passengers off the West Coast Mainline, to leave more space for local services that use the same line.
To use a car analogy, to drive from London to Birmingham, you can either use the motorways or drive on A roads. The motorways are designed for long distance traffic, and the A roads are for local traffic.
Certainly more should be invested in broadband but not instead of HS2. The pros/cons of additional transport capacity are fairly clear and it is easy to see that this is required given current usage trends. Understanding the pros/cons of fast internet requires some insight into future changes to the way society operates so is harder to justify to the public. Still, it should be persued because of the potential that it offers.
Clearly, the advent of the internet has not done anything to reduce rail usage in the UK, suggesting that, so far, it has not made travel redundant. Look at rail usage from the early 1990s, e.g. http://www.railway-technical.com/statistics.shtml Who knows whether that trend will continue.
The T34, which was arguably the war-winning weapon for the Russians in its various incarnations, used a BMW-designed advanced light Diesel engine. You could say that BMW was on the Russian team.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Poles are increasingly doing the middle class jobs. The Russians...the oligarchs will loan the money to the Government so that the Government won't extradite them to Russia when Putin needs a rouble or two.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If germany hadn't been defeated do you think Hitler would have stopped at the atlantic? The nazis and the japanese would invaded and nicely carved up the USA so you'd probably have bullet trains running across your country by now and be eating at McSushi.
A resort style city? What, like Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham?
No, really, it's purpose is to spend 32 billion+.
The stretch to bitmingham will cost 15bn and save 40 (not 20) minutes, not to mention increasing capacity. The Full cost is for the full plan is for the extension to Manchester and Leeds which will cost 32bn and save considerably more time and also add capacity.
The mainline is running close to capacity, and only the government has the foresight and funds to spend money on large infrastructure projects.
Since you're likely to troll me with the same assertion as before, what do you propose should be done to increase capacity?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The less well off can still use the existing routes on the conventional lines, which will take longer and on older trains but will still exist once the high speed project is live. If the high speed train is a great success, then some capacity on existing lines can be made spare or re-allocated for regional and suburban services that currently run on the same lines as the intercity service. What I actually worry about is that the added capacity encourages more people and companies to have more trips into London, where they will use the tube to get to their final destinations and that is really hard to upgrade.
This is what is called a "Keynesian stimulus program"[2]. It's purpose is to spend 300 billion[1] into the economy in order to inflate the national debt away, save the banks and the contractors. At the taxpayers and citizens expense, the currency will be devalued causing inflation and taxpayers will have to service increased interest payments. The people who will be hit hardest by the additional inflation and taxation are the old, and the poor.
Wow, are you a politician, or perhaps a Daily Mail writer? This is the exact same generic argument used against anything that the government ever does in this country and it has never once happened that way on the scale you suggest. If it did it would bankrupt the country, and I have a feeling they might stop a fair way short of that. How many multi-billion pound projects can you name where the cost was ten times what was originally budgeted for, outside of our nuclear weapons?
In particular you don't seem to understand the nature of cost overruns. If you are building something that costs £1m and there is some huge cock-up it might cost £1m more to fix. If you build something costing £1bn and there is the same huge cock-up it still costs £1m to sort out. Problems do not apply multipliers to cost like some kind of pinball machine.
We have a simple choice. We try to make things better, or we give up before starting out of cynicism. Personally I don't ever want to live in a society where the latter happens so I'll take the risk on this one, even though I know other countries could do it better.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
British accountants frequently combine arrogance with ignorance; their inability to understand how businesses really work has been one of the reasons for failure of UK PLC.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."