...also a "Lesson's Learned Lecture Speech" from HS1, amusingly on DFT website. Hope someone re-read this, before todays announcement - preferably Lord Adonis :rolleyes:
I particularly like the "The known unknowns” projection of unknown but expected (and counted on) benefits the go-ahead needs to 'justify' the whole scheme.... Wishful thinking, unjustifiable bollocks comes to my mind.
...reminds me of a famous Donald Rumsfeld speech :eek:
--
The £34bn projected cust, before over-runs , would be better spent/invested on replacing oil/coal/gas power stations with some nice clean (after build) Nuclear Power stations, or the proposed £16bn tidal barrage power scheme in the Solway Firth. these we actually need, to plug the forecasted power shortfalls in 5-10 years.
Great News that this is finally being built, we are woefully underdeveloped in rail here. It takes me over 6 hours to drive from London to Glasgow, this is perfect for me.
Great News that this is finally being built, we are woefully underdeveloped in rail here. It takes me over 6 hours to drive from London to Glasgow, this is perfect for me.
Much more that an hour. Getting to the airport in London is 100x much harder than train (I've tried flying from London to Glasgow), it takes at least between 1 and 2 hours in a rush hour just to get to an airport.
Then then getting through all the airport takes at least 20/30 minutes. The flight takes 1 hour and once in Glasgow the Coach takes 30mins/hour+ in the rush to get into Glasgow Queens Street.
For the Train I just need to get to Euston and I'm done. The car is murder but it's atm better than a train.
The train takes 5 hours right now and is slightly expensive - but for 2 hours I'll take the train.
Much more that an hour. Getting to the airport in London is 100x much harder than train (I've tried flying from London to Glasgow), it takes at least between 1 and 2 hours in a rush hour just to get to an airport.
Then then getting through all the airport takes at least 20/30 minutes. The flight takes 1 hour and once in Glasgow the Coach takes 30mins/hour+ in the rush to get into Glasgow Queens Street.
For the Train I just need to get to Euston and I'm done. The car is murder but it's atm better than a train.
The train takes 5 hours right now and is slightly expensive - but for 2 hours I'll take the train.
I suppose it depends where you live, as getting to Euston would be an ordeal for some people (or wherever the London HS2 station finally does end up) - They could have built it below the Olympic Stadium if anyone in Government has any forethought !! Not like they aren't pumping billions into the infrastructure to make it (relatively) easy to get there from most places
HS2 is great for people at the ends of the routes London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow - but bugger all use to the rest of us.....
All I can see it doing is spreading the London Housing Nightmare to the centre of Birmingham. The property speculators will already be sizing land up near the new stations tonight !!
We need to stgop people wanting/needing to go to London. The BBC bailing half of its organisation out of London to Salford comes to mind as alternatives....
I suppose it depends where you live, as getting to Euston would be an ordeal for some people (or wherever the London HS2 station finally does end up) - They could have built it below the Olympic Stadium if anyone in Government has any forethought !! Not like they aren't pumping billions into the infrastructure to make it (relatively) easy to get there from most places
HS2 is great for people at the ends of the routes London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow - but bugger all use to the rest of us.....
All I can see it doing is spreading the London Housing Nightmare to the centre of Birmingham. The property speculators will already be sizing land up near the new stations tonight !!
Sorry (I'm not the political argumentative type) but what is this "London Housing Nightmare". If it means building more housing and bring jobs then you've got a tipsy turby view of the world; and London's housing problems are due to there being a need for more housing. Sorry again.
Sorry (I'm not the political argumentative type) but what is this "London Housing Nightmare". If it means building more housing and bring jobs then you've got a tipsy turby view of the world; and London's housing problems are due to there being a need for more housing. Sorry again.
London Houseing Nightmare...
If Birmingham becomes a 'commuter belt town' for London, housing problems of price and affordability dogging southern towns spreads North....
When I lived in Aylesbury in 1997, House to average earnings was about 3-4x we bought at £44k. The same house today is well over £200K and is about 8-10x average earnings.
Where I stand today, with a much higher family income comapred to 1997, I could not hope to afford the same house we bought with ease in 1997....
Great News that this is finally being built, we are woefully underdeveloped in rail here. It takes me over 6 hours to drive from London to Glasgow, this is perfect for me.
And it will not be much faster by High Speed Rail probably about 5 hours
...also a "Lesson's Learned Lecture Speech" from HS1, amusingly on DFT website. Hope someone re-read this, before todays announcement - preferably Lord Adonis :rolleyes:
I particularly like the "The known unknowns” projection of unknown but expected (and counted on) benefits the go-ahead needs to 'justify' the whole scheme.... Wishful thinking, unjustifiable bollocks comes to my mind.
...reminds me of a famous Donald Rumsfeld speech :eek:
--
The £34bn projected cust, before over-runs , would be better spent/invested on replacing oil/coal/gas power stations with some nice clean (after build) Nuclear Power stations, or the proposed £16bn tidal barrage power scheme in the Solway Firth. these we actually need, to plug the forecasted power shortfalls in 5-10 years.
How is a power station going to get me to work? LOL. Travelling by train - an electric train is far more greener than car.
The timescale fluctuated because there was no proper start date, due to varying routes and other things. Once the date was confirmed for stages 1 and 2 it ran to time. Stage 1 was finished first and as that was coming to its conclusion, stage 2 which had already been planned was starting.
I don't know about the rest of the posters on here, but how many times have you come back off holiday or a business trip in Europe and see how their trains work so well. For example a trip to Holland and their Thalys train is amazing. I really dont know why we cant get some policitcal consensus sorted about the UK railways.
Sorry (I'm not the political argumentative type) but what is this "London Housing Nightmare". If it means building more housing and bring jobs then you've got a tipsy turby view of the world; and London's housing problems are due to there being a need for more housing. Sorry again.
London's housing nightmare is, because everyone wants to live in one small corner of the UK, there's simply not enough room.
Turning Birminghma into an extension of that is likely to harm Birmingham more than it benefits London.
The shortest time it has taken for me and my luggage to get from central London to central Glasgow is 3 hours 15 mins.
That's 1:20 mins in the air, 30 mins from checkin, 20 mins for baggage reclaim, 20 mins on Heathrow Express, 25 mins on the bus to Buchanan Station and the remainder in walking between connections. And that's cutting it all very fine!
Not as cheap as rail either (though you can get cheaper if you go to Luton or Stansted, but that will take longer as well.)
And it will not be much faster by High Speed Rail probably about 5 hours
Your maths is letting you down again, Bob. Currently the fastest is about 4 1/2 hours; London is less than 400 miles from Glasgow, Eurostar trains (15 years old) can do 186 mph.
The shortest time it has taken for me and my luggage to get from central London to central Glasgow is 3 hours 15 mins.
That's 1:20 mins in the air, 30 mins from checkin, 20 mins for baggage reclaim, 20 mins on Heathrow Express, 25 mins on the bus to Buchanan Station and the remainder in walking between connections. And that's cutting it all very fine!
Not as cheap as rail either (though you can get cheaper if you go to Luton or Stansted, but that will take longer as well.)
A friend regularly flys Edinburgh city centre - City of London (using City Airport) in 2 hours 25 mins. Still about 20 mins faster than the proposed High Speed line (if it ever gets to Edinburgh) and tbh I wouldn't expect HS2 to be cheaper.
I'm not so sure it will replace 'spoke' flights to Heathrow. If I was an airline competing against HSR, I'd be trying to minimise the connection effort by taking the luggage at the first airport and handling it automatically through Heathrow to the connecting flight - making it less effort that having to take your luggage to the train station, get it aboard the train, find a space, keep an eye on it (if not in luggage van), take it off the train, out the station and all way to the check in at Heathrow. If they could do that, why being no more expensive or longer, there'd be a strong case just to fly to Heathrow anyway.
A friend regularly flys Edinburgh city centre - City of London (using City Airport) in 2 hours 25 mins. Still about 20 mins faster than the proposed High Speed line (if it ever gets to Edinburgh) and tbh I wouldn't expect HS2 to be cheaper.
I'm not so sure it will replace 'spoke' flights to Heathrow. If I was an airline competing against HSR, I'd be trying to minimise the connection effort by taking the luggage at the first airport and handling it automatically through Heathrow to the connecting flight - making it less effort that having to take your luggage to the train station, get it aboard the train, find a space, keep an eye on it (if not in luggage van), take it off the train, out the station and all way to the check in at Heathrow. If they could do that, why being no more expensive or longer, there'd be a strong case just to fly to Heathrow anyway.
What would make far more sense to me would be to run trains to Heathrow that let you do all the check in, security and immigration formalities on the train. That could be done today from Manchester with no loss of time.
What would make far more sense to me would be to run trains to Heathrow that let you do all the check in, security and immigration formalities on the train. That could be done today from Manchester with no loss of time.
Problem then is you can't then mix them with non-international travellers. So you need a space set aside, which might not be large enough or is too large and reduces the space available for non-international travellers. That would include having them going straight to airside at the airport (which is probably an even bigger headache).
It's a nice idea but it pre-clearance only really works in situations like the BA London City - New York flight that stops at Shannon, where you can tightly control where people go once they've been cleared.
Problem then is you can't then mix them with non-international travellers. So you need a space set aside, which might not be large enough or is too large and reduces the space available for non-international travellers. That would include having them going straight to airside at the airport (which is probably an even bigger headache).
It's a nice idea but it pre-clearance only really works in situations like the BA London City - New York flight that stops at Shannon, where you can tightly control where people go once they've been cleared.
It would be special trains, but not dissimilar to the way Eurostar traffic is (was) segregated at Ashford. They would stop at a segregated Heathrow area designated airside.
It would be much easier than building a third runway.
Your maths is letting you down again, Bob. Currently the fastest is about 4 1/2 hours; London is less than 400 miles from Glasgow, Eurostar trains (15 years old) can do 186 mph.
Yes but that is probably a 1 off fast train but it does make the point that a new HS line will not make much difference to the time but the line will got a fortune and will require hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses to be demolished in order to provide a HS link that will not be used by that many people
The money would be better spent carry f out further upgraded to the line and dealing with bottlenecks. Technology improvements as well will enable further speed improvements.
We have so many large cities in the UK that the trains are always going to need to stop pretty frequently in order to serve them
Are they even sensible? Higher speeds are really just a nice to have and is not essential. The main impact could well be to increase considerably the London Commuter belt and is that really sensible?
Your maths is letting you down again, Bob. Currently the fastest is about 4 1/2 hours; London is less than 400 miles from Glasgow, Eurostar trains (15 years old) can do 186 mph.
The fastest service on the WCML from Euston to Glasgow Central is the 1630 from Euston with one stop at Preston which completes the 401 mile course in 4 hrs 10mins , all the other services average around 4hrs 30 mins.
The APT in 1981 managed the route in 3hrs 52 non stop incluiding a 14min wait at Stafford with atop spedd of 138mph & a while back a Pendolino had a crack at breaking the time record , but managed to do it in 3hrs 55 non stop running at 125mph. Even BR with its 110mph locos & coaches managed 4hrs 43m by 1990. The origainal headline time of 5hrs came when the 1974 electrification was completed , knocking some 54 mins off the previous 1970 best.
If the money had been put into the APT project with its ability run a 155mph train on 125mph signalling , then maybe we would have saved an awful amount of money in the long run.
Yes but that is probably a 1 off fast train but it does make the point that a new HS line will not make much difference to the time but the line will got a fortune and will require hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses to be demolished in order to provide a HS link that will not be used by that many people
The money would be better spent carry f out further upgraded to the line and dealing with bottlenecks. Technology improvements as well will enable further speed improvements.
We have so many large cities in the UK that the trains are always going to need to stop pretty frequently in order to serve them
Are they even sensible? Higher speeds are really just a nice to have and is not essential. The main impact could well be to increase considerably the London Commuter belt and is that really sensible?
I don't think people are understanding this. How do you think you deal with bottlenecks in the classical rail system? Where do you think the bottlenecks are?
The answer is that it involves adding extra lines where there are stations (where the bottlenecks invariably are). And unfortunately, stations tend to be in the centres of towns and cities. And adding extra lines involves buying prime urban real estate. And that costs a bliddy fortune!
The fastest service on the WCML from Euston to Glasgow Central is the 1630 from Euston with one stop at Preston which completes the 401 mile course in 4 hrs 10mins , all the other services average around 4hrs 30 mins.
The APT in 1981 managed the route in 3hrs 52 non stop incluiding a 14min wait at Stafford with atop spedd of 138mph & a while back a Pendolino had a crack at breaking the time record , but managed to do it in 3hrs 55 non stop running at 125mph. Even BR with its 110mph locos & coaches managed 4hrs 43m by 1990. The origainal headline time of 5hrs came when the 1974 electrification was completed , knocking some 54 mins off the previous 1970 best.
If the money had been put into the APT project with its ability run a 155mph train on 125mph signalling , then maybe we would have saved an awful amount of money in the long run.
Surely a non-stop service on a complete HS2 would be under 2 hours though? (assuming it averages over 200mph).
Comments
Agreed. We are on a small country but the time it takes to get from one part to another by road is scarey sometimes
I think you are woefully misinformed, the budget and timescale were revised upwards many times,
Don't you remenber the shambles of John Prescott, Railtrack, Network Rail and 'London and Continental Railways'.
Wikipedia Overview of HS1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1#Background
...also a "Lesson's Learned Lecture Speech" from HS1, amusingly on DFT website. Hope someone re-read this, before todays announcement - preferably Lord Adonis :rolleyes:
I particularly like the "The known unknowns” projection of unknown but expected (and counted on) benefits the go-ahead needs to 'justify' the whole scheme.... Wishful thinking, unjustifiable bollocks comes to my mind.
...reminds me of a famous Donald Rumsfeld speech
--
The £34bn projected cust, before over-runs
Yes, you can get from Preston to Glasgow in about 3 hours on the M6/M74
Oil pipeline in the middle-east?
Have you tried flying - Less than an hour.
Then then getting through all the airport takes at least 20/30 minutes. The flight takes 1 hour and once in Glasgow the Coach takes 30mins/hour+ in the rush to get into Glasgow Queens Street.
For the Train I just need to get to Euston and I'm done. The car is murder but it's atm better than a train.
The train takes 5 hours right now and is slightly expensive - but for 2 hours I'll take the train.
I suppose it depends where you live, as getting to Euston would be an ordeal for some people (or wherever the London HS2 station finally does end up) - They could have built it below the Olympic Stadium if anyone in Government has any forethought !! Not like they aren't pumping billions into the infrastructure to make it (relatively) easy to get there from most places
HS2 is great for people at the ends of the routes London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow - but bugger all use to the rest of us.....
All I can see it doing is spreading the London Housing Nightmare to the centre of Birmingham. The property speculators will already be sizing land up near the new stations tonight !!
We need to stgop people wanting/needing to go to London. The BBC bailing half of its organisation out of London to Salford comes to mind as alternatives....
Sorry (I'm not the political argumentative type) but what is this "London Housing Nightmare". If it means building more housing and bring jobs then you've got a tipsy turby view of the world; and London's housing problems are due to there being a need for more housing. Sorry again.
London Houseing Nightmare...
If Birmingham becomes a 'commuter belt town' for London, housing problems of price and affordability dogging southern towns spreads North....
When I lived in Aylesbury in 1997, House to average earnings was about 3-4x we bought at £44k. The same house today is well over £200K and is about 8-10x average earnings.
Where I stand today, with a much higher family income comapred to 1997, I could not hope to afford the same house we bought with ease in 1997....
And it will not be much faster by High Speed Rail probably about 5 hours
How is a power station going to get me to work? LOL. Travelling by train - an electric train is far more greener than car.
The timescale fluctuated because there was no proper start date, due to varying routes and other things. Once the date was confirmed for stages 1 and 2 it ran to time. Stage 1 was finished first and as that was coming to its conclusion, stage 2 which had already been planned was starting.
I don't know about the rest of the posters on here, but how many times have you come back off holiday or a business trip in Europe and see how their trains work so well. For example a trip to Holland and their Thalys train is amazing. I really dont know why we cant get some policitcal consensus sorted about the UK railways.
London's housing nightmare is, because everyone wants to live in one small corner of the UK, there's simply not enough room.
Turning Birminghma into an extension of that is likely to harm Birmingham more than it benefits London.
The shortest time it has taken for me and my luggage to get from central London to central Glasgow is 3 hours 15 mins.
That's 1:20 mins in the air, 30 mins from checkin, 20 mins for baggage reclaim, 20 mins on Heathrow Express, 25 mins on the bus to Buchanan Station and the remainder in walking between connections. And that's cutting it all very fine!
Not as cheap as rail either (though you can get cheaper if you go to Luton or Stansted, but that will take longer as well.)
Your maths is letting you down again, Bob. Currently the fastest is about 4 1/2 hours; London is less than 400 miles from Glasgow, Eurostar trains (15 years old) can do 186 mph.
Power station - Electric for trains....
Future Power shortages - see Ofgen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8494899.stm
You might get to London or Bimringham, but the lights might be off when you get there !!
I'm not so sure it will replace 'spoke' flights to Heathrow. If I was an airline competing against HSR, I'd be trying to minimise the connection effort by taking the luggage at the first airport and handling it automatically through Heathrow to the connecting flight - making it less effort that having to take your luggage to the train station, get it aboard the train, find a space, keep an eye on it (if not in luggage van), take it off the train, out the station and all way to the check in at Heathrow. If they could do that, why being no more expensive or longer, there'd be a strong case just to fly to Heathrow anyway.
What would make far more sense to me would be to run trains to Heathrow that let you do all the check in, security and immigration formalities on the train. That could be done today from Manchester with no loss of time.
It's a nice idea but it pre-clearance only really works in situations like the BA London City - New York flight that stops at Shannon, where you can tightly control where people go once they've been cleared.
It would be special trains, but not dissimilar to the way Eurostar traffic is (was) segregated at Ashford. They would stop at a segregated Heathrow area designated airside.
It would be much easier than building a third runway.
Yes but that is probably a 1 off fast train but it does make the point that a new HS line will not make much difference to the time but the line will got a fortune and will require hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses to be demolished in order to provide a HS link that will not be used by that many people
The money would be better spent carry f out further upgraded to the line and dealing with bottlenecks. Technology improvements as well will enable further speed improvements.
We have so many large cities in the UK that the trains are always going to need to stop pretty frequently in order to serve them
Are they even sensible? Higher speeds are really just a nice to have and is not essential. The main impact could well be to increase considerably the London Commuter belt and is that really sensible?
The actual time will be 3h30m, less IF the link from Manchester northwards gets built
The fastest service on the WCML from Euston to Glasgow Central is the 1630 from Euston with one stop at Preston which completes the 401 mile course in 4 hrs 10mins , all the other services average around 4hrs 30 mins.
The APT in 1981 managed the route in 3hrs 52 non stop incluiding a 14min wait at Stafford with atop spedd of 138mph & a while back a Pendolino had a crack at breaking the time record , but managed to do it in 3hrs 55 non stop running at 125mph. Even BR with its 110mph locos & coaches managed 4hrs 43m by 1990. The origainal headline time of 5hrs came when the 1974 electrification was completed , knocking some 54 mins off the previous 1970 best.
If the money had been put into the APT project with its ability run a 155mph train on 125mph signalling , then maybe we would have saved an awful amount of money in the long run.
I don't think people are understanding this. How do you think you deal with bottlenecks in the classical rail system? Where do you think the bottlenecks are?
The answer is that it involves adding extra lines where there are stations (where the bottlenecks invariably are). And unfortunately, stations tend to be in the centres of towns and cities. And adding extra lines involves buying prime urban real estate. And that costs a bliddy fortune!
Surely a non-stop service on a complete HS2 would be under 2 hours though? (assuming it averages over 200mph).