HS2 Required or a Potential Saving?

[vim_fuego]

Since the pandemic workers appetite to travel to work has reduced, especially after the following cost of living and fuel issues. My offices run, at best, at 50% of historical occupancy, and that’s only Tuesday through Thursday. Monday and Friday are write-offs. I hear that many NHS offices are poorly attended and not worth keeping open and my clients are still indicating willingness to work remotely.

The world that required the ability to get from Manchester to London 40 minutes faster than before has changed. We have a £40bn black hole apparently so do we keep on with HS2 or pay off existing contracts, hook up what’s fine with existing rail and save the rest instead of tax hikes?

 

[Tin basher]

All depends on how far down the HS2 rabbit hole you see the whole project. Is it cheaper to finish the project or cheaper to pay off contracts and offer redundancy to the companies employees who lose their jobs. There are around 25,000 working on HS2
that s a lot to add to the unemployment numbers. Enviromental factors also come in is it better to go by train and take cars off the motorway network, even before you think of the eco-mentalists stance. WFH is a thing now and there's no going back to pre-covid working practices unless you are in the RMT obviously.

HS2 recruitment drive takes total workforce to almost 25,000 people | New Civil Engineer

HS2’s workforce increased by more than 2,000 in the last quarter, with the construction of Britain’s new railway now supporting a record 24,800 jobs.

www.newcivilengineer.com

 

[busby1971]

We might have needed more capacity, but certainly had no need for High Speed now or before.

I’d cancel and shift the investment to the Liverpool to Hull line, I reckon there’s probably enough people in this area to keep a regular commuter service going.

 

[Barch]

A housing estate about a mile from me has been put on hold because of HS2 and the residents are fuming.

Some people signed contracts on brand new houses, moved in and then told that their homes would be compulsorily purchased.

>> Linky Thingy <<

 

[Tin basher]

A housing estate about a mile from me has been put on hold because of HS2 and the residents are fuming.

Some people signed contracts on brand new houses, moved in and then told that their homes would be compulsorily purchased.

>> Linky Thingy <<

Not just houses golf courses as well, holes moved, removed, changed etc. Played ingestre GC before HS2 intervened (nice enough layout) and the members, at the time, were not a happy bunch to say the very least. Ingestre is a bit upmarket and has quite a blue centric membership. The prospect of the course being "ruined" by HS2 was the focus of much local whinging . Now its a different story they like the proposed new layout and like even more the money provided to construct the new holes.

The NEW Course

Ingestre Park Golf Club is set in the grounds of Ingestre Hall in the heart of the country side. The only noises you may hear are the birds singing and maybe the odd shout of “FORE”. The course offers an enjoyable and testing game of golf to players of all abilities. The stunning array of trees...

www.ingestregolf.co.uk

 

[Oldstacker]

I was always dubious about the need for HS2 and my doubts grew as the route was revealed. Had it been planned & built as an extension to HS1, from east London northwards so that through trains from the north to the chunnel and the continent could be operated (as was originally planned) it may have made sense but to leave the first section as a disconnected route from west London to Birmingham (already served by 2 separate routes from London) was madness. The rail network, as it stands, needs huge investment and it would have made much more sense (imho) to have spent the HS2 money on some smaller scale works (like East West Rail, Oxford - Bedford- Cambridge or the Trans-Pennine corridor) that would have improved capacity and connectivity for more people and freight and, even better, generated some returns on the investment a lot sooner.

 

[muttywhitedog]

Hybrid working has killed off the need for additional train capacity. I'm struggling to understand why we actually need so many services from Northern Cities to London. Today there appear to be four off peak trains an hour running from Newcastle to London, and two per hour from Leeds to London. My local mainline station (Peterborough) has at least 6 off-peak trains per hour as it is not only served by LNER, but Thameslink.

I recently travelled on an early morning "commuter" train to London from Peterborough, arriving in London around 7:30. It cost me £53 for two advance singles. The train was almost empty. On the way back, I travelled from London off peak (0915) and it cost me £18 for the same distance journey. Again the train was empty.

 

[Oldstacker]

You may be right that some routes have excess passenger capacity at the moment but in some areas the difficulty is that higher volumes of relatively slow moving freight don't fit well with an effective fast or frequent passenger service.

Saving the planet requires growth in both areas, across the country not the all services being between 'nowhere' and London hub and spoke model that currently is the core network.

Hence, I would have spent the HS2 money on alleviating regional pinch points and cross country routes such as Ipswich to Cambridge which carries large volumes of container traffic from Felixstowe to the midlands or refreshing and extending local passenger services such as Okehampton to Exeter. In both cases improvements can make rail a much more attractive àlternative to road.

They also make more sense, in my view, than simply increasing the numbers of people who can travel to London at increasing speed.