Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Nigel Harris' explanation of HS2 budget

In what I thought was an excellent and most informative contribution, Nigel Harris, managing editor of Rail magazine posted a series of tweets explaining the ballooning of the HS2 budget. All seems a lot clearer to me now.

https://twitter.com/RAIL/status/1222812020896141314

Originally it was £32 billion and that was a lot !

It is an eye watering amount of money. IIRC the TGV line from Lyon to Marseille (about 160 miles) came in at €3,8 billion (which in itself was some way over budget). OK, it was nearly 20 years ago, but we've all been told that inflation has been low over the last 20 years, so the figures being bandied about for HS2 really do seem stratospheric.

The line to Marseille has been hugely successful, and the fact you can get from Paris to Marseille in 3 hours means it has taken 2/3 of the volume from air traffic for the route. Of course, fares have been kept reasonable, which helps, and the péage on the autoroutes tilts the economics in favor of rail if you're travelling alone.

One of the thing I really like about the French national character is the love of "le grand projet". The TGV network is a fine example of this; from a French perspective, high speed inter-city rail travel has been a wonderful thing (when the drivers aren't on strike !!).

It's perhaps a sign that I've gone a bit native in my 31 years here, but I'm always a bit baffled by how much the UK beats itself up over this sort of thing. The current rail infrastructure is largely victorian, and look how well it has served. A really long term view is needed on this. The argument about how much quicker it'll be to get to Birmingham is irrelevant, it's about the increase in capacity. By having separate high speed and lower speed tracks one can run way more services (assuming there is the rolling stock and staff to achieve this...)

I'd be very interested to know the views of the likes of Bob, who really know about railways.

The French have the luxury of space, France has roughly the same population as the UK in a country twice the size. The damage to parts of the British countryside for HS2 is heartbreaking.

Funny how China seems to be building a HS rail network without any drama and in a fraction of the time anyone else is able to do it.

Difference is, in the crowded UK every square foot costs megabucks and probably has at least three levels of archaeological site on it.... Chinese lines probably go across lots of undeveloped land and they'd just turn up with trucks and relocate any inconvenient landowners to some prime desert location near the Tibet border! :-)

K

and of course we have a functioning democracy with the rule of law and individual human rights. Our government cannot simply command people and businesses with the threat of disappearance and organ harvesting for non-compliance.

They also have a few other benefits, what they say goes. period.

Thank you for the compliment. I consider myself very knowledgeable regarding the signalling systems on the railway but I don't really know much about the permanent way or civil side of it. I think that Nigel Harris has given a great explanation of the costing.

The trouble with our system is what you said about the system being Victorian and the damage and usage it got during both wars. It served extremely well in both wars and very much helped us to victory.

I hope that the start of bringing the railway back into public ownership IS just the start. The infrastructure needs so much doing it will be expensive. I also think that fares should reflect what the public are able to pay, allowing for the return to rail commuting instead of EVs.

I've travelled on UK railways extensively, and on many main lines there is spare capacity where four tracks were reduced to two, or two reduced to one in the sixties.

I can already get to London in two hours from Yorkshire so to me, HS2 is tragic misuse of funding. That money should be spent on reinstating four tracks, and reopening closed lines where the demand is there.

Our Pacer units are the worst in the country. Commuters face serious overcrowding every day, but its better and faster than driving in to work.