HS2

[jjb1970]

11 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

"There's a government toolkit for things like this, providing a range of carefully callibrated holistic program solutions which leverage synergies across the value chain and which utilize disruptive technologies such as block chain and AI, including:"

I am glad to see that you have such a good grasp of management speak. Are you planning a job in government? 

No, you can't be as you can also write plain  English.

Jonathan

 

 

Funnily enough I've considered applying for government jobs a few times and twice have been asked to apply for very interesting roles (one in the MoD, one in.....DfT....shudder). However whenever I've looked at the application process I have decided 'stuff that', writing essays about a time I ended world hunger, a time I was nice to somebody, how I am a team player blah blah blah. It was obvious the selection was going to be 'competency' based. To a normal person that might mean assessing whether people are competent to perform the role but in the world of HR it is testing whether you can blag your way through a load of scenarios using the latest current thing ideas and buzz words. To do it properly is a lot of work and I hate all that 'competency' stuff. I don't have any issues with rigorous selection, over my career I've been in roles which required government issued certificates of competency and various other statutory certification, I've had roles which required me to do psychometric and technical tests, roles which required chartered engineer registration etc etc all on top of interviews but I can't be bothered with the current competency approach. My current role started as a bit of a joke, I was asked if I fancied a job which would be located in Brussels, I responded 'put the job in Singapore and I'll say yes' thinking that'd be the end of that and they came back and said 'we can do that'. I had a couple of informal interviews with rather senior people and that was that. After they came back to tell me they'd had a look and agreed to move the role from Brussels to Singapore I kind of felt guilty telling them it was a bit of a joke.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

……Or Waterloo station, named after a former Swedish pop groups first hit, nearly 50 years ago.

 

 

.

Or Victoria, named after a Spice Girl😄

Paddington named after a bear.

 

Maybe OOC should be renamed "London West", with the current end of construction near Lichfield "Manchester South", then the shortened railway will meet all it's current connection targets?😉

 

Edited August 17, 2023 by melmerby

[DenysW]

On 15/08/2023 at 10:24, phil-b259 said:

Actually when it comes to the East Midlands (I.e. Nottingham / Derby area) HS2 would indeed give the fastest journey time to London

 

On 15/08/2023 at 10:29, phil-b259 said:

so HS2 trains can serve Derby, Nottingham (and Sheffield via the MML).

HS2 is NOT going to Leicester, Derby or Nottingham, and was never intended to. It was proposed to go to Toton (the former Midland Railway coal trans-shipment point known 1927-1955 for its LMS Garratts), and this is to Nottingham what West Hampstead or Willesden Junction is to central London - fairly close but definitely no cigar. Slightly further from Derby, so maybe a Watford equivalent. In both cases worse than claiming that OOC is as good as Euston.  It will add time to London from Leicester if the present service (not proposed now to be electrified beyond Wigston Junction due to the wrong clearance under the Midland Counties Railway's bridge giving unexpected costs (!!!)) is degraded once the East Midlands is basking in the joys of the service (now) to Trent Junction, also known as East Midland Parkway. Not even Toton now. Sigh.

[jamie92208]

I'm sure if Mr O'Leary was operating the service betweenOOCand Handsacre he would advertise it as London to Manchester. 

 

Jamie

[Edwin_m]

3 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

……Or Waterloo station, named after a former Swedish pop groups first hit, nearly 50 years ago.

No worse than a station named after a bear.  

[The Stationmaster]

On 15/08/2023 at 20:38, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

With much respect Mike, I suspect you are underestimating the scale and complexity of the work that has to be done in creating this new and quite large surface station and the complete remodelling the whole section of the GWML, in the vicinity of OOC.

 

Just one example, all the bridges carrying the current lines over Old Oak Common Lane, at the western end of the site, are to be demolished and the road dug out, with all its services removed.

A new wider road is tol be constructed at a 2 metre lower level and a new, much wider bridge put in place.

That sounds like a lot more than a typical modern heavy bridge replacement, carried out over 48 or 72 hours ....and as explained in the video, it is a far more complex task than it would appear at first glance.

 

From what I understand, apart from the overall construction work to create the mainline section of the station, there will be something like 18 main construction and rail infrastructure stages to go through to create the new multi-track and multi-platform mainline station and facilitate the construction work and moving  the GWML over in stages.

The station building and structure that will span all 8 lines, is quite large and I imagine it must involve some very detailed choreography to facilitate this heavy construction work alongside, within and over a live operational railway, over a period of a number of years.

There will inevitably be numerous occasions where the railway will have to stop running (possessions) for various tasks and stages of construction to be carried out; either for practical reasons, or for safety.

 

The track remodelling is obviously going to further complicated by the presence of the overhead power.

Large sections of that will have to be either modified, removed or replaced on the running lines that stay put for the time being, as the relief lines and then fast lines are gradually removed and replaced by completely new alignments with a whole set of new OHLE and supporting infrastructure.

 

Network Rail and TfL are both involved in the management team overseeing this programme.

I am sure than minimising disruption to the regular running of GWML and EL services will be of the highest priority, so if they are talking of 10-14 and 20 day closures (those are supposed to be the longest and most impactful ones), there will be good reason for it.

It sounds like 2026 to 2028 will be the critical part of the overall timeframe, so there's plenty of time for contingency planning.

I seem to remember, the whole of Waterloo station was closed for the best part of 2 weeks, only a few years ago.

 

 

.

Well Ron the only constraints are the underbridges towards one end - as you mention - and the cuttings/overbridges at the extreme  ends of the site.  The underbridges amount to nothing unusuai in engineering terms, it is no more than widening the road

.  

For example the underbridge at the east end of Reading was reputed at the time the work was done to be the widest new bridge under a railway in the country (that's the width of road infrastructure, not the width of the railway infrastructure road although the latter was also altered.  The road width was altered from two pavements (not particularly narrow) and three traffic lanes (divided from each other by white line markings) to a dual carriageway with a central area a few feet wide between the two carriageways  with three vehicle lanes northbound and two vehicles lanes southbound  widening to three lanes. underneath the bridge.  Plus two wide pedestrian pavements at a higher level than the road itself.   So the equivalent in Old Oak Lane would be widening the bridge(s) to accommodate a dual carriageway, at the same time lowering the road to accommodate double deck 'buses plus constructing a roundabout at each end immediately beyond the bridge.   The Reading job was done with no longer railway possessions than 48/60 hour weekend possessions and of course included resiting all the signalling and comms cables crossing the bridge while keeping rail traffic running the rest of the time.  Old Oak Lane bridgeworks is no excuse for any possessions longer than installing various parts of the finished works as is usually done.  Build the bridge and slide it in for the existing running line width then subsequently add on extra width at the northern end ready for the track sluing

.

If the oft derided BR could do the job with, in some respects, less sophisticated kit than is available today I'm sure that HS2's/NR's  engineers ought to be able to do so today with the same minimal amount of interference with. a heavily used railway.

 

The rest of the job is basically simple railway engineering work of building, stage by stage the new on the north side of the existing on a wide site with plenty of easy access towards the west end.  In many respects it is not dissimilar to moving a lot of the track layout sideways and creating new platforms plus through line realignments at Peterborough,  It is on an almost level site (albeit rising at a the very slight  gradient of 1 in1204 towards the west end, and there are currently four running lines with sufficient width to add several more plus some platform structures and ohle structures and much of the wiring before interfering with them by doing the big slues.   Simple principle - jkeep to a minimum the amount of time involved in stopping the normal running of trains and understand that also means working shifts so the changeover is a continuous rather than something you only do during the day.

 

The principle in the past was to try to keep the railway running and get the job done.  The principle now seems to be s*d the railway, forget the passengers who use it and don't worry if they never come back, and have a ruddy great building site instead and hang the expense because someone else is paying.  This week our branch had.s been closed. with expensive alternative 'bus services in operation, for four days to allow NR to re-lay  a whole 396 yards of plain line,  and 'clear lneside vegetation' (I'm not entirely sure why that should suddenly bother them when it has been growing unchecked for the past 50 years.  the last time a section of the branc was completely relaid it needed a Sunday possession - in order to deal with 440+ yards.  I'd love to hear what the past Area Civil Engineer thinks of this circus, especially as the line closure included the day his wife travels over the branch to do volunteer work fora charity?

 

I'm sorry Ron but when we saw massive works - like that underbridge at Reading - carried out with minimal, and only unavoidably essential, interference with the running of trains I seriously wonder exactly who is thinking about commercial priorities rather than keeping certain, apparently naive, engineers happy?   And judging by one or two relatively recent examples I can just see protracted closures coming at the same time as Reading pop festival or the seven nations rugby tournament because it also appears that those planning such jobs aren't familiar with event calendars either.  The latter were what we used to start with but then our idea was to do our level best to try to run a train service and not tir n our backs on passengers and freight customers.

[The Stationmaster]

4 hours ago, melmerby said:

Or Victoria, named after a Spice Girl😄

Paddington named after a bear.

 

Maybe OOC should be renamed "London West", with the current end of construction near Lichfield "Manchester South", then the shortened railway will meet all it's current connection targets?😉

 

I have a horrible suspicion you might be right on the money with renaming Old Oak Common because I doubt it would mean much to many people.  So 'London West' might work but really to accord with the latest ideas it should be.'Great London West' or maybe  'Great West(ern) London'.  and for some Wormwood Scrubs North might make more sense?

 

But logically I suppose it could follow in GW tradition and be called called something like 'Central London Road' or 'Palace of Westminster Road'  being a station that's nowhere near either Central London or the Palace of Westminster but is considered to be so by those who want it to be London's station for travellers to either?

Edited August 17, 2023 by The Stationmaster

[rockershovel]

11 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

As the segments are bei g produced it's probably cheaper to keep the machines running. 

 

Jamie

It's most cost effective to keep the machines running and install the segments. 

 

The cheapest solution would be to simply stop the segment production line, store the moulds and redeploy the batching and delivery plant. 

 

The in-between solution would be to produce a stock of segments. Some of the segments used on the original Jubilee Line were decades old, dating from the great shelter and bunker construction projects of the 1940s and 1950s 

 

Some of the bolted segments I was using around London in the 1980s were cast in Kinnear Moodie moulds dating from the late 1930s. 

 

 

[rockershovel]

It's a fundamental problem with commercial projects that the goals of the various parties involved, rarely align. 

 

Hence the contractors building the railway care nothing for interrupted services with another operator; doubly so because most of them aren't British anyway (eg Skanska).

 

 

[rockershovel]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

Funnily enough I've considered applying for government jobs a few times and twice have been asked to apply for very interesting roles (one in the MoD, one in.....DfT....shudder). However whenever I've looked at the application process I have decided 'stuff that', writing essays about a time I ended world hunger, a time I was nice to somebody, how I am a team player blah blah blah. It was obvious the selection was going to be 'competency' based. To a normal person that might mean assessing whether people are competent to perform the role but in the world of HR it is testing whether you can blag your way through a load of scenarios using the latest current thing ideas and buzz words. To do it properly is a lot of work and I hate all that 'competency' stuff. I don't have any issues with rigorous selection, over my career I've been in roles which required government issued certificates of competency and various other statutory certification, I've had roles which required me to do psychometric and technical tests, roles which required chartered engineer registration etc etc all on top of interviews but I can't be bothered with the current competency approach. My current role started as a bit of a joke, I was asked if I fancied a job which would be located in Brussels, I responded 'put the job in Singapore and I'll say yes' thinking that'd be the end of that and they came back and said 'we can do that'. I had a couple of informal interviews with rather senior people and that was that. After they came back to tell me they'd had a look and agreed to move the role from Brussels to Singapore I kind of felt guilty telling them it was a bit of a joke.

I have long since numbered HR among the "enemies of all good governance", to quote a certain Mr Cromwell. 

 

My current employers are basically paid to haul earth and stone, weld and lay pipe. I'd reckon that 25% of Head Office personnel are in roles which bear no relation to that. 

 

 

[david.hill64]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

 However whenever I've looked at the application process I have decided 'stuff that', writing essays about a time I ended world hunger, a time I was nice to somebody, how I am a team player blah blah blah. It was obvious the selection was going to be 'competency' based. To a normal person that might mean assessing whether people are competent to perform the role but in the world of HR it is testing whether you can blag your way through a load of scenarios using the latest current thing ideas and buzz words. 

And this, I think, summarises why so many government departments are inept. Group think is the only opinion tolerated, when what is needed for an effective business is a diversity of opinion and the odd maverick. Dominic Cummings was right when he sought to recruit misfits into government.

 

HS2 will start returning money only when it is up and running. Delaying the project intentionally not only increases costs but delays revenue and runs the risk of being a massive financial burden if cancelled. It needs some brave souls in the civil service to stand up for this.

[ess1uk]

On 17/08/2023 at 01:38, jjb1970 said:

There's a government toolkit for things like this, providing a range of carefully callibrated holistic program solutions which leverage synergies across the value chain and which utilize disruptive technologies such as block chain and AI, including:

 

-do nothing and hope it'll either end up working, nobody will notice who messed up or it'll be the next governments problem;

-reduce the specification to cut costs. Remember, life is about what you need, not what you want, that refurbished pacer on a single track line does everything people think they need from HS2;

-delay the project to shuffle spend further into the future, this is a prudent and effective way to reduce costs by making things more expensive;

-go for a 'fitted/designed for but not with' approach, this allows them to strip out a lot of the good stuff while letting the plebs live in the vain hope it might happen one day.

 

Sounds like one of my old managers 

[APOLLO]

20 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

……Or Waterloo station, named after a former Swedish pop groups first hit, nearly 50 years ago.

 

Before his death, Winston Churchill decided to add one more request to his funeral arrangements, by insisting that his funeral train departed from Waterloo. This caused many complications, as Bladon was on the former Great Western Railway line and the natural departure point for such a journey would be Paddington, so why Waterloo?

Churchill revelled in the idea that the French President, Charles de Gaulle would have to walk bare headed under the archway that celebrates one of the Britain’s greatest victories over France. 

 

Brit15

[DenysW]

15 hours ago, david.hill64 said:

Delaying the project intentionally not only increases costs but delays revenue and runs the risk of being a massive financial burden if cancelled. It needs some brave souls in the civil service to stand up for this.

Although I still agree that it's the wrong decision, it's a decision based on cash-flow not cost. Everyone, even the politicians, knows it will add total cost and delay benefits. However, a Government (both political & civil service) that is facing a cash-flow abyss as it rolls over debt into new securities at 3-6 times the interest burden has to do at least one of reduce outgoings, increase taxes, or borrow the new difference at the new rates, and with the recent Covid-support and energy-subsidy debt suddenly looking like a millstone.

 

As one of the few Government expenditures likely to give a benefit (and having borrowed/spent a lot of the total already) I think I'd plough ahead. But splashing billions/year on HS2 when trying to save billions/year by screwing-over people who vote is a difficult sell to the media and in Westminster.

[melmerby]

Of course all the extra (un budgeted for) tax now coming in due to rising wages won't affect the govenment's cash flow.

No, it will go on targeted tax cuts to woo voters at the next election.

[phil-b259]

On 17/08/2023 at 14:19, DenysW said:

 

HS2 is NOT going to Leicester, Derby or Nottingham, and was never intended to. It was proposed to go to Toton (the former Midland Railway coal trans-shipment point known 1927-1955 for its LMS Garratts), and this is to Nottingham what West Hampstead or Willesden Junction is to central London - fairly close but definitely no cigar. Slightly further from Derby, so maybe a Watford equivalent. In both cases worse than claiming that OOC is as good as Euston.  It will add time to London from Leicester if the present service (not proposed now to be electrified beyond Wigston Junction due to the wrong clearance under the Midland Counties Railway's bridge giving unexpected costs (!!!)) is degraded once the East Midlands is basking in the joys of the service (now) to Trent Junction, also known as East Midland Parkway. Not even Toton now. Sigh.

Do keep up at the back!

 

That original version of HS2 got dumped and REPLACED by the government with a short extension of the ‘stub’ (being built by phase one) as far as the Midland main line Near East Midlands parkway thus allowing HS2 trains to serve the EXISTING city centre stations in Derby and Nottingham (with the former extending on to Sheffield as happens now with trains from St Pancras.

 

If you are going to start having a pop it helps if you get your facts right....

 

Go look at page 76 of this document…

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1062157/integrated-rail-plan-for-the-north-and-midlands-web-version.pdf

 

 

[david.hill64]

6 hours ago, DenysW said:

Although I still agree that it's the wrong decision, it's a decision based on cash-flow not cost. Everyone, even the politicians, knows it will add total cost and delay benefits. However, a Government (both political & civil service) that is facing a cash-flow abyss as it rolls over debt into new securities at 3-6 times the interest burden has to do at least one of reduce outgoings, increase taxes, or borrow the new difference at the new rates, and with the recent Covid-support and energy-subsidy debt suddenly looking like a millstone.

 

As one of the few Government expenditures likely to give a benefit (and having borrowed/spent a lot of the total already) I think I'd plough ahead. But splashing billions/year on HS2 when trying to save billions/year by screwing-over people who vote is a difficult sell to the media and in Westminster.

So why not use your noddle and invite in the private sector? They are likely to end up buying the infrastructure anyway. It needs something other than groupthink to move forward. Your post is an excellent example of why we don't do things like they do in Asia: we find reasons not to do things. In Asia they find ways to do things.

[david.hill64]

Just following up on private sector involvement:

 

I was involved with the Taiwan High Speed Rail project in 1992/3 when it was a government funded project. Compared with western countries, Taiwan's government is awash with cash, but still decided in 1993 to cancel the project for affordability reasons. What they did next was to enact legislation that permitted private investment in infrastructure then let a competition to award the project. Knowing that the base economics of rail don't work in favour of the railway (who don't get the larger financial rewards), they sweetened the deal by giving sole development rights in the new station areas for 50 years.

 

So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

 

 

[jjb1970]

6 hours ago, david.hill64 said:

So why not use your noddle and invite in the private sector? They are likely to end up buying the infrastructure anyway. It needs something other than groupthink to move forward. Your post is an excellent example of why we don't do things like they do in Asia: we find reasons not to do things. In Asia they find ways to do things.

 

When I look at infrastructure development in much of Asia I can't help asking the question - are we doing anything to learn from them?

 

The usual answer is to claim health and safety isn't practiced in Asia (it is), governments are dictatorships (I think that is a simplification for the People's Republic of China and nonsense for Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan/RoC etc) or that 'they do things differently' (well, quite, that's the point).

 

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, david.hill64 said:

Just following up on private sector involvement:

 

I was involved with the Taiwan High Speed Rail project in 1992/3 when it was a government funded project. Compared with western countries, Taiwan's government is awash with cash, but still decided in 1993 to cancel the project for affordability reasons. What they did next was to enact legislation that permitted private investment in infrastructure then let a competition to award the project. Knowing that the base economics of rail don't work in favour of the railway (who don't get the larger financial rewards), they sweetened the deal by giving sole development rights in the new station areas for 50 years.

 

So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

 

 

I rather doubt that. The basic idea isn't new - the US Transcontinental railway was built that way, as was "Metroland" but the UP had a whole continent to give away. Both concepts relied upon the land being developed in such a way as to create ongoing traffic for the railway.... but the UP went bankrupt anyway.....

 

Hand a developer the rights to a London site and they will have separated the revenue from the railway before they have laid a single brick

 

I'm also minded of the Jubilee Line Extension and its various misadventures with the Reichman brothers ....

 

 

[lmsforever]

The moles have not gone away  reading a piece of local public news  about HS2   and events and doings around Wendover  ,a group of people were discovered trying to dig underneath the line so as to hide there and stop work. What next will these anti,s do they are encouraged by so called experts that publish rubbish saying the line should be stopped and  other rubbish.

[chaplin]

Quote

So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

Some infrastructure projects are financed this way. I believe the new Silvertown tunnel was financed by the contractor in return for running the toll for a number of years to be paid back.

 

It's not without an element of risk, however. Most of these large projects are built by JV's and if one or more should go belly up then it can end in tears.

 

What is really needed is a better tendering process that is not largely based on awarding the job to the cheapest. This is mainly driven by the media whipping up a storm with high total costs. Take HS2 for example, years ago it was all about spending £52b to save 15 minutes and that became the slogan of those against it.  This leads to a drive to save money and jobs are then awarded to the cheapest. As we usually see, however, the cheapest bid is usually a contractor 'buying' the job by going in too cheap with the aim to claim as many extra costs as possible during construction to make up the profit. Margins are very slim in this game for the main contractors and it's a case of claim claim claim to make any profit at all.

 

Much better would be to award based on using UK subcontractors and suppliers, UK staff, and incorporating training schemes for locally unemployed etc. Most people would be happy to spend £62bn rather than £52bn if it meant more of that money was staying in the country and coming straight back in various taxation. By constantly talking about these large figures however, we then get politicians and civil servants just demanding cuts rather than opportunities and much of it goes abroad and to foreign workers, who can survive on much lower rates than those from the UK with families to support.

[rockershovel]

The problem with local Labour on construction projects is that they require a sharply defined peak of specialist skills with no continuity to follow. Local Labour often can't or won't adapt to the long hours and heavy work in unfamiliar conditions and the HMRC don't help in the slightest. 

 

The complex maze of specialist certification, combined with the industry's resistance to paying for it is a further problem. 

 

[woodenhead]

On 19/08/2023 at 05:15, david.hill64 said:

So why don't we say to developers/ pension funds/ insurance companies, you pay the cost of the Euston extension, and in return the station site is handed over to you for 50 years. Develop it as you will, get the revenue from offices, retail and £x a head from every passenger. See if the numbers stack up.

 

 

Don’t think it would help, at the moment London I awash with retail and business locations that will be under performing.

 

The best use might be hotel and living space, perhaps affordable homes but they don’t have quite the same return I’ll bet.

[rockershovel]

42 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Don’t think it would help, at the moment London I awash with retail and business locations that will be under performing.

 

The best use might be hotel and living space, perhaps affordable homes but they don’t have quite the same return I’ll bet.

It's not that simple. Purpose-built office spaces lack the necessary water and sewage services, usually located in a central core around the lifts. They have communal ventilation systems... we went through all this in the 90s when the Lawson Boom produced a glut of speculative office development.