HS2 under review

[Mike Storey]

Many thanks Arun for going to that trouble. Certainly an interesting, highly edited (no doubt), selective set of comments.

 

But then, what else would you expect from a free newspaper published by the Daily Mail Media Group (aka Associated Newspapers), whose Editor in Chief is one Paul Dacre, recently ex-editor of the Daily Mail, and arch-defender of something he called "Middle England"? Never a supporter of HS2, that's for sure.

 

It makes a mockery of the Metro's claim to be "entirely neutral" in matters of national interest.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Mike Storey

[lmsforever]

Seems to me that any comments against this line are always dismissed as made up ,utter tosh ,or at worst heresy ,will posters respect other peoples views on this thread its not much to ask is it. 

[Pacific231G]

I should make it clear that i'm not calling for the inhabitants of the Chilterns to be subject to anything in their backyards that I wouldn't accept in my own. My house is about 250m from HS2's route and I doubt if I'll be aware of anythng more than a distant sound.

 

As a lapsed engineer I found these articles interesting.

https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/10/19/how-one-engineers-birdwatching-made-japans-bullet-train-better

https://mi2.org/featured/biomimicry-bullet-trains-innovation

 

It would be ironic if the insistence on so many tunnels actually makes any noise problem worse.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Pacific231G

[GoingUnderground]

Seems to me that any comments against this line are always dismissed as made up ,utter tosh ,or at worst heresy ,will posters respect other peoples views on this thread its not much to ask is it.

Don't worry. Recent political shenanigans have made me even more certain that it will be cancelled.

 

When Mrs May gets the chop next year, her successor, who will most likely be from the right-wing of her party, will drop it: one because it's publc transport and the right-wing dislikes spending taxpayers' money on anything public; and two, tax revenue will be lower than previously forecast due to the utter fiasco that's Brexit so that it'll be unaffordable by any government of any political colour. The official justification for its cancellation will be that "anticipated progress on self-driving vehicles and traction batteries is such that it will make HS2 unnecessary by the time that it's due to be completed".

Edited January 17, 2019 by GoingUnderground

[Dava]

A reasonably balanced and positive article in the Evening Standard from Julian Glover [you might disagree if you've lost your home in Camden].

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/hs2-will-be-transformative-just-not-quite-yet-says-transport-head-a4040401.html?amp

[Mike Storey]

A reasonably balanced and positive article in the Evening Standard from Julian Glover [you might disagree if you've lost your home in Camden].

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/hs2-will-be-transformative-just-not-quite-yet-says-transport-head-a4040401.html?amp

 

Unusually balanced, as there are acknowledgements of problems as well as opportunities. But the reader comments underneath are mostly anti, but with some spirited defence too. One aspect is that a reader accuses the author of bias, in that he "is" a SPAD to the DfT. He was, but it doesn't look like he is now. He joined the ES as Associate Editor a year or so ago. He used to be a Guardian journalist for years, until becoming a speechwriter for Cameron (an odd transition), but his main focus has always been historical engineering.

 

At least you can see, and find out about if you want, the person who is writing this, unlike many articles about HS2 which are either anonymous, or appear under sub-editor's by-lines.

 

I am not sure it is HS2's job to "make the case" for HS2? Surely that is the job of the elected government, as the primary funder? HS2's PR efforts are being, rightly, directed towards informing people who will be affected directly by the works, and publishing analysis and forecasts of its progress, including all matters required by HMG and Parliament. Whether or not they have been doing this very well is, of course, an entirely different matter.

[Crewlisle]

Don't worry. Recent political shenanigans have made me even more certain that it will be cancelledJubilees

 

When Mrs May gets the chop next year, her successor, who will most likely be from the right-wing of her party, will drop it: one because it's publc transport and the right-wing dislikes spending taxpayers' money on anything public; and two, tax revenue will be lower than previously forecast due to the utter fiasco that's Brexit so that it'll be unaffordable by any government of any political colour. The official justification for its cancellation will be that "anticipated progress on self-driving vehicles and traction batteries is such that it will make HS2 unnecessary by the time that it's due to be completed".

 

The cheaper option would be to either add extra lines to the existing WCML, adjust signalling, lengthen platforms or all three.  I remember trainspotting at Rugby in the 1950s when Duchess Pacifics would regularly pass through with 16 coaches or Royal Scots or Jubilees with 12 to 14 coaches.  Problem solved!

 

Peter

[black and decker boy]

The cheaper option would be to either add extra lines to the existing WCML, adjust signalling, lengthen platforms or all three. I remember trainspotting at Rugby in the 1950s when Duchess Pacifics would regularly pass through with 16 coaches or Royal Scots or Jubilees with 12 to 14 coaches. Problem solved!

 

Peter

Widening the WCML through the London, Birmingham & Manchester suburbs, cheaper than a new line in a new tunnel? All those houses, flats and businesses that line the route to be relocated & compensated? A new tortuous legal process to get approval for such works and the CPOs necessary?

 

Sorry but your solution isn’t a solution at all and would just never happen.

[jjb1970]

The real solution for transport demand would be for people to travel less. That would also significantly reduce emissions and energy consumption. People could return to the cities or work locally or use the various options available to work at home and avoid business travel. I actually think that would be be a better approach for society to try than constantly increasing transport capacity but it is highly unlikely to happen. The societal changes to do it would make the challenge of building HS2 trivial. I estimate 80% of my business trips could be cancelled and done by video conferencing (and I would be happy not to have to make regular trips to Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo etc, although I do enjoy the Asian trips) but there still seems to be a demand to attend in person. Similarly even if offices remain necessary I think most office staff could do some home working.

[298]

The cheaper option would be to either add extra lines to the existing WCML, adjust signalling, lengthen platforms or all three.  I remember trainspotting at Rugby in the 1950s when Duchess Pacifics would regularly pass through with 16 coaches or Royal Scots or Jubilees with 12 to 14 coaches.  Problem solved!

 

Peter

Rugby: was 2 through platform faces and a 75mph limit, now 5 through platform faces and a 125mph limit (more platforms = less conflicting moves, = less chance of a delay).

 

How many trains did you see in one hour back in the 1950s...? South of Rugby the WCML has about 24 Virgin trains every hour, plus LNW and freight, all filled to a greater capacity- an 11 coach Pendolino has 600 seats, more than 16 coaches of compartment stock.

 

All the easy projects have been done, and further improvements will mean more capital investment and years of disruption over building a new line.

[jamie92208]

The real solution for transport demand would be for people to travel less. That would also significantly reduce emissions and energy consumption. People could return to the cities or work locally or use the various options available to work at home and avoid business travel. I actually think that would be be a better approach for society to try than constantly increasing transport capacity but it is highly unlikely to happen. The societal changes to do it would make the challenge of building HS2 trivial. I estimate 80% of my business trips could be cancelled and done by video conferencing (and I would be happy not to have to make regular trips to Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo etc, although I do enjoy the Asian trips) but there still seems to be a demand to attend in person. Similarly even if offices remain necessary I think most office staff could do some home working.

I listened to a talk by some people from the BR Inter City team (Or whatever they were called then) back in 1971 and one of the speakers said that the biggest threat to demand that they saw on the horizon was video conferencing. It doesn't quite seem to have worked out.

 

Jamie

[Arun Sharma]

I listened to a talk by some people from the BR Inter City team (Or whatever they were called then) back in 1971 and one of the speakers said that the biggest threat to demand that they saw on the horizon was video conferencing. It doesn't quite seem to have worked out.

 

Jamie

Back in the time when Boris was still Mayor of London he featured in a TV documentary that examined the increasingly London-centric UK economy and whether that was/should be viable ad-infinitum as well as whether it had a negative effect elsewhere in the country

One of the premises that emerged in the program regarded a research topic that had examined productivity in two situations. One where characters were in close proximity and another where folk were able to video conference/phone/write letters but not normally actually able to meet in person. The conclusion of what must have been a long term piece of research certainly suggested that "meetings by the watercooler" of people employed under one roof encouraged a mindset that allowed more free and out-of-the box thinking and thus increased productivity. There was a suggestion that it also made workers feel happier/more content if they were in contact with others.

Leaving aside the difficulties of repeating/confirming such experiments and hypotheses in terms of finding suitable control populations, infringing commercially sensitive data etc., Boris opined that increasing the working population of the City and Docklands would have an impact greater than the sum of its parts in creating new idea-flows and encouraging initiative and thus he supported the unfettered growth of London and the additional monies generated.

 

The other simple reason why working from home is possibly seen as less efficient by employers is that many people are actually not very good at self-tasking or self-motivating irrespective of deadlines.

[pete_mcfarlane]

I listened to a talk by some people from the BR Inter City team (Or whatever they were called then) back in 1971 and one of the speakers said that the biggest threat to demand that they saw on the horizon was video conferencing. It doesn't quite seem to have worked out.

 

Jamie

 

Can you say that again please, I didn't quite hear it?

 

Video conferencing is an awful way to communicate, so it tends to be used only to talk to people in different countries, or when somebody is working from home and needs to connect in to a meeting. 

[Pacific231G]

The real solution for transport demand would be for people to travel less. That would also significantly reduce emissions and energy consumption. People could return to the cities or work locally or use the various options available to work at home and avoid business travel. I actually think that would be be a better approach for society to try than constantly increasing transport capacity but it is highly unlikely to happen. The societal changes to do it would make the challenge of building HS2 trivial. I estimate 80% of my business trips could be cancelled and done by video conferencing (and I would be happy not to have to make regular trips to Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo etc, although I do enjoy the Asian trips) but there still seems to be a demand to attend in person. Similarly even if offices remain necessary I think most office staff could do some home working.

The great myth (or one of them) in the Heathrow third runway saga has been that the airport's main function is to handle business travel. According to the CAA's latest figures

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwiFusLQ4fzfAhXCUhUIHRFPDOcQFjAAegQIBxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.caa.co.uk%2FuploadedFiles%2FCAA%2FContent%2FStandard_Content%2FData_and_analysis%2FDatasets%2FPassenger_survey%2F2017CAAPaxSurveyReport.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1PEE7B8zlrgMJp5sp0qR5a

 

For Heathrow, "Leisure travellers" account for 67% of journeys while "business travel" accounts for only 33%. That's actually a far higher than any other major British airport apart from London City  (the only one with slightly more business-51.4%  than leisure- 48.5% travellers) The overall figures for the ten major airports in England were 18.7% business against 81.4% leisure.

Furthermore, even that small minority of "business" travellers are not just office workers going to meetings, they'll also include contractors going to site visits, medics and scientists going to conferences (given the importance of interpersonal contact outside the sessions teleconferencing really isn't an option) Also, quite a few describing their journeys as "business" are likely to be people travelling to and from home while working elsewhere.

 

Air travel aside, looking at fellow travellers while on trains I'd say that, commuters aside, the balance between business and "leisure" travellers recorded by the CAA is probably not far different for those using trains. I used to travel a lot by train around the UK to direct film items  for TV programmes (always standard class- it was the BBC!) There's no way i could have done that by remote control and the same would be true for people working in a whole lot of other industries. Since becoming a freelance and consultant I have worked mainly from home but, while avoiding the daily commute (thank goodness) I still have to travel. 

 

I'm afraid I saw the only way to get people to travel less while going to a meeting in Birmingham in the early 1990s. The city had been particularly badly hit by a collapse in local industries during the 1980s and I remember a cabbie taking us from New St. Station to the company we were visiting saying that we didn't have to worry about the rush hour (at the end of our meeting) because Birmingham no longer had one . He was quite right, the roads never got congested.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Pacific231G

[jjb1970]

The great myth (or one of them) in the Heathrow third runway saga has been that the airport's main function is to handle business travel. According to the CAA's latest figures

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwiFusLQ4fzfAhXCUhUIHRFPDOcQFjAAegQIBxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.caa.co.uk%2FuploadedFiles%2FCAA%2FContent%2FStandard_Content%2FData_and_analysis%2FDatasets%2FPassenger_survey%2F2017CAAPaxSurveyReport.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1PEE7B8zlrgMJp5sp0qR5a

 

For Heathrow, "Leisure travellers" account for 67% of journeys while "business travel" accounts for only 33%. That's actually a far higher than any other major British airport apart from London City  (the only one with slightly more business-51.4%  than leisure- 48.5% travellers) The overall figures for the ten major airports in England were 18.7% business against 81.4% leisure.

Furthermore, even that small minority of "business" travellers are not just office workers going to meetings, they'll also include contractors going to site visits, medics and scientists going to conferences (given the importance of interpersonal contact outside the sessions teleconferencing really isn't an option) Also, quite a few describing their journeys as "business" are likely to be people travelling to and from home while working elsewhere.

 

Air travel aside, looking at fellow travellers while on trains I'd say that, commuters aside, the balance between business and "leisure" travellers recorded by the CAA is probably not far different for those using trains. I used to travel a lot by train around the UK to direct film items  for TV programmes (always standard class- it was the BBC!) There's no way i could have done that by remote control and the same would be true for people working in a whole lot of other industries. Since becoming a freelance and consultant I have worked mainly from home but, while avoiding the daily commute (thank goodness) I still have to travel. 

 

I'm afraid I saw the only way to get people to travel less while going to a meeting in Birmingham in the early 1990s. The city had been particularly badly hit by a collapse in local industries during the 1980s and I remember a cabbie taking us from New St. Station to the company we were visiting saying that we didn't have to worry about the rush hour (at the end of our meeting) because Birmingham no longer had one . He was quite right, the roads never got congested.

 

That's still a lot of business trips of which a significant percentage may not be necessary if businesses utilised alternatives to face to face meetings. Conferences are a good example, most of them are pointless junkets that add nothing to human knowledge but a couple of hundred people will happily fly around the world to tell each other how terrible global warming is and how we need to suppress demand for air travel (that may sound cynical but I go to plenty of those events myself). On many routes the trains that operate between rush hours are lightly used and very pleasant. For example, on the route I use to commute the morning and evening trains are 8 or 12 cars and very heavily loaded on arrival at, or departure from, London Euston. Between those times they tend to be 4 cars and finding a seat is very rarely an issue and a large part of the fleet is sitting in holding sidings waiting for the next rush hour. The distribution on weekends is completely different with a much more even spread throughout the day. So if a the third of journey's for business were reduced, and the rush hour demand was suppressed by more people doing even one of two days a week work from home it'd make a significant difference. Many companies already allow flexible working to spread out the rush hour but there is a limit to how early people want to get up or how late they want to get home.

 

In any capacity restricted system the absolute numbers are not really the issue, the critical numbers are the differences between demand and capacity or supply, a small change either way can transform the position with respect to loading (or prices) without really looking particularly significant in terms of absolute numbers. Something which is apparent in school half term periods and other holiday periods to anybody who commutes in the rush hour.

 

Inter-City journey's are different but even WCML Pendolino services seem to mirror the rush hour load distribution during the week and Friday nights and Sunday nights are awful with people who work in London Monday - Friday going home for the weekend (I did that for 6 months and Sunday night trains back to London from Cumbria could be a nightmare).

[jjb1970]

Can you say that again please, I didn't quite hear it?

 

Video conferencing is an awful way to communicate, so it tends to be used only to talk to people in different countries, or when somebody is working from home and needs to connect in to a meeting. 

 

I find it works very well if people are used to it. In some ways it improves communication as people need to allow people to speak and not start speaking over each other. And modern systems have lost the latency that plagued older systems making it feel much more natural. I use video conferencing quite a lot and think it has potential to avoid an awful lot of travelling.

[Dava]

An interesting & balanced article on the HS2 Euston station redevelopment in today's 'Observer' which reports the scale of works already under way as well as the planning & financial challenges still faced by the project. The economic growth evidence from HS1 based on Sratford and Ashford is also cited. It's all quite reasonable unless it's your home in the way....

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/19/hs2-all-stations-regeneration-work-begins-earnest-london-euston

[Mike Storey]

An interesting & balanced article on the HS2 Euston station redevelopment in today's 'Observer' which reports the scale of works already under way as well as the planning & financial challenges still faced by the project. The economic growth evidence from HS1 based on Sratford and Ashford is also cited. It's all quite reasonable unless it's your home in the way....

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/19/hs2-all-stations-regeneration-work-begins-earnest-london-euston

 

Thanks for this. One new bit of info I had not seen before is that parliamentary legislation on HS2 (and therefore presumably on the TransPennine major upgrade) has been pushed back to 2020, and may not be completed until 2023. Pity.

[Pacific231G]

That's still a lot of business trips of which a significant percentage may not be necessary if businesses utilised alternatives to face to face meetings. Conferences are a good example, most of them are pointless junkets that add nothing to human knowledge but a couple of hundred people will happily fly around the world to tell each other how terrible global warming is and how we need to suppress demand for air travel (that may sound cynical but I go to plenty of those events myself). On many routes the trains that operate between rush hours are lightly used and very pleasant. For example, on the route I use to commute the morning and evening trains are 8 or 12 cars and very heavily loaded on arrival at, or departure from, London Euston. Between those times they tend to be 4 cars and finding a seat is very rarely an issue and a large part of the fleet is sitting in holding sidings waiting for the next rush hour. The distribution on weekends is completely different with a much more even spread throughout the day. So if a the third of journey's for business were reduced, and the rush hour demand was suppressed by more people doing even one of two days a week work from home it'd make a significant difference. Many companies already allow flexible working to spread out the rush hour but there is a limit to how early people want to get up or how late they want to get home.

 

In any capacity restricted system the absolute numbers are not really the issue, the critical numbers are the differences between demand and capacity or supply, a small change either way can transform the position with respect to loading (or prices) without really looking particularly significant in terms of absolute numbers. Something which is apparent in school half term periods and other holiday periods to anybody who commutes in the rush hour.

 

Inter-City journey's are different but even WCML Pendolino services seem to mirror the rush hour load distribution during the week and Friday nights and Sunday nights are awful with people who work in London Monday - Friday going home for the weekend (I did that for 6 months and Sunday night trains back to London from Cumbria could be a nightmare).

I don't disagree that a proportion of business journeys probably are unnecessary and in many fields people working for four rather than five days a week can  achieve just as much. that has worked for me on a number of occasions. I don't believe though that reducing such unnecessary journeys would be enough to cut out the need for new infrastructure. Apart from anything else, if travelling on business rather than to work it's often possible to avoid the busiest periods. That's certainly been my own experience.

 

What worries me about the arguments  against HS2 is that rail infrastructure seems to be questioned far more than new roads and motorways. Good public transport reduces the need for private transport which is far more damaging (I live in London but I've never paid a central London congestion charge because using the tube or train is far easier)  A railway can weave its way through a city (or the countryside) with relatively little social or environmental impact. A six lane motorway cannot.  

Edited January 21, 2019 by Pacific231G

[lmsforever]

There is a big campaign localy building up against the east west motorway between Oxford and Cambridge but the rail link is welcomed as it will take cars off the road but the motorway will add many vehicles to already crowded local roads.

[Davexoc]

There is a big campaign localy building up against the east west motorway between Oxford and Cambridge but the rail link is welcomed as it will take cars off the road but the motorway will add many vehicles to already crowded local roads.

Strange, I haven't heard anything here in MK.

Didn't think the plan was for it to be a motorway, just an extension of the A421 Bedford bypass basically....

 

Dave

[Ron Ron Ron]

There is a big campaign localy building up against the east west motorway between Oxford and Cambridge but the rail link is welcomed as it will take cars off the road but the motorway will add many vehicles to already crowded local roads.

 

 

With new homes being planned to accommodate up to one million people, to be built in this corridor, isn't it rather naive to think that new major trunk roads shouldn't be built, or are unnecessary.

 

This can't be stopped, as the population figures keep on rising.

It won't only be your area either.

Two more Birmingham's worth within the next 20 years !!!!!!

 

UK population....

 

1990  57.25 m

2000  58.89 m

2010  62.77 m

 

2018  66.57 m

2019  66.79 m

 

forecasts...

 

2020  67.33 m  (next year)

2030. 70.58 m

2040. 73.12 m  (only 21 years time)

 

 

 

.

[lmsforever]

Every release about this road it is described as an expressway/motorway six lanes wide and complemented by enormous house building ,the majority will be high end and out of reach by many people.This is happening around my town and is seemingly unrestricted by planning and a complete lack of traffic improvements so we are swamped by increasing traffic and pressure on services ,in short planning of these devolments is s free for all situation.

[phil-b259]

Every release about this road it is described as an expressway/motorway six lanes wide and complemented by enormous house building ,the majority will be high end and out of reach by many people.This is happening around my town and is seemingly unrestricted by planning and a complete lack of traffic improvements so we are swamped by increasing traffic and pressure on services ,in short planning of these devolments is s free for all situation.

 

But all development is good according to a certain political party - creating thousands of new jobs and easing the housebuilding crisis.

 

Its why the planning rules have been rigged making it very hard for local authorities to act against proposals - particularly if they haven't embraced the 'correct' ideology and earmarked lots of land for new housing in the local development plan as such a failing will pretty much guarantee any rejections of planning applications are overturned by the Secretary of State.

Edited January 22, 2019 by phil-b259

[The Stationmaster]

But all development is good according to a certain political party - creating thousands of new jobs and easing the housebuilding crisis.

 

Its why they planning rules ave been rigged making it very hard for local authorities to act against proposals - particularly if they haven't embraced the 'correct' ideology and earmarked lots of land for new housing in the local development plan as such a failing will pretty much guarantee any rejections of planning applications are overturned by the Secretary of State.

 

Not necessarily one planning approval near here has been so overturned (so far) and another is being thrown back into the melting pot by a local council who are trying to stop it, partly because of the designation of the site as being primarily for commercial use.  And the number of new houses is being reduced by the County Council.