There are good arguments to be made for re nationalising certain things in the U.K. At the head of that list are Rail and Water. Both have over a long enough period shown that they are being run badly and hardly for the benefit of the travelling public or consumers. Some rail companies so incompetently that even a Tory government has put them into public ownership. I think that Labour would have a massive vote winner on their hands if they were to pledge that over a period of time the intention was to take rail and water back into public ownership. Easier for rail because franchises could just not be renewed but certainly more difficult for water. What’s happening with our sewage is beyond disgusting and frankly belief.
Water is not a capitalist asset, neither is the air we breathe. I can’t see how ‘the market’ is suited to both water and rail. Imagine if the police were subject to market forces, which ‘force’ responds to your break in? The Met? Ace Ventura? Kojak and Co? Darwood and Tanner?
Water is not a capitalist asset, neither is the air we breathe. I can’t see how ‘the market’ is suited to both water and rail. Imagine if the police were subject to market forces, which ‘force’ responds to your break in? The Met? Ace Ventura? Kojak and Co? Darwood and Tanner?
I think the police are already heavily influenced by market forces.
London to Manchester was 2hr 6m and would have been reduced to 1hr 55m. And that's a "time saved" of 55 minutes? No wonder the sums didn't add up in the end.
Its really not about time saved, even if that's a bonus, it's the massive capacity upgrade it gives the network, and the off-shoot benefits for Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Weirdly the time argument isn't used for the Elizabeth line, even thought it knocks 10 minutes off journeys, it's a mainly a capacity play.
Exactly this, the time benefits should always have been stated as a small bonus on top of this. In addition it should have been used to promote the net zero targets, encouraging more train use and less car/plane travel to these destinations. Creating more jobs and as you mention the Northern powerhouse economic benefits. I would add lower prices on the existing lines but we all know that probably wouldn't materialise given the privatisation of our railway network.
In my opinion the Northern Powerhouse relies far more on east/west transport, not north/south. Businesses in the south are not going to relocate to the north, they will stay in the south. Commuters are not going to benefit from faster journey times from London to Manchester for their outward journey - it will be the other way around. The traditional manufacturing heartlands of the midlands and the north (what's left anyway) would tend to look at supply chains within the midlands and the north - and that clearly includes the supply of labour.
HS2 was planned on a false premise. High speed, reliable train services linking Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle are far more important - but that's the bit that won't get done, but we can save a few minutes on empty trains between London and Birmingham.
Why the f*ck should major infrastructure projects be political.
Agree but as I said the benefits of HS2 with regards to this should have been an added bonus, the biggest benefit as Rothko mentions should have been the increased capacity. I think I read that Manchester Piccadilly has the highest cancellations of any station in the country, clearly HS2 would have helped with this and currently if you were even thinking about travelling for business to or from there it must play a factor. Our whole rail network needs massive investment and HS2 wouldn't have solved issues elsewhere but it would have been a start. We can just add it to a long list of things that are crumbling and in dire need of investment.
as others have said, not just time saving but the increased amount of seats too.
Agree the northern half should been the priority especially east-west
HS down to London just gives more of an excuse for the trade to flow down rather than flow up north
The French experience of the TGV network has seen productivity improve hugely outside of Paris, and helped places like Lille turn itself round from a complete dump, to a leading European city, same can be side for a lot of those cities within 2 hours of TGV to Paris.
You also need East West in the north, but proper high speed, not some round the edges improvements to the existing transpennine route, and you still need to invest in London, Crossrail two needs building
How can anyone believe that the £36bn will be spent as Sunak has promised. Just like the 40 new hospitals, it will never happen. So many promises never kept.
First thing to add to the 'let's blame Labour for it not happening' list once they are in power.
Yep, many land mines being left for Labour. Cynical politics at it's worse.
the attempt to try and sell the safeguarded land between Litchfield and Crewe is going to be the landmine
Labour should just say that when they get into power they will buy the land back at the cost it was sold at. Obvs not sure about legalities of that but would stop anyone purchasing it!
Unbelievably no one has ever built a direct railway from Leeds to Manchester the wrongly named Manchester and Leeds Railway, opened in 1841,didn'teven go to Leeds but to Normington that is nearer Wakefield than Leeds, even nearly 200 years ago it was a bodge job!
Water is not a capitalist asset, neither is the air we breathe. I can’t see how ‘the market’ is suited to both water and rail. Imagine if the police were subject to market forces, which ‘force’ responds to your break in? The Met? Ace Ventura? Kojak and Co? Darwood and Tanner?
Neither are capitalist assets in isolation, I agree - but the distribution of water and the treatment of sewage are most definitely capitalist assets. But I think we would both agree that they should be in state hands.
I think it's pretty clear that the privatisation of utilities and the railways has been a disaster. Most of the energy companies have collapsed and we're now having to pay more in our standing charges, to cover the costs that the remaining companies have incurred in taking on the customers of the failed companies.
Private companies must make a profit for their shareholders. All profits from the utilities and railways should be ploughed back into improving them, not to give money to shareholders and overpaid executives.
Well in theory it does help the country. The theory is that the 32billion will all be spent within the UK, so it will generate jobs, safe guard companies, and keep taxes flowing. It's a lovely theory, until we find out that we're using a German construction company, and the steel's coming from India, the software from the US, the computer infrastructure from China, etc. etc. etc.
There is an economic theory that in times of hardship you create public projects, it's a good way of getting money to the people without just handing it out. The problem is that doesn't work as well in a multi-national world. It was easy years ago, the only people who'd see that money would be British, but that's not the case anymore. In the great depression in the US they were literally paying people to dig holes and then paying other people to fill them in. That way government money flowed directly to low paid labourers, the very people hardest hit by the depression.
With the recession the government should be looking to leverage and cash and/or cheap lending to get large scale infrastructure projects done. In theory materials and labour should be at their cheapest. The problem is that government is incredibly bad at managing large scale infrastructure projects, so any saving will be lost in the bureaucracy of government, the glacial pace decisions are made at, and the often sheer incompetence of those tasks with making the decisions.
10 years on from your post, you were depressingly right on virtually every sentence you wrote. This is the 1st time I've opened this thread as railways, despite being an Addick of a certain age, they do not really float my boat. So its quite depressing to read how something so good for the nation turns out so embarrassing and incomplete from the original idea.
f w it's w .. I always thought that HS2 from London to Brum was a complete white elephant. We really have Despicable Boris to thank for giving it the final go ahead, probably as a huge publicity gesture after his crowning as PM
Thanks to a local project I started on in summer, I'm much more across the detail of HS2 now. So I think I can now explain in fairly simple terms why the cancellation north of Birmingham is, to borrow James "Cleverly's" description, batshit.
Thanks to this thread (but no thanks to the early years of public communication about HS2) I think most here now understand that the main goal of HS2 is to boost capacity; however people may still only have a vague idea of how and why this capacity is needed and increased.
The thing with high speed trains (anything above 100mph for this purpose) is, they need more time to stop in an emergency. Existing lines in the UK are full of all kinds of slower trains. It's not so much that they get in the way of the HSTs. Its that you have to create more space between a slower train and an HST than between two slower trains. So high speed trains on the same track as slower trains actually reduce the total capacity. On top of that the track and signalling used cannot cope safely with more than 125mph. That is why you need a separate line for serious high speed trains. The new line has state of the art signalling, and the HS trains can actually run quite close together while the older line is freed up to carry more slower but high capacity regional and metropolitan trains, and more freight.
Now the thing is, they will still build the separated HS2 line to Birmingham so all these trains will race up there at high frequency - but then what? To get anywhere further north they will be forced back on to the older lines. There will therefore not be any increase in capacity to the North. The old line cannot handle all those extra HS trains. That's why Andy Burnham and co. are now screaming that the decision will actually make the London-Manchester service worse. No increase in capacity and actually slower speed.
And every time you change a big project in mid-development you add significantly to the total cost
That's why the decision to axe it is batshit. And trust me, the rail people in Europe are looking on in absolute bewilderment.
I could understand why a political decision might be taken to pause the part of the plan to take the line beyond Birmingham, but the rush to sell off the land that's been bought so it can NEVER happen in the future just stinks. Who is this land being sold to and for how much compared to the purchase price?
I could understand why a political decision might be taken to pause the part of the plan to take the line beyond Birmingham, but the rush to sell off the land that's been bought so it can NEVER happen in the future just stinks. Who is this land being sold to and for how much compared to the purchase price?
Probably Tory donors and mates of Tories. They profited from Covid contracts, they need to get as much as they can before they are kicked out of Government.
Comments
I can’t see how ‘the market’ is suited to both water and rail.
Imagine if the police were subject to market forces, which ‘force’ responds to your break in?
The Met? Ace Ventura? Kojak and Co? Darwood and Tanner?
HS down to London just gives more of an excuse for the trade to flow down rather than flow up north
You also need East West in the north, but proper high speed, not some round the edges improvements to the existing transpennine route, and you still need to invest in London, Crossrail two needs building
Private companies must make a profit for their shareholders. All profits from the utilities and railways should be ploughed back into improving them, not to give money to shareholders and overpaid executives.
https://x.com/HCH_Hill/status/1709916024743637084?s=20
https://x.com/HCH_Hill/status/1709939426842030475?s=20
This is the 1st time I've opened this thread as railways, despite being an Addick of a certain age, they do not really float my boat. So its quite depressing to read how something so good for the nation turns out so embarrassing and incomplete from the original idea.
Money moved from helping the North to levelling up London I guess?
Thanks to this thread (but no thanks to the early years of public communication about HS2) I think most here now understand that the main goal of HS2 is to boost capacity; however people may still only have a vague idea of how and why this capacity is needed and increased.
The thing with high speed trains (anything above 100mph for this purpose) is, they need more time to stop in an emergency. Existing lines in the UK are full of all kinds of slower trains. It's not so much that they get in the way of the HSTs. Its that you have to create more space between a slower train and an HST than between two slower trains. So high speed trains on the same track as slower trains actually reduce the total capacity. On top of that the track and signalling used cannot cope safely with more than 125mph. That is why you need a separate line for serious high speed trains. The new line has state of the art signalling, and the HS trains can actually run quite close together while the older line is freed up to carry more slower but high capacity regional and metropolitan trains, and more freight.
Now the thing is, they will still build the separated HS2 line to Birmingham so all these trains will race up there at high frequency - but then what? To get anywhere further north they will be forced back on to the older lines. There will therefore not be any increase in capacity to the North. The old line cannot handle all those extra HS trains. That's why Andy Burnham and co. are now screaming that the decision will actually make the London-Manchester service worse. No increase in capacity and actually slower speed.
And every time you change a big project in mid-development you add significantly to the total cost
That's why the decision to axe it is batshit. And trust me, the rail people in Europe are looking on in absolute bewilderment.