Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Gridlock at 3pm..

To me the HS2 is a vanity project based on the misguided political idiots. Other countries have them but few, if any, are a success. The construction/feasability industry will get paid £££££. Maybe their lobbying efforts are better than other groups against it.
That amount of money would be better used and more sensible if spent on long distance transport systems, road, rail perhaps combining with freight transport and local road deliveries, using overnight rail trains?
Major companies have centralised or regional distribution centres yet still send fleets onto roads. A decent example is Ford at Bridgend. Engines were transported by rail on a purpose built line linking the factory to the national network.
HS2 is going to be a premium cost option with companies paying employees fares, general public making very occasional journeys. No freight. The projections for benefits are great acts of fiction.
The last time I used a train was to go to pick up my 4/4 from Allon White. Train from Llanelli, changes at Bristol Parkway, Birmingham New St. Then picked up from Milton Keynes by car. When booking the ticket I discovered a £25 saving by buying a separate ticket for each leg rather than a single full journey ticket! A truly mad rail system.

OK Peter but that also means 5 times as much income from road fund tax and from fuel duties and from car insurance tax let alone fines and other charges. So what have we built with it since the motorways?

And I go back to my main point. Joe Public wants personal transport. He pays for it both directly and through the above taxes. We are a democracy so its the job of that useless lot in government to give their bosses the taxpayer what he is paying for. Its not up to them to tell us what we should want.

There's a lot wrong with the rail system. HS2 will be irrelevant to most people. The money would be better spent on upgrading what's there. Plenty of room to quadruple main routes and increase capacity. There are not enough trains and not enough capacity. The volume of users is rising rapidly. My train of choice to work at 7.15 which once was half full is now basically standing room only. So I get the one before at 6.42 which is only a third full.
Pricing is ridiculously complex and unbalanced so some routes - such as Sheffield-Birmingham is stupidly expensive and overcrowded. Birmingham to Malvern takes a similar time but is about £7 return.............

I can get from home to Kings Cross in under two and a half hours, and a carefully chosen ticket can be under £30. At certain times even first class is affordable. I try to use that coming home. A relaxing trip with food & wine. That's what railways should be like!!!!

I agree 100% with the stupidity of HS2.

All the money should go to adding capacity and improving infrastructure, for example re-doubling the line from Salisbury to Exeter and putting in a proper flyover at Woking, so the Portsmouth line trains don't have to cross the Salisbury line. Free the flow.

Then there is the Woodhead route..don't get me started. Likewise the Alternative Brighton line. Sadly some of the capacity increases will be bad news for a few preservation railways....

Pricing should be per km, with a simple load factor applied.

Also, on all trains that are classed as "inter city" if anyone has to stand they should get a 90% refund. Going up to London from Salisbury on any rush hour train it is standing room only after Basingstoke and likewise returning from London if you don't get on at Waterloo it is standing only to Basingstoke.

All that being said, I do use the trains.....I can get to York and back in a day and using a Senior Citizens Rail Card it costs a lot less, even in first, than driving there and back and staying a night.

The main reason for HS2 is to increase capacity: existing routes are full! Talking of upgrading existing lines is to give current travellers regular doses of purgatory. A good example of this is when the WCML was upgraded a few years ago. The works were hugely delayed, grossly over budget and what did it produce? - marginal line speed improvements and a footpath the length of the line. Anyone who wants to have bus replacement services every weekend and overrunning engineering works affecting weekday running is welcome to promote upgrading the existing network.

I have endured the Thameslink upgrade through London for the last five years and that will not be complete until 2018: it was originally promoted as Thameslink 2000! For all these reasons that is why HS2, HS3 and others are long overdue. Then we can upgrade the existing lines with alternatives in place. Projects such as Crossrail show how it can, and should, be done.

Tim

Tim,

point taken....

But....

I read that:

1. The cost of rail way line building, per km, is the highest in Europe...why?

2. HS2 will end outside London and the the tunnels on the line into the North London termini will not be added to, so the trains will have to slow and find space....this is stupid. At least HS1 is HS almost all the way into St P.

Last, I'd argue that opening the Uckfield line to London, the complete Great Central and the Woodhead line would add a lot of needed capacity without disruption...sorry Great Central Railway Preservation Co & Lavender Line....

That money doesn't go towards roads, it goes straight to the Exchequer

I think the only real solution is autonomous cars and trucks. Paving over more of our country is not really the answer I dont think.

True. But then I dont find it any more objectionable than most of the other pretexts the taxman has for taking money from us.

I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't pi$$ such vast sums of it up the wall.

Yes - if we keep building roads, railways, houses, etc, there'll be no green areas left!