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A) How long will it take to get from Birmingham to Old Oak Common on HS2?
B) How long does it take to get from Old Oak Common to Euston?
C) How long does it take to get from Birmingham to Central London on the existing line?
Is A+B less than C?
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but as a Mancunian HS2 hasn’t appeared on my radar.
Seems a whole waste of cash. Manc here, so won't be coming to us, and the normal trains are quick enough. Will HS2 suffer train strikes ?
I need a bit of help understanding HS2…
You are Mark Harper AICMFP
Err it's not just about time, it's about capacity too.
New lines mean more local trains can run on the lines the old high speed services ran on. However, and it's a big however.... London to Birmingham realistically didn't need the upgrade. At least not in comparison to the rest of the route.
The logic I guess is that in order to connect Manchester etc to London it had to be built, but actually what the north wants/needs is connections to the north. London's the one place it's actually not too hard to get to long distance.
Its a method of diverting money from poor to rich and lining tories pals pockets.
Midlands based MP on R4 this morning trying to explain why he wanted the full fat HS2 to continue.
His reasoning was that it would enable young people in his constituency to access jobs in Manchester whilst remaining near their family roots.
The concept that chipping a few minutes off the journey time was going to make that viable if currently not considered viable and that said young person could find the cash for a daily train commute feels so far fetched. Commuting costs was always the driving factor, not 15mins extra in bed.
Lots was rubbish about covid, but we learnt that homeworking can work both in terms of time efficiency and environmentally. Surely we should be learning from that and spunking this volume of cash into making sure everyone has great reliable internet and remote working hubs in residential spaces rather than shunting people from city to city. A workforce that access jobs regardless of location.....that's levelling up right there. Obviously not all jobs can be done remotely, but when we can that has to be a win.
HS2 is carving through the countryside near me. The devastation has to be seen to be believed, it's truly heartbreaking at what has been done in the name of shaving 20 minutes off the London - B'ham journey (that's what it was originally billed as).For a while large construction projects around here stalled because all the concrete in the south was being allocated to HS2. Whole swathes of land destroyed, in many cases just to create the access roads/infrastructure and work compounds, not even for the route of the line itself, as that presumably will only be quite narrow. A friend of mine was one of the senior management team for the Euston project, he lasted approximately a year before he walked away from it as he stated that the money being wasted was off-the-scale outrageous, which for any construction/Government project is saying something. There are no stations between London and Birmingham so you have to go into London to come back out again. The Leeds extension was canned a few years back and now the link to the Northern Powerhouse is also in jeopardy. In years to come it will be seen as one of the biggest white elephants in recent years.
The whole idea should have been nipped in the bud at the outset.
Not a fan.
"Err it’s not just about time, it’s about capacity too."
I always said that they should've just aimed for 150mph, and for a lot less money & time than HS2 they could've easily put 4 lines in (outer 2 as stopping lines and inner 2 as straight thru lines).
Have you tried reading any of the 200 previous threads on HS2, OP?
There's all the infantile nonsense you'd care to see there, like pish about TeN mInUtEs qUiCkEr tO lOnDoN, and
Its a method of diverting money from poor to rich and lining tories pals pockets.
For the love of God, you evidently no nothing about HS2 procurement and the ownership of the small number of global companies that are capable of doing work of this complexity, nor the massive number of blue and white collar jobs created by HS2. There are many, many reasons to criticise HS2 but amazingly you've found the only two that don't make sense.
Oh goody, thread bifurcation...
There are many, many reasons to criticise HS2 but amazingly you’ve found the only two that don’t make sense.
In your opinion. Mine is its clearly about transferring money from rich to poor and lining tory doners pockets. Yes there might be a bit of trickle down but its clearly porkbarrel politics and creating a white elephant for financial gain
Oh goody, thread bifurcation…
Is this the high speed one*
*quickest to get closed?
Mine is its clearly about transferring money from rich to poor and lining tory doners pockets. Yes there might be a bit of trickle down but its clearly porkbarrel politics
lamb-barrel, shurely?
Its a method of diverting money from poor to rich and lining tories pals pockets.
TJ in most cases I'd agree that massive govt spending often ends up in the pockets of the rich, but in this case you're wrong. I work for one of the consultancies who have had 100s of millions out of HS2 and it might suprise you to learn that we barely make a profit out of it. It's a break-even enterprise as the project fees are so low. I"ve seen rate cards where we charge out chartered civil engineers to HS2 at around 70% of their normal rates.
the name of shaving 20 minutes off the London – B’ham journey
THAT IS NOT THE WHOLE POINT OF IT
For goodness' sake, use your brain a bit.
Dazh - how much profit has ended up in the hands of tory doners? Thats the issue. Open your eyes man. Its all about lining the pockets of the rich
What else is the point Molgrips? Its all it achieves. The extra capacity could be produced by other means and london / birmingham is not where the extra capacity is most needed by my understanding.
Politicians love big infrastructure projects. This one has it all for them including the chance to divert huge sums to their pals
Wish they’d roll back some of the Beeching reforms rather than build a big train I’d need a train to get to and if it’s similarly priced as the current network I’d only use it if work paid for it.
Yes there might be a bit of trickle down
Trickle down economics explained:
Its a method of diverting money from poor to rich and lining tories pals pockets
I am sorry but you are really going to have to explain this one for me. How does building a train line make the poor even more poor?
Yes it will make company directors richer, but thats because they tend to be the top earners in the country. There is a relationship between how much people earn and who they vote for.
Now I dont necessarily agree with HS2, but I am pretty sure it has created a lot of jobs for people, and a lot of people are less poor than they were.
Rail capacity improvements make loads of sense.
HS2 less so.
The entire planning system is ridiculously cumbersome, making everything 3x as expensive and take 3x as long as it should
Dazh – how much profit has ended up in the hands of tory doners? Thats the issue. Open your eyes man. Its all about lining the pockets of the rich
FFS man I don't need to open my eyes I'm on the inside and can see clearly. I only know about our company and I know for a fact we don't donate anything to any political party and no one is getting rich. The companies working on HS2 on the whole aren't making a profit (some even make a loss). HS2 paid my wages for 2-3 years a few years back. Without it I might have lost my job. That goes for tens of thousands of other professionals in the construction, engineering and consultancy sectors. You do want an engineering industry in this country don't you? Or do you want to outsource all that to foreign companies? If the answer is the former then I'm afraid projects like HS2 (and Crossrail, Hinkley Point etc) are par for the course.
Wish they’d roll back some of the Beeching reforms
Oh god that would be so useful! Trains are more popular now so it would work, and it's main drawback is the the lack of access to place you might want to go to, so that would be amazing. I'll be honest I don't fully understand the point of buidling a new railway line that connects places already connected by a railway either
What else is the point Molgrips?
We've done this to death, but once again:
The UK needs modern sustainable transport and due to the limitations of our old network, we need new lines. We don't need HS2 on its own, we need a proper high speed rail network that links in with local lines properly and delivers capacity where its needed.
However you do this, you need to start somewhere. They chose London to Birmingham, for better or worse - I'm not arguing in favour of that route choice. But we need a network and it needs to cover the whole country properly. And this is the start.
It may be badly run and it may be corrupt, but that doesn't mean we don't need a network.
I’ll be honest I don’t fully understand the point of buidling a new railway line that connects places already connected by a railway either
More capacity. Ever tried to get to London on a Monday morning? It's extremely expensive and crowded, isn't it? That's why.