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More delays for Euston's HS2 station

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Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#81

Post by smcl »

SilverBirch wrote: post #24

To be honest I think with a lot of policy issues in the UK at the moment you need to just give the government a bit of time to breath. Sunak's decision making on HS2 was bizarre bad long term/short term/pragmatic/polcitical. It was just one of those bizarre moments where he had sort of a correct aim and then changed that aim into "How can I cause as much damage as possible". So the current policy is extremely expensi…

How on earth did Sunak have “sort of a correct aim” on HS2? He’s taken an infrastructure project which would have increased capacity north-to-south once all of it was delivered, which was heavily criticised for being “only a way to get to London slightly faster” … and cancelled enough of it so that it reduced capacity and then became only a way to get to London slightly faster but from ultimately quite a nearby city. All that for a fairly sizeable chunk of money, enough that they might as well complete it.

He was desperately searching for a way to maybe gain votes that didn’t cost any extra money, and took a punt on axing half of HS2. It wasn’t a carefully calculated strategy, it was an attempt at a cheap vote-grab that was ultimately fruitless and will cost the UK public dearly in the long run.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#82

Post by chgs »

laurencerowe wrote: post #70
DrBazza wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old HS1 boss, said the main problem with HS2 goes was the government publicly announced the budget for each contract and the bidders bid... you guessed it right at the maximum of each contract. HS1 never announced any budget for any contract, so lots of bids came in way under what the government was prepared to spend, hence came in well under budget. I seem to recall that was also due to infrastructure 'transpare…

The problem with stopping at Old Oak Common is that it would likely worsen end-end journey times for the many passengers travelling to destinations not well served by Crossrail. Euston/Kings Cross/St Pancras are all next door to each other and collectively busier than any other rail station in the country. They are not connected to Crossrail so anyone connecting on from there (Eurostar, east coast mainline, west coas…

Why would a hs2 user be connecting on from Euston? Or indeed from St Pancras (other than maybe Kent and Europe)

But walking with a suitcase from Euston to KGSP isn’t exactly easy anyway.

Only benefits to Euston are easy to get to the Victoria and northern lines. Whether that outweighs crossrail is a septye wuruain, maybe for north-south journeys, but probably not for “to London”.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#83

Post by smcl »

michaelt wrote: post #60
panick21_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is quite a lot of work left in terms of detailed track planning. People that were working on that were all taken of the project. But this can be restarted, these projects are on-ice, not dead. Its certainty more ready then any potential large scale project in the North only. > We all know there's not much money left. Not sure what that means. > And politically speaking, Labour needs to give the north of england…

>> We all know there's not much money left. > Not sure what that means. What it means is: 1. The UK national debt is high, about 7% of public spending is on interest payments. The debt-to-GDP ratio is the worst it's been in 60 years. 2. The current overall tax rate is the highest it's been since the 1960s. We might be able to get some extra money by going after tax cheats and suchlike, but it's probably not going to…

So what do you do in times like this? Do you continue austerity and cutbacks - something that has worsened the UK economy over the last 14 years - or do you invest in public infrastructure - something which is near universally accepted as improving the health of an economy?

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#84

Post by willyt »

ak_111 wrote: post #44
Yeul wrote: post #2

I was reading the newspaper a few weeks ago and there were two articles that amused me: The first one was about Dutch high speed trains having to reduce speed to 80kph because the construction company fucked up the bridge construction. The second article was about the new high speed train in Indonesia. Every once in a while you're reminded that this is Asia's century.

Note that Indonesia's high speed rail is being built by China, so it is more accurate to remind everyone that this is China's century. On the other hand, for the sake of balance it is also important to remember that the grass is always greener on the other side, and in particular the famous saying about fascists (more accurately Mussolini) "they made the trains run on time."

They didn’t make the trains run on time they just said they had made them run on time and they controlled the media so it was impossible to know otherwise.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#85

Post by chgs »

f_allwein wrote: post #9
zarzavat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike HS2, the Indonesian high speed train does not attempt to go to the city center. Instead, there is a slow feeder train to get to the terminal on the outskirts of Bandung that takes almost as long as the high speed train itself. So, Asia has not solved this particular problem either. The main problem with HS2 is that it goes underground through rural areas for political reasons.

High speed trains in France, Germany, Italy, ... all usually go to the city centres as well.

I couldn’t believe how slow trains in Germany were last month, even before the inevitable delays. Berlin to geneva averaged 70mph. Brussels to Leipzig was scheduled even slower and ended up 2 hours late.

Even the train I took from Geneva to Paris crawled for the first hour.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#86

Post by chgs »

switch007 wrote: post #68
Symbiote wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of the better links between Northern cities were dependent on HS2 — either directly, by providing rail links where none currently exist, or indirectly, by freeing up space on existing lines to allow more local and regional services.

Such as?

Manchester to Liverpool and Birmingham, Birmingham to Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle

All relied on phase 2 though, freeing up capacity through Stockport and winsford, adding it for man-Liverpool/glasgow, freeing up the painful cross country services from Leeds, etc

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#87

Post by chgs »

panick21_ wrote: post #6

Laber needs to get off its ass and reorganize this. The way the whole HS2 thing is organised is braindead. Throwing all the costs for everything from stations to trains into the same semi-private company. Not learning best practices from Japan rail station operation. Building way to many tunnels because of a few braindead Nimbys. Simply recreate BritishRail, make the railroad public, including things like rolling sto…

And in 5 years, or at most 10, the tories will be back in and destroy that future plan

We had a future plan, it was called hs2. They were far to slow getting the diggers out, so it was cancelled for spite.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#88

Post by willyt »

michaelt wrote: post #45
panick21_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HS2 is by far the most important transportation project, it massively impacts the whole rail system. HS2 connects North and South like never before. And it massively improves what you can do with regional and local trains on the rest of the network. And its pretty much ready to go. Work is lined up and planed. All it needs is political support and funding. Other projects should be done, but they should be planned in…

> And its pretty much ready to go. Work is lined up and planed. Is it? Or does the plan need a bunch of revisions, to restore the link to Euston and address the cost over-runs? We all know there's not much money left. And politically speaking, Labour needs to give the north of england a fair deal on infrastructure spending, to shore up wavering support in red wall seats. HS2 is an exciting project that a lot of work…

They’ve already built the most expensive bit; all the tunnels under Home Counties Tory constituencies. The line to Birmingham has cost ~£100bn. To finish it to Manchester would cost another ~£30bn for about the same distance again. They should at least finish it to Crewe where it can actually start to relieve traffic from the West Coast Mainline which is full; you can hardly ever find tickets less than £150 return and trains are often packed. Compared to TGV UK trains are double the time double the price and half the legroom and too much vibration to easily be able to select a paragraph of text with a trackpad. Transport emissions are significant part of UK emissions and replacing 150gCO2/km journeys with 9gCO2/km would help to cut into these massively.

Re: More delays for Euston's HS2 station

#89

Post by [deleted] »

chgs wrote: post #82
laurencerowe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with stopping at Old Oak Common is that it would likely worsen end-end journey times for the many passengers travelling to destinations not well served by Crossrail. Euston/Kings Cross/St Pancras are all next door to each other and collectively busier than any other rail station in the country. They are not connected to Crossrail so anyone connecting on from there (Eurostar, east coast mainline, west coas…

Why would a hs2 user be connecting on from Euston? Or indeed from St Pancras (other than maybe Kent and Europe) But walking with a suitcase from Euston to KGSP isn’t exactly easy anyway. Only benefits to Euston are easy to get to the Victoria and northern lines. Whether that outweighs crossrail is a septye wuruain, maybe for north-south journeys, but probably not for “to London”.

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