Any normal country would have built the thing in full already
In the declining UK though, we balk at actually improving things. Heaven forbid we actually improve long term infrastructure. Just think of the few billion we could save! We could literally pay off 0.001% of our national debt if we scrapped this project after already building a third of it. Just think of the brilliant British future with no high speed rail network & our national debt ever so slightly smaller
Given the current government who are dismissing this, I highly suspect that it is entirely accurate.
Thank fuck for that, it was going to spoil my uninterrupted views of a car park and newt habitat
18 trains an hour was so obviously never going to be case. One every 3 minutes?? People astroturf Reddit etc with “IT IS ALL ABOUT CAPACITY” lol. They promised near unlimited capacity and cheap tickets as a result.
I mean, 10 an hour isn’t bad.
But look at the other rail announcement about tickets. It’s clear the government is on a course to increasing fares significantly now.
Christ alive just build the bloody thing. Every other high speed rail system has faced these arguments, and they’re always totally forgotten once the system gets going and is fantastically successful.
Also the amount of work that’s been done around Birmingham for this, and the amount of development dependent in it, is unreal. Pulling the rug on the second city for the second time since the war would be beyond ridiculous.
I expect to see it announced next week.
Given how chronically overpriced rail travel is in the UK, compared to practically anywhere else in the world, I’m at a loss for who is going to be the target market for HS2 given that its going to be far more expensive than existing rail travel
Does anyone actually believe we will get a decent, high-speed rail service? It’s too good to be true.
So some people can get from Birmingham to London 20 mins quicker….
Ah, the classic “you cant prove that” defence, widely used amongst the later found guilty.
Its already been cut so many goddamn times, first it was London to (I think Edinburgh) to have a transit link across the whole mainland UK, then it was London to northern england, now its London to… basically London. By the time its done its going to be one of those train shaped childs climbing frames yet somehow still cost the full 100 billion.
The problem with a maximum speed of 125mph is that this allows for traditional signaling instead of the more advanced European Train Control System, and quite a lot of other less modern stuff as well (road crossings instead of bridges/underpasses etc). What you get in the end is a traditional train track and not a dedicated 21st century high speed line.
The speed was originally specified too high. There’s no need for it to be 225mph, but FFS, don’t change the specification once you’ve already started building it.
Just build the damn thing. It’s not like you’re tipping money into a hole. It’s getting invested in the future and the money spent is going to workers in the local economy.
Always ignore media speculation about big famous public projects. It’s 90% clickbait.
Why is the UK so against good infrastructure. It would do so much for the whole country.
Are the people determined to destroy the country that much?
Just build the damned thing already.
>Reports HS2 services will be halved – and run at lower speeds – dismissed as ‘speculation’ by govt, **but they thank speculators for their ‘wonderful’ suggestion and will take it on board**
FTFY
Honestly this whole build has screamed corruption to me from the get go
It’s been horribly managed
I spoke to their cyber security manager a few years that said their tech tender was so bloated the only company that could even respond was Mitsubishi. They just lumped the whole thing together meaning only massive SIs could respond, adding huge margin and not giving access to best of breed technologies
For legal reasons: I have no way of verifying this man’s statements and this is purely hear say
I feel that we would have benefited much more from the production of lateral train lines across the midlands and north rather than upgrading a link to London. Most people that would have typically used the new link now work from home, and if not the trains already had Wi-Fi enabled. Saving 30 minutes from Birmingham to London seems like a shitty way to spend billions of taxpayer money within that context
Imagine what 45 billion could do elsewhere. This screams “getting tax payer money to my friends in private orgs” to me. But then again I’m a cynic
To be honest I couldn’t be arsed if it ever gets done or not, it’s not like they’d branch it out to benefit much of the UK if it were to be built, the majority of places will get overlooked either way even if they could afford to do so
Exactly as planned for the anti HS2 brigade.
They don’t care if it costs billions. They just want to avoid building anything that might help places outside london.
Why do we have to build this as 225mph anyway? I’m all for HS2, but if building HS2 at 200mph adds a few secs but saves billions, I’d rather they do that and add more services to compensate
A little wisdom from Yes, Minister: “never believe something until it has been officially denied”
Cant we please just get a crossrail style 125MPH electric railway connecting teeside and tyneside up the durham coast??
And then can we think about a railway connecting the north east to Manchester and the rest of the north?
23 comments
Any normal country would have built the thing in full already
In the declining UK though, we balk at actually improving things. Heaven forbid we actually improve long term infrastructure. Just think of the few billion we could save! We could literally pay off 0.001% of our national debt if we scrapped this project after already building a third of it. Just think of the brilliant British future with no high speed rail network & our national debt ever so slightly smaller
Given the current government who are dismissing this, I highly suspect that it is entirely accurate.
Thank fuck for that, it was going to spoil my uninterrupted views of a car park and newt habitat
18 trains an hour was so obviously never going to be case. One every 3 minutes?? People astroturf Reddit etc with “IT IS ALL ABOUT CAPACITY” lol. They promised near unlimited capacity and cheap tickets as a result.
I mean, 10 an hour isn’t bad.
But look at the other rail announcement about tickets. It’s clear the government is on a course to increasing fares significantly now.
Christ alive just build the bloody thing. Every other high speed rail system has faced these arguments, and they’re always totally forgotten once the system gets going and is fantastically successful.
Also the amount of work that’s been done around Birmingham for this, and the amount of development dependent in it, is unreal. Pulling the rug on the second city for the second time since the war would be beyond ridiculous.
I expect to see it announced next week.
Given how chronically overpriced rail travel is in the UK, compared to practically anywhere else in the world, I’m at a loss for who is going to be the target market for HS2 given that its going to be far more expensive than existing rail travel
Does anyone actually believe we will get a decent, high-speed rail service? It’s too good to be true.
So some people can get from Birmingham to London 20 mins quicker….
Ah, the classic “you cant prove that” defence, widely used amongst the later found guilty.
Absolute shambles. Yet somehow, completely unsurprising.
Its already been cut so many goddamn times, first it was London to (I think Edinburgh) to have a transit link across the whole mainland UK, then it was London to northern england, now its London to… basically London. By the time its done its going to be one of those train shaped childs climbing frames yet somehow still cost the full 100 billion.
The problem with a maximum speed of 125mph is that this allows for traditional signaling instead of the more advanced European Train Control System, and quite a lot of other less modern stuff as well (road crossings instead of bridges/underpasses etc). What you get in the end is a traditional train track and not a dedicated 21st century high speed line.
The speed was originally specified too high. There’s no need for it to be 225mph, but FFS, don’t change the specification once you’ve already started building it.
Just build the damn thing. It’s not like you’re tipping money into a hole. It’s getting invested in the future and the money spent is going to workers in the local economy.
Always ignore media speculation about big famous public projects. It’s 90% clickbait.
Why is the UK so against good infrastructure. It would do so much for the whole country.
Are the people determined to destroy the country that much?
Just build the damned thing already.
>Reports HS2 services will be halved – and run at lower speeds – dismissed as ‘speculation’ by govt, **but they thank speculators for their ‘wonderful’ suggestion and will take it on board**
FTFY
Honestly this whole build has screamed corruption to me from the get go
It’s been horribly managed
I spoke to their cyber security manager a few years that said their tech tender was so bloated the only company that could even respond was Mitsubishi. They just lumped the whole thing together meaning only massive SIs could respond, adding huge margin and not giving access to best of breed technologies
For legal reasons: I have no way of verifying this man’s statements and this is purely hear say
I feel that we would have benefited much more from the production of lateral train lines across the midlands and north rather than upgrading a link to London. Most people that would have typically used the new link now work from home, and if not the trains already had Wi-Fi enabled. Saving 30 minutes from Birmingham to London seems like a shitty way to spend billions of taxpayer money within that context
Imagine what 45 billion could do elsewhere. This screams “getting tax payer money to my friends in private orgs” to me. But then again I’m a cynic
To be honest I couldn’t be arsed if it ever gets done or not, it’s not like they’d branch it out to benefit much of the UK if it were to be built, the majority of places will get overlooked either way even if they could afford to do so
Exactly as planned for the anti HS2 brigade.
They don’t care if it costs billions. They just want to avoid building anything that might help places outside london.
Why do we have to build this as 225mph anyway? I’m all for HS2, but if building HS2 at 200mph adds a few secs but saves billions, I’d rather they do that and add more services to compensate
A little wisdom from Yes, Minister: “never believe something until it has been officially denied”
Cant we please just get a crossrail style 125MPH electric railway connecting teeside and tyneside up the durham coast??
And then can we think about a railway connecting the north east to Manchester and the rest of the north?
No.