HS2 Approved - Great news for the North!

I blame Beeching. He scrapped our local line into Oxford, now it can take you nearly two hours to drive the twenty miles into Oxford in rush hour. And don't use the bus, cos the bus has to use the same flippin roads.

Nope, they are gonna extend a bit of dual carriageway, build a Park & Ride out of town and a bus lane, all for £102million. Not everyone want's to go into Oxford, but they would of, if they could get a train to London or elsewhere.
 
The bit I don’t get is why HS2 won’t connect with HS1. This is just ... nuts.
 
Is there not 250 miles of cycle ways in the mix somewhere that should ease congestion or whatever? :rotfl:
 
Totally un-necessary investment which is only going to make London richer. People are not going to work in Brum and the surrounding area and live in London, it will be the other way round which means that jobs and wealth will stay in the South East.

The fact that the North of England desperately requires infrastructure upgrade as well as the WCML to Glasgow and Edinburgh means that the money should have been spent there. We are a small country, we don't need superfast rail travel, we modern and reliable rail travel.

The Pendolino trains running on the WCML are capable of 140mph which is way fast enough for the UK. If the line and signalling had been upgraded to support this faster speed then Glasgow to London would be around 3 to 3.5 hours, which is plenty fast enough and would compete with air travel.

The North and Scotland loses again :mad:

All a charade from Johnson as usual. This will be what he claims he's doing to thank the North for supporting him in the election. And now he'll be absolved of any further commitment.

Finished by 2040 as well. So we can take 2050 as the real date. If tech has moved on a bit by then, by the time it's finished it'll be out of date.

I think I'd rather have the bridge....
 
I blame Beeching. He scrapped our local line into Oxford, now it can take you nearly two hours to drive the twenty miles into Oxford in rush hour. And don't use the bus, cos the bus has to use the same flippin roads.

Nope, they are gonna extend a bit of dual carriageway, build a Park & Ride out of town and a bus lane, all for £102million. Not everyone want's to go into Oxford, but they would of, if they could get a train to London or elsewhere.
A40 by any chance?
 
We've been looking at going by train on our next holiday as the car is on the blink. Our usual trip from London to the SW, or Peak District, or NE is coming in at £300-£500 in rail tickets. Scrabble at home it is then :laugh:
 
Why not do the required works in the North first instead of starting in the South first?
My understanding is that they're doing the South now and then works in the North will be done 10+ years later.
The routes from Birmingham to London are at capacity. The rail network needs more capacity. Building the southern end first will free up needed capacity on the existing West Coast Main Line which will be useful sooner than later.

I suspect it will be much easier getting passengers on it if one end terminates in London from the start. If you built the northern end first people would be complaning that they have to change at Birmingham and have to get a train on the bursting at the seams WCML to London instead of going straight through.
 
Wasn’t one of the selling points of HS2 that people wouldn’t need to go to London as much transport links in the North would be so much improved that businesses would set up shop in the North instead? If that’s truly the plan then we don’t need it terminating at London from the start.

What is more likely to happen is that the cost will be so astronomically over budget & ridiculously late, phase 2 will get scrapped 10+ years down the line & HS2 will end at Birmingham...
 
To all those who voted for Boris at last year's GE and thought that he would scrap HS2, you reap what you sow.

And to all those who support HS2, we'll see what happens with knife and gun crime as well as terrorist attacks, when all of you are screwed to living hell with by voting for Boris.
 
Personally find it obscene that they can spend that sort of money on a white elephant when many other areas of our society are so broken. Housing, NHS, Policing and many others should be prioritised over an unaffordable transport system.
 
Yes, but why is Phase 2 not phase 1? High Speed 2 Phase Two - Wikipedia
Why does London to Birmingham have to be Phase 1?

A lot of people fear phase 2 will be scrapped or substantially watered down when it comes time to starting it in 10+ years time, AFTER Phase 1 is completed. Why not do Phase 2 first to 'lock that in' for the North and then do Phase 1 afterwards (the Southern section that they'll always find money for hell or high water)?
Well, if phase 2 was scrapped then that defeats the entire purpose of HS2.
It's a long term project with long term benefits. We need to start thinking beyond the scope of our own lifetimes and actually build for the future - which exactly is what HS2 is doing.

Short term benefits are non existent, but you can't have your cake and eat it.
 
They can’t get the existing mainline trains running properly/efficiently, so what chance HS2.
 
Well London (surprise surprise) still benefits somewhat from phase one without phase two.
Yes I agree, but I'd like to think the people involved are actually looking past the end of their noses for a change. HS2 needs to be a success, but we won't see any short term benefits, that's the sticking point for most people I reckon.

Nothing worthwhile ever happened overnight.
 
The fast rail network and Ebbsfleet in Kent has made it much easier for those that have been removed from the cities to carry on commuting, or visiting the kids at the weekend.

Not saying this is the case, but ;)
 
Yes I agree, but I'd like to think the people involved are actually looking past the end of their noses for a change. HS2 needs to be a success, but we won't see any short term benefits, that's the sticking point for most people I reckon.

Nothing worthwhile ever happened overnight.
Just depends whether they (whoever is in power in 10+ years time) have the stomach to continue to phase 2, once phase 1 is nearing completion.

If say the cost of phase 1 reached £100bn on its own & phase 2 would cost another £50bn, I could see them pulling the plug & saying they were ‘justified’ in only delivering phase 1 as phase 2 was now too expensive.
 
Just depends whether they (whoever is in power in 10+ years time) have the stomach to continue to phase 2, once phase 1 is nearing completion.

If say the cost of phase 1 reached £100bn on its own & phase 2 would cost another £50bn, I could see them pulling the plug & saying they were ‘justified’ in only delivering phase 1 as phase 2 was now too expensive.
Politics ruins most things unfortunately, it seems anything done nowadays is only to gain short term favour, no one has the guts to make the long term decisions - except Johnson it seems.
Only time will tell of course.
 
Pretty sure no one will think of it that way around. Escaping Birmingham quicker though is another matter...

Besides, the point of HS2 is not the HS bit - it's the extra capacity that is needed long term on the network. The HS bit is cos you might as well do that given that it's a marginal extra cost.
Not quite true. On a railway, speed and capacity are linked because trains can't pass each other. Faster journey times are a useful spin-off from the main issue, which is capacity.

Past governments and HS2 pundits made a serious error in the early days by hyping the speed element, which laid it open to all the jibes about the worth of shaving 30 minutes off London-Brum times, when all the time it was capacity which is the issue. They've finally got around to changing the message, but many years too late.

You can increase capacity in two ways: more frequent and/or longer trains.

Frequency can only be improved by increasing speed and better signalling. That's the essence of a high-speed railway. Longer trains are also desirable, but usually cannot operate on existing networks, though they can be incorporated into a new system. I guess when HS2 stock starts to operate on the WCML north of Crewe, they might designate sections of the train to specific destinations, such as, say the front part for intermediate stations, and the train will stop accordingly.
 
Once it gets to Leeds/Manchester it could be extended further north in the future.


which century would you choose though :facepalm: , I would much rather they dualled the A66 coast to coast and the A1 at least to Edinburgh , those roads are utterly ridiculous where they are single carriageway :mad:
 
But HS2 isn't specifically for the north or south? Objectively, its a project that will link north/south
People just see as a vanity project because we won't see the benefit anytime soon.


Taken from the above link - 'HS2 will directly serve: Birmingham Curzon Street, Carlisle, Chesterfield, Crewe, Darlington, Durham, East Midlands Hub (Toton), Edinburgh, Glasgow, Interchange (Solihull), Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Lockerbie, London Euston, Manchester Airport, Manchester Piccadilly, Newcastle, Old Oak Common, Oxenholme, Penrith, Preston, Runcorn, Sheffield Midland, Stafford, Warrington, Wigan and York. '

Many of those are branches off the HS2 line using existing lines. Sheffield for instance. HS2 lines won’t actually go to Sheffield Station.

Why not do the required works in the North first instead of starting in the South first?
My understanding is that they're doing the South now and then works in the North will be done 10+ years later.

Or why not start at both ends at the same time and meet in Birmingham? Because north of Birmingham will never happen, or it will be massively watered down. They’ve already said there will be a review of the Birmingham - Leeds and Manchester phase to look at reducing costs.

I’m 43 and will probably be retired before HS2 even starts running, certainly up here anyway. Meanwhile the current infrastructure is desperately in need of sorting out, and it needs doing in less than 10-20 years. The network is too crowded, and every train that’s late has a knock-on effect on subsequent ones.
 
which century would you choose though :facepalm: , I would much rather they dualled the A66 coast to coast and the A1 at least to Edinburgh , those roads are utterly ridiculous where they are single carriageway :mad:
I'd prefer the A9 to be dualled all the way from Perth to Inverness. Currently they have a 60mph limit, but 50mph for lorries. As you can never get past the buggers that means an effective 50mph limit for everyone - and it's a loooooong road. Oh, it also has average speed checks for most of its length.
 

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