HS2

Complete waste of money. A vanity project.

100% wot Kevin sed.

Quite apart from the questionable projected savings in journey times, recent reports regarding compulsory purchase of properties, where the sellers have still not been paid, and are suffering financial hardship, make for troubled reading.

HS2, together with the recent agreement to purchase one hundred and thirty eight F-35  combat aircraft, at £92 million a pop, makes one despair at how our money is being spent. 

Given the poor state of the railways generally in the UK, it is clear that they could have benefitted greatly from investment in maintenance. This would have bought advantages to far more people than HS2 ever could, without decimating another huge swathe of countryside. An F-35 would be more fun, though!

ChrisSU posted:

Given the poor state of the railways generally in the UK, it is clear that they could have benefitted greatly from investment in maintenance. This would have bought advantages to far more people than HS2 ever could, without decimating another huge swathe of countryside. An F-35 would be more fun, though!

Tough decision, Chez Dave ................ my own personal F-35, or a Naim ND555? 

Dave,

I'm sort of with you on HS2. However, in France, the TGV projects provided very generous compensation packages. Result - very few disgruntled property owners and a significant reduction in dispute (read solicitor) costs. HS1 (ok it was called CTRL, or Union Railway at the time) took the approach that HS2 has adopted and it upset a lot of people, but it seems to have paid off. I'm not sure what the return on investment figures look like at the moment for HS2. Marginal at best I would guess.

As for 138 F-35 combat aircraft, well I guess i'm somewhat biased here, but Aircraft, aircraft carriers, submarines and nuclear weapons etc still get you a seat on global influential committees. Or we could rely on France or the USA......nah !

dave marshall posted:

ChrisSU posted:

Given the poor state of the railways generally in the UK, it is clear that they could have benefitted greatly from investment in maintenance. This would have bought advantages to far more people than HS2 ever could, without decimating another huge swathe of countryside. An F-35 would be more fun, though!

Tough decision, Chez Dave ................ my own personal F-35, or a Naim ND555? 

I might have dropped a Zero or two, but I think the F35 budget works out at £200 per person. So not quite an ND555 yet

HS2 OTOH works out at more like £900 percapita, so we are into Mu-so territory !

Don Atkinson posted:

However, in France, the TGV projects provided very generous compensation packages. Result - very few disgruntled property owners and a significant reduction in dispute (read solicitor) costs.

A much less difficult problem in France, as it is twice the size of Britain, with a similar population. Building HS2 through the already disastrously overcrowded South-East of Britain is, in my view, a very bad thing. 

I understand your concern Chris, and i’m Not convinced HS2 is a good investment, it might be, it might not be. The selected alignment  might also be less than ideal. Most are usually a compromise.

However, if you worked where I do, you would soon see there are plenty of green fields left in SE England. It surprises me each and every day !

Don Atkinson posted:

I understand your concern Chris, and i’m Not convinced HS2 is a good investment, it might be, it might not be. The selected alignment  might also be less than ideal. Most are usually a compromise.

However, if you worked where I do, you would soon see there are plenty of green fields left in SE England. It surprises me each and every day !

Yes, there are still lots of wonderful green spaces in the SE (albeit that most of them are unseasonably brown this year) but the pressure of human encroachment on the natural world is unsustainable. 

Don Atkinson posted:

HS2 OTOH works out at more like £900 percapita, so we are into Mu-so territory !

Don, that's assuming it stays on budget just look at the electrification of the south west railway section started at £800 million is approaching £3 billion and running six years behind schedule.

As I understand it, HS2 is something of a flagship project to show the rest of Europe, if not the world, that the UK isn't flagging behind other high-speed networks. What the rest of the world doesn't know, and the government seems to be turning a blind eye to is that saving 10 or 20 minutes in journey time is all very well if the darn trains actually run on time and aren't subject to strike action.

Then there's the price. The last time I travelled peak time from Euston to Manchester with Virgin it was £240 return. Even with a season ticket reduction that's a serious amount of dosh to shell out and still with HS2 a long commuting day. It's just not going to happen. Who is going to use it for goodness sake?

Jonners posted:

As I understand it, HS2 is something of a flagship project to show the rest of Europe, if not the world, that the UK isn't flagging behind other high-speed networks. What the rest of the world doesn't know, and the government seems to be turning a blind eye to is that saving 10 or 20 minutes in journey time is all very well if the darn trains actually run on time and aren't subject to strike action.

Then there's the price. The last time I travelled peak time from Euston to Manchester with Virgin it was £240 return. Even with a season ticket reduction that's a serious amount of dosh to shell out and still with HS2 a long commuting day. It's just not going to happen. Who is going to use it for goodness sake?

A surprisingly large number of people apparently do commute such long distances/times, a bit under 2 hours Doncaster to London, or a bit over that Manchester to London (+additional travel to Final destination) - and pay the exhorbitant season ticket costs. One reason they do is the extremely high cost of housing in, or near, London - but that much time commuting is not my idea of good use of my life...  

The appropriate answer, of course, instead of HS2, and instead of trying to cram in ever more homes where not only can people not afford them but there is precious little space, overcrowded roads and trains, and inadequate infrastructure like water supply, is force businesses to move well out of London, particularly North, banning any substantial new businesses in or near London unless there is an essential physical requirement such as transport of goods in or out of France (and that may not be a valid reason after Brexit!), meanwhile substantially increase business rates in the same area, at least for larger businesses, unless the same need is proven, to encourage some of them to move out. Sadly, of course, it will never happen.

Innocent Bystander posted:

A surprisingly large number of people apparently do commute such long distances/times, a bit under 2 hours Doncaster to London, or a bit over that Manchester to London (+additional travel to Final destination) - and pay the exhorbitant season ticket costs. One reason they do is the extremely high cost of housing in, or near, London - but that much time commuting is not my idea of good use of my life...  

The appropriate answer, of course, instead of HS2, and instead of trying to cram in ever more homes where not only can people not afford them but there is precious little space, overcrowded roads and trains, and inadequate infrastructure like water supply, is force businesses to move well out of London, particularly North, banning any substantial new businesses in or near London unless there is an essential physical requirement such as transport of goods in or out of France (and that may not be a valid reason after Brexit!), meanwhile substantially increase business rates in the same area, at least for larger businesses, unless the same need is proven, to encourage some of them to move out. Sadly, of course, it will never happen.

A lot of folks do commute down from the north but I reckon they stay over in hotels and B&B's and I think they drive down which explains the state of the motorways on Sunday evenings, Monday mornings and Friday evenings. 

Business has already gone to the north, hence George Osborne's "northern powerhouse" project. What hasn't happened is the improvement of the infrastructure between those cities. It can take longer to get from Leeds or Liverpool to Manchester than it can be to get to London. As for house prices, well they follow the money and if you've been to places like Harrogate, they're absolutely minted.

I was on holiday in Bamburgh last week in Northumberland. House prices there have tripled in under 5 years. 

I do know that Doncaster is a popular place for daily commuting to London (1¾ hrs to London). As for house prices, there are isolated places in the north where prices are high, but I don’t think any as high as anything comparable in or close to London, and the majority of areas far less. I have looked ar house prices recently on NE England, Rutland/cambridgeshire and north Kent, and I have a fair idea of what I could afford in each, or at least the sort of  area of each in which I would consider living, and what I woukd get for my money in Kent is far, far less than in either of the other locations.