School me on HS2

stickyfiddle

It's not NIMBYism in my case I've never lived anywhere near the route, and currently not even in the same country. It's just plain shit value for money. What a surprise from a modern UK government...

Ianpdq

Will the Politician's clame  on expenses there travel up north on HS2 if so that will cost the taxpayer even more

Phil_aka_Pip

Clarky said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

If the Torygraph and Mandelson agree on anything it surely must be proof that in higher mathematics they have found theorems that are both true and false at the same time and within the same set of parameters. The space/time continuum is not curved, it is fundamentally bent.

does this also mean that Mandleson is not curved, but fundamentally bent too?

Natch

bertie

Clarky said:

maybe they could spend a tiny percentage of that 80bn by comming up with some plague that will wipe out 4 in 10 people..

saves loads of money, and won't need to expand anything at all

plenty of jobs,  houses, roads, trains, NHS etc for everyone that's left..

Are you Jessica Hyde ?

martinw

200mph trains? Does anyone else think that's f***ing nuts?

When, not if, one crashes, I hope they get it on video.

crunchman

One thing to remember is that the government will get back a significant proportion of any money they sink into any big project (HS2, Crossrail, new roads, nuclear power stations or whatever else).

The biggest cost of the project will be the wages of the workers. These could be those working directly on the construction, or indirectly (e.g. workers for JCB).  Between NI, income tax, VAT, fuel duty, alcohol duty etc. the government will get a large chunk of these wages back.  Better still some of these workers would have been on the dole so you save on dole payments.

When people chuck around the headline cost of HS2, crossrail, nuclear power you have to remember the actual cost to the taxpayer will be lower than that - although you do need to allow for cost overruns in the final figure.

ICBM

martinw said:

200mph trains? Does anyone else think that's f***ing nuts?

When, not if, one crashes, I hope they get it on video.

Sadly, they have. Did you see the news from Spain a couple of months back?

On the other hand doing 600mph in a flimsy metal tube six miles up in the air doesn't sound like a great idea either! But trains and planes are the safest forms of transport ever invented… unlike automobiles.

not_the_dj

My in-laws house is due for complusary purchase (they back onto a disused line, now a greenway).

They're not that keen on the idea, but my five year old son can't wait to see all the bulldozers

martinw

ICBM said:

martinw said:

200mph trains? Does anyone else think that's f***ing nuts?

When, not if, one crashes, I hope they get it on video.

Sadly, they have. Did you see the news from Spain a couple of months back?

Yeah, but that wasn't anywhere near 200mph! When it does happen at that speed, it will be air travel!

On the other hand doing 600mph in a flimsy metal tube six miles up in the air doesn't sound like a great idea either! But trains and planes are the safest forms of transport ever invented… unlike automobiles.

You're right, but still.....200mph on rails? It's wrong, just wrong.

crunchman

Modern trains are very good. The Hatfield crash was caused by a broken rail at around 115mph and only 4 people died.  At Hither Green in 1967 there was a derailment caused by a broken rail where the train was doing around 70mph and 55 people died.  There were other factors involved, but the big difference in the body count is due to the modern rolling stock.

200mph would be a lot worse that 115mph though.

Phil_aka_Pip

ICBM said:

 trains and planes are the safest forms of transport ever invented… unlike automobiles.

this may have something to do with the way the people who drive/fly them are trained, and the selection procedures which tend to restrict the number of people who are trained. Let Joe Public loose on anything and it will become dangerous or unpleasant in some way. (Just look at how music has changed since Joe Public was sold the idea you didn't need to know anything about music to be in a band - even more so now we've got tools that allow even those with no musical idea whatsoever to create noises that sound vaguely like music).

ICBM

I think it's OK if it's engineered well enough and they don't have stupid things like bends with a speed restriction of 50mph which the driver is supposed to slow down for manually…

There are a lot of high speed trains in the world already which travel at that sort of speed and there are very few accidents - apart from the Spanish one, none I can remember recently. The Japanese have been doing it for decades - although only fairly recently at 200mph I think.

It's not the danger I object to, it's the cost and the lack of necessity to make them go that fast, over the distances we need to cover in the UK. Even Edinburgh to London is only just over four hours in a conventional train, which doesn't seem too bad to me - and it would only be significantly less if they built HS2 all the way to Scotland… but still not comparable to a plane even then. It makes even less sense for the shorter routes that are currently planned.

chillidoggy

I think HS2 will simply mean you can be late quicker.

Handsome_Chris

Phil_aka_Pip said:

btw @Jalapeno I can't see what's wrong with NIMBYism. If you paid good money to live somewhere nice the last thing you'd want is someone spoiling it for you.

I know a lot of people who are on the same side of the fence as Phil. When they wanted to build an asylum seekers' centre in Bicester, on unused MoD property the locals went flippin' ballistic.  I expect that they paid good money for their property so why should they have to live near foreigners. They should make asylum seekers live where the poor people live.

This is the same argument with the wind farms.  I want the more eco-friendly power, but why should wind farms be built near me: Build it near the poor people.

chillidoggy

I am not remotely worried by anyone spoiling Margate. HS2 can come here if it wants, it'd put the value of my gaff up by at least a tenner.

Ianpdq

Clarky said:

maybe they could spend a tiny percentage of that 80bn by comming up with some plague that will wipe out 4 in 10 people..

saves loads of money, and won't need to expand anything at all

plenty of jobs,  houses, roads, trains, NHS etc for everyone that's left..

That's a good solution send all the immigrants home no need for a plague then
 

holnrew

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Railway_(UK)

The central railway plan has been there for over twenty years and has private financial backing, but the government won't approve of it. Obviously spending public funds on cutting a few minutes off travel time is a superior plan.

Extra capacity is needed for sure though. A lot of money is being spent upgrading the existing network and we're almost reaching everything you can do with it. I think they're upgrading the signalling and sections of track on the ECML, so that the existing trains can go faster.

crunchman

Phil_aka_Pip said:

ICBM said:

 trains and planes are the safest forms of transport ever invented… unlike automobiles.

this may have something to do with the way the people who drive/fly them are trained, and the selection procedures which tend to restrict the number of people who are trained. Let Joe Public loose on anything and it will become dangerous or unpleasant in some way. (Just look at how music has changed since Joe Public was sold the idea you didn't need to know anything about music to be in a band - even more so now we've got tools that allow even those with no musical idea whatsoever to create noises that sound vaguely like music).

Even trained drivers make mistakes but the way railways are going, trains will be driving themselves.  4 lines on the Underground have automatic operation now.  The rest will follow in the next decade or so.  All the driver does is close the doors at the station and then the train drives itself to the next station.

Currently, the driver can drive the train manually in emergency situations, but there is talk that the next generation of tube trains may not even have a cab.  I'm not sure that will happen for a while though.  Bob Crow will have something to say about that, but more importantly, I'm not sure the public would be happy with the thought of being stuck underground without a driver on the train if something goes wrong.

ICBM

Same with planes. The pilots still take off and land under hand control, but that's about it. The worrying thing is that the automation is getting to the point where the pilots are losing essential flying skills, so when something goes wrong with the automation itself - the very situation they're supposed to be there to handle - they can't and you have things like Air France 447, or possibly the San Francisco crash (if that wasn't just pure pilot error).

I generally think it's a good thing that the human is still there as a monitor and safety backup though. The plain (no pun intended!) fact is that increasing automation has made flying safer, and there's no reason the same shouldn't be true for trains. That doesn't mean I'd like to see driverless ones though. A properly trained human can sometimes cope with situations far outside what the systems designers thought of.

gilby

martinw;70002" said:

You're right, but still.....200mph on rails? It's wrong, just wrong.

Don't tell Alton Towers that