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HS2 Brum to Manc will be scrapped

Decision made.

 

Extraordinary - so we will be left with an incredibly expensive fast speed service not connected to the rest of the network that travels around 100 mils between two cities already linked by 2 different rail lines.  It will not even served London city centre for many years.

 

What a farce.

And it is important to note 

 

THIS PREVENTS THE NORTHERN RAIL IMPROVEMENTS WHICH WERE GOING TO SHARE TRACK 

THE TORIES HATE THE NORTH, THEY HATE YOU AND THEY HATE ME

It's a complete farce. They should have started building it Manchester to Birmingham, not London to Birmingham.

It's basically a failure to manage. The government are like the child who struggles with homework, takes three times as long to do first half so throws their hands up and won't do the rest.

the point is there is very little reason for anyone travelling anywhere other than Birmingham City Centre as a final destination to use it.  It will still be quicker to use existing main line trains to go further north than change  from HS2 at Birmingham (which will require a trek across the city centre).  Absolutely bonkers.

Struggling to understand this timing-wise.  What pressure was on the Tories to make this decision now?  Surely it was a prime turd sandwich they could have left for Labour?  And it certainly won't turn the tide of public opinion in their favour unless it's going to be followed up with some post-truth machinations about clutching the country from doom.

The only answer I have is that there is literally no money left.

I thought they'd already CPO'd all the land already for this? If they have, will they now sell it at bargain prices to their buddies?  Buy it back again in a couple of years at inflated rates?

I am not sure I want it reversed.   What I do know is that the decision is the worse of all possible worlds - either scrap it entirely and write off the sunk costs or do it properly so it is actually of some vague use to the country.  London to Birmingham only is just pointless.   

You can't stand down a massive infra project and then stand it up again a bit later without massive cost uplift. You'd have to be a complete incompet... oh so this is happening then.

When do you reckon we'll find out the projected cost number which has made them do this?  Must be well above the £100bn they've already admitted.

I went to London from Crewe last week and saw the massive HS2 North Crewe "Campus".  There must be loads dotted round the North, will loads of employees, who have been there for years working on this.  What a collosal waste of money.

I also know some people who've sold their houses to get away from being "near" (more than 2km away from) the line.  Megalolz.

the point is there is very little reason for anyone travelling anywhere other than Birmingham City Centre as a final destination to use it.  It will still be quicker to use existing main line trains to go further north than change  from HS2 at Birmingham (which will require a trek across the city centre).  Absolutely bonkers.

 

- it's worse than that - you need to want to go from an obscure, low density transport interchange in west London to a slightly south of centre terminus station in Brum that, but of course, doesn't link to the other main station in Brum. 

 

and there already are 3 ways of getting to Brum from London by rail: Avanti; West Midlands Railway; Chiltern. 

 

No I'm suggesting that Starmer will resurrect just after he takes over

Not likely. A huge chunk of the cost is spinning up these massive projects. Once wound down it will never come back or at least not for a generation. 

Personally I can’t wait to get a train to Birmingham, change, get a train from Birmingham to Ealing, change, get the tube to central, change, get another tube to THE SUNLIT UPLANDS.

I can't get too worked up about its cancellation tbh. What makes my blood boil is that the whole ludicrous folly was ever embarked on in the first place, wrecking the environment, costing hundreds if not thousands to every individual taxpayer. 

The Mancs I know always said it would never be built, always, at every twist and turn. My mother’s house, which would have had ro be complusorily purchased, in the end sold at full value to a private individual. 
Seems there is something fishy.

And watching I Claudius last week there was a peach of a scene with the wily Claudius pointing out that the reason his cherished Ostia Port project was so over-priced was precisely because people had a vested interest in it not being built. “One way to make sure it isnt built - make it too expensive”.

fishy

HS2 is this generation's TSR.2 - except far more costly and having impacted far more lives and jobs (not to mention large areas of city and countryside). 

Why are we so crap at handling megaprojects?  We don't seem to be able to steel ourselves to either be full on preservationist, or to embark upon them with the steely determination of Xi or MBS.  HS2 would be only one of a whole host of massive infrastructure projects taking place in KSA or the PRC.  The result is a kind of halfway house in which we get the worst of both outcomes.  

Because of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. 

We want to build but have empowered people who have no stake in the country’s economic future to stymie all attempts. 

How very rof.

How many of you have seen the state of Euston lately? Roughly a square mile has been flattened for this. Who will that get sold off to? And ppl wonder why kids have absolutely no faith in democracy in this country. Do you blame them? Forced to be shamed by their history when they’re barely old enough to understand what history is, then shilled and rinsed by Work Experience and Co as if they’re doing the country a favour by stooping to take public office. We appear to have imported foreign levels of corruption, social regression and conservatism wholesale. General Election NOW

Anyone north of Watford who bought into the sham "levelling up" campaign and voted tory... you are reaping what your own stupidity has sown.

1. plenty of people south of Watford voted tory in 2019 

2. we are all reaping what all of their stupidity has sown 

Couple of interviewees about this on Today this morning. One was the chairman of HS1 and Crossrail (although he somewhat selectively bragged about how he delivered HS1 on time and under budget). He was excoriating about how the HS2 project was designed and run. The inappropriately high max speed (400kph, initially) added exponentially to the engineering costs vs a more practical, slightly lower-speed high-speed train. And he was very critical of the publication of the budget for HS2, which incentivised bidders to inflate their quotes and was one of the reasons for the spiralling costs.

Basically we should have just bought (300kph) TGVs from France. Tried and tested, perfectly fast. But presumably the decision makers couldn't be seen to be using French trains, so they would engineer their a brand new (and faster than the Frenchies') trainset. Thanks, British exceptionalism.

Apparently he applied for a role with HS2 but was rejected because he didn't have the relevant expertise. Reading between the lines, one suspects that those in charge had already decided they wanted a brand new choo-choo frame, not the TGV that he could have efficiently delivered, and he is now engaging in a well-earned spell of grumpy schadenfreude.

@ Heffalump - it also explains why there is no need for extra capacity between Brum and London.

It’s a total waste of money to carry on with Brum to Old Oak only. 
 

We absolutely should invest in better train connections with the North and Midlands. Have been to Nottingham and Derby twice this year - slow and expensive. But do we need 360 km/h trains which send the costs spiralling? No. 

Exactly. Try getting from Manchester to Nottingham or Manchester to Newcastle by train. You just wouldn't bother if you had any alternative. The distances aren't massive in the UK so there is no real need for super high speed. The Pendolino from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly is just over 2 hours ffs. Even flying takes longer than. That unless you're already in an airport. 

It's a totally cynical move by a government who don't give a fück about the good of the country.  This is about funding a small tax cut pre-election which will be a big vote winner.  The fact that it harms the country isn't their main concern.

Andrew Adonis

@Andrew_Adonis

Sunak’s transport plan is a fairy tale. The projects he listed almost all have no plan or planning consents whatever, won’t start for years & cost multiple times more than £36bn “saved” from HS2. The northern rail scheme alone will cost above £36bn to get journey times he pledged

one of the promised projects is the leeds tram, the most fictional thing in all of uk transport policy for decades now. an idea that at this point only exists for the purposes of being cancelled. 

I agree with Dave:

David Cameron

@David_Cameron

Today’s decision on HS2 is the wrong one. It will help to fuel the views of those who argue that we can no longer think or act for the long-term as a country; that we are heading in the wrong direction. HS2 was about investing for the long-term, bringing the country together, ensuring a more balanced economy and delivering the Northern Powerhouse. We achieved historic, cross-party support, with extensive buy-in from city and local authority leaders across the Midlands and North of England. Today’s announcement throws away fifteen years of cross-party consensus, sustained over six administrations, and will make it much harder to build consensus for any future long-term projects. All across the world, we see transformative, long-term infrastructure projects completed or underway. They show countries on the rise, building for future generations, thinking big and getting things done. I regret this decision and in years to come I suspect many will look back at today’s announcement and wonder how this once-in-a-generation opportunity was lost.

HS2 was misconcieved from the beginning - the money should have been spent on in cab signalling which would allow the electrified mainlines to run at 140mph and increasing passing places on the mainlines and lengthening platforms which would increase capacity for passengers and freight.  With the huge sum left over investment could have been made in regional rail.

In country the size of the UK there is no need for super high speed. 140mph is perfectly adequate.

Making it London - Birmingham makes HS2 a bad project. The ROI on that is genuinely atrocious, an almost total waste of time and money that will do basically nothing to alleviate Britain's infrastructure problems.

The entire value of the scheme was in the northern bits. 

Guy once again repeatedly ad nauseam missing the point that the project is not just about speed (though speed is good) but, importantly, the additional capacity from new lines, freeing up the old ones for slower services and freight

As a self confessed train-spotter, this has always been an egregious waste of money.

As Guy says, some much more modest investment in extending platforms, enhanced  signalling, building  some loops and grade-separated flyovers and tunnels, and new rolling stock to the West Coast Main line would probably have come in at about £15Billion - and would have been miles better than the pig’s ear we now have.

30p Lee laughing at HS2 scrappage by saying anybody who has been to Bradford wouldn't want a way to get there quicker. 

2 of the 5 MPs in the Bradford constituency are tozzas. I bet they love 30p Lee.

"Guy once again repeatedly ad nauseam missing the point that the project is not just about speed (though speed is good) but, importantly, the additional capacity from new lines, freeing up the old ones for slower services and freight"

I did not miss that point at all.  Suggest you read posts properly before going off on one.

the most amusing thing is that most of the “northern powerhouse” strategy is predic7ed on completion of hs2 beyond birmingham…

… so the tozzas have rendered their flagship domestic policy practically impossible on its current terms and difficult 2 c as nething other than enormously expensive 2 reboot with a semblance of equivalence

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