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Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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