HS2 - The UK's Failed Railway.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- Big Thanks to Chris: @Rail_Focus Go Subscribe!
Ok, before you grumble at me. Just watch!
This week we take a fresh look at how HS2 might not be as bad as you hear from every media outlet. Lets have a look at the benefits and some of the cost, environmental and infrastructure myths you may have heard.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @pwhitewick
Sources:
HS2 CO2: x.com/HS2ltd/status/126085769...
www.echo-news.co.uk/news/2406...
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/prot...
Cost explanation: citymonitor.ai/transport/hs2-...
www.manchestereveningnews.co....
Credits if not listed above:
HS2 on site images and film: Chris @Rail_Focus
All music: StoryBlocks paid license.
Maps: Google
Images and film of HS2: HS2 Ltd.
Thumbnail Cathedral Foreground: Anthony McCallum
Chapters:
00:00 - Lower Thames Crossing
01:05 - What went Wrong
02:55 - Why was it needed?
04:30 - Misinformation
06:48 - Cost
08:37 - Economy
10:00 - Cancelled - Розваги
Big Thanks to Chris: @Rail_Focus Go Subscribe!
On the title (not having watched the vid yet): I would probably rather title it "The UK's Failing Railway" (instead of failed), or maybe even "How The UK* Failed Its Railway" (*UK's Gov't). Just a quick thought.
I can't follow Chris :(
Are you or Chris aware of the HS2 alternative called High Speed UK? Which would lend itself far more readily to the reintroduction of branch lines
@@mattmill30the crayons on blank sheets person? The one that ignores what already exists on the ground person? That HSUK?
@@MontytheHorse who are you?
What I find quite frustrating is that you can explain to people the actual benefits and reasoning of HS2, and you'll think they're taking it all in, and then they'll just repeat the stuff about £100 billion to shave twenty minutes off the journey.
Sounds like Brexit
I think one of the main problems is that people in the North can see billions being spent on projects in the south east, like Crossrail. Then they see a project like HS2, and all the northerners think "why didn't they start it at our end?""they've overpaid and under-delivered on a project once again, but their bit is gonna get built". That clear north south divide breeds resentment in the eyes of a northerner, we literally can't understand why we can't have a few hundred million for improvements on trans-Pennine routes.
@@sam3317it’s a very good point - maybe if we all agree that voting conservative will never help the north we can work on this
Because they read it on Facebook and it made them feel smart.
@@lawrencejobdid voting labour in the past help the North?
A few years ago, an acquaintance found out I was a rail enthusiast and asked me what I thought of HS2. I predicted it would be built as far as Northamptonshire and get cancelled. So my prediction was nearly right. But what Rishi Sunak has done is that in a matter of a few minutes, has done nearly irreparable damage to HM Government, the Conservative Party and himself.
Firstly: he has turned HM Government in a Bad Customer. That means many companies will simply not come forward for contract work and others will put up their prices, ask for higher deposits, higher initial down payments and increase cancellation fees. If, in the future, HS2 is restarted, it will cost considerably more than if Sunak had just let it go ahead as it was. Maybe three or four times as much. Secondly, he has demonstrated that he and the Government care little for Northern England and Scotland. And this will be reflected in the ballot box. Thirdly, as a businessman, he has shown poor judgement that in many companies would get you the sack on the spot. He has confused Capital with Operational expenditure. You can't use capital to repair roads. That's not how it works. That's not what it's for. Capex is for creating stuff, Opex is for maintenance, insurance, wages, paying off loans, etc. Fourthly, if you go to the bank to get a loan for the express purpose for, say, building an extension to your house, and then go and spend that cash on a car instead, you'll get a letter from your bank manager, asking exactly what is going on. It looks as if Rishi has read the chapter about 'How Not to Spend Other People's Money' in the 'Big Boy's Bumper Book of How Not to Do Stuff' (Harvard Business School Edition) and decided to ignore everything. Sunak has just exposed himself as incompetent. And now we're going to pay for his mistakes. Rant Over.
Agreed. Couple of things.
UK gov has always been a bad customer, irrespective of the party running the country. I’ve seen companies that have done the taxpayer a favour get right royally screwed. The lesson is grant no favours, because politicians are not to be trusted.
Politicians fundamentally do not get what it’s like to be a supplier to government, be that local or national. Because they themselves are not fundamentally bound by the need to make a profit, they behave in irrational ways and don’t understand that it costs money to set up a contract, and that must be recouped one way or other. Answering the phone or replying to an email costs money, never mind contract negotiations, or the cost of renegotiating it afterwards.
And, if anyone can reallocate capex to opex, it is a Prime Minister.
good rant and I totally agree. 👍
Fair rant mate. Scotland and Northern England don't exist.
Good rant, though you'll always find another Capita to offer to build something for the price of a kiss
Here in Denmark it's normal for government projects to cost between 3 and 10 times more than if the same work was done for a private contractor, simply because they (the government) are incredibly difficult to work with and make absurd demands. Quite often they'll order stuff built or made and merely hand out a list of specifications along with the money, and then never follow up on progress along the way and often aren't available for answering questions when the people working on the project are unsure what they're supposed to when things don't go according to plan (our infamous IC4 trains are a prime example of how this approach turns out). Thus the companies charge a ton extra to cover the cost of correcting their own work, when it's usually the government that's to blame because they didn't check up on the work along the way. The only reason our bridges ever turn out usable is because the state traffic department (and not the government) are the ones who keep an eye on those projects.
Why would the PM support building new rail lines when he can travel everywhere by helicopter?
So he can funnel money into back pocket
Or private jet
@@nathanlucas6465Just like the WEF elites.
That is indeed the question. But if we wanted a competent government that actually cared about the working class - instead of a bunch of billionaires and bankers - we'd have voted for them, wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?
this goes against the climate change situation. If the Prime minister can travel like that - his carbon footprint must be massive. He needs to get a grip and stop thinking short term. Stop the strikes, invest in green transport and you will still have my vote.
In my humble opinion, breaking up British Rail and privatising the rail network totally screwed up the whole thing. Yes, BR had many problems and was inefficient and slow to make necessary changes, but in the last few years before it's demise it was improving.
Now with multiple companies, multiple different stock owning companies, and no institutional memory, constant goal post changes by governments and different overseeing organisations, and the draining of 'profit' from the whole infrastructure, everything costs much more than it needs too and takes much, much longer. A total balls up all round.
British rail was starved of investment in the years before privatisation so that the government could make its case for its privatisation. You have got to remember in the immediate years after privatisation there was some horrendous rail disasters due to corner cutting cos after all who needs all that health and safety shit
@@trevintheshed6707Yep, and they're doing exactly the same thing with the NHS right now. You'd think people would learn by now that the Tories are no good to anyone but themselves and the obscenely rich
As a retired railwayman I can only agree. As a storeman in the 70's I could send an urgently needed part anywhere in the UK and know it would get there in hours. Breaking up such a well running operation to sell it of in pieces to wolves was a crime.
@@GryphLane this may be the case but it often caused by public sectors bad actors. Inside these organisations it's governed by the uneasy relationship between unions and management. Both sides take the piss and effort gets invested in waste from the unions refusal to modernise and strike cover from the managements ability to listen rather than delivering for the public.
You obviously never used It
Long-term, large-scale national infrastructure projects should never be cancelled because of short-term savings
✅️
Perhaps the government needs to stop playing with trains
@@wrichard11and manage the current network properly and stop strikes.
@@wrichard11yes they should actually do it properly. Actually build an industry that can build railways at a sane cost. Decide to invest a number of billions a year and then keep doing it.
Agreed, but our political system is based on a short-term popularity contest. No government wants to spend money today that might benefit a government of the future.
I was one of those people spouting exactly what that bloke did in your short clip - 20 minutes saving! But now, after having followed the project by creating videos with my drone, I have had to research everything and I particularly remember a video of yours when you met up with Gareth Dennis and he explained everything so clearly. I just didn't realise what it was actually about before. The media has twisted all the information and nothing, as you say, has been done to correct it all. What Sunak did was a blow to the country. I'm even surprised he was allowed to do that. I thought any serious decision like that would have to go through committees which would last for weeks and yet he seemed to make the decision in a few days.
Thats the uk for ya 😁
I moved to South West France but I used to commute to Basingstoke and London Waterloo by train regularly (An absolute cattle truck coming out of Waterloo at 6pm and ferociously expensive).
SO.... I parked the car in Bordeaux and hopped on a tram to the Gare St Jean (about €1.30) from there I got my pre-booked upstairs seat on the TGV to Paris (€45 each way). It left on time to the second and got to Paris on time to the minute. 350 miles in 2hrs 40mins. Think about that. (Touching 200mph in parts). From Gare Montparnasse in Paris I got the Metro to my Hotel (€2).
The point being that it was a cheaper option than driving, quicker than driving, more civilised than driving, and kept several hundred cars off the roads.
The whole Tram, Train, Metro thing was seamless.
It's just so damn affordable and civilised. It makes sense.
You’re absolutely correct. The rail networks in Europe are incredible and so unbelievably cheap to use that everyone can use them.
My experience with European trains has mostly been in Italy. Brilliant system. The only good thing Mussolini did was build a massive railway network that is still in operation. You can go from any small village in Italy to anywhere in the country by train, for not much money compared to rip-off UK. (One example, I travelled from Bologna to Mantua for €14 one way, a 3 hour journey. The same distance in the UK would cost around £200.)
But of course Brexit Britain is vastly superior to the Evil EU, so nobody will say how flawed and catastrophic the UK’s rail network is now. Even if HS2 was finished as originally planned, who could afford to travel on it? Fares from London to Newcastle would probably be 5 times more than an airfare.
Privatising the rail network was surely Thatcher’s most horrendous moment. European railways are so good because they’re nationalised and owned by governments that don’t steal billions to give to their mates, donors and tax cheating spouses.
@marco The biggest hurdle of the continental European train networks are the cross border services. It's not quite as integrated as they could be but there are plans in place to help with this. We could have been part of all of this, but we chose not to bother, even while in the EU. We've always considered ourselves as exceptional, we're British, not European! It's a stupid, regressive mindset. You can be both, and those who have embraced both (replace British with other country here) have benefitted the most.
Also Thatcher didn't privatise the rail network, that was Major. Even Thatcher knew that one was a bad idea. Privatisation can work, it just needs to be heavily regulated and for them to be ENFORCED. Japan is a great example of this.
That's why most the world subsidize the public transport, so people can afford it and thus will use it. There are even some areas in South America and Asia where it's completely free to take the bus, because they've realized that public transport will never be profitable either way, but they need people to use it to get them to and from work or nothing will function. The UK approach of refusing to spend money on public transit and refusing to subsidize the ticket prices, does the exact opposite and means the only ones who use the public transport are the ones who have no other choice, since it's usually cheaper to drive, despite toll roads and emission fees etc.
350 miles in 2hrs 40mins is good but not the best TGV can do: Paris-Bordeaux (565 km) Tuesday 5 March 2024, departure Paris 9:04am - arrival Bordeaux 11:14am, travel time *2hr 10min* . If you book your seat a week in advance it can be cheap: 25 euros!
Its sad at how much ahead France is ahead of Britain.
The UK's approach to rail is shocking leading to people still being wedded to their cars. Beeching really started the rot with no future view towards urban and rural expansion. There's some fantastic locations in rural Scotland, previously having a railway connection, that would massively benefit from rail infrastructure in 2024.
Exactly and Stop HS2 wanted this to happen leaving hundreds of family losing their homes in the progress for what. People are still stuck in the 20th Century and future Generation will have to sort this country mess out. UK Population is expected to grow to 74 million by 2036 and we will see capacity continue growing on trains and roads at it worse and future generation will be pointing fingers at Sunak for this mess.
Tbh, Scotland has the power to invest in its railways, which it has succeeded in, so can re-establish those railways if it wants and can afford it (based on what England spends). Sunak only has power over the railways of England and Wales.
The wood discussed @5:57 was the site of the terminus of the Halton Railway was a spur line from Wendover to RAF Halton used to transport coal and other goods to RAF Halton. It closed in 1963.
I did note some old lines already there.
So the woodlands that HS2 would have "affected" from a mile away, are only 60 years old, at best, in what was originally a ballast covered, railway triangle? Priorities people! Priorities!
RAF Halton itself is closing in 2025.
Cancelling HS2 was a big mistake that will haunt the U.K. for decades to come.
I tend to agree
@@pwhitewick the only mistake about cancelling HS2 is that it's too late to cancel the whole damn thing.
@@richardharrold9736Then you personally should pay all the money that has been spent so far.
Starting the thing was the biggest mistake
@@18robsmith HS2 wasn't my bloody stupid idea.
I never knew when we were hearing the cost comparison of building HS2 Vs other countries that it was comparing the whole infrastructure as well as the trains against the rail tracks only! That makes quite a significant difference!
Yup. Another thing nobodynreally talks about
And in China the cost of building government projects doesn't include design costs as they are paid directly by the communist government. That would be about 12 to 15% of the cost.
Statistics to tell you what they want to tell you (and they want to tell you its too expensive compared to everyone else)
@@fatrobin72I believe it was Mark Twain who said, "There are lies, damn lies and then statistics".
That's partly down to HS2 not explaining things properly and the media not bothering to inform us. Much of the media in this country is very much on the right and has a very anti-nice-things-for-the-plebs agenda, so they don't inform their reader/viewership. They rely on people being under informed or even lied to and to keep them angry.
The small bit of hope, is that the government’s plan for a quick re-sale of the land put aside for the extension leg, has hit the buffers itself. The door is still slightly ajar, for it to be revived.
I think that's purely for legal reasons. You can't compulsory purchase then sell the land onto someone else rapidly straight away. In any event, who is going to buy a strip of land that it would be very hard to develop anything on? The land will probably go back to the original owners at a loss. Failing that, a road!
Ahhhh. Politicians govern and plan for their pensions not the good of society! 🇨🇦
Thank you for being a voice of reason, the way the discussion around HS2 has been co-opted by climate change deniers and people who oppose rail in general is ridiculous. The facts are that the WCML is at capacity and a massive modal shift is needed to get cars off the road; if it's not HS2 then it'll be years, possibly decades of even more expensive upgrades to existing routes. Hopefully a future government will see sense and reinstate phase 2.
It's got nothing to do with climate change, and the capacity argument is much better addressed through selective reopenings - a complete reopening of the Great Central Railway all the way through to Sheffield and Manchester would have cost about £2 billion worst case scenario, and freed up a lot of capacity. There will never be a great "modal shift" as you suggest - this exists only in the fever dreams of civil servants and Railfuture HSR fetishists. The only sensible option for HS2 is to cancel what remains tomorrow and dynamite what has been built.
@@richardharrold9736 I'm not listening to a guy who didn't even watch the video. Leave.
@@richardharrold9736Then YOU should re-pay ALL the money that has been spent so far.
If we replace ICE cars with EV's ,what is what government tells us it wants, it is not really getting cars off the road is it. It is getting more heavy cars on the road who need even more expensive infrastructure to make it work so more taxpayers money.
@@tomwatts703 I've been following HS2 since it was first announced. Paul's idealistic view of it is, frankly, bollocks.
The thing that gets me about roads is that the accountants never count if a road generates a profit, and they never look at road closures for unprofitable roads (of which there are many). Constant and consistent tarmac bias, and lots of railism!
Thanks for pointing out @Rail_Focus now subscribed!
Cheers Paul - great video.
The UK trying to be a clone of America, again.
I'm currently reading Stephen R. Brown's "Dominion", a book about the building of the Trans Canada Railway in the late 1800's. It's interesting that the inflated costs and political corruption in infrastructure projects are the same today as they were then.
Whether we are talking about London, England or London, Ontario much of this is the same. Public infrastructure projects seen by contractors and others as just a chance to raid the public treasury. And, I refuse to be politically partisan about it-- all political parties allow this to continue because those gorging at the public trough make sure some of it gets back to the political parties as "contributions"-- or what any reasonable person would call a bribe. A bribe being what it is.
The problem with public perception with rail specifically, is that there's a default idea that if we use steel wheels on steel rails, it has to "pay for itself". But no one expects a pay back when we put rubber wheels on asphalt. We subsidize roads without a thought because it's generally recognized that even if one does not own a car or truck, we all benefit from the efficient movement of goods and people. Somehow, this does not extend to rail transportation-- or public transit for that matter.
Just imagine how impoverished Canada would be without that railway. Most of North America relies on railways for freight delivery. Sometimes of course companies go too far (it's why we have a Public Accounts Committee). Near me a bridge over a railway line soared in cost so the council awarded the contract to a different company. Look up Kings Dyke crossing for the story. Removing the level crossing itself will still cost over £1 million as it's not as straightforward as you think it might be.
I did see something in the news about a planned fraud of billions from the HS2 budget. Every contact leaves a trace, as Locard said.
Yes, and if we went back to Roman times the same would hold true, people do not change.
@@stevemartin7464 I am put in mind of a hilarious conversation between two civil servants in the BBC production of "I Clavdivs"
Interestingly, William Cornelius Van Horne made the CPR railway across Canada possible. Long story, but probably chief among the reasons the railway was possible was due to his elimination of corruption and political patronage appointments.
The difference between building the Trans Canada Railway in the late 1800s and doing the same today is that there was no realistic alternative for long distance travel in the 1800s..
@@mrmyorky5634 that's a lot to do with the geography of the Dominion of Canada, but we have the same problem here with moving vast volumes of freight. Roads scale badly.
The problem is these mistruths were also told to the politicians who couldn't explain the real reasons why they were building it.
Citizens don't have the framework to understand what infrastructure projects cost; anything in millions of dollars/pounds/euros is unfathomable. Even installing a new traffic signal can cost $100k. New transit option appear to be crazy expensive, but are rarely compared to other annual expenses or projects.
Loved being on site to see you shoot this. Thanks for inspiring my son James.
I'm gonna be perfectly honest here, I've been a bit skeptical in the past about HS2 but after seeing how this government seem to prefer roads over railways and all the myths about this project, I wish more than ever before that they didn't cancel it.
In total agreement! For various reasons I was skeptical of HS2 (from no link to HS1 to a general 'London' focus rather than country focused approach, to name a few), but I truly believe in rail and sustainable travel. With some tweaks, the HS2 project could've made an incredible positive difference to the UK. And even without changes, it would've been far more beneficial built in full (or to Manchester /the north west at least) than the glorious yet ineffective stub from west London to Birmingham we'll end up with. How one man had the power to just cancel the whole thing without scrutiny even, let alone debate, was startling. Now if this were some programe that could re-start with the push of a button and some cash, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But infrastructure projects aren't like that. Once canceled (as opposed to delayed indefinitely), it is extremely hard to restart them, or propose a similar new project. How very foolish, shortsighted, and damaging in equal measures is the PMs decision
@@tomthornton6259 the only thing foolish and damaging about HS2's cancellation is that it didn't happen in 2010-11 before any of the blasted thing was built.
@@richardharrold9736Ever travelled on the WCML? Or been stuck behind lorries on the motorway? Because then you would understand why it's needed.
@@richardharrold9736maybe have a look at the video government are liars.... and it should of been put to the vote, to the whole country
@@richardharrold9736try standing on platform 14 of Manchester Piccadilly at 5.30pm on a Friday evening. You may change your mind somewhat I reckon. I presume you live in leafy Surrey or somewhere and drive your Range Rover to Waitrose and the golf club twice a week and haven’t used public transport since you were 6 when nanny took you to the seaside for the day. We are being laughed at by our European neighbours. Let us stay with our Victorian infrastructure then and choke the roads with more vehicles and watch as trade fizzles out to other places where it can get to meanwhile we spend 4 hours on the M6 to drive 37 miles….but at least we will have the few hundred extra trees…
I still want to know how the PM had the power to cancel HS2 given it was VOTED FOR IN PARLIAMENT!
Yuuuuup
But it's going ahead, it wasn't stopped just a case of cutting coat according to your cloth.!
@@chrisstephens6673it's been hacked back so much that most of the benefits have been lost. I live in Peterborough and I have lost out once the Eastern leg to Leeds was cancelled. Worst thing to do will be to build a smaller Euston station for HS2 platforms as they are supposed to be the long distance services.
@@hairyairey They've already scaled back the number of platforms at Euston and are no longer funding the expansion of the station to handle the extra capacity. TfL are now having to pay for that from their already rather stretched budget. They've also sold off the land around it to property developers so when it becomes obvious (or more so, it already is) that the station needs a much larger expansion it'll be nigh impossible without spending ungodly amounts of money to buy out the property owners and rehouse all those tenants. Almost like they're salting the Earth... because that's exactly what they're doing.
He is the city's man. They have spoken. You didn't really believe that we have a democracy in the UK did you? We don't.
All major construction projects go well over their proposed budgets. That's a fact of life everywhere. The Elizabeth Line in London went way over, but now that it's operating it seems to be proving to have been a good investment. The UK already has a huge amount invested in HS2, and to stop it now means that much of it was spent for naught. In the US, California has embarked on a major high-speed rail project, and it is also well over budget and behind schedule, but they're continuing construction. I've heard from other sources that the biggest benefit of HS2 would be to increase much-needed capacity, which would improve the existing passenger and freight services. You need a new Prime Minister....
You are mistaken. Major construction projects can conclude on time and budget. After 5 years of work, the 182 km Bretagne HSR opened on time in July 2017. Expected cost in 2010 Euros was 2.892 billion, as opposed to 50 billion for similar length HS2. Final cost was 2.832 billion.
In CA or the UK, builders and consultants send ever increasing bills to the government as they go, and the government has an open commitment. In Bretagne, the cost was shared by the builders (34.8%) in exchange for a 25 year concession, various local authorities (32.6%) and State (32.6%). The builders want to open on time because they borrowed the money and need the TGV tolls to pay it back, the local authorities won't ask for costly changes because they would have to pay for them, and the State knows it won't end up supporting a project in the news for the wrong reasons.
That is only happening to that scale in UK and US.
As a Thurrock resident, another issue that the LTC will have is it doesn't take the traffic far enough from the problem area. When the Dartford crossing messes up, the WHOLE of Thurrock can become gridlocked, literally not moving for hours just sat in your car in the same spot.
Utterly ridiculous that HS2 wont even make it to Crewe at the very least, as ending at Handsacre as the permanent end will be nothing short of a disaster, especially at the already congested Colwich Junction. And lets not talk about the uncertainty of Euston (which should have been kept as gov funded under Phase 1 post 2023), which will make a further disaster, as the Elizabeth Line will have to soak up the HS2 capacity. At least getting it to Crewe would have given trains a sensible spot to terminate, and would go well with the proposed North Wales Electrification scheme, as HS2 trains could even go up to Holyhead as well, so wales could have benefitted. Manchester could have still gotten a HS2 link via NPR (with a small stub to link HS2 to it). It will be ridiculous if they give the Thames tunnel the go ahead (Which wont be a motorway by the way, it will become the A122, which will be an all purpose A Road dual carriageway, in a similar vein to the A14 upgrades north of Cambridge), as that same money really should go into getting HS2 to Crewe (and Euston) rather than another road for the South-east.
I do wonder what the real motive for cancelling HS2 was, as i wonder if it was caught up in Sunak's pro cars moment as a desperate way to get voters back, after the win in Uxbridge
The cherry on top of the Liz Line aspect is the government are refusing to fund the purchase of more train sets to handle the extra traffic. I bet that has absolutely nothing to do with the Mayor of London being Labour. No Siree! TfL have been left holding the bag for the work on the underground work needed at Euston too which was originally part of the HS2 fund.
The real motive was simple. The government are run by abject morons who couldn't plan a piss up in a brewery. They couldn't even run a bath. They're so monumentally incompetent and do everything on a whim to benefit them in the immediate moment they're currently in. They saw a very slight win in Boris's old constituency on the topic of ULEZ and then launched a media frenzy saying "they" are coming for your cars. They pandered to the motorists. Apparently the whole thing was decided and "planned" in a hotel room a day or so before being announced. The brochure they made was obviously rushed, they put Manchester in Preston on the front cover! No wonder they canned it, they didn't know where it was supposed to be going!
I keep seeing this claim that Tories are pro-car and that Labour are pro-bicycle but there must be so many exceptions to both.
@@hairyairey Tories, and specifically Sunak are pro whatever will get them votes or positive news right now and damn the long term.
No one in Wales believes the North Wales Mainline electrification is going to go ahead, it’ll cost way more than £1 billion, dubious all the way to Holyhead, and in an election year, in which no one is really taking it seriously. Likely chosen as the first “major” rail project the Tories can think of in Wales that isn’t in rural or Labour areas.
And ofc, Wales is still paying for HS2, regardless if it benefits or not, which it isn’t benefitting overall.
@@Redwitheran Just be aware of this, had HS2 gone ahead in full there would have been more capacity for trains from Wales through Birmingham New Street.
Until the line gets to Euston (2040ish) the time savings will be wiped out by having to stop at Old Oak Common and wait for what will be a stupidly overcrowded Elizabeth Line train.
Welcome to the wonderful world of HS2 video comments, enjoy 🤣. Great different take on the HS2 debate 👍.
Here I was thinking we were going to get a video about something old and historical! This is interesting and not what I was expecting!
Back to normal next week!
@@pwhitewick I'm a train nerd can't ever complain about a railroad video.
The DNS is historical. I live in Newbury and you can’t go south or north on the train since 1962 or there about. The a34 is the most dangerous road in the country I don’t drive and I would have to go Reading first to get the train to the beach which is ridiculous….. I need more rail lines
All sections add up to part of a larger integrated system. HS2's capacity will help many miles away.
Just look at the way the Lizz line has worked in London.
HS2 is having a net detrimental impact on the network as a whole.
@@richardharrold9736Total and utte4r LIE - you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
@@richardharrold9736 It doesn't even exist yet in its massively handicapped form. So how the holy hell can you make such a ludicrous claim?
@@richardharrold9736 It will still have some advantageous network effects between london and birmingham. But now it's no longer extending to manchester, it is making the network north of manchester more crowded as the current govt has promised you'll be able to take HS2 trains all the way. The ideal solution would be to build the network in full so that it could deliver increased capacity for the whole country, but the government doesn't seem to care about the north.
@@TalesOfWar because the money spent on it is being taken away from investment in infrastructure and services on the rest of the network.
I lived in Korea for 11 years, they have an entire separate High speed rail network from the low speed lines. Not half-arsed either. Major cities and country connected from North to South and They are still building too, an entire new line from west to east though mountain ranges and valleys. There's no politics around it, it's seem as progress and people are proud of it. Rail tickets are also up fixed, about 36 quid to travel the either line. slower tiers even cheaper. we need to be proud of build stuff again. HS rail. Dual carriage bypasses. motorways. We have totally stagnated.
The problem here is the investment all goes to London. Something like 10x more is spent per person in London rather than the rest of the country. HS2 to no one's surprise starts from London. The rest of the country deperately needs better services. I used to want HS2. Now I don't.
@@deputyVH Yeah that is the key thing really. Over in Korea they spread money all over the country no one place is ignored. This is helped by the fact that the provinces (counties) have autonomy to handle their own tax rake, infrastructure, fiscal policies etc. And I agree, why spend so much on a rail project when everything else is just falling apart... Still using 1970s rail stock. It's a joke.
They built the KTX in Korea to link up cities. We are just doing London to Birmingham... Just stupid.
The construction I have witnessed over there would be incomprehensible to most here in the UK, due to the sheer lack of it here. New cities, new rail lines cutting through mountain ranges, ships, cable cars, bridges, highways, skyscrapers. All have been done in the last 7 years. It's like an alien thing here at least outside of London...
The truth is there is no money. Only enough to keep London going, rest is borrowed for us plebs to get scraps.
The other month I had a look at lost rail lines and traces over Google maps in Yorkshire and wondered what it would be like if all these north and east Yorkshire towns and villages still had rail and commuter trains running around. Sad to think that we had it all at one point but we got too cheap about keeping it...
@@deputyVH Koreans say the same thing. all investment goes to Seoul.
also, stations are built in areas where it should not be, because of political pressure from locals.
UK is disgusting with cars. Totally bike unfriendly. Shameful.
This video is spot on. Cancelling in the way it has been done is the worst decision possible for the UK.
The British taxpayer is not an unlimited cashflow for these contractors to make a profit from!
Something I want to bring up is that in the 2010s everyone was like 'crossrail is over budget' and 'oohoh its several years late' but now you dont see anyone like that, they take it for granted and use it, proving that it was worth it. But now the blame has shifted to HS2 and I have a suspicion that its gonna end the same way again
Should have started at the top down, there would probably have been less chance of it not being completed.
Absolutely right
Why, when projects like this are constructed they are constructed in multiple phases all over the site like they do with Motorways, they never construct from one point. As it is Hs2 is being construted in Birmingham and from Birmingham North towards Handsacre in Staffordshie and South towards London, From London North towrds the Midlands and numerouse construction sites between Birmingham and London. As HS2 is a Birmingham based project with HS2 lt's Head Quarters in Birmingham City Centre it is based prelimary in Birmingham wher 2 large new Stations are being built, Birminghm Curzon Street and Birmingham Interchange next to Birmingham Airport and the HS2 train min maintainance depot in Washwood Heath Birmingham, plus Birmingham is the HQ od the train operator of HS2 services Avanti West Coast Trains
@@peterwilliamallen1063 The raison d'etre of HS2 was to connect to the north. The west coast line is appalling.
@@davidperry7128 Where did you get that idea from and what is so special about the North. HS2's main reason was to provide more capacity on the West Coast Main line South of Crewe to London Euston and to move Avanti West Coast Hi speed serviceses off the WCML after 2 failed attempts to upgrade it, by moving these trains on to the HS2 route it allows now more freight and semi fast servises to use the WCML, not only that the UK's busiest Station outside of London, Birmingham New Street Station is at breaking point with too many trains using it and is the readon the the Newest and Largest terminal station in the UK is being built in Birmingham City Centre at Birmingham Curzon Street
As someone who lived in Surrey in 1990-1992 (I'm an American), it boggles my mind how the UK's rail has failed. Y'all had AMAZING rail and as a kid, we NEVER needed a car. We could walk to the rail station and take the train into London, take buses and the Underground all over, and never once need the car. The ONLY exception was maybe some touring if we wanted to go to places outside of easy rail access or if we needed frequent point-to-point travel. Well, that and shopping at Sleezeberries. Between the bumpercarts and the self-bagging, it definitely required an automobile (like any other big box store), which was why the housewives like my Mum and the neighbors used to carpool together and fend off other carts/shoppers teying to mow you down as a collective. 😅
But I guess that's what happens when Thatcherism goes mad. RIP English rail post-deregulation.
As a teenager in the early 90s, it was quite affordable to make a last minute desicion to get a return ticket and jump on the train to London from Nottingham for a night out, for basically pocket money prices. I can't imagine any teenagers being able to do that these days.
Wasn't just Thatcherism. Labour didn't reverse any of it when they were in power. Thatcher was more anti-union than anti-railway. As I recall it was her government that pushed for the Channel Tunnel to be built.
I am a Duchie and here in the Netherlands there is and was a lot of new train lines made.Those new lines are enormously succesfull.And they can get a speed off 250 km/hour.And this is already very fast.But because it is not a speed train the costs off those are less than say a train traveling on 400 km/hour! So why not choose the middle and make it a train for 250 km/hour?But not a train stop at every village off course.
The attitude was if we’re spending billions anyway then we may as well pay a little bit extra for it to be as fast as it could be.
The huge extra cost that could easily have been cut is due to the amount of tunnelling. Vast sections of this line is going to be underground, underground for miles upon miles at a time.
Decisions like this were made to please the NIMBYs, many of which live in conservative controlled areas. Also done to please the environmentalists.
It’s an extremely green railway, but that in itself costs billions extra.
Billions could have been saved if they just told these people no.
The UK is not China. You cant just cause environmental catastrophes with cheap & badly thought through infrastructure, and chuck people out of their houses willy nilly
Hi Paul. The trouble with railways (and airlines too) is that they never seem to go from where you are to where you want to be.
That naughty Dr Beeching closed all those branch lines that fed the main lines. What we need is an integrated transport system so buses meet trains and so on. That is an impossibility with this fragmented privatised model that governments pursue.
This is exactly why it DOES work in London too, it's all run by TfL.
Beeching wrote a report about many different options for cost cutting for the railways. The Conservative government at the time chose the most extreme option. The transport minister themselves had shares in the road industry. The Labour government soon afterwards did nothing to stop the cuts going ahead.
Don't let them scapegoat others when it's always the government, and it's always both of them. We don't have a choice, and we really need to find a way to fight back against it.
@@TalesOfWar Manchester is also taking control of its transport network. It's far better now than it used to be. Really good to see disused lines repurposed for the trams.
@@mattevans4377the only way to fight back against these things is via an informed electorate. The electorate has shown over and over again in the last few years that keeping themselves informed of the facts isn’t high on many of their agendas.
@@nicholaspostlethwaite9554 And where do you suppose you're putting all these cars? Tearing up more of the countryside for motorways? Tearing up more countryside for parking spaces?
As for driverless, Professor Hannah Fry has explained exactly why they will NEVER work and I agree with her.
It was the high speed bit of HS2 that caused all the problems. The faster you go over 100mph the costs exponentially rise. And the benefits get smaller. A normal railway line would have been less sexy but far more practical and cheaper.
The problem with a conventional railway is it would only serve as a bypass for the WCML, you need the high speeds in order to at least match journey times over the eastern leg to places like Derby, Nottingham, Leeds, Sheffield and York and release capacity on the MML and ECML. A side benefit of the high speeds is it becomes easier to undercut and reduce domestic flights.
It was a dark day when our Prime Minster who we haven't even voted for cancelled HS2 in a Disused Station! This line would had helped with capacity for local passenger trains and freight trains. Even the PM is against getting the High Speed Line into Euston and trying to sink the project still. And some of the things that were shown saying 'HS2 will wreck that' even now it's 2 miles away makes me wonder why would someone make up a BS news story about that a certain land would be destroyed by HS2 even know it going nowhere near it. Great video Paul
There is a step towards re-using abandoned rail lines in Ireland. The parts of defunct inner city lines that ran to the old Broadstone terminus (in the north of Dublin) and Harcourt Street terminus (in the south of Dublin) have been repurposed for the 'LUAS' (- or tram) - most of the 'Green line' follows the old Harcourt to Bray route for it's course.
But there's also the re-introduction of the Clonsilla to M3 parkway rail line that was originally closed in the early 1960's and was re-opened in 2010 to serve the Dublin suburbs that had recently spread to the area. The line is eventually intended to continue onwards to serve the town of Navan & will follow (as far as is possible) the original line.
You can't have nice things but you can watch videos of China's 38,000km of high speed rail and weep.
Thankyou Paul for a very informative vidio, I agree there are many problems with the whole project the first being the route out of London, it is supposed to be a high speed route to the north yet it will leave Euston and immediately turn left and head west for miles to then go on to carve its way though miles of prime land some of which must be the most expensive in the country only to go on to swing to the right of Birmingham to eventually merge with the most congested part of the west coast main line north of Tamworth .
The other failing is it does not connect to HS1 in any way so anyone wishing to use it as part of an onward journey to the continent is faced with a massive break in their journey to get betwen Euston and St Pancras international . Whilst not all international passengers will be looking to travel north a fair proportion may wish to connect to onward high speed services without the need to change stations .
What might have been a better plan would have HS2 start at St Pancras heading North out of London to a suitable place where it could pickup the now closed GCR route to the North, suitable junctions could be constructed to allow trains to then connect to upgraded existing lines towards Birmingham, Derby , Leicester and the north. North of Derby use could be made of the now closed route across to Manchester through the Pennines , whilst this may not be the fastest part of the journey it would be the most scenic and could ease pressure on the WCML by not trying to add more traffic to an allready busy route .
Electrification of all the routes between the major citys would allow faster journey times with better through routing of cross country services benefiting all.
We need to avoid trying to go the last mile to each destination at high speed and settle for the last few miles on existing tracks and routes as building into and out of cities has become too expensive since a certain previous government forced BR to sell off all the spare land they had around the major stations.
If HS2 Had started in Scotland and worked South it would never have been cancelled. HS2 didn't help the North just the South
The question of WCML capacity is important. A lot of people living in Buckinghamshire complain about HS2 coming through their neighbourhood - and it is causing disruption in many ways - but where do they catch their trains if they want to go north? The answer is places like Tring and Leighton Buzzard on the WCML. HS2 should create more capacity for such services by taking some of the longer distance services off the WCML - or provide the space in the timetable for more of them to stop at Watford Junction or Milton Keynes. Alternatively, it could allow freight services to speed up (perhaps by taking some of them off the Northampton loop and sending them down the fast line).
Build the bloody thing..what are they waiting for ????
Just have to finish widening the motorways alongside the railway. Again. 😝
Thank you Paul, we get brainwashed by the myths and you put things into perspective. I learned a lot tonight.
Very welcome
this is the most frustrating thing... many people don't realize that roads cost billions and when they are told it they don't bat an eye even if it's very short and overpriced, and then that has to be completely rebuilt in 50 years, then there's rail... these days we have many machines doing the hard work of bringing it up to standards including removing old track, scraping the underside clean relaying the underside and realigning the track... when was the last time your local council picked up a lane of road and then put it back within the same day? Sure it's oversimplifying it but... it's scarily close to dropping off and picking up your dry cleaning...
You're inconvenienced for a day and tomorrow they are probably off in the next city
I dispute the suggestion that spending 100 bn on HS2 "won't make much difference to the cost of a loaf of bread".
100 bn is enough to completely solve the housing crisis. And if we did that, the cost of rents and mortgages would fall dramatically, making a loaf of bread significantly more affordable. If you then consider an end to the enormous indirect costs of the housing crisis (estimated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to be in excess of 75 bn) we could see further benefits, in terms of public spending budgets. Add in the growing desire for reduced "food miles", the desire to consume less, and the growth localised economies, and it's difficult to see how an expansion of the railways, at huge cost, at a time when money is tight, can really be justified.
Apart from anything, human nature inevitably means that making a route slightly faster will just result in people choosing to live slightly further away from there place of work, to exploit slightly more advantageous house price differentials, until a new equilibrium is reached.
Excellent video. I do hope the project isn’t fully dead but I don’t hold much hope. One of the videos I will point “20 mins to Brum” people at
Crazy to cancel anything not finished! Another clear explanation with some great pictures of tunnels! Keep them coming.
😊😊😊
It's not cancelled, I can hear them working on it every night even though the nearest workings are 2 miles away!
You can only cancel things that aren't finished.
Gareth Dennis at Rail Natter on UA-cam has some very good discussion on HS2. His perspective is that of a rail industry professional 🙂👍
Absolutely yes
Thank you. Different from what I expected but well worth the effort you (plural) put in. I was not a big fan of HS2 because I thought that that starting from London was a guarantee that once it got past the M25 our politicians would cancel it. I felt it should have started from Manchester and gone north and south from there. And I live in a part of the south where the 90+ mile rail route to Exeter is mainly single track. Thank you again.
North and South from Manchester would have been great right!
It is unbelievable that it is cheaper to send crates of tomatoes from Spain to supermarkets in England via lorries rather than use freight trains.
Rebuild the railway network up, and get the juggernauts off of the roads. [or maybe even buy more stuff that is made and grown locally 🤔]
So when you've got all the juggernauts off the road, how do you then get all the tomatoes from the railway station to the supermarket? 😂😂😂😂😂
@@mrmyorky5634
Normal sized Large lorries running short distance from the station and back ain’t so much of a problem, Small lorries and trucks for in town that don’t block the city streets when they deliver like what we used to have years ago would be good.
There is a onestop shop in town nr me where their massive delivery lorries block the main road through town causing gridlock during morning rush hour twice a week.
If you get caught in it it’s better to turn around, drive through the town and exit from the other side of the city just to get out of town.
@@mrmyorky5634 The future Electric delivery trucks, you don't seem to understand logistics.😒😒
@@davidperry7128 Electric trucks still have to be driven to the railway station. (Meaning an empty vehicle road journey) The goods then need to be unloaded from the train. They then need to be taken and stacked in a goods receiving area. Paperwork needs to be completed and the goods need to be stored whilst waiting for the Electric delivery trucks to arrive.
The goods then need to be re-loaded on to the Electric delivery trucks followed by yet more paperwork. The electric delivery truck then continues on it's final journey to the buyer. (You're right, I don't understand Logistics)
What I do understand though is the stupidity of creating unnecessary work and the fact that everything including all the wasted time has to be paid for. It's all been tried before and we've already arrived at the cheapest and most efficient compromise which is. Road Transport for everything else except the bulk transport of heavy materials.
As a Northener, I think the money would have been better invested building additional infrastructure across the north, linking Birmingham, Leeds Manchester etc and maybe re-opening some of the ex Beaching lines that could aid in reducing congestion and also remove some freight from roads.
Is HS2 going to help balance the UK economy or is it just going to make luxury homes in the north more accessible to wealthy southerners who want a weekend getaway, and extend the commuter belt for people working in London.
We need HS2 but, other rail infrastructure should have happened first.
Well done. Please add to the next programme the massive new build development around the Birmingham stations that has not been included as a benefit in the economic assessment. Also the additional tunnels required by local Chiltern MPs added to the costs.
I expect it's the most expensive part, per mile, that's being completed and the dumped phases that would be much cheaper per mile. Putting the High Speed trains onto the WCML is likely to make the congestion very much worse. The point of HS2 was to reduce congestion and enable local services!
Great video. Unfortunately some people just don't want to listen to you, but some will so please keep it up
Thanks. I don't want to sing HS2 from the roof top. Just add a little.logic to the debate.
@@pwhitewick there was never any logic to HS2. It was and remains purely a political vanity project.
Paul, great watch & listen. Very informative & well delivered. Thanks for your 'highlighting' of what was outside the Head. Appreciated.
Regards from Western Scotland 👍
What’s really sad is that 15 years ago in school I remember reading in a scholastic magazine about how Amtrak and British Rail discussed the possibility of a high speed rail line connecting the US and UK via a trans Atlantic tunnel. What’s sad about it is that it would’ve been schedule to have been completed phase 1 construction by 2024-2025, with regular service connections to New York and London
Wow.... do you have anything else on this!?
@@pwhitewick I’d have to go back and look, maybe do a deep dive on a web search for it. If I’m not just completely wrong about it I think the Acela program was also part of it testing viability of high speed rail on existing infrastructure
Found a small Wikipedia page about transatlantic tunnel proposals but it lacks mention of Amtrak and BR but does specifically state a New York to London route
The railways were originally made to move freight, the profits off set/subsidised the passenger fare costs, by 1960 the railways were 135m in debt, due to lack of investment during the war and the advent of the car and heavy goods vehicle, the only way to make the rails pay and lower passenger costs is to get heavy goods back on to them and off the roads, it does seem that a lot of people have their noses in the trough when a 14m stretch of road costs 10b, but HS2 will double capacity between the 1st and 2nd cities, so at least that's something
Rail travel will never be competitive with road travel. The infrastructure, the trains themselves and the total running costs are simply too high.
@@mrmyorky5634 Not true at all. TGVs carry 650 passengers, using clean electricity, how many cars is that, costs of road building and damage repair, lost money to the economy caused by traffic jams, costs in environmental damage due to co2, transportation of fuel to feed cars. Trains in France free up motorway space for shorter journeys. I would never drive through the UK ever again.
2nd City,? It isn't going to Manchester.😂😂
😝 selecter, duran duram, joan armatrading, black sabbath? dexys midnight runners,ELO.judas priest, the moody blues,the move,ub40,black sabbath.the streets. what?
@@davidperry7128 Trains journeys in France are affordable. Ours are ridiculously expensive and are dirty in comparison to the French trains plus our train service is infrequent and unreliable with too many cancellations. The daily train journey I travelled on was always overcrowded and it was cancelled without notice many times leaving passengers stranded on an empty station at 10pm. People need reliable and affordable transport, not cattle class rubbish.
What infuriates me about HS2, is the bit we need the most, is the bit we won’t get. We’ll be left with bit we need the least.
The north part should have been built first (& all the way to Edinburgh / Glasgow!)...
That woodland the other side of Wendover at RAF Halton used to have a railway in it. There was a small branch line from the NW of Wendover Station to RAF Halton that had its marshalling yard near those woods. And yes those buildings are from RAF Halton.
Decent guess
One of the main reasons that costs have increased so much is the interminable dithering of the Tory Government. Repeated reviews, "will we, won't we" decisions, part-cancellations, mean that any potential supplier is going to jack up their prices as a contingency against the possibility of investing a load of time, effort and money only to have their contract cancelled.
To stop the line at Birmingham means that they're building the most expensive part of the line (through London and the Home Counties), but without gaining any of the real benefits (relieving the capacity crunch up around, and to the North-West of, New Street.
It also means that when a future Government comes to their senses and realises that we do actually need it, it will be even more expensive - partly because the Tories are deliberately trying to sabotage any future revival by selling off the land that was bought to build HS2, and because all of the ecosystem (suppliers, trained workers, etc.) will have evaporated and will need to be built again.
To cancel the Northern part of HS2 and instead spend a lot of the money on road building is truly criminal. I fully expect some brown envelopes to have gone into some of the Tories' pockets.
I don't think it was ever going to go beyond Birmingham. I am a Londoner living in the Midlands and unfortunately it's become clear over my lifespan. successive UK governments don't really think about anything outside the home counties.
2/3rds of the population live in the South East that's why. And if Scotland ever gets its independence it'll get worse. However, it's still hurting that part of the population. I'd like to think it will lose them the next election but that seems unlikely. It would take a historic swing to Labour and Kier Starmer is frankly uninspiring.
@@hairyairey Except that isn't true. 9 million people live in the south east of England out of a total UK population of 67 million. The population of north west England is 7.4 million so not a huge amount in it. The only real difference is the south east gets many times the infrastructure investment.
@@radman8321 Fair enough, although I would note that those figures bizarrely exclude the East of England! I was in Manchester last weekend, loads of investment clearly visible. As it is in all the cities of the North. This idea that the North is impoverished is a ruse to get votes. But back to the point, building a high speed railway network would have benefitted everyone even people who never used it.
@@hairyairey Yes there has been a decent amount of investment in Manchester city centre and some in other cities, but that is pretty much all private sector investment. Once you leave the main cities there are hundreds of large and medium sized towns that have had zero investment for decades. They were abandoned when Thatcher decided that the country was better off offshoring manufacturing and have never recovered.
I really think the reason rail projects get all the headlines is the tendency to build them all at once. What if, instead of phase 1/2/3, all in the tens of billions, these projects were more like phase 1 to reach a minimum viable product, and then just a slow, constant build out adding a new station every year or two, gradually expanding under the radar.
That every infrastructure project is a massive announceable investment makes it harder to build networks.
1-Build more capacity then.
2-Just don’t need high speed.
3-current London to Rugby faster than London Dover (HS1).
4-Should have been Glasgow (why not Inverness) to Birmingham.
1- ok. Tell us another way to add as much capacity as HS2 then.
I was ambivalent to HS2 leaning towards not wanting it, without really looking into it. I'd only heard the "horror stories"
It was when a friend of mine pointed out that it was really about freeing up the existing network for more trains, which he did in depth, that I realised I'd been hoodwinked by the "fake outrage" coming form certain parts of the media.
We can actually have nice things. It's just that getting the tories to actually support it and fund it is like trying to persuade a truculant teenager to clean their room. The power is there, they just refuse to use it.
Could not agree more!
HS2 will have a station close to Birmingham airport and was going to have a station AT Manchester airport yet HS2 was never proposed as a solution to the debate of Gatwick's second and Heathrow's third runways'. Manchester airport already has two runways and IS bigger than Gatwick and it is planning to build more terminal space yet it is unloved by the (current) government because its owned by a collection of Northern (Labour) councils. I also think like you that the Southampton to Didcot railway should reopen for freight with a flyover at Didcot so as to not block passenger train paths on the SW mainline at Basingstoke and the GWR at Reading as they do now. However the big question no one has ever answered for me is; Why is HS2 taking so long to build? The original Birmingham to London line only took 5 years from first spade to fully open and the Manchester to Birmingham railway took a similar amount of time. Both these railways were dug by hand and the 11 million hand laid bricks in the 22 arch viaduct at Stockport only took a year to build.
Yep yep yep and tunnels.
Don't forget the Nimbys Brigades like Stop HS2 have to answer to, they demanded a tunnel under the Chiltern Hills just to save a fews oak trees to keep the tree Huggers Happy, Plus HS2 building a bridge over the river canal at Denham towards West Ruislip which the line going under ground at West Ruislip, I fear if more roads are going to be constructed, we are not going to save any trees to keep the tree Huggers Happy, Plus how much it costing to build mostly under ground just to keep environmentalist happy.
Surely the main reason that HS2 failed was its spiralling and uncap-able cost, for a vague and not very large benefit?
The history of all UK governments is that they are totally unable to manage large projects successfully, especially IT and infrastructure projects.
Two thoughts. Cost spiral because the government moved the posts continually. Secondly as explained the cost is offset against the growth it brings.
It was estimated to bring £100billion a YEAR to the economy once built (in full). Saying it won't pay for itself is as dumb as saying building the M1 didn't pay for itself. Not directly, but in the wider economy where it serves it's more than paid for itself since being built. This was also a project for the next 120 years, which would take around 30 to build. Split that cost up over those 30 years (which is what the entire projected cost does) and the £100billion figure thown around is hilariously tiny. Network Rail spent more on maintenance a year than HS2 would have cost over its construction period, and Network Rail have been constantly shafted with budget cuts for years because the Tories don't like spending money on things for us plebs. Why do you think the NHS is in such a state? Same reason.
@wick Third costs spiral was acquiescing to objections to the extent that the view from the train will be next to nothing because it is in expensive tunnels and cuttings.
"Vague and not very large benefit"
Benefitting everyone in the Chilterns with increased capacity.
"Spiralling costs"
Benefitting everyone in the Chilterns by having to tunnel under at greater expense so they don't have to see it.
See the pattern?
The GCR should of been reopened and all the other railways that got closed
The GCR would be great for sure.
The route is just not there anymore
As I have said elsewhere (and often before)
Opening old lines would be a great idea on paper... but like most lost railways the land that they would use is now built upon in a way that makes it nearly impossible to reuse.
The GCR in Nottingham or Leicester for example... Its not even recognisable there was ever a railway there on much of the land. The Woodhead tunnels, sold to power companies who despite protests and court cases pending, built powerlines in the tunnel making it completely unusable (I've heard this powerline installation damaged the tunnel for future railway use)
Even where old lines have been rebuilt (The Borders railway on the northern part of the Waverly Route in Scotland) the line deviates from the original in many places due to new infrastructure building on the old routes.
Even where the lines or their routes) still exist, "vandalism" in the name of repairs make it prohibitive to use. The Bridge in Old Musgrave being filled in to "protect" it (when there was nothing wrong with it) by the Highways agency, in Cumbria show the disregard to our railway pas, and it potential future.
Even where the routes are open and viable, people protest the loss of walking or cycling routes that replaced the rails. Edinburgh Trams announced their preferred route for its future line (exactly the same as its previous, cancelled option) and with in 24 hours groups were lobbying Scottish Government to block the plans as they would run along a Former trackbed, that is now a footpath that may be lost in places... despite this being the same route announced 10 years ago, with celebration
Its a shame, but the old routes simply are not an option, for the most part
Just because closing a line was a bad idea, does not mean re-opening it is a good idea.
Such is true for the GCML. Even if the route still existed to be reopened, it was only ever designed to do 90mph, which is significantly slower than the slowest trains on our network today.
@@barrieshepherd7694 the route is …. However some of it has been built on and the amazing viaducts some of them have been blown up
Suspect there are more friends of the government in the highways and oil sector than the rail sector. 'Twas ever thus.
Well done report.
I'm in the US, so this doesn't matter to me, but some observations...
I saw a report that France has built out their HSR system to the point that short haul airline flights have ended, shifted to HSR, to save an enormous amount of fuel. This is a reason for a full HSR network in the fairly dense UK. The other big reason, as stated, is to separate long distance traffic from local and freight traffic. Building just a small part of the network is Completely Ufeleff (Jeremy Clarkson voice).
People keep wondering why the US doesn't build more HSR. Note that the state of Texas alone is 2.8 times the area of the entire UK, and has less than half the population of the UK.
The answer is to build a better product and people will use it. Mandates have become discredited in the last few years.
HS2 killed by Train Drivers Strike. Trains will only work in the UK when the Robots are in the drivers seat.
As usual, great work Paul! From the title I thought you were going to talk about us here in America!😂 Keep up the good fight!
It's the classic - why should railways be classed as a loss, the roads don't make money.....
Actually the roads make a ton of money, for the government. You pay for the right to use the road (Road Fund License), then you pay Fuel Duty on your petrol or diesel. Then, to add insult to injury, you pay VAT on your Fuel Duty! And that doesn't even take into account the taxes you pay to buy the vehicle in the first place. The Government wants as many cars on the roads as possible, it's what they pay themselves and their friends with. Especially with less and less people actually working and paying Income Tax.
More what I meant was they don't make a profit.... it costs a lot more to build and maintain the roads than they make in various taxes
@ley999 Given the state of the roads here, it's hard to say there's much spent on their maintenance. And the price of fuel here is about £1.50 a litre, about half of which goes straight into the coffers of the Treasury. There are millions of people using the roads in the UK right now, and even that drink you buy in the filling station is taxed. Trust me, they're taking a literal fortune from us every single day.
Trains are a much more efficient way of moving people (the economy of scale of nothing else), so if it costs more to take a train somewhere than drive there you something isn't right. We know we're getting ripped off on the roads, so how much more of the piss are they taking with the railways?
hello again Paul, another very interesting video, enjoyed this one again , really well done and thank you 😊
It isn't just HS2, it seems that every civil infrastructure project for the last 20 odd years has been cut back, over budget, highly delayed and not meeting standards. Off the top of my head I can think of the Elizabeth line, Edinburgh Trams, Millenium Projects, West Coast Main Line upgrade... From what I have heard a large part of the problem is that they have been inconsistant with projects meaning that each one requires a large number of contracted staff rather than having long term staff. Also the failure to commit means that ideas are discussed for decades before any action is taken. For example, although I can no longer call myself a young man, most of my life there has been discussion about a new runway in London without it either being completely cancelled or a single spade put in the ground. Apart from the immediate effect of not having these facilities, the uncertainty means business are afraid to commit to projects where these are a deciding factor.
As someone who used to work for a national Contractor on the cost side I can tell you it's not just government projects that have a budget problem. It's all construction projects. The problem starts with a cost consultant who puts a budget in place but doesn't have the expertise to understand the true cost.But redesigning and de specing a building project is easier to do - put it in a different place on the proposed site, find another site, reduce the size of the building, de spec the specification. But you can't do any of those things with a railway or any other civil engineering structure.
@@TrevorWilliams-fq8mgThanks for adding to this, but it is quite disheartening to hear that the cost consultant doesn't have the expertise. I had an interesting conversation about China. There is a lot wrong with the government there, but they do seem to do large projects well. While part of this is no doubt due to liberties the government can take that they wouldn't in this country, another factor seems to be that the authorities are full of engineers that actually know about civil projects. Maybe it would be good to have more people with an engineering and technical background to make decisions in this country that actually know about projects.
@@tomq6491that's exactly right. A mixed development at Deptford- our price 104 million. Our competitors price 102 million. Client budget as advised by his cost consultant 78 million. I asked the cost consultant how many tower cranes he had in his budget. He said as many as is necessary. I said we need 4. He said that's outrageous. I repeated my question, and he repeated his answer. He was just trying to justify his lost cause.
The country is being dismantled by a failed political system. Education, health, transport are pillars of society, not just ‘cost centres’. There’s some kind of dystopian society laid out for us, where we don’t go anywhere and remain stuck in front of a screen beavering away until AI replaces everyone. Rail, affordable rail, is critical for our collective futures, along with car pooling and other alternatives. Instead, we have a nation throttled by mismanagement and facing an uncertain future as all our key pillars crumble through under investment.
I’m so happy you’ve made this video. I think the biggest failure of this project is the lack of showing the great things it does.
Because we're British, invented the blasted thing, & successive Governments & others can't organise a party in a brewery.
There are too many examples over the decades & I've never been able to work-out why. I think we treat these projects as 'party political footballs' whereas other countries view them as strategic infrastructure for the good of the nation.
2 party fptp politics is a big part of the problem.
I thought the reopening of the Moor Street line was meant to relieve capacity in Birmingham as the Worcester line trains used to go from New Street. I think there are places such as Crewe, Doncaster, Newark, York etc where east-west routes cross north-south ones. These (such as new platforms at Crewe so the Manchester / Liverpool - Wales trains don't have to cross the WCML and a new flyover at Newark to take the Nottingham - Lincoln line over the ECML) could relieve capacity at relatively low costs. There are also disused railways such as Swinton - Normanton & Glossop - Penistone that used to be inter-city routes that could be reopened.
Great video, although that clip of Sunak in Manchester really riles me!
Me too
Nicely done, sir (from the USA, home of the conflated and misunderstood cost-benefit.)
Great vid. The key points are crystal clear and always have been. It's not a level playing field. Roads get built with very shakey business cases, but railways have to have a much shorter payback and the benefits of recreating an integrated rail network are never truly considered. This is completely backwards, of course. More cynically, Tory MPs probably aren't members of the rail infrastructure lobby, but are members of private health care, so guess what gets promulgated!
its a fine balancing act between Cost and Benefit, as for the lower thames crossing between Kent and Essex there is a good reason for that project and its fundamentally the same as HS2 its all about capacity, given that the M20/M25 Motorway is a major trunk route from the Dover ports into London and the rest of the country and as a result theres significant strain on the 2 pre-existing routes (Blackwall Tunnel and the QE2 Crossing Tunnel/Bridge)
As for HS2 i fear it won't do a huge ammount to mitigate road traffic on that route as the cost of a ticket between the 2 ends of the line will likely be eyewateringly expensive compared to teh alturnative, as it stands it costs £82.50 to go between Ashford (AFK) and London St Pancras (STP) during peak hours and roughly £38 off peak and thats roughly only a distance of about 60 miles... the problem is who will be able to afford to use it? im a railfan myself but the overboated prices are doing more harm than good to the viability of any new railways/routes
The thing is Scotland government has already spent 15 to 24 million on there part of HS2 and they have been told they will not get any of that money back
Sorry but you will find Scotland has spent NOTHING on HS2, where did you get that stupid idea from and Scotland has never ever had any part in HS2 as it has never been planned to build HS2 north of Crewe
That's new to me? Is this another of the ridiculous rantings of the Scottish National Party?
I think there is a bit of confusion. HS2 is not going to Scotland, probably never will. But under the devolution funding system, if England spends money on rail infrastructure, Scotland gets an equivalent. So the cutting of HS2 funding in England would lead to a reduction in funding to Scotland.
Wales also has no HS2 going to it, and now further away, but is still paying for HS2 even if it doesn’t benefit Wales. Wales get £0 in funding.
It hasn’t been scaled back by distance, it’s been scaled back by time. The maximum commute into London and no more.
living in a country (Denmark) where we spend billions building bridges, I never understood why HS2 would cost so much. Had no idea they included the trains and depots, and the other crap that isn't really part of the line - that's a completely absurd way of calculating cost. Here in Denmark they normally announce the total cost of the line - the Femern connection is a great example - and then talk about what the individual bridges and tunnels will cost by themselves, since they are important connections on their own even without being part of whole line, but the cost of the line is only the line itself and any stations along the way, it doesn't include all the extra to make it work and it definitely doesn't include trains. The Copenhagen Metro and our new LRTs are the only Danish networks where the trains were ordered before the construction was completed, but the way they normally do things here on the regular train network, is that the lines are built and then they run what trains they already have until the budget allows them to order the new trains that are supposed to run on the new line. Thus we got about 100 km of 250 km/h rail line a few years ago, which will eventually connect to the Femern line, but we're not getting new intercity trains till around 2030 or later
At last, someone who can talk some sense about cost comparisons. When you add all the other costs in, some of which you mention the cost of building here compares to mainland Europe.
Well the water table is being affected by HS2 cutting across the landscape in Buckinghamshire Paul; and the ancient woodlands being destroyed too ..had they not dropped the Aylesbury spur from The East-West line then I think the locals (including myself ) might have been more supportive… however with so much of the project now been cancelled, I cannot see that changing. With some other projects being promised money instead .. we do need to re-open some of those closed lines including lost branches .. here in Bucks the link between High Wycombe & Bourne End is a perfect example.. closed post Beeching .. it would be very welcome now with The Elizabeth Line running through Maidenhead & give alternative routes into London for both GWR & Chiltern Railways.
My only concern all along has been how HS2 was supposed to free up capacity elsewhere .. I could not see how that would help the Chiltern Railways line without forcing passengers to have to go into London to get to Birmingham; if they tried that then it would just force people back into their cars!
The water table is affected mainly by climate change and the effects of building and agriculture. The ancient woodland thing is almost totally a red herring. You can open branch lines but it won't help congestion. It isn't about the Chilterns, a high speed line takes fast trains off the main network and frees up space for local trains, around Manchester, Birmingham and all points between and towards London. The TGV lines do this in France, the Bordeaux-Toulouse TGV line will create better local services in the Garonne and Tarn valleys, but then the French know the value of infrastructure.
I often wonder if the anti's travel along routes like the M40 'guilt free' as if it was always there.
A very good video Paul and a very thought provoking one too. Makes you think how short sighted the Beeching report was. We have gone to where you could of got almost anywhere in the country by rail to having to use a car
If it was left to private hands, HS2 would be finished before he even had time to cancel it.
I know this because our existing network was largely build by rail barons, who got it done fast and cheap.
Good one Paul, well worth highlighting. My view is we would need a full breakdown of all significant changes made from the original plans (which were much more than just outline proposals), and which were done to keep predominantly Conservative constituencies happy. It looks to me as though no real cost control was ever capable of being exercised against that budget if contracts were let on a cost-plus basis thus effectively ruling out price competition. I understand the amount of tunnelling has increased significantly from that planned and overground viaducts seem to require the most amazing temporary works which As I understand it are paid for in full but will disappear into the asset bank of said cost-plus contractors. If so these changes could well explain why a PM who loves his numbers and private jets would see the cancellation as a possibility even though it meant removing the entire reason for HS2, railway capacity increase. I would love to know from anyone actually in the know working on the project, because we are left to glean only snippets of information from multiple sources and the HS2 site leaves so many questions unanswered.
WHO is going to use HS2 and for WHAT? It would make far more sense to invest the money in the existing network to provide trains that run on time at a price people can afford.
Excellent summary. Have you already made the video about the A303 Stonehenge scheme cancellation?
Paul, as ever this was brilliant, clear and concise. Thank you!
Excellent Video Paul, Thank you for sharing a BALANCED VIEW of what could've been Britain's Greatest internal Achievement. Thanks to the incumbent Government and their short-termism, we are left behind again, Brexit has shown the importance of keeping things moving but its always the excuse "we can't afford it" well actually for our children and their children WE CAN'T AFFORD TO NOT BUILD THE REQUIRED INFRASTRUCTURE.
Should have connected the Northern cities together first , creating the Northern Powerhouse , then connected it all to London last .
Can't say I agree with @Paul on this one I'm afraid. There are certainly examples of poorly used and down-right misused data on both sides of the argument, and I agree that we do need to increase capacity and utility in our rail infrastructure but I don't see HS2 as the answer. Even if it were the means to "level-up" Britain by providing currently non-existent levels of connectivity between cities in the "Northern Power-House" as well as linking them to the south, it should have been started in the north where the greatest benefit would be felt and then continued as originally planned - a half-arsed bodge is less than pointless (IMO ofc).
As for my opinion on what we do need, it would be to increase rail capacity with more lines to enable trains to be more useful to more people rather than just go slightly faster for a few people. In other words, not HS rail (Britain's too small to need it) but more connectivity (HS2 didn't provide a lot of connectivity since it only connected a handful of cities).
Full disclosure, I live near the route but not so close I can see it, thanks to a hill, but close enough that we're heavily affected by it. However, I'm also an engineer, love trains and railways and support the need for improved infrastructure. I just don't see HS2 as an improvement.
HS2 Benefits literally hundreds of towns it will never stop by allowing more regional trains, more frequently since fast intercity trains can be moved to seperate lines. Someone living in Keynes is directly benefitted by HS2 NOT stopping there
@@joshmarsh2532 You're right and I agree that MK and other similarly placed/serviced places may benefit in that way (the devil will be in the detail of course), but places closer to a HS2 terminus (e.g. Wendover in the video) will likely see more people using existing services to get to London to access HS2 (this is what allegedly happened in towns near HS-stations in France). This line has it particularly bad since there is no direct connection to anywhere other than London so imroving "normal" rail links would definitely improve their lot as well as relieve the load on other services to/from London. I think the provision of extra capacity/lines and connectivity is definitely needed, I just don't think HS2 was the right solution (cycnically, it does look like the "shiniest" one with the best political headlines - but that now seems to be a case of "be careful what you wish for 😉).
the problem is with government and in particular the Treasury know the cost of everything and the value of nothing