Election Year or Fear!

[swaledale]

We will have to disagree on it's necessity and your argument is further weakened by the second reason you cite for its failure "unnecessary tunnels just to sooth some Tory voters in the Chilterns" which shows your true colours as opposed to rational thinking.

My view is that it was ill conceived, was not integrated with the remaining rail strategy and that the funding could have been far better spent on improving a lot more elements of the network. The need for it to be high speed was pointless as the surrounding connections were not high speed and so any journey times other than direct London to Brum remained compromised: so yes HS2 phase 1 would get you to Birmingham 20 minutes earlier, which saving would be lost by the cancellation of your connecting train to Wolverhampton (this is what I mean by not integrated)

If we are looking at the moving of goods capacity, then extra lines are needed for sure, but I don't see the virtue in that being high speed with its additional costs of having to be built in straight lines. Carriages full of raw materials such as sand/gravel etc don't benefit from being at destination 20 minutes early. Even tomatoes don't go off that quickly.

But each to his or her own - it's something that divides opinion and no-one is entirely right or wrong. My view is that the rail infrastructure overall could have benefitted much more from the money budgeted (then wasted) and that "high speed" does not solve the problem when everything else around it is slow speed - or stopped/cancelled. This is why I refer to it as "vanity": the need for speed.

Ok I'm up for a serious debate.

1. As originally conceived, it was fully integrated into the rail strategy, its purpose was to provide a high speed link dedicated to long distance passenger traffic, improving journey times between Scotland and the North of England - the mythology about it making the journey between Birmingham and London 20 mins faster was one whipped up by the ill informed media, even with the short sighted removal of the Leeds and Manchester legs, journey times would still have been improved from the North. The HS2 trains are designed to run on existing lines albeit at a max of 125 mph and there will be a connecting link onto the existing lines, so there wouldn't and won't be a requirement to change trains at Birmingham or Wolverhampton as you claim, thus the 20 mins reduction in time would be still there. With the Manchester and Leeds legs the time saving increases, such that it would have reduced the travel time for trains from Scotland by an hour or more had they been able to access them.

2. Other elements of the network have been improved London to Leeds/Newcastle and London to Birmingham/Manchester Glasgow with additional tracks provided and digital signalling being installed and there is currently extensive works to improve cross country lines between Liverpool/Manchester and Leeds/York. The funds for HS2 were separate from the general railway budget and there are significant practical and cost issues in trying to widen existing routes which would have negatively impacted on considerably more people than building a new line does.

3. The strategy of HS2 is that the majority of long distance passenger trains from Scotland the North of England would use it which would free up capacity on both the routes south of York and south of Manchester/Birmingham. Removing most of the fast non stop passenger trains from existing routes means that extra capacity is available for both freight and indeed slower passenger trains that stop en route. The more there is a differential between the slowest (usually freight/goods trains) and the fastest passenger trains, the less capacity there is on a route. HS2 would have provided many more freight train paths on existing routes to London and at a lower cost and ongoing disruption to existing trains that building additional tracks along these routes. It was never envisaged that HS2 would carry freight.

For example, one can run 140 mph trains at intervals of 3- 5 minutes if they are all going the same speed, bung a 60 mph freight train or a 80 mph local in the mix and the frequency drops considerably. Removing most of the high speed trains from the 3 main routes into London from the Midlands/North (the Derby - St Pancras line would also benefit) would have provided considerable additional capacity.

Far from being a vanity project, it was badly needed infrastructure which would and could still have significant economic benefits for the UK. especially for those areas in the Midlands and North of England/Scotland where improved connectivity is urgently required.

My comment on the tunnels through the Chilterns has nothing to do with my bias and everything to do with the fact that they are unnecessary. nearly 25% of the route is in tunnel, which costs on average a minimum of double the cost of open line. Other methods such as open cuttings and noise baffles would have avoided any disturbance for the most part, absolutely ludicrous demands were made which has bumped up the costs considerably.

It made sense to make it a high speed line, but not a ultra high speed line, 140 mph would have been sufficient, so in that I would agree a degree of "vanity" or as I would put it over engineering was involved. But largely the endless tinkering and interference in the project has typified how of late infrastructure projects, such as replacement Nuclear Power stations or the need to replace and expand the electricity grid just get bogged down in the UK.