School me on HS2

chillidoggy

Mrs C thinks that if she travels in the front carriage of a train she'll get to her destination faster than if she got on the last carriage.

chillidoggy

crunchman said:

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.

Docklands Light Railway trains are driverless already. It's a bit weird.

Fretwired

VimFuego

chillidoggy said:

Mrs C thinks that if she travels in the front carriage of a train she'll get to her destination faster than if she got on the last carriage.

depends on which carriage is closest to the exit.

chillidoggy

I'm sorry, but logic does not enter the equation!

holnrew

Technically she's right, makes no difference though. If I'm on the Metro I'll try and pick the carriage closest to the platform exit at the station I'm getting off at, so I can beat the old people to the escalators.

VimFuego

which is, as I've found to my cost, preferable than beating them on the escalators.

ToneControl

Fast lines to London mean I can pay £8 a day to park at Crewe, and £230 per person to take a day trip to London - way more expensive than driving. As soon as it's more than one person, staying in hotels overnight looks cheap

It takes 30-60 minutes to drive to Crewe, then 10-20 minutes faffing at the station. For almost any other destination it's slower than driving as well as way more expensive. For almost any destination, a car is cheaper and faster

Now I ask - what is the point of trains? Sometimes faster. Rarely cheaper, supposedly lower car use. As mentioned, canals are now for hobby use, there's no guarantees on future demand. If you consider, in 50 years all cars are likely to be electric, and drive themselves. They might well be able to go much faster on improved/dedicated motorways

I'd say we'd be better expanding the network and capacity of motorways, and the fuelling strategy to support non-fossil-fuel cars. We could all be travelling in individual train carriages that drive themselves down the motorway at 150 mph with a much-finer granularity of destinations (rather than just north-south). Look how weak the motorway network is at present, the anti-car movement has stifled road development I think, trying to drive East across the pennines to East Anglia is a nightmare, to get from Liverpool to Bristol, it's country roads or via the worst bit of the M6 around Brum.

I can see how the USA, or other large countries could really use this, places where internal flights are normal, but we need a web of transport.

I can see imagine self-driving cars and coaches/carriages zipping East, West , North and south, rather than driving for ages to get to Crewe, getting into London, crossing London on the tube (not fun with luggage), and then out to deepest Essex or wherever on local trains

ToneControl

VimFuego said:

chillidoggy said:

Mrs C thinks that if she travels in the front carriage of a train she'll get to her destination faster than if she got on the last carriage.

depends on which carriage is closest to the exit.

and you will if there's a taxi or car park machine queue after you get off!

Jalapeno

Here's another piece of classy HS2 nonsense.

1. Arrive from Europe on HS1

2, Walk half a mile down the Euston Road from St Pancras to Euston

3. Walk past Euston to new HS2 terminal (wiping out Drummond St )

4. Join HS2