More delays for Euston's HS2 station | Hacker News Reader

More delays for Euston's HS2 station

ianvisits.co.uk

63 pointsedward134 comments

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 expensive, makes rail infrastructure worse and leaves even the things that remain in plan, largely poorly planned.

But we don't seriously beleive the labour government agree with this plan. We know it's going to change. So at some point in the next 12 months you can pretty much guarantee that a new rail strategy is going to be unveiled, and until that point there isn't really a whole lot worth talking about with the current strategy. The only thing to say is that I doubt HS2 is going to be a core part of the strategy going forward, you're more likely to see some big plans for regional rail and the details on HS2 will likely be "Well let's just tidy up this mess and draw it to a close".

I would love to see HS2 reinstated, but I agree that it is not likely at this time. There are likely higher priority projects that should go ahead first (some form of Northern Powerhouse, for example). At a minimum, though, I do hope that they protect the route for HS2 north of Birmingham even if construction is indefinitely deferred. It is going to be needed eventually.

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 the understanding of how the whole network is reworked with HS2.

> 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 has already been done on, it'd be totally cool if it did go ahead - but I'm not holding my breath.

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 a fair deal on infrastructure spending

HS2 is the best thing that can happen to the North, far better then any other possible prject. I'm not sure why you are not seeing this.

Express trains to London are ruining all the local network on the traditional main lines, and thus all connected branch lines.

HS2 will put all the express trains onto HS2. Meaning all of a sudden all the other lines have massive amounts of utilization free that can finally be used for regular regional and local travel.

>> 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 be easy; we don't have the money yet.

3. Previously we've tried cutting back on public services to get the debt down - "austerity" as it was called - and it was not regarded as a big success.

4. In fact, there have been loads of strikes and a long period of under-investment in public services. So we could probably spend quite a chunk of money just stopping the roofs falling down on the schools we've already got, to say nothing of building anything new.

5. Previous attempts to move public debt off the books, like PFI contracts, turned out to cost the taxpayer more in the long term.

6. Truss attempted to spur GDP growth to improve the debt-to-GDP ratio, and it went terribly.

7. Individuals aren't any better, with the high levels of mortgage debt and student loan debt, rising fuel bills and a cost-of-living crisis.

We're a hardy nation, we've dealt with worse and we'll get through this - but the reality is Starmer doesn't have a lot of cash to splash around.

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?

I'm baffled why everything I consume from Britain is damn pessimistic.

So, you can't invest in HS2 because money and debt. But anytime you try to save money it also doesn't work.

So best do nothing and start drinking I guess???

> We're a hardy nation, we've dealt with worse and we'll get through this

Well the people wont all just move. And UK wont collapse. But the question is, will it be as a nation as rich as Nordics or more like Italy.

> but the reality is Starmer doesn't have a lot of cash to splash around.

Many nations have higher debt then Britain.

HS2 and BritishRail can turn Britain from a subpar train country into one of the best. Its just a matter of actually doing it. If that not worth investing in, then nothing is.

> I'm baffled why everything I consume from Britain is damn pessimistic.

I'm just saying, although we've recently elected a centre-left government, we shouldn't expect a free-spending, state-expanding government.

In their election campaign they spent a lot of time marketing themselves as the party of stability and fiscal rules. The first bill announced in the King's Speech was a "Budget Responsibility Bill" requiring them to get independent assessment of major tax and spending bills.

> start drinking I guess???

Now you're talking my language!

I think describing Starmer's Labour as centre-left is a bit of a stretch. They want to crack down on immigration and suspended seven MPs who voted in favour of a pretty minor amendment to scrap the 2-child benefit cap (that overwhelmingly failed ... because the rest of Labour voted against it). They've also got Wes Streeting as Secretary of State for Health and he seems very keen privatisation of the NHS - in fact the party themselves love PFI.

They were once the party of workers and a strong voice for the UK left, but that time has long passed.

I would say they are to the left of the previous government, because they don't want to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda. And they're substantially to the left of what American readers would consider the centre, because American politics is crazy.

I agree that they're nowhere near as far to the left as they were in the 1970s - and nowhere near as left-wing as they were under previous party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

> because they don't want to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda

That was such a batshit insane plan. Like any government that comes up with shit like that has just seriously lost the plot.

What's wild is that how persistent they were with it. Like it wasn't just an idea or a policy someone threw out there once. They pushed it through, fought for it in court and stuck with it for years. Utterly insane.

> we shouldn't expect a free-spending, state-expanding government.

I understand. That was my criticism. They are not gone do that.

> Now you're talking my language!

Cheers to that.

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.

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 'transparency' and government 'openness' from the 00s.

It got off to a bad start under Andrew Adonis in the dying days of the Blair/Brown administration, but people forget that.

"Adonis himself is openly regretful. “HS2 should stop at Old Oak Common,” he told me, “interchanging with Crossrail there. We should leave open the question of going further into London.” As head of the Cameron’s national infrastructure commission, Adonis makes many speeches on these subjects. He nowadays lauds HS3, and lauds Old Oak Common as London’s greatest development opportunity. I have yet to hear him laud Euston. That station, he says, “is the poison at the heart of HS2. I bitterly regret not stopping it before I left office”."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/hs2-the-zomb...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...

> Mr Holden also said HS1 was successful because the true budget was known to just “a handful of people”, while HS2 contractors inflated their prices once they saw the latter project’s true budget.

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 coast mainline) would be required to make two additional changes, a pain with luggage. And anyone going to Norh or South London on Thameslink, Northern or Victoria lines would have to make an additional change.

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”.

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

With the exception of Paddington (where presumably most services will stop at OOC), it's going to be easier to connect to any of the other London terminals from Euston than from Old Oak Common. Liverpool St about the same. Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge direct tube from Euston vs two from OOC. Kings Cross / St Pancras walkable from Euston vs two changes.

East/West connections in the UK are often pretty dire, so often the fastest way to get anywhere in the South East from the North West will be to travel via London. Flexible off peak returns are often only £1 more than an off peak single so after I moved abroad, when visiting family and friends around England I would usually find returns from London the cheapest somewhat flexible option to visit everyone.

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

I've done this and found that 10 minute walk on the flat much easier than taking a suitcase up three lifts to Liverpool Street mainline station from the Crossrail platform...

> 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”.

When I lived in Manchester I used to take the train down to London quite often. Being able to change at Old Oak Common to Crossrail would probably have made about 1/3rd of my trips easier (great for going west, Heathrow or Canary Wharf), but would have made more than half more difficult (most of central, north or south London, South East England outside of London), with the remainder much the same (the City, possibly Clapham.)

So I definitely don't think being able to change to Crossrail at OOC would be useless, just less useful than changing at Euston.

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

They might want somewhere on the line towards Watford. Or the Northern line. Or the Victoria line. Or the Circle line. Or Thameslink. Or one of the Great Northern lines. Or they might be travelling to one of the tech offices or hedge funds around that Warren Street area (where e.g. Facebook and Twitter are), or UCL and their big hospital, or the British Library, or that whole King's Cross biomedical campus area, or that big new development around Central St Martins, or the hotels on Russel Square, or the whole Camen Town area, or...

It's hard to imagine Old Oak Common will be quite as much of a destination as that central area, at least for several decades. The redevelopment Stratford has been a huge success, probably the best you could hope for, and Stratford has a huge amount of transport interchange options. But it would still be a massive blunder for HS1 to have terminated there rather than continuing into St Pancras.

It would make more sense for Euston to be a deep level station and for HS2 to continue onto the mainline to Portsmouth/Bournemouth which have a similar population to Birmingham. I don’t think there will be the stomach to build a new high speed line but they could electrify the current line with overhead wires and replace the current fast trains with HS2 services. If Euston were a through station it would only need 4 platforms rather then 11. Stick another deep station under Victoria while you’re at it.

I think the difficulty of this approach is the huge imbalance in population north and south of London. While the Portsmouth/Southampton/Bournemouth area is around 2M, the Birmingham area is about 5M and HS2 will likely also end up serving trains from Manchester and Liverpool (combined 7M) and Glasgow (2M). There just aren't enough places south of London for all those trains to go.

Yes, you would probably run some trains empty to a carriage sidings south of London to be cleaned and restocked.

Even if you count Euston+KX+SP as a single station, it's not that much busier in trips HS2 users from Birmingham might want to make since most trains have that as a terminus going north.

Realistically, you would only be adding access to the Thameslink and to the Northern and Victoria lines.

Old Oak Common has access to the Elizabeth Line, the two branches of the North London Line Overground, and a branch of the Lionesses Line Overground. IMO increasing Overground speed and throughput might be a better use of money than the branch line to Euston.

> Realistically, you would only be adding access to the Thameslink and to the Northern and Victoria lines.

And HS1 and the Eurostar.

And the Circle and other cut-and-cover lines.

Nevermind, I wrote that comment before my morning coffee hit.

In fairness though, the best destination for an HS2 would clearly be St Pancras, not Easton - connections you can make with a suitcase are what make rail palatable vs flying or driving. There is a special place in hell for whoever put stairs at the entrance to the Circle line in St Pancras!

HS2 isn't meant to connect you with any north going services in London like ECML and WCML - it's too niche to be justifiable.

You're meant to benefit on those journeys from reduced pressure on the WCML and other north-bound services.

I have a relative working on HS2. During the pandemic he was on zoom calls with five thousand people, none of whom were 'navvies'. He is car dependent, never uses the train and that money spent on HS2 to hire him has been spent on German cars and airline flights.

If I was in charge of HS2 I would get the thousands that shuffle spreadsheets to get pickaxes out and build the whole thing going all the way to Birmingham and beyond to Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.

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.

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.

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.

> in France

Not really. They can, but mostly only do so at end stations. The network is built with excentered, specific stations meant to avoid the slow-down caused by merging into normal train traffic, with slow, crowded track sections.

If you are talking about the stations at Lyon Exupery or Disney: what I really like about the SNCF is that they offer you the choice. There definitely are trains that go through the center of Lyon (Part Dieu) if you want, but if you want to pass around (and then take the tram/bus), you can too. I never had to choose one of those out-of-town stations if I didn't want to.

If you are talking about Ouigo, yes, but you get a low price in return. And it's not your only option.

In Germany usually they go to the normal network, they don't have a direct high speed connection to the city center.

The downside here in Germany, the trains are very fast but then slow down to go to the city center (Munich, Leipzig, Hamburg + also too many stops in general for political reasons) - so it still takes a working day to travel around.

As Amdahl's law applies here, newer high speed trains in Germany are no longer as fast, because if you have these slow passages / many stops, there is no difference between 250 and 300 (there are some prestige 300km/h lines).

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.

Indonesia's HSR stations are so far out of Jakarta/Bandung, the trips there and back are almost certainly going to be the majority of your trip. People complained about Euston not linking up well, imagine if you'd have to first go to Milton Keynes.

The Netherlands are having to build track over bog. It can't sink, it can't vibrate too much. It's hard to get right.

The Chinese can build track through your living room if they want to. Plus, they have accidents and structural failures all the time too.

> The Chinese can build track through your living room if they want to

They actually can't, leading to some pretty hilarious situations of lone houses in the middle of roads

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...

There the infra is only technically not through their living rooms, for all practical purposes those buildings are no longer usable.

If we're talking Dutch high-speed rails, don't forget the Fyra!

It was a high-speed train plagued with so many issues it was returned to the manufacturer. To give an example: one day 85% of the trips had to be cancelled due to defective trains, with one of those which did run losing parts(!) at high speed; the train wasn't water-tight; the brakes were designed for 160km/h despite the train itself going 250 km/h; a train horn which couldn't handle snow; batteries in the passenger compartment catching fire; doors opening at full speed; and of course software issues. Mind you, this is just some of the issues - the full list is a lot longer.

They were returned to maker AnsaldoBreda, and now seem to be operating well enough in Italy and Greece.

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.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartaria

I always wonder about why infrastructure like rail isn’t delivered in a much more agile way. You could easily have useful stretches of rail working around the north of England by now, proving out the technology and adding and upgrading stations much later. Why we think of projects like this as you open all the stations at once is mad - for example with crossrail you could have aimed to open Liverpool Street to Whitechapel, then add in Tottenham Court Road, etc. etc. until you finish the whole line but 80% of it was opened at once which seems very high risk.

As much as I love the Elizabeth line I’m pretty sure it is crazy over specified, the stations and tunnels are all gargantuan and they probably could have made everything 20% smaller IMO which would have saved them quite bit.

I often think the politicians egos are the biggest pitfall for most infrastructure projects.

I'd argue that the Elizabeth Line was delivered in an Agile way, at least as far as is possible for a project of that size.

"TfL Rail" ran the line from Liverpool Street through Stratford out to the East, and I believe parts of the line out from West London to Reading. The first iteration of this was with old rolling stock, and then they even started running the new Elizabeth Line trains on the routes before the Elizabeth Line itself opened. This meant that by the actual opening they had proven out the trains, a bunch of stations, and a large portion of the line (by distance, not complexity), as well as trained many staff and operated it as an a separate group that ended up becoming the Elizabeth Line.

Now they did still have to open 6-8(?) new stations, change the signalling, change the timetables, all on day 1 of opening, but there are still other ways in which they did an incremental approach. Trains didn't run end to end on day 1, they would run shorter, simplified routes, they decoupled Bond Street as an emergency exit from Bond Street as a station, etc.

I'm not sure what more they could have done. Personally I felt the incremental "agile" approach worked here, kept them on target, and got value early on (I used TfL Rail for years!).

> You could easily have useful stretches of rail working around the north of England by now, proving out the technology and adding and upgrading stations much later.

Upgrading stations in-place is extremely expensive, far more so than building them in the first place. (In theory opening the railway without the station and then closing it for months to add the station might be better all round, but in practice passengers throw a fit if you try to do that).

> for example with crossrail you could have aimed to open Liverpool Street to Whitechapel, then add in Tottenham Court Road, etc. etc.

So you'd have to build a bunch of extra turnback facilities, resignal everything repeatedly, use those expensive TBMs for longer, and to what benefit?

They did build one station early to prove things out and understand any problems (Canary Wharf). Not a lot of value in doing more than that.

> As much as I love the Elizabeth line I’m pretty sure it is crazy over specified, the stations and tunnels are all gargantuan and they probably could have made everything 20% smaller IMO which would have saved them quite bit.

No it wouldn't, that's exactly the sort of backwards shortsighted thinking that messed up HS2 (if we make the charitable assumption that Sunak wasn't just deliberately wrecking it). The most expensive part of building the Elizabeth line was demolishing and digging up a bunch of buildings in central London. Rebuilding an existing underground railway in London to be bigger is literally impossible to do economically, the size they built it was the size it will be forever, and even if building it to tube size had been a good idea (it isn't) it would have been illegal under accessibility regulations. Making the stations 20% smaller would have been penny-wise and pound-foolish in the extreme.

> I often think the politicians egos are the biggest pitfall for most infrastructure projects.

Well, yes, but the way that manifests is politicians thinking they can tell the people building it to just do x y and z and that will save money, rather than accepting that actually the experts know what they're doing. The same thinking as your comment, in other words.

> So you'd have to build a bunch of extra turnback facilities

Not forgetting that in the central stretch we're talking about extra turnback facilities underground.

Big rail supporter here, but the HS2 project execution lost all sense of cost. For context the, the total receipts from all passenger rail in UK are around £10b (https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/passenger-rai...). For a single new line to require a £100bn investment, i.e., 10x of total gross receipts of the entire industry, is just disproportionate.

I dont understand how HS2 is not the number 1 priority to link the dying cities of the north to london, its important to have good communications, its such a tiny island anyway. Get a grip, and make the line extend to the northern territories, that was literally the whole point.

Britain is not a tiny island. its the ninth largest in the word and is a lot bigger than Java (population of 156m BTW) and is only a little smaller than Honshu.

The cities of the north are not dying. Some are doing badly, some are doing well. its not a given that what they need most is better links to London- better links between northern cities might do more.

It's good that you compared us to Honshu because the Japanese have managed to build a high speed line connecting both ends of that island, with a lot less drama. Whereas we have a high speed line that doesn't even go to the centre of our capital city.

lmao

Interesting points thanks, I still disagree on your final point, however I agree more train links needed.

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

Its crazy how nobody understands what HS2 was designed to do.

I blame the name "High Speed 2".

It was never about improving speed (at least not in any meaningful sense), it was about improving capacity.

Yes. A smarter way to do this was not having some separate thing.

It should just be 'BritishRail' and 'HS2' should simple be one of many 'Future BritishRail' upgrade paths. You could call the project, 'HighSpeed North-South Mainline'. Make it boring so sensationalized headlines aren't as interesting.

Make people who are against it answer the question "Why are you against the rail system". Now they constantly say 'Pro Rail, against HS2' (even if that's BS).

“WCML 6 track project”

It's crazy how oversold the project is/was too. Honestly some people believe it will fix every congestion problem in England

That just nonsense. The media at large barley ever even even talked about the effect on capacity.

Most people didn't even know anything beyond X fast to city Y.

Once you get to the people who understand capacity, most are well aware that it doesnt solve everything. Nobody believed it would solve issues to the South or the West.

Critics almost universally used the 'we should use the money to increase capacity line'. As if that not what HS2 was designed to do.

HS2 certainly creates more capacity then anything else proposed, certently more then some of the ideas thrown out 'improving X other line'.

And it serves as a excelent backbone to address other capacity issues that exists in the network.

Amazing. I bet HS2 was going to fix congestion in Penzance too

So much coolaid being drunk

Note how Sheffield, Newcastle and Liverpool aren't in any HS2 plans...

I'm in favour of rail projects. I just dislike the dishonesty about the benefits

Newcastle and Sheffield ran over eastern leg, Newcastle especially benefiting on services to Birmingham.

Liverpool on the western leg. I always felt landing the leg south of Acton bridge was odd as it meant you still had the winsford bottleneck, but again better service to Birmingham and London

Improved services from Liverpool to Manchester relies on the airport-centre leg in Manchester to avoid castlefield and Stockport bottlenecks

Britain might be big for an island but it isnt for a country. And somehow Germany, France and even Italy have high speed rail. So does Taiwan and Japan and Korea.

The idea that Britain should have decent North South High Speed rail is crazy.

Also, density really drops off in the upper part of Britain, the density below the North England cities is very high. And HS2 was exactly designed for that, and to open capacity on the rest of the system.

The North as whole isnt doing great. The numbers are pretty clear. HS2 creating fast north south connection and opening up the rest of the rail system was exactly what was needed.

Yes, more investment in Northern rail in general is needed as well, but it would be completly counter-productive to not do HS2 to do that instead.

Whitehall doesn't believe in ROI in the north and it's been that way for decades and decades. Well, that's they excuse they use anyway

Birmingham got lucky as it's just feasible enough to turn it in to a commuting city for London but other cities are too far

Note: even though the article is from an .co.uk and talks about the UK government, when English people talk about the “north” they implicitly mean “north of England”, not the north of the UK, even when talking in the context of the UK.

This comment even talks about the “island”, but is implicitly talking about the centre of the island when referring to the “north”.

it's a token gesture to the pronvicials...a show of unity.

It will never recoup it's cost, nobody north of the Watford Gap wants to work in London, and nobody in London wants to work north of the Gap.

London is international first, parochial second.

A lot of good people left the project when it looked like they might be sacked due to the uncertainty (after making some people redundant). They aren't coming back. That's not going to help!

"Currently, all the costs fall on HS2, whereas the profits from the oversite development go to the Treasury. So although both are effectively arms of the government, the Treausry’s desire for a larger oversite development piled costs onto HS2 that it is not able to offset from the extra property sales."

Remarkable how rules accounting rules like this can derail a project. Clearly any foundational costs for commercial development should be billed out of the profits coming from said developments.

It's beaurocratic bullshit like this that results in short term thinking with any attempt to build a better more profitable staion being expressed as a project overun and resulting in cancellations or scale backs of critical features.

Remarkable how rules accounting rules like this can derail a project.

Almost as though it was done on purpose in order to derail the project . . .

> Remarkable how rules accounting rules like this can derail a project.

it's only remarkable in the sense that British politicians allow government to be like this. the PM can tell the Treasury and Chancellor to fuck off and account for things in a more useful way, but they simply don't.

I run past the building works at Old Oak Common quite frequently, it’s been quite incredible seeing such a large infrastructure project happening that’ll have such a limited impact.

They could not have fucked thus up more, really.

Given more time, the may well do so.

With the new government, it's not the same they anymore.

Well, looks like the rebuild of the Euston Arch will be delayed again.

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 stock as well. Put HS2 into BritishRail.

Then create a long term rail 2050 plan. HS2 should be fully done, with the original route. This will allow a massive reorganisation of the rest of the network.

Common labor, this are the 5 years to prove yourself.

In fairness to them they've only just taken control, and have already said they are reforming British Rail, and are reviewing HS2. It's not a click of the fingers thing to fix.

One problem that Labour face is that the contracts are already signed. So, for example - a report just out from the Audit Commission says it will be cheaper to build platforms in Birmingham that will never be used, than to not use them.

Source?

It might be this [1] which says "According to the report, the decision was made by officials to continue to build the Birmingham Curzon Street Station to its full specification because it was cheaper than trying to cancel part of the scheme. "

"that the project will plough ahead with building a seven-platform station at Curzon Street, despite just three being required for the reduced HS2 line."

Unfortunately inews doesn't seem to quote the original NAO report, just linking to a list of NAO news items on inews :(?

[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/hs2-waste-new-birmingham-s...

[EDIT] So the ft does actually link to the report [2] from this page [3] saying "The watchdog said scrapping the northern leg of the flagship high speed rail link would take three years and cost up to £100mn, and that some platforms would still be built even though they would never be used."

[2] https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/hs2-update...

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/ecde4265-0269-4169-ac0e-179938667...

Nationalising the rail is one of their targets. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/24/labour-prom...

Their program is pretty weak sauce to be honest.

Not clear message of recreating BritishRail outright. They should go back to full uniform marketing strategy. NetworkRail should be rolled back into BritishRail.

Their proposal is mostly adding more unneeded stuff, to the complex organizational chart. You don't need a 'Passenger Standards Authority', what you need is a public rail company that works for the public and has good funding.

The rolling stock companies are literal cancers, the need to be burned down. In fact they should be disowned, the profit they made over the last decades should be removed from the price. They basically got a sweetheart deal and profit off the public since then. Its almost as fucking stupid as Chicago selling its own roads, almost.

They also promised very little beyond that. Britain desperately needs a rolling electrification program and a rolling station access compliance program. No commitment to anything other then just 'nationalization' as a pretty abstract thing.

There is no commitment to roll HS2 into BritishRail either.

How far back do you want to go? Even pre-privatization, there wasn't a "uniform strategy" - you had NSE, Inter-city, Provincial doing things up north, Scotrail in Scotland, not to mention the variety of PTEs who had their own schemes.

Its not about 'going back'. Its about being smart and doing what makes sense.

Yes, before privatisation there wasnt a totally uniform strategy but BritishRail certaintly had strategy, both for the network and in term of branding and marketing different setvices.

This would not just be a BritishRail thing. It would also involve the government, local governemnt and related transport services like TfL.

The smart way of doing it is basically what Switzerland did in Bahn2000. You first look at your current network and timetable and think about what you would optimally want, make a priority list. Then you study and figure out what you can get for how much price.

Then you make targeted infrastructure and service investments to achieve those goals, and of course you coordinate between all the different stack holders.

In Switzerland you also dont just have SBB, there are lots of other imporantant organisation. RBB, SOB, BLS are signifcant in passenger transport. And of course the local governments with their Transport organisations.

Is it in Britain somehow impossible for people to work thogether and come up with a plan?

This could even have been done during privatisation. Japan has many private railway and do a lot of integrated planning.

Its just a weakpoint of UK governemnt.

Bear in mind that the rail system is already part nationalised everywhere (the rails were nationalised more than 20 years ago) and some of the train operating companies are too - so many rail journeys already take place entirely in a nationalised system.

They've been in charge for about 3 weeks. Did you want them to come up with plans for a national strategy on rail for the next 25 years within the first 3 weeks?

Why werent they thinking about this for the past 10 years when they're not been in power?

You can think about it for the past 10 years but since your thinking is reactionary to the incumbent government (who had a propensity for random decisions!), you might as well have the most basic of plans until you've got a chance to sit down and ponder without interference.

You can think about it, but then have to deal with the reality of finances etc once actually in power. Back seat driving is a different game.

You don’t have the money nor the armies of civil servants, nor access to all the details when you’re not in government.

Probably the best that they can do for anything this complex is headline policies and high level plans.

Now they are in power it’s probably only 10–20% about having the right policy and 80–90% about execution being competent, consistent, and quick.

They need to be given time to do the right thing, but not too much time.

The opposition always have 100% access to all Government spending. It is publicly published. It’s pathetic Westminster politics and Parliamentary privilege that allows both sides to make lies like ‘it’s worse than we thought’.

> [you don't have] access to all the details when you’re not in government

When I wrote this I was not talking about accounting details, though I am not sure whether all of those details are really publicly available once you get down into the delivery organisations and projects that inevitably get set up for something like HS2.

What I was getting at is that this kind of project is hugely complex, and develops fast both as delivery progresses (or doesn't) and as decisions are made. Anyone who can't be in the room for those decisions and isn't managing the relationships and receiving the day to day reports is going to be at a big disadvantage if they are trying to make major changes.

You can stand on the sidelines and set how you would do things differently, but I don't think you can credibly turn up with a detailed plan that's ready to go on day one for something like this.

Agreed. Cabinet (and other) meeting details are generally private, and an FoI request rarely gets anything that's not redacted. There is a vast amount of information in the public domain regarding HS2, and 'vast' is the problem to both the last Government and this one.

Which single person can read and be fully clued up a modern UK infrastructure project? Our infrastructure planning needs an overhaul.

The Lower Thames Crossing is worse than HS2, far worse, and it's not much more than 10 miles.

https://www.cityam.com/lower-thames-crossing-planning-applic...

They were. Corbyn announced a nationalisation plan in 2015. But Labour is not a monolith, and Starmer has decided to distance himself from anything that smells vaguely Corbynish.

They were busy trying to set themselves on fire and seeing what is going on, they are still at it (Starmer just suspended seven Labour MPs). Britain could use a long-term plan for transportation. It really doesn't know what it wants, cancelled HS2, allows property developers build on airfields, and every time there is an inexpensive way to run a train track they dig a ditch or a tunnel instead.

They have already announced a plan, and they had one before the election. And it was weak sauce. Badically the Tory plan.

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.

Great. Why not just nuke the whole country then. The Tories are against the project, lets just do nothing.

Helping trans people, why bother the tories are against it. Repair schools, why bother? Tories will reverse it.

This is fucking insane. How are British people all such pesimists.

HS2 is literally being built. There are tunnels already there. The digger are out in force already. That exactly why Phase 1 wasnt cancled.

And if Labor took their finger out of their assholes they would get to a point where digger were out on Phase 2 and then the Tories wouldnt cancle that.

And maybe at some point HS2 actually is operational and people will see that it is nice and cancling the rest of it would piss people off.

If your strategy is 'lets do nothing we are gone lose the next election anyway' then you should just give up. Winning 3 elections in a row is possible ither parties have done it. The Tories are in a terrible situation, that wont be easy to come back from.

Now is the time to be bold.

> Helping trans people, why bother the tories are against it.

Depends what you mean by "help". There's already a big enough problem with males using female spaces, why make this even worse for women and girls? And for minors, the Cass Review made it clear the evidence isn't there to favour giving gender non-conforming kids drugs to block their puberty.

> Repair schools, why bother?

The RAAC problem? Already being funded. Department for Education started doing this a few months ago and the new government are continuing the work.

> Depends what you mean by "help".

blablabla right wing/TURF propaganda.

> And for minors, the Cass Review

No it didn't, its a report many people disagree including many medical organization disagree with. And anyway even if the Cass Review was true, that is not at all indicative that the Toris are not anti-Trans people. The report was weaponized as political tool.

> Already being funded.

Ahh see what my point is then?

> blablabla

Low intelligence reactive response. Would you like to try again with something more rational?

> No it didn't, its a report many people disagree including many medical organization disagree with.

I've yet to see a substantive critique of the Review that challenges its key points. So far it's just been ideological disagreement.

> Ahh see what my point is then?

No, because the schools with this issue (assuming that's what you were referring to) are actually being repaired.

Clearly my point was the tories being against something is no reason not to do something. Tories not being for something and maybe reversing it in the future is no reason not to do something.

And im not gone have a debate about trans stuff on HN in a train thread. Specially because you brought up a report that didn't have anything to do with the point I made about the tories.

> There's already a big enough problem with males using female spaces

Back it up with some numbers, and then let’s see how many of the perpetrators identify as trans.

Yet another inactive throwaway terf account

Being bold does not mean talking about what to do from now to 2050, it means digging. Now.

But every armchair expert with a crayon has their preferred solution to rail. Is hs2 perfect? No

Is it better than nothing? Yes.

Yeah, there is not much appetite to connect the North to London.

I read an article[0] just this morning (dated yesterday), that due to reduced seats on HS2, passengers may need to be "encouraged" to NOT travel by train at certain times "if at all".

With the war on drivers, and years of trying to convince us to travel by train, despite ludicrous prices and appalling service, they're now going to tell us _not_ to travel by train?

Complete and utter insanity, I mean seriously, the plot has thoroughly been lost.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c725k6ynw7go

>war on drivers

I guess it's true what they say: for those accustomed to privilege, equality is aggression.

Nice attack there, if a little ignorant.

The only people being forced of the road are the under-privileged, those who can't afford electric vehicles by ULEZ, those who can't afford maintenance with poor roads, skyrocketing insurance, high fuel prices, ever increasing taxes, unfair parking charges for those using polluting Diesels who we encouraged and subsidised to buy them a few short years ago, and those who rely on them for their work or trade.

The only people who _won't_ be forced off of the road, are the privileged.

We'll all by walking and cycling around outside of London where the infrastructure continues to suffer after all of the public funds have been pocketed by the privileged for improved transport that was never delivered, while the roads are lined with processions of Chelsea tractors ignoring 20mph limits.

>>those who can't afford electric vehicles by ULEZ

I wonder if you're doing this on purpose, or if you are genuienly unaware of ULEZ compliance conditions? ULEZ only requires your car to be Euro 4 compliant for petrol cars, and Euro 6 for diesels. Most(if not all) petrol cars that are younger than 20 years old are Euro 4 compliant, and any diesel made in the last 10 years should be Euro 6 compliant too. You are making it sound like you have to buy an EV to be ULEZ compliant, which is absolutely not true.

>>for those using polluting Diesels who we encouraged and subsidised to buy them a few short years ago

Well, you can't reverse decisions from the past - you can only improve on them. And ULEZ is one of the best decisions made anywhere in this country, its impact on pollution within London is undeniable, I wish every single city in the UK had a ULEZ zone.

>> and those who rely on them for their work or trade.

Funny, but this exact same argument was being used when leaded petrol was being phased out. And yet I can't imagine anyone would look back at that time and say it was a mistake to get rid of it.

>>skyrocketing insurance

That is one thing I 100% agree with you on - insurance industry is just a giant cartel right now, and they keep charging more and more despite skyrocketing profits. Their own numbers about increased cost of repairs doesn't line up with the increases in premiums across the board, it's all a scam.

>> high fuel prices

Fuel prices have been going down every year, even if the price of fuel has increased in absolute terms. Thank inflation for that one.

> I wonder if you're doing this on purpose, or if you are genuienly unaware of ULEZ compliance conditions?

I'm well aware; I picked the extreme condition (EV) to make my point, bit naughty, I'm sorry, but sure, a Euro 6 vehicle can still cost you £10k if you want something clean and that isn't going to immediately be a maintenance burden, heck, let's say £5k, £3k, £1k? The older/cheaper you're going, the more you're subjecting yourself to in maintenance costs, and higher road tax, so let's say they opt for something about to enter MOT-requirements, 3 years, by scrapping an existing junk-car, one which they only have because they can't afford a better one, we're easily talking thousands of pounds.

I assume these people aren't driving old, non-compliant cars because they can afford a better one and just choose not to.

> Well, you can't reverse decisions from the past - you can only improve on them.

Fair, I can't argue with that, but I hope you can see how that might be quite aggravating for someone who bought into it at that time, whose vehicle is now non-compliant because of its age, and perhaps can't afford to replace it.

> its impact on pollution within London is undeniable

I agree, for London, but ULEZ doesn't just affect London, it affects much of the area within the M25 now, much of which is poorly connected or subject to appalling rail operators, they're treated the same way as those living within central areas and there's nothing "equality" about that. I'm not sure if it was yourself or another commenter who mentioned NIMBYs, and I know a lot of the reasons parts particularly south of the river are poorly connected is due to NIMBYism, but this whole discussion is over not worrying about the feelings or well-being of minorities; if it was for the greater good, it should have just been done. Were people not forced out of there homes for HS2? Look where that got us.

> I wish every single city in the UK had a ULEZ zone.

I wish every city in the UK was as well connected as London, then it would be reasonable and fair to have a ULEZ in them.

> Their own numbers about increased cost of repairs doesn't line up with the increases in premiums across the board, it's all a scam

Hear hear.

> Fuel prices have been going down every year, even if the price of fuel has increased in absolute terms. Thank inflation for that one

Yes, alone the affects due to inflation are (perhaps) unavoidable, but it's another expense, and even if you _could_ afford an EV let's say instead, the prices to charge away from home (or if there's no possible way for you to charge at home), are ridiculous anyway. Let's also not forget greed and record profits.

Back to the original commenters point, and mine, to which you replied; this isn't about privilege at all, I'm privileged, I can afford to run a car or two, buy an EV etc, have a leisure vehicle, I (we?) are the ones _not_ negatively affected by any of this, it's easy for us to sit here and say, this is better for everyone, but in the ham-fisted way it has been handled, while billions in public funds have been wasted on the likes of HS2, while not delivering, and pocketed by the privileged, in times were we're talking about a "cost of living crisis" is not.

I think being _able_ to prioritise the environment, one's health, the greater good etc is itself a privilege, and being able to be ignorant of that is too (I'm not suggesting you are; just making a general comment).

ULEZ is a London specific thing where you have already admitted there are great alternative transport options.

It's not though, it also affects those who live anywhere within the M25, which would be generous to call "London", particularly the more neglected parts, in public transport terms in the south and south-east.

What parts are you talking about? Most areas in the m25 is part of a London Borough. Watford isn't but has decent rail connections and has tfl bus routes ending there.

There are some parts of rural Enfield and Barnet which aren't so great for public transport connections admittedly.

I mean, pick basically anywhere east of centre, or anywhere served by Southern or Southeastern, some of the worst rail operators, or anywhere more than ~20 minutes walk from a station. Being a London borough doesn't mean much in some parts, other than being subject to the will of London, despite a very different landscape.

I live in an area served by Southeastern and have plenty of non-Southeastern transport options.

So your conclusion is not "we should invest in transit to those neglected areas", it's "let's subsidise driving everywhere". Interesting.

>attack

Damn, what a way to prove my point! Even opinions in an online forum are "attack" :)

The simple fact is that

(1) Drivers are subsidised by the state and by all of us, directly through such freebies as road construction and maintenance (which is horrendously expensive) and indirectly through such nice externalities that society must bear, such as the tens of thousands of deaths yearly (2-3 million worldwide) from crashes, pollution, etc.

(2) Driving is the mode of transportation that is taken as default and that everything else must bow to: roads are first-class, then sidewalks, bus stops, cycle "lanes", etc, are an afterthought that must bend to the car traffic space, if they exist at all

(3) Past a certain density it's literally physically impossible that people move around in automobiles

Look I don't want to "defund roads", I'd already be happy if a tiny fraction of the money and attention that goes to driving would be devoted to other forms of transport.

> roads are first-class, then sidewalks, bus stops, cycle "lanes", etc, are an afterthought that must bend to the car traffic space, if they exist at all

I agree, and it's not right. Perhaps see some of my other points to see that we're not disagreeing with each other, I just phrased my initial point poorly due to misunderstanding of the term "war on drivers", which I don't be using again.

> Look I don't want to "defund roads", I'd already be happy if a tiny fraction of the money and attention that goes to driving would be devoted to other forms of transport.

I have no problem with "defund roads" as such, but I'd like to see something suitable and workable in their place before that.

I don't think ploughing on with unfair costs, ICE bans and electrification in spite of it all, is the solution; we'll just be left with more expensive, less productive ways to get around that cause more damage in other ways (EVs are terrifying as a pedestrian or cyclist), the potential for lithium fires, more devastating crashes, battery lifetimes, etc, and most half decent EVs are priced in the "luxury" vehicle category.

My one minor ask, if I could have one thing _now_? Update legislation to make privately owning and using e-scooters a thing on the roads.

> The only people being forced of the road are the under-privileged, those who can't afford electric vehicles by ULEZ, those who can't afford maintenance with poor roads, skyrocketing insurance, high fuel prices, ever increasing taxes, unfair parking charges for those using polluting Diesels who we encouraged and subsidised to buy them a few short years ago, and those who rely on them for their work or trade.

No, the people who are currently forced off the road are the people who are worse off than that, the people who can't afford cars at all. The mass of cars choking the streets makes life difficult or impossible for those who have to rely on cycling or buses, which is what being actually unprivileged looks like. To say nothing of the people literally dying from air pollution.

> The only people who _won't_ be forced off of the road, are the privileged.

There are simply too many vehicles on the roads. Some of them need to go. Either we charge a fair price and then at least the wealthy are contributing something that can be spent on helping the rest of us. Or we do something else, and the wealthy will still find a way round it but won't pay anything towards the public good.

> the infrastructure continues to suffer after all of the public funds have been pocketed by the privileged for improved transport that was never delivered, while the roads are lined with processions of Chelsea tractors ignoring 20mph limits.

So if investing in transport improvements is no good and taking cars off the road is no good, what do you actually want? Other than to complain on the internet, which will still be allowed in any scenario.

There was never a 'war on drivers' - just empty rhetoric that Sunak clung on to after the Uxbridge by-election.

You just have to look at the state of transport for those outside of London, even within the M25 to see this has nothing to do with rhetoric.

Sure "war on drivers" may be the wrong phrase, but there is nothing being done to encourage those who are not privileged, or live in London where transport is excellent, to use alternative means.

ULEZ, high insurance, fuel, tax, neglect of infrastructure, unfair parking charges for old/non-electric vehicles, etc, for those who can't afford electric vehicles or for whom they're not practical, who have older vehicles because that's what their budget allows for, and who require them for their trade, or because they have to travel further to find work, those for whom it's cheaper to drive than pay exorbitant rail fairs, at the cost of their time due to greedy rail providers with poor services, I'm sure for them it can feel like a war against them.

It's easy for those who live in London, or are able to cycle or walk everywhere they want/need to say; I lived in London for ten years and never needed to own a car; but for those out in the rest of the country, who have a family, have a disability, work in different locations day to day, or a plethora other reasons, that's just not reality.

What you're describing isn't a war on drivers just poor infrastructure and bad decisions. For all these issues no alternatives have been made no ones benefiting.

I've already pointed out that may have been the wrong phrase, but, I'm not suggesting anyone's winning, but plenty are losing by stupid decisions consistently being made, that disproportionately affect the under-privileged.

I'm not talking about drivers vs cyclists, or whatever, I'm talking about people who _need_ to drive for their livelihood; it shouldn't be reserved for those of us who can afford the annual insurance increases, nice new or electric cars and what-not, UNLESS something is being done to replace the need to drive, and it just isn't.

I'm not pro-driving and drivers, I'm pro not making stupid moves from a position of privilege while others are left in the dirt. "War on drivers" was just the catch-phrase that came to mind, and I failed to elaborate my point, that was my mistake, but it seems everyone has latched onto those three words and missed the forest for the trees, or just made some other assumption like I'm hating on cyclists or something that is sometimes associated with that phrase.

I dont disgree with you on some points.

But using 'war on drivers' is very politocally charged slogen that stands for opposition the pretty much anything to with anything other then 'more highways'. Its literally a far right wing slogan.

I agree that there are lots of unneed subsidies for rich electric car buyers. And investment for those people.

Parking however geneally should be far more expensive, they are massive actually gigantic subsidy that drivers have been benefiting from for decades.

Insurance increases could be reduced by having less accident in total, meaning slower streets, better road design, more bycicles. Not sure what else governments should do about insurance. The NHS is already a huge subsidy for drivers over people who use public tranist or walk.

Better public bus networks are prettu urgent, and thats something even the tories realized. That can do a lot for making people need to drive less.

In terms of infrastructure funding, road networks and highways get a lot and have been getting a lot continiously for 50 years. Its just infrastructure that degrades very fast.

I am not against maintaining existing roads and highways but absolutly no new highways should be built. And new roads only in a few exeptional circumstances.

I would say things like low concetion zones, road diets, bike lanes and change like that are actually good for drivers.

These are all things 'war on cars' people normally are against.

I would suggest that we make it so cars are far more expensive if they are large and heavy. And that includes EVs. Poor people should be encouraged to drive small cars even if they are not EVs.

What things do you think should be done (or not done) for poor drivers?

> Its literally a far right wing slogan

Well today I learned something; and I'm about as far from far right as one can be.

> What things do you think should be done (or not done) for poor drivers?

What you've said makes sense, and I agree with it all. As for poor drivers, a quick thought would be: We make public transport so good they don't need to drive, and for those who must, perhaps subsidise some purpose-built EVs (small vans, milk floats etc) that enable them to work (and in many cases provide an important service).

None of that is a short term goal, but I don't see any progress towards it, even in the medium term, try not to make driving for work unaffordable, but perhaps restrict the driving of "problem" vehicles to work-only; not everyone can cycle or get a bus to work, and not everyone can work from home.

It seems to be the status quo in this country (and probably others) to push on with banning/restricting things that are bad, for brownie points, without actually doing anything about replacing the purpose they serve.

>>With the war on drivers

The government literally allocated tens of billions for drivers(including 8.3 billion taken from HS2 funding directly), and zero for cycling or other infrastructure. The whole idea of "war on drivers" is complete and utter nonsense - I'd actually risk saying that no group of people anywhere in this country is as well looked after and invested into as drivers.

And ironically, HS2 would have improved driving conditions in this country, because currently our rail system is at a capacity - so bulk non perishable goods are going by road instead of shipped by train - it's completely insane. It increases congestion as well as damages our roads further - but of course media presented it as some lavish extravagance to decrease travel time from manchester by 8 minutes, which it absolutely isn't about.

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