Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
Why would you build a full new route from Manchester to Glasgow ?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Hebrew is ambiguous to tense. And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
A fascinating ambiguity runs through this subject. It starts with the two creation accounts in Genesis, where in the first God creates male and female in God's image, so that male and female are equally icons of God while the second (the Adam and Eve myth) pretty clearly subordinates the female to the male - ribs and all that.
Everyone agrees that language about God in terms of sex/gender is about custom and use, not about the nature of God in itself. Gets complicated with the male nature of Jesus of course....which debate continues.
I'm bored with HS2 now. But I find it utterly bizarre that the Tories have let it dominate their conference. Assuming the review is genuine, all Sunak had to do was state very clearly when an announcement would be made (say, November 1st, or in the Autumn statement), and that until then nobody in government would be commenting further. The press would soon have got bored with silence.
But I guess they have neither the political guile nor the self-discipline to carry out something so obvious.
Certainly, it's not obvious why they are waiting either to confirm or deny the rumour.
The purpose seems to be to lure Labour into making some sort of commitment, presumably to trap them into having to say how they will pay for it?
I think it is this. What else could it be? Makes zero sense to allow the entire conference to be derailed (ho hum) by this. Throw down a man trap for Starmer and ask him to step into it.
If they can succeed in having Labour say they will use their evil Meat Tax to pay for HS2 then the Tories will win a majority of 704.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Hebrew is ambiguous to tense. And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
A fascinating ambiguity runs through this subject. It starts with the two creation accounts in Genesis, where in the first God creates male and female in God's image, so that male and female are equally icons of God while the second (the Adam and Eve myth) pretty clearly subordinates the female to the male - ribs and all that.
Everyone agrees that language about God in terms of sex/gender is about custom and use, not about the nature of God in itself. Gets complicated with the male nature of Jesus of course....which debate continues.
Pronouns denote more than gender - "I am who I am" as a statement uses pronouns.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
The bit that isn't closed is that he is favourite with the betting markets (just) to be POTUS. I don't think we are as frightened of this mass voter criminal-fascist tendency as we should be.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Yes, it's ridiculous. Even if the AG has political views, her decision to prosecute is entirely vindicated by the fact that a guilty verdict was reached. Anyone who thinks she shouldn't have prosecuted is saying they think Trump should not have had to stand trial for something that he has been shown to be guilty of.
If you want someone to be let off a crime they definitely did, just because of their political status, YOU are the one who is politically motivated.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
Why would you build a full new route from Manchester to Glasgow ?
At least as far as Preston because the capacity there is absolutely dreadful as has been in the news a heck of a lot and I've got friends who take that route North who object to it. The Manchester to Preston leg is notoriously bad and needs investment.
Preston to Glasgow? I honestly couldn't say if its necessary or not. Others have said its a good idea, I don't know myself, but I'm not opposed to investment.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Hebrew is ambiguous to tense. And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
A fascinating ambiguity runs through this subject. It starts with the two creation accounts in Genesis, where in the first God creates male and female in God's image, so that male and female are equally icons of God while the second (the Adam and Eve myth) pretty clearly subordinates the female to the male - ribs and all that.
Everyone agrees that language about God in terms of sex/gender is about custom and use, not about the nature of God in itself. Gets complicated with the male nature of Jesus of course....which debate continues.
"Rib" is a questionable translation that subordinates the female more. "Side" is probably better, which does so less.
Allah is more clearly thought of as beyond gender compared to Christian tradition.
Off topic: Before I disappear on holiday I wanted to post on the 19 Oct by election which could be won by any of the main players. Yes I'm talking about the Horlseys by election for Surrey County Council.
This really is a cliff hanger. This used to be a rock solid seat for the Tories. Posh central. Then we had the debacle in Guildford Borough Council (I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary) and the Tories got wiped out in Guildford by the LDs in the centre and the newly formed independents R4GV in the villages. The latter being the more impressive gains.
In the last set of Borough elections the Tories made a comeback. You won't see that if you look at the overall results as it shows the LDs taking control of the council, but that hides another story. The Tories lost their main last stronghold (6 councillors, 5 to LDs and 1 to an indy), but actually made good gains everywhere else at the expense of R4GV.
In the Horsleys however R4GV remained strong and R4GV hold all the Borough seats making up this County ward except 1 and hold them by decent margins.
However a popular R4GV councillor has stood down so this should make it a strong possible gain for the Tories.
But another quirk is this ward has moved from the Mole valley constituency to the Guildford constituency and we all know how the LDs love a by election, so they are going for it.
Anyone of the 3 could win and nobody has a clue.
I vote here and am involved in the campaign and have arranged my proxy vote for when I am away. Previously I have voted LD or R4GV. I am voting LD this time.
"I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary"
unexpected shade from you there
Oh I love @Cyclefree's headers, but really a book (or several) could be written on the final few years of the Conservative administration in Guildford. And in fairness that is not a reflection on the Conservatives but the individuals involved (although only one was actually found guilty of a criminal offence!) In fact the Mole Valley Conservatives fell out badly with the Guildford Conservatives over some of the issues.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669 ...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
Why would you build a full new route from Manchester to Glasgow ?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669 ...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
I have no views on the substance of HS2 except that it would be impossible to make it up and be taken seriously, but I make of it that hell hath no fury like a CEO and chairman scorned. (And that he may well be on the right side of history but might have to wait a bit for his next honour or a seat in the House of Lords).
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
I think it is an important test of Conservatives willingness to maintain basic anti-prejudice boundaries as to whether this Susan Hall claim - criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews as simply untrue - is challenged and withdrawn. https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1709088356427087874
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
You may ask yourself why, except for the Chinese line, there is no working high-speed Maglev anywhere in the world (though the different Japanese system may - eventually - come online). And why Germany's abandoned the idea; and why China have abandoned any plans to extend their Maglev route.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669 ...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
I have no views on the substance of HS2 except that it would be impossible to make it up and be taken seriously, but I make of it that hell hath no fury like a CEO and chairman scorned. (And that he may well be on the right side of history but might have to wait a bit for his next honour or a seat in the House of Lords).
A friend who worked for HS2 Ltd (in a not insignificant role) says this article from the Guardian is accurate and may even understate the problems:
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
B. Because you have no idea of the costings, and therefore the affordability.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Yes, it's ridiculous. Even if the AG has political views, her decision to prosecute is entirely vindicated by the fact that a guilty verdict was reached. Anyone who thinks she shouldn't have prosecuted is saying they think Trump should not have had to stand trial for something that he has been shown to be guilty of.
If you want someone to be let off a crime they definitely did, just because of their political status, YOU are the one who is politically motivated.
As someone who was a director of three companies over 25 years, I have signed off numerous business accounts under that little paragraph that says that I "... acknowledge that these accounts provide a fair and accurate representation of the company's financial state in accordance with the Companies Act.." etc.
I have seen TV clips of Trump saying that his accounts were fantasies and no one should believe them. He convicted himself on TV. The man is an idiot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669 ...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
I have no views on the substance of HS2 except that it would be impossible to make it up and be taken seriously, but I make of it that hell hath no fury like a CEO and chairman scorned. (And that he may well be on the right side of history but might have to wait a bit for his next honour or a seat in the House of Lords).
A friend who worked for HS2 Ltd (in a not insignificant role) says this article from the Guardian is accurate and may even understate the problems:
In brief - too much middle management, changing minds too often.
I remember speaking to somebody who was hired to try and sort out the infamous NHS computer system, they had basically the same criticism. What should have been an achievable, was turned into alphabet soup by constant changing specs and infinite interference from government / middle management.
Good. It means those travelling from Manchester disembark at Euston not Old Oak. This IS investment in the North surely?
QTWAIN.
Investment in the North is improving travel between locations in the North, not those who go to London.
Yes, that does seem to be the plan. Don't spend billions on the fast line from Lichfield to Manchester but make use of the line you've built from Lichfield to London to speed up and make more reliable the train journeys between London and the North including finishing the link into Euston. Whilst spending the billions saved on commuter links in the North.
Win win
I can see the logic, the comms and decision making process has been appalling though.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
No, the tracks NEVER terminated in Manchester.
Manchester is a spur off the main line, designed for 230km/h, the top speed on any of the planned spurs.
Initially the plan was the main line would continue from Crewe to Preston, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate at Goldbourne, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate in Crewe.
And be it Preston, Goldbourne or Crewe, HS2 was always going to connect back to the WCML so the trains would continue north on the WCML.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Hebrew is ambiguous to tense. And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
A fascinating ambiguity runs through this subject. It starts with the two creation accounts in Genesis, where in the first God creates male and female in God's image, so that male and female are equally icons of God while the second (the Adam and Eve myth) pretty clearly subordinates the female to the male - ribs and all that.
Everyone agrees that language about God in terms of sex/gender is about custom and use, not about the nature of God in itself. Gets complicated with the male nature of Jesus of course....which debate continues.
"Rib" is a questionable translation that subordinates the female more. "Side" is probably better, which does so less.
Allah is more clearly thought of as beyond gender compared to Christian tradition.
It may not be in the nature of the divine to be gendered, but it is in the nature of language to be so. And this is true in Islam and Christianity.
IMHO both 'he' and 'she' language of God (though not of Jesus!) is fine, but we are not ready for 'it' language. Singular pronouns that are neutral and personal are not around yet, at least in the traditional rural community I have lived in for decades.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Yes, it's ridiculous. Even if the AG has political views, her decision to prosecute is entirely vindicated by the fact that a guilty verdict was reached. Anyone who thinks she shouldn't have prosecuted is saying they think Trump should not have had to stand trial for something that he has been shown to be guilty of.
If you want someone to be let off a crime they definitely did, just because of their political status, YOU are the one who is politically motivated.
As someone who was a director of three companies over 25 years, I have signed off numerous business accounts under that little paragraph that says that I "... acknowledge that these accounts provide a fair and accurate representation of the company's financial state in accordance with the Companies Act.." etc.
I have seen TV clips of Trump saying that his accounts were fantasies and no one should believe them. He convicted himself on TV. The man is an idiot.
I fully expect an appeal on the ground of the First Amendment protecting his right to produce false accounts on the basis that they were clearly satire.
And, naturally, the Supreme Court will vote 6-3 in his favour.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Am I missing something? There seems to be no live coverage of the Tory conference. Presume it will be same for Labour.
What would be the point?
Interesting that the BBC very nearly entirely ignored the LD conference. Perhaps they are getting the point that the way politics actually works, for people prepared to think about it, is only indirectly related to anything political party PR departments come up with.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
No, the tracks NEVER terminated in Manchester.
Manchester is a spur off the main line, designed for 230km/h, the top speed on any of the planned spurs.
Initially the plan was the main line would continue from Crewe to Preston, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate at Goldbourne, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate in Crewe.
And be it Preston, Goldbourne or Crewe, HS2 was always going to connect back to the WCML so the trains would continue north on the WCML.
The initial plan hasn't been the plan for years, so not sure why you keep referring to it?
Terminating at Golborne is not the same as terminating at Preston. Goldborne works for Warrington and Manchester, but not for Preston.
North from Manchester/Warrington to Preston is messed up currently, its been in the news constantly what a dreadful service that is. If we're having all this investment, it should have gone all the way, terminating at either Goldborne or Crewe makes no sense if you care about the North and not just London.
I think it is an important test of Conservatives willingness to maintain basic anti-prejudice boundaries as to whether this Susan Hall claim - criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews as simply untrue - is challenged and withdrawn. https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1709088356427087874
I would bet solid money that it won't be withdrawn.
There was coverage on BBC2 and news 24, Sky and GB news of Hunt's speech yesterday and will likely be for Sunak's speech too.
However little of the rest of the conference, for Labour too will likely be mainly Starmer and Reeves, even BBC Parliament showing Westminster select cttees and Senedd etc rather than conferences
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
FYI Northerners are less likely to be drivers than Southerners, after accounting for population density.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
I just spent a few nights there in a fairly cheap hotel without so much as a nibble from a bloodsucker - much better than frequent mosquito bites in Italy and the south of France.
Off topic: Before I disappear on holiday I wanted to post on the 19 Oct by election which could be won by any of the main players. Yes I'm talking about the Horlseys by election for Surrey County Council.
This really is a cliff hanger. This used to be a rock solid seat for the Tories. Posh central. Then we had the debacle in Guildford Borough Council (I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary) and the Tories got wiped out in Guildford by the LDs in the centre and the newly formed independents R4GV in the villages. The latter being the more impressive gains.
In the last set of Borough elections the Tories made a comeback. You won't see that if you look at the overall results as it shows the LDs taking control of the council, but that hides another story. The Tories lost their main last stronghold (6 councillors, 5 to LDs and 1 to an indy), but actually made good gains everywhere else at the expense of R4GV.
In the Horsleys however R4GV remained strong and R4GV hold all the Borough seats making up this County ward except 1 and hold them by decent margins.
However a popular R4GV councillor has stood down so this should make it a strong possible gain for the Tories.
But another quirk is this ward has moved from the Mole valley constituency to the Guildford constituency and we all know how the LDs love a by election, so they are going for it.
Anyone of the 3 could win and nobody has a clue.
I vote here and am involved in the campaign and have arranged my proxy vote for when I am away. Previously I have voted LD or R4GV. I am voting LD this time.
I could have canvassed you the Saturday morning before last.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
I'd like to know who was responsible for the 400km/h idea, because ultimately they're probably responsible for sinking the whole project.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Do I want to walk / cycle down a busy and narrow road stuffed with traffic? No. Might I do so if a bypass was built and the traffic was taken away? Yes.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
You may ask yourself why, except for the Chinese line, there is no working high-speed Maglev anywhere in the world (though the different Japanese system may - eventually - come online). And why Germany's abandoned the idea; and why China have abandoned any plans to extend their Maglev route.
The delay for the Japanese maglev is that they wanted to build it without putting a station in one of the prefectures it will pass through, and that prefecture has developed a totally scientific and sincerely-held concern that the water in the river above the tunnel will fall out.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
Absolutely. Camden residents deemed more important than cogent national transport development.
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
The platforms and tracks for that are still in the Euston plan. It can be ressurected, should a future governmnt wish to do so.
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
Euston & St Pancras would probably be linked in any self respecting country that's serious about infrastructure. The British library might need moving but I can't see any particular architectural masterpieces between the stations unless you're a particular fan of brutalism.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
The bit that isn't closed is that he is favourite with the betting markets (just) to be POTUS. I don't think we are as frightened of this mass voter criminal-fascist tendency as we should be.
Trump underscores the weakness of democracy - if your electorate has a sizeable portion of gullible idiots or malicious fools, they will believe almost any lies that suits their prejudices and fantasies.
The sad truth is that many Americans seem to be utterly devoid of critical thinking and hang on Trump's every word and it seems to me that Fox News and the Murdoch empire has a large share of the blame in this. I was glad to see Fox getting fined for $700m.
As usual, the Americans outdid us. Our rightwards swing only resulted in Brexit and the utterly inept clown show that now masquerades as the Conservative Party. Our lot may be utter fools, incompetents and corrupt but they lack the malice of Trump's mafia-like approach. It is possibly the only point in their favour...
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
The WCML does not run between Manchester and either Wigan nor Preston.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
are two nice videos on why suspended monorails tended not to work out more generally.
Yes I know, (and interestingly I had already watched both), but you make the basic mistake of thinking I was approaching it as a professional making a sober cost/benefit analysis for a specific goal, whereas what I really want to do is sit down the front and go "Eeeee-yyyowwwwww" when it goes round a corner...
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
Euston & St Pancras would probably be linked in any self respecting country that's serious about infrastructure. The British library might need moving but I can't see any particular architectural masterpieces between the stations unless you're a particular fan of brutalism.
Of course the tragedy of St Pancras is that the rebuilt station is a massive capacity constraint on the Midland Mainline. 4 platforms which are already bursting which means no further scope to run more services.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
I'd like to know who was responsible for the 400km/h idea, because ultimately they're probably responsible for sinking the whole project.
Currently the BBC are reporting Sunak as saying “he won’t be rushed” a decision. It’s hard to see how he see this as being rushed. There are situations in life where, eventually, one HAS to make a decision!
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
The WCML does not run between Manchester and either Wigan nor Preston.
Well the post I responded to said this: WCML towards Wigan and Preston
I could tell you which motorways I would use between Manchester and Wigan/Preston (M6 and M61) but don't often take the train.
Either way, whatever line it is, my understanding is the line between Manchester and Preston is poor quality and over capacity.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669 ...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
I have no views on the substance of HS2 except that it would be impossible to make it up and be taken seriously, but I make of it that hell hath no fury like a CEO and chairman scorned. (And that he may well be on the right side of history but might have to wait a bit for his next honour or a seat in the House of Lords).
A friend who worked for HS2 Ltd (in a not insignificant role) says this article from the Guardian is accurate and may even understate the problems:
In brief - too much middle management, changing minds too often.
This sounds characteristic.
...There may well have been a cheaper way. But the environmental mitigations and cosmetic demands – largely from local Tory councils and politicians, ordering extravagant side dishes and then railing against the final bill – are, as one weary HS2 manager put it, simply the cost of building infrastructure in an island crammed with private property.
Prof Andrew McNaughton, who was technical director of HS2 from 2009 until 2017, concurs that costs have spun out of control, and the construction overdesigned – but believes a reset can put it back on track.
Two other factors, in his view, have piled on cost: the way contracts have been shaped and the excessive number of managers. Giving liability to the contractor has encouraged “designing for the worst possible case, deeper foundations, sinking more piles into the ground – these things add up”.
Meanwhile, McNaughton says, the project is being overseen by not just HS2 Ltd, but hundreds of Department for Transport employees and “development partners” from engineering consultancy firms: “You end up with this white-collar army out of proportion to what you see anywhere else in Europe.”
Although HS2 Ltd’s staffing and salaries appear excessive – with more than 40 employees earning more than £150,000 per annum and chief executives paid more than any other public official – McNaughton says that the bigger impact is the “creation of bureaucracy”: slowing down decisions and the signoff of designs, breeding uncertainty and piling on cost.
Nowhere has that been more evident than Euston station itself, where the estimated HS2 bill has ballooned to nearly £5bn, mired in indecision and uncertainty, according to the National Audit Office.
Meanwhile, arguments that were long deemed settled in parliament have been re-opened, with suspicious degrees of political expediency – from the review promised by Boris Johnson when vying for the party leadership in 2018, to the quiet axing of the Golborne Link through 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady’s constituency last year, to Sunak’s pre-election jockeying now...
"A man has been charged after his dog attacked a child in south London.
The 20-month-old boy was bitten in Greenwich on Monday morning. Police were called just after 10am and attended with paramedics. He was taken to hospital, where his injuries were assessed as not life-threatening or life-changing. Thomas Ackah, 29, was charged with being in charge of a dangerously out of control dog.
The dog has been taken to kennels and was reported to be an XL bully. However, police said further tests were required to confirm it."
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
The bit that isn't closed is that he is favourite with the betting markets (just) to be POTUS. I don't think we are as frightened of this mass voter criminal-fascist tendency as we should be.
Trump underscores the weakness of democracy - if your electorate has a sizeable portion of gullible idiots or malicious fools, they will believe almost any lies that suits their prejudices and fantasies.
The sad truth is that many Americans seem to be utterly devoid of critical thinking and hang on Trump's every word and it seems to me that Fox News and the Murdoch empire has a large share of the blame in this. I was glad to see Fox getting fined for $700m.
As usual, the Americans outdid us. Our rightwards swing only resulted in Brexit and the utterly inept clown show that now masquerades as the Conservative Party. Our lot may be utter fools, incompetents and corrupt but they lack the malice of Trump's mafia-like approach. It is possibly the only point in their favour...
It occurs to me that the very religious rather than being rocks of moral probity and principle may instead be open to the suspension of disbelief and therefore willing to believe any old shite. Certainly seems to be the case with Trump and the born agains. The UK being essentally irreligious may be the saving of us.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
No, its precisely why you don't.
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
The bit that isn't closed is that he is favourite with the betting markets (just) to be POTUS. I don't think we are as frightened of this mass voter criminal-fascist tendency as we should be.
Trump underscores the weakness of democracy - if your electorate has a sizeable portion of gullible idiots or malicious fools, they will believe almost any lies that suits their prejudices and fantasies.
The sad truth is that many Americans seem to be utterly devoid of critical thinking and hang on Trump's every word and it seems to me that Fox News and the Murdoch empire has a large share of the blame in this. I was glad to see Fox getting fined for $700m.
As usual, the Americans outdid us. Our rightwards swing only resulted in Brexit and the utterly inept clown show that now masquerades as the Conservative Party. Our lot may be utter fools, incompetents and corrupt but they lack the malice of Trump's mafia-like approach. It is possibly the only point in their favour...
It occurs to me that the very religious rather than being rocks of moral probity and principle may instead be open to the suspension of disbelief and therefore willing to believe any old shite. Certainly seems to be the case with Trump and the born agains. The UK being essentally irreligious may be the saving of us.
An attitude that unquestioningly defers to authority rather than challenging it must be a huge source of comfort to any demagogue.
At least they no longer burn heretics, so a small improvement there
There was coverage on BBC2 and news 24, Sky and GB news of Hunt's speech yesterday and will likely be for Sunak's speech too.
However little of the rest of the conference, for Labour too will likely be mainly Starmer and Reeves, even BBC Parliament showing Westminster select cttees and Senedd etc rather than conferences
It wasn't that long ago that they would show many hours of live coverage of party conferences.
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and passenger services. "
Absolutely. Camden residents deemed more important than cogent national transport development.
If we only knew a Camden resident we could have a go at....
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
No, its precisely why you don't.
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
"We northerners drive" suggests that it's an inherent trait.
1) Many northerners do not drive 2) Density is a strong predictor of car ownership rates. After accounting for that, northerners are actually less likely to drive than others.
"Cutting off the North from HS2 is a national disgrace Ripping up plans to extend HS2 north of Birmingham will mean a life sentence of travel misery for tens of millions of travellers
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
No, its precisely why you don't.
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
"We northerners drive" suggests that it's an inherent trait.
1) Many northerners do not drive 2) Density is a strong predictor of car ownership rates. After accounting for that, northerners are actually less likely to drive than others.
1) Most do. There will always be some who don't. 2) The North is less dense than London.
There is no point accounting for (2) because density is a matter of fact. We aren't overly dense like Londoners are, so we're able to get about by driving. We're also able to better afford our own homes too, another bonus from not being so dense.
Accounting for density just means trying to change the North and South from what t hey are to something else, its bullshit. Simply look at the real number of Londoners and other Southerners who drive, and the real number of Northerners who do, there's no need to control for anything to make the data fit an agenda.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
No, its precisely why you don't.
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
"We northerners drive" suggests that it's an inherent trait.
1) Many northerners do not drive 2) Density is a strong predictor of car ownership rates. After accounting for that, northerners are actually less likely to drive than others.
1) Most do. There will always be some who don't. 2) The North is less dense than London.
There is no point accounting for (2) because density is a matter of fact. We aren't overly dense like Londoners are, so we're able to get about by driving. We're also able to better afford our own homes too, another bonus from not being so dense.
Accounting for density just means trying to change the North and South from what t hey are to something else, its bullshit. Simply look at the real number of Londoners and other Southerners who drive, and the real number of Northerners who do, there's no need to control for anything to make the data fit an agenda.
Sorry for calling you out.
I'm going to investigate further why northerners are less likely to drive.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
You know there are still parts of it that are a single not even dual carriageway?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
The bit that isn't closed is that he is favourite with the betting markets (just) to be POTUS. I don't think we are as frightened of this mass voter criminal-fascist tendency as we should be.
Trump underscores the weakness of democracy - if your electorate has a sizeable portion of gullible idiots or malicious fools, they will believe almost any lies that suits their prejudices and fantasies.
The sad truth is that many Americans seem to be utterly devoid of critical thinking and hang on Trump's every word and it seems to me that Fox News and the Murdoch empire has a large share of the blame in this. I was glad to see Fox getting fined for $700m.
As usual, the Americans outdid us. Our rightwards swing only resulted in Brexit and the utterly inept clown show that now masquerades as the Conservative Party. Our lot may be utter fools, incompetents and corrupt but they lack the malice of Trump's mafia-like approach. It is possibly the only point in their favour...
It occurs to me that the very religious rather than being rocks of moral probity and principle may instead be open to the suspension of disbelief and therefore willing to believe any old shite. Certainly seems to be the case with Trump and the born agains. The UK being essentally irreligious may be the saving of us.
O the other hand, I'm reminded of the theory about those dodgy emails trying to con one out of one's data, money, etc. They're so obviously absurd that you and I can see it instantly - but they're not aimed at you and me, but a deliberate filtration stretegy to pick out people whose critical faculties are already damaged, as by old age. The sort of stuff which Mr Sunak and his colleagues have been coming out with had a horrible reek of that fraud strategy - banning meat bans and seven bins, unbanning bendy bananas, and insisting that all new urban developments recreate twee-er versions of Castlemilk when it was brand new*.
*For those of us who are from the lost lands, the Mulk is infamous in Scotland for being a huge peripheral housing estate built without shops, community facilities, kirks, indeed anything, in the drive to de-slum Glasgow centre. The sort o place Billy Connolly clyped a desert wi windaes. (It has improved since. But it was hellish if you didn't have a car.)
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.
No, I did not. I know the difference. I fully support the construction of brand new build LTNs.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
Nah you mixed them up. You claimed that 15-minute cities include putting filters in. Not true.
No, I did not. You keep wilfully misrepresenting what I write, it is pure dishonesty.
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Nope. That's what you said.
Is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
Building more roads = more people walk.
It's a stretch.
Not at all a stretch.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
Are the Dutch big walkers? Thought they cycled everywhere.
Then you thought wrong.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
FYI "We Northerners" actually have lower car ownership than their southern counterparts.
Another thing you got wrong.
No we don't.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
That's precisely why you would need to control for density.
No, its precisely why you don't.
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
"We northerners drive" suggests that it's an inherent trait.
1) Many northerners do not drive 2) Density is a strong predictor of car ownership rates. After accounting for that, northerners are actually less likely to drive than others.
1) Most do. There will always be some who don't. 2) The North is less dense than London.
There is no point accounting for (2) because density is a matter of fact. We aren't overly dense like Londoners are, so we're able to get about by driving. We're also able to better afford our own homes too, another bonus from not being so dense.
Accounting for density just means trying to change the North and South from what t hey are to something else, its bullshit. Simply look at the real number of Londoners and other Southerners who drive, and the real number of Northerners who do, there's no need to control for anything to make the data fit an agenda.
Sorry for calling you out.
I'm going to investigate further why northerners are less likely to drive.
Let me know if you find any explanation other than they're not as the answer.
Try using real data, not fake manipulated data about spherical Northerners in a vacuum.
There’s an air of unreality at #cpc23 in Manchester. But it’s part of a longer story. The slow radicalisation of the Conservative Party. The seeds are being sown for that process to complete, with Liz Truss & Nigel Farage at its centre. My latest for NS.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
The case against Trump has nothing to do with politics. It is an incredibly simple case - he compiled false accounts and signed them off as true accounts. That alone is an offence in both the USA and here in the UK.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Yes, it's ridiculous. Even if the AG has political views, her decision to prosecute is entirely vindicated by the fact that a guilty verdict was reached. Anyone who thinks she shouldn't have prosecuted is saying they think Trump should not have had to stand trial for something that he has been shown to be guilty of.
If you want someone to be let off a crime they definitely did, just because of their political status, YOU are the one who is politically motivated.
As someone who was a director of three companies over 25 years, I have signed off numerous business accounts under that little paragraph that says that I "... acknowledge that these accounts provide a fair and accurate representation of the company's financial state in accordance with the Companies Act.." etc.
I have seen TV clips of Trump saying that his accounts were fantasies and no one should believe them. He convicted himself on TV. The man is an idiot.
I fully expect an appeal on the ground of the First Amendment protecting his right to produce false accounts on the basis that they were clearly satire..
Or, more likely, political speech.
It's a notable fact of all the Trump cases that the media (including the 'liberal' media and our own BBC) almost always headline reports with Trump's comments on the case, rather than any facts about the cases themselves.
While we're doing the whole North/South thing, the average price of a pint here in Oxford has just gone above £5 apparently.
brb just looking up Calderdale houses on Rightmove
My pub crawl in 2019, the 501 centre Manc bars average price was £4.75
I've just done the 100 Metrolink stops, pint at each, the average pint was almost £5 and that is despite many being in very very poor areas.
In fact, the take away from the Metrolink pub crawl was vast swathes of the country, poor inner city areas, simply do not have bars / pubs at all, you have to go quite some distance from some inner city Metrolink tram stops to find a bar / pub.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
Yes. You can drive on dual carriageways without a gap from Bodmin in Cornwall to north of Aberdeen but neither Mway nor dual from Newcastle (nor Carlisle) to Edinburgh.
My takeaway from all this is that the Preston north end deserves to be promoted
And, for those with time to spare, Preston station is a good place to train watch, activity watch and people watch. As I discovered not long ago when it took me over 6 hours to get by train from Carlisle to York.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
Comments
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
He then used them in loan applications to procure money and that is the legal definition of fraud.
That is it. Case closed. Everything else is the tidy-up.
Everyone agrees that language about God in terms of sex/gender is about custom and use, not about the nature of God in itself. Gets complicated with the male nature of Jesus of course....which debate continues.
If they can succeed in having Labour say they will use their evil Meat Tax to pay for HS2 then the Tories will win a majority of 704.
But I see you trying to change the topic again rather than admit you were wrong, not for the first time. Lets nail you down on this please before you try to change the topic.
Preston have spent many years investing in new road capacity, building safe active travel with that new capacity, and using that new capacity to convert old roads to active travel too.
The Netherlands have done the same thing.
Preston has as you say good active travel rates. Without either overcrowding or very low home ownership rates as seen in other cities incidentally.
So are you prepared to say that investing in roads and active travel, as I advocate, as the Dutch have done for fifty years, and as Preston has done, is a good thing? Yes or no?
If you want someone to be let off a crime they definitely did, just because of their political status, YOU are the one who is politically motivated.
Preston to Glasgow? I honestly couldn't say if its necessary or not. Others have said its a good idea, I don't know myself, but I'm not opposed to investment.
Allah is more clearly thought of as beyond gender compared to Christian tradition.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66989669
...Rob Holden is a man who knows a thing or two about building high-speed railway lines and huge projects; he is the former CEO of Crossrail and chairman of HS1 - the link from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.
He says the project was "ill-conceived" and costs have ballooned due to the engineering and environmental mitigations involved with the design of the high-speed scheme.
"Costs rise because of extra commitments which are made during the process," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier today.
"The costs rise because the design of a mega project is not as complete as it should be. There is no doubt the costs have risen, that speaks for a lack of control.
"The overall cost of the railway should never have been as much as it was because it was designed to operate at a speed which is not appropriate for this country."
As a reminder, the HS2 route was designed to take trains at 400 kmh (250mph), while the trains themselves will run at top speeds of around 360 kmh (225 mph). Some have argued that allowing such speed is unneccesary and expensive - pointing out France's TGV only runs at 320 kmh.
Holden says he applied to be part of the HS2 project, but says he heard a "message from a senior official" at the Department for Transport said he had "no qualifications or experience"...
Now on to the topic at hand - is Preston's long-term investment in multiple new road schemes and using that investment to both improve road capacity and boost active travel a success in your eyes?
https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1709088356427087874
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/29/we-are-a-political-project-how-hs2s-costs-have-spiralled-out-of-control
In brief - too much middle management, changing minds too often.
As someone who was a director of three companies over 25 years, I have signed off numerous business accounts under that little paragraph that says that I "... acknowledge that these accounts provide a fair and accurate representation of the company's financial state in accordance with the Companies Act.." etc.
I have seen TV clips of Trump saying that his accounts were fantasies and no one should believe them. He convicted himself on TV. The man is an idiot.
Win win
I can see the logic, the comms and decision making process has been appalling though.
Manchester is a spur off the main line, designed for 230km/h, the top speed on any of the planned spurs.
Initially the plan was the main line would continue from Crewe to Preston, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate at Goldbourne, then that was cut back and the main line would terminate in Crewe.
And be it Preston, Goldbourne or Crewe, HS2 was always going to connect back to the WCML so the trains would continue north on the WCML.
IMHO both 'he' and 'she' language of God (though not of Jesus!) is fine, but we are not ready for 'it' language. Singular pronouns that are neutral and personal are not around yet, at least in the traditional rural community I have lived in for decades.
And, naturally, the Supreme Court will vote 6-3 in his favour.
The bill won't expire, they just won't fund it.
Will piss off all those suffering blight though as the light at the end of the tunnel will be a lot further away.
Interesting that the BBC very nearly entirely ignored the LD conference. Perhaps they are getting the point that the way politics actually works, for people prepared to think about it, is only indirectly related to anything political party PR departments come up with.
Terminating at Golborne is not the same as terminating at Preston. Goldborne works for Warrington and Manchester, but not for Preston.
North from Manchester/Warrington to Preston is messed up currently, its been in the news constantly what a dreadful service that is. If we're having all this investment, it should have gone all the way, terminating at either Goldborne or Crewe makes no sense if you care about the North and not just London.
However little of the rest of the conference, for Labour too will likely be mainly Starmer and Reeves, even BBC Parliament showing Westminster select cttees and Senedd etc rather than conferences
Are you so shameless you're refusing to answer the question? You're the one who brought Preston's active travel up, not me.
https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-latest-greggs-sales-are-soaring-heres-why-how-much-sober-october-could-save-you-strikes-12615118
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0j00Wp8vgE
It's a stretch.
FYI Northerners are less likely to be drivers than Southerners, after accounting for population density.
The Dutch and Preston have shown it works. Investment works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4KZLcvMQWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeYTtlXywUI
are two nice videos on why suspended monorails tended not to work out more generally.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/480712/hs2-east-and-west.pdf
"Connecting to High Speed 1
November 2015
73. It was originally proposed that a rail link be provided between Euston and St. Pancras
stations in London to enable limited direct services to the Continent. However, this
would have had a significant impact on residents in Camden and on both freight and
passenger services. "
I shall be returning....
Might I do so if a bypass was built and the traffic was taken away? Yes.
The Dutch walk, cycle and drive. Indeed car ownership has been going up not down for decades in the Netherlands.
Investing in more and safer roads, cycle paths and footpaths improves all three modes of travel and allows more of each. Which is good for everyone. The Dutch have done it, Preston have done it and I advocate it.
The sad truth is that many Americans seem to be utterly devoid of critical thinking and hang on Trump's every word and it seems to me that Fox News and the Murdoch empire has a large share of the blame in this. I was glad to see Fox getting fined for $700m.
As usual, the Americans outdid us. Our rightwards swing only resulted in Brexit and the utterly inept clown show that now masquerades as the Conservative Party. Our lot may be utter fools, incompetents and corrupt but they lack the malice of Trump's mafia-like approach. It is possibly the only point in their favour...
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Another thing you got wrong.
London is in the South.
"Controlling for density" is code for "my figures are bullshit" because density is real and not something to be controlled for. It is overcrowded and overcapacity London that people are driven (pun intended) off the roads and into public transport due to how shit the roads are there. Thankfully we don't have that problem.
There are situations in life where, eventually, one HAS to make a decision!
I could tell you which motorways I would use between Manchester and Wigan/Preston (M6 and M61) but don't often take the train.
Either way, whatever line it is, my understanding is the line between Manchester and Preston is poor quality and over capacity.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
...There may well have been a cheaper way. But the environmental mitigations and cosmetic demands – largely from local Tory councils and politicians, ordering extravagant side dishes and then railing against the final bill – are, as one weary HS2 manager put it, simply the cost of building infrastructure in an island crammed with private property.
Prof Andrew McNaughton, who was technical director of HS2 from 2009 until 2017, concurs that costs have spun out of control, and the construction overdesigned – but believes a reset can put it back on track.
Two other factors, in his view, have piled on cost: the way contracts have been shaped and the excessive number of managers. Giving liability to the contractor has encouraged “designing for the worst possible case, deeper foundations, sinking more piles into the ground – these things add up”.
Meanwhile, McNaughton says, the project is being overseen by not just HS2 Ltd, but hundreds of Department for Transport employees and “development partners” from engineering consultancy firms: “You end up with this white-collar army out of proportion to what you see anywhere else in Europe.”
Although HS2 Ltd’s staffing and salaries appear excessive – with more than 40 employees earning more than £150,000 per annum and chief executives paid more than any other public official – McNaughton says that the bigger impact is the “creation of bureaucracy”: slowing down decisions and the signoff of designs, breeding uncertainty and piling on cost.
Nowhere has that been more evident than Euston station itself, where the estimated HS2 bill has ballooned to nearly £5bn, mired in indecision and uncertainty, according to the National Audit Office.
Meanwhile, arguments that were long deemed settled in parliament have been re-opened, with suspicious degrees of political expediency – from the review promised by Boris Johnson when vying for the party leadership in 2018, to the quiet axing of the Golborne Link through 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady’s constituency last year, to Sunak’s pre-election jockeying now...
The 20-month-old boy was bitten in Greenwich on Monday morning. Police were called just after 10am and attended with paramedics. He was taken to hospital, where his injuries were assessed as not life-threatening or life-changing. Thomas Ackah, 29, was charged with being in charge of a dangerously out of control dog.
The dog has been taken to kennels and was reported to be an XL bully. However, police said further tests were required to confirm it."
https://news.sky.com/story/man-charged-after-his-dog-attacked-a-20-month-old-child-in-greenwich-12975525
Density is absolutely real, not something you control for.
Its like suggesting that the weather is better in England than Florida, controlling for wind, rain and sunshine.
At least they no longer burn heretics, so a small improvement there
1) Many northerners do not drive
2) Density is a strong predictor of car ownership rates. After accounting for that, northerners are actually less likely to drive than others.
NE, NW, Yorks & Humber are obviously northern regions and SW, SE & London obviously southern.
But I need to know how are you counting the East of England, East & West Midlands in your South/North discussion.
Are either of you including Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland ?
Ripping up plans to extend HS2 north of Birmingham will mean a life sentence of travel misery for tens of millions of travellers
Simon Calder
Travel Correspondent"
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/hs2-birmingham-manchester-london-leeds-b2422490.html
2) The North is less dense than London.
There is no point accounting for (2) because density is a matter of fact. We aren't overly dense like Londoners are, so we're able to get about by driving. We're also able to better afford our own homes too, another bonus from not being so dense.
Accounting for density just means trying to change the North and South from what t hey are to something else, its bullshit. Simply look at the real number of Londoners and other Southerners who drive, and the real number of Northerners who do, there's no need to control for anything to make the data fit an agenda.
I'm going to investigate further why northerners are less likely to drive.
*For those of us who are from the lost lands, the Mulk is infamous in Scotland for being a huge peripheral housing estate built without shops, community facilities, kirks, indeed anything, in the drive to de-slum Glasgow centre. The sort o place Billy Connolly clyped a desert wi windaes. (It has improved since. But it was hellish if you didn't have a car.)
I'd class East of England and East & West Midlands as Midlands, neither North nor South personally.
Try using real data, not fake manipulated data about spherical Northerners in a vacuum.
@lewis_goodall
There’s an air of unreality at #cpc23 in Manchester. But it’s part of a longer story. The slow radicalisation of the Conservative Party. The seeds are being sown for that process to complete, with Liz Truss & Nigel Farage at its centre. My latest for NS.
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1709153857597575577?s=20
brb just looking up Calderdale houses on Rightmove
It's a notable fact of all the Trump cases that the media (including the 'liberal' media and our own BBC) almost always headline reports with Trump's comments on the case, rather than any facts about the cases themselves.
Thus:
As Trump goes on trial for business fraud, he treats courthouse like campaign stop
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/02/trump-arrives-civil-fraud-trial-00119452
Defiant Trump turns up at $250m New York fraud trial to blast 'scam'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66986808
Trump takes his campaign to court in preview of upcoming criminal trials
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/02/trump-court-campaign-2024/
Trump Civil Fraud Trial Trump Begins Fraud Trial by Attacking Attorney General and Judge
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/02/nyregion/trump-fraud-trial
They should do a better job.
Not weighted to try and find spherical Northerners in a vacuum, but actual real life figures.
I'd be interested to see your modelling of capacity on a Preston - Glasgow HS2 line.
I've just done the 100 Metrolink stops, pint at each, the average pint was almost £5 and that is despite many being in very very poor areas.
In fact, the take away from the Metrolink pub crawl was vast swathes of the country, poor inner city areas, simply do not have bars / pubs at all, you have to go quite some distance from some inner city Metrolink tram stops to find a bar / pub.
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1708816290167529666?s=20