Ditch HS2?

[classic33]

Would now be a good time to stop any further work on this?

There's fewer that will be commuting to work. Due to more working from home. People don't appear to be as willing to use the rail network. Any return on building it will take longer to be realised. Costs are rising, again.

The end of last year saw 1,600 cubic metres of Bentnoite, from one of it's construction sites. Network Rail say it is "highly polluting" in liquid form and a danger to the environment.
Water PH has been raised in the area of the loss, which may mean extra work will have to be done on drinking water supplies. At cost to who, and will it be only monetary.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/10/hs2-potentially-highly-polluting-bentonite

The fall in rail passenger traffic may be behind the increase in vehicle traffic around the various London construction sites.
There's talk of downscaling parts of the southern end of the project.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/la...sues-at-euston-and-old-oak-common-10-09-2021/

There's suggestions being made that parts of the project should be mothballed. Possibly integrating it into existing upgrades. Decision may be made in the next few weeks.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-pressure-grows-to-stay-the-course-for-eastern-leg-q68k2q50v

When completed the journey time, Leeds to London, was expected to be cut by a full 30 minutes. With work on the new platforms at Leeds has carried on, at the opposite side of the station from the entrance built for the new service. Where new track and new platforms were built for the now finished entrance.

Should a halt now be called to any further work for this project. Will passenger numbers return to the levels of two years ago(I don't think they will) which was the last time these numbers were reviewed.

 

[mudsticks]

Would now be a good time to stop any further work on this?

There's fewer that will be commuting to work. Due to more working from home. People don't appear to be as willing to use the rail network. Any return on building it will take longer to be realised. Costs are rising, again.

The end of last year saw 1,600 cubic metres of Bentnoite, from one of it's construction sites. Network Rail say it is "highly polluting" in liquid form and a danger to the environment.
Water PH has been raised in the area of the loss, which may mean extra work will have to be done on drinking water supplies. At cost to who, and will it be only monetary.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/10/hs2-potentially-highly-polluting-bentonite

The fall in rail passenger traffic may be behind the increase in vehicle traffic around the various London construction sites.
There's talk of downscaling parts of the southern end of the project.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/la...sues-at-euston-and-old-oak-common-10-09-2021/

There's suggestions being made that parts of the project should be mothballed. Possibly integrating it into existing upgrades. Decision may be made in the next few weeks.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-pressure-grows-to-stay-the-course-for-eastern-leg-q68k2q50v

When completed the journey time, Leeds to London, was expected to be cut by a full 30 minutes. With work on the new platforms at Leeds has carried on, at the opposite side of the station from the entrance built for the new service. Where new track and new platforms were built for the now finished entrance.

Should a halt now be called to any further work for this project. Will passenger numbers return to the levels of two years ago(I don't think they will) which was the last time these numbers were reviewed.

If only they would.

There was a good thing doing the rounds a while back along the lines of

"If you could preserve X acres of ancient trees, and woodland, diverse ecology, landscape value , peaceful countryside, etc etc by adding twenty minutes to your journey time, would you be willing to do that?"

I really hope they do..

They could use 'covid' as a face saving excuse - like they have for so much else.

The whole network needs updating , and expanding even.

Not this one vanity project , which is doubtless making someone very rich , whilst adding little to nothing to passenger convenience or reliability..

Which is what we need to get more of us back on the rails, and out of cars..

 

[Milkfloat]

Living in the middle of HS2 where any bike ride from my house involves the possibility of being turned around by heavies, or finding a lovely cycling road permanently blocked up suggests that it is far too late for this stage. I am not a man of the railways, but I understood that HS2 will free up space for more freight on the existing rails - which could be a good thing. However, I am not sure why we need HS2 to be so high speed, I think the need to run it in a straight line is hugely costly both in real terms and environmental, this just makes it a vanity project.

 

[Bromptonaut]

As @Milkfloat points out the rationale for HS2 is capacity. The north facing lines out of London, particularly those from Euston and Kings Cross, were full pre Covid. The departures per hour were all the track/signalling could handle and the trains were as long as the platforms etc could handle. As the upgrade to the West Coast Line in the early noughties showed trying to modernise a railway AND run a decent service while doing so is a fool's errand.

The jury is still out on the extent to which regular travel will return. We're looking at a 10+ year timeframe not what happens in the coming months. The work already in progress around the Colne Valley, the Chilterns and Euston isn't something that can be just abandoned. All sorts of stabilisation and either continuation or reinstatement of currently closed roads would be needed. The groundworks immediately north and west of Euston are immense.

I'm not sure building a slower speed Victorian style sinuous line makes any sense at all. Curves are the curse of the modern railway whereas electric traction makes light work of gradients.

@classic33 might get some releif though as there seem to be moves to curtail the eastern limb, possibly as a quid pro quo for imrovements to the transpennine lines.

 

[classic33]

They're downsizing the southern end of the service as well.

Two years ago it wasn't expected to reach Leeds in 2034-2035. Costs have risen, passenger numbers have declined. And if working from home does become the new normal, then there will be fewer needing to use a North - South link. Much less a high speed link.

As for services across the Pennies, the track and signalling has only been recently upgraded. We have newer rolling stock, that has access problems at many stations, with the driver along as a passenger. In much the same way an autonomous car still requires a human operator to be onboard, ready to take control should the computer fail.

 

[Pale Rider]

HS2 is looking increasingly out of step with the travel requirements of today and the likely future.

As a Tory, I'm against government compulsion on the citizen, but I do wonder if we should be encouraging people to travel long distances across the country.

There was a tree hugger on GB News this morning dismissed HS2 as nothing more than a glorified airport link.

I'm not sure if that's entirely fair, but encouraging more air travel is surely the opposite of what we should be doing from an environmental perspective.

 

[classic33]

HS2 is looking increasingly out of step with the travel requirements of today and the likely future.

As a Tory, I'm against government compulsion on the citizen, but I do wonder if we should be encouraging people to travel long distances across the country.

There was a tree hugger on GB News this morning dismissed HS2 as nothing more than a glorified airport link.

I'm not sure if that's entirely fair, but encouraging more air travel is surely the opposite of what we should be doing from an environmental perspective.

Two years ago, Leeds to London, possibly enough passenger traffic to justify it. Now that has gone, and looks to decline even further.
Ten years time who knows.

It would be ironic if what is causing delays around the construction sites is the very traffic they said it would reduce.

 

[FishFright]

I'm still a little torn on this. More rail capacity is good thing , especially with goods movements taking trucks off the road. But the cynic in me just sees this as expanding the commute capacity of London and sucking more wealth and people towards the capital.

Where ever you build new infrastructure there will be sacrificing something as there is little to no unused space here,

 

[mjr]

Where ever you build new infrastructure there will be sacrificing something as there is little to no unused space here,

A chunk of the southern HS2 is recycling the former Great Central Railway corridor, but some of it wouldn't fit through towns like Brackley and it's a bit unfair to demolish too much for a line that won't directly serve them (they will still have to use a bus to reach the Chiltern line to catch a train) so it does leave the route there and cut a new path through the Northamptonshire uplands.

North of Birmingham, it follows the M42/A42 corridor to Derby and the M1/M18 to Maltby. It's mainly from there to Woodlesford (for Leeds) and Church Fenton (for York and onwards) which isn't either an existing or former transport route. Have a click around https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ (on a high enough zoom to see the black dotted lines for former routes) and you may be surprised how much is near current roads or rails. I don't know if it could be aligned more tightly without limiting speeds and increasing noise and wear. I hope they've considered it.

I think HS2 should be built to get passengers off the WCML so that more freight can go on it. The Felixstowe WCML "bypass" route via Ely, Peterborough and Nuneaton is already full and the improvements at Ely won't be enough to cope with expected growth as move road freight moves to rail. Also the GEML-NLL-WCML route is already electric (only a few short stretches like Ipswich to Felixstowe need to be wired to unlock that), while EPN is not planned for electric soon.

I also think they should spend a few more quid and reinstate the cycleway alongside that was better value for money than the rails!

 

[Banderill]

How much has been spent on it so far?

 

[classic33]

£11 billion has been spent to date including land and property provisions, with a further £12.6 billion contracted out.

Figures from march this year, with an updated figure due this month.

 

[classic33]

A chunk of the southern HS2 is recycling the former Great Central Railway corridor, but some of it wouldn't fit through towns like Brackley and it's a bit unfair to demolish too much for a line that won't directly serve them (they will still have to use a bus to reach the Chiltern line to catch a train) so it does leave the route there and cut a new path through the Northamptonshire uplands.

North of Birmingham, it follows the M42/A42 corridor to Derby and the M1/M18 to Maltby. It's mainly from there to Woodlesford (for Leeds) and Church Fenton (for York and onwards) which isn't either an existing or former transport route. Have a click around https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ (on a high enough zoom to see the black dotted lines for former routes) and you may be surprised how much is near current roads or rails. I don't know if it could be aligned more tightly without limiting speeds and increasing noise and wear. I hope they've considered it.

I think HS2 should be built to get passengers off the WCML so that more freight can go on it. The Felixstowe WCML "bypass" route via Ely, Peterborough and Nuneaton is already full and the improvements at Ely won't be enough to cope with expected growth as move road freight moves to rail. Also the GEML-NLL-WCML route is already electric (only a few short stretches like Ipswich to Felixstowe need to be wired to unlock that), while EPN is not planned for electric soon.

I also think they should spend a few more quid and reinstate the cycleway alongside that was better value for money than the rails!

The terminal, at Leeds, would have been on the Crown Point Retail Park. Totally separate from the main station, and linked by a moving walkway(Long since scrapped on cost grounds). And as said earlier, the new platforms for the HS2 are at the opposite side of the station.
The lines were upgraded at Holbeck Junction, itself a site for the new terminal at one stage, to take the line through the Southern side of the station.

 

[BoldonLad]

Instead of scrapping it (HS2), I would like to see some real Project Control, Cost Control and Accountability.... dream on

 

[Mike_P]

In terms of traveling time saving Leeds-Birmingham has the biggest improvement compared with the current often slow crawl.

 

[classic33]

In terms of traveling time saving Leeds-Birmingham has the biggest improvement compared with the current often slow crawl.

But that won't be for another 13 years, if they build it as far as Leeds.