HS2

[nekomatic]

What's wrong with a garden bridge?

Just as a reminder, what was wrong with the specific garden bridge was that it was going to be a privately owned and privately policed space, partly built and entirely maintained at public expense, in a place that didn’t need another bridge, which destroyed some existing public space and mucked up some views that lots of people rather liked. Bridge-cum-garden in principle though? Knock yourself out.

[plodder]

What's wrong with a garden bridge?

Just as a reminder, what was wrong with the specific garden bridge was that it was going to be a privately owned and privately policed space, partly built and entirely maintained at public expense, in a place that didn’t need another bridge, which destroyed some existing public space and mucked up some views that lots of people rather liked. Bridge-cum-garden in principle though? Knock yourself out.

Well, yes. The bastardised version was more about corruption (and, frankly, bean counters moaning about strategic and sustainable funding) than the actual vanity concept that had Joanna Lumley gasping with delight.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Network Rail has already identified that at current railway construction delivery costs we cannot afford to keep our existing railway going, as renewal is too expensive. It has a project to reduce signalling renewals to 45% of their current cost, which it believes is the kind of cost necessary for the railway to be sustainable. And that's just the signalling.

So it ought to save a lot of money to have a conventional railway. And basically our railway is stuffed unless we relearn how to do it at a sensible cost.

I'm one of the technical leads for that signalling cost reduction programme, and whilst there is (justifiably) a lot of scepticism about its ability to hit its goals, it's good to see a programme really look in-depth at every cost driver and see what can be done systemically to remove factors that increase cost. A lot of it is in conjunction with EULYNX, which is a pan-European project to set standards around signalling systems and how they interface. The EU is a massive player here, mainly because it has the clout to try to force suppliers to work to standards and avoid supplier lock-in, which can be a big part of the cost.

Thing is, other asset disciplines (track, electrification, etc) also need to get a grip of their own costs, and there isn't anything like the same focus that signalling has got going. The exec just aren't bothered about the unit costs of renewals - the cost of staffing, yep. But not renewals.

[Grumble]

While we were looking at the Tory party tearing itself apart, the government announced the removal of the West Coast mainline link to HS2.
https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/ ... link-sinks

[JQH]

So the North loses out yet again.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Yup. The strategic outline business case for it is due out from DfT next month, and it contains work on the impact of removing it. Suffice it to say, it doesn't help.

The official thinking here is that they don't want to worsen the capacity issues through Wigan up to Preston, and also that better times to Scotland could be achieved by having more HS2 line joining the WCML further north. But the alternatives will involve spending more money on more infrastructure, and having more discussion in Parliament which will take longer. Many people here will, in all honesty, be dead by the time Phase 2b Western leg connects to the WCML in the north west. I'll be nearing retirement (I'm 38).

It's a bad decision, in my mind. The entire Integrated Rail Plan is a bad decision, mind, but even this wasn't considered in that atrocious document.

[El Pollo Diablo]

For f.cks sake

[IvanV]

For f.cks sake

I could never understand that a conservative government, of all governments, would decide to pour so much money into such a deep money hole. They that refused to build the much more valuable and cheaper Crossrail, though at least they allowed that to finish, and it is a project that serves its original and high value purpose, unlike the ever-changing purpose of HS2.

They are slowly waking up to the idea that they don't like so much money going down the HS2 money hole, when there is so much pressure on public money. But we are increasingly creeping towards the outcome that no one ever thought would be a sensible, a high speed line only from London to Birmingham, which is likely to be a white elephant. The Dutch high speed HSL-Zuid line is now widely considered a white elephant in the Netherlands, in part because the Belgians ultimately only upgraded 36km of the track to high speed from the border to Brussels. But at least it only cost €8bn for its 125km, even though at the time that seemed expensive for a high speed line. The British would be delighted to be able to build at that unit cost.

Let us not forget that in 1974 it was a incoming Labour government that decided that the shortage of money was such that they would abandon the channel rail tunnel under construction at that time, even at the cost of compensating the French for what they had done on their side.

[El Pollo Diablo]

For the last time, the purpose of HS2 has remained the same since 2010. And much of the reason for the expense is the fact that the government, who have got incredible amounts of interference into what HS2, keep dicking around with what they want.

Even just the uncertainty right now will make things more expensive - suppliers will make layoffs or refuse to gear up until things are certain, and thus things will take longer.

[IvanV]

For the last time, the purpose of HS2 has remained the same since 2010. And much of the reason for the expense is the fact that the government, who have got incredible amounts of interference into what HS2, keep dicking around with what they want.

If you have a sufficiently clear idea of what you are trying to achieve, and how the project, just this project, delivers it, then it ought to be pretty resistant to being endlessly buggered about with. See for example, Crossrail, which for all its problems in the end had a scope that made sense for a clear and specific objective. And for all the pain of the eventual cost and time overruns, which seemed horrible at the time but in hindsight were pretty modest for such a megaproject, the scope or something very close to it stood up to scrutiny and was delivered.

A senior HS2 person reminds us what HS2 is for, writing in 2018. The main benefits are journey time, capacity, and levelling up. Though the £92 billion of benefits is looking very sick by now, and suggestive of a BCR that has now fallen well below 1.

This 2019 House of Commons Committee report, see especially Ch 5, seems to take the same view that I suggested this list of benefits was not stable from the start, but added to as time went along. A commentator there calls it "benefit hunting". It didn't help public confidence in the benefit case that we had a KPMG business case claiming agglomeration benefits between Birmingham and London, that didn't pass the laugh test, and a PWC report revealing problems with the cost and benefit realisation, that was sat on for 2 years.

But the ultimate problem, as I would see it, is that the objectives the first author sets out are a bit too generic to define the precise scope of HS2. I know you have pointed to reports in the past which claim that the HS2 scope is optimised. But that is within quite a narrow context. Greater problems of poor capacity, slow journeys and poor connectivity in our rail system are evident on quite different route axes, especially between northern and midland cities, where rail has a poor market share of journeys on those axes. It was always controversial whether HS2 would help levelling up, as evidence appeared to show such railways avoid the need for, rather than facilitate, development in outlying regions. I'm aware that the management of Manchester etc is much in favour of it. And no one really believes conservatives talking about levelling up. So it has never been quite clear that just this scope is the best way to spend money to gain just these benefits.

Ultimately, precisely what HS2 is for and how it delivers it were never pinned down to the precision of the Crossrail case, and the cost estimates were also less well pinned down. And if they had been, it would have been much more resistant to the damaging buggering about it suffered as realities emerged.

[Trinucleus]

For the last time, the purpose of HS2 has remained the same since 2010. And much of the reason for the expense is the fact that the government, who have got incredible amounts of interference into what HS2, keep dicking around with what they want.

If you have a sufficiently clear idea of what you are trying to achieve, and how the project, just this project, delivers it, then it ought to be pretty resistant to being endlessly buggered about with. See for example, Crossrail, which for all its problems in the end had a scope that made sense for a clear and specific objective. And for all the pain of the eventual cost and time overruns, which seemed horrible at the time but in hindsight were pretty modest for such a megaproject, the scope or something very close to it stood up to scrutiny and was delivered.

A senior HS2 person reminds us what HS2 is for, writing in 2018. The main benefits are journey time, capacity, and levelling up. Though the £92 billion of benefits is looking very sick by now, and suggestive of a BCR that has now fallen well below 1.

This 2019 House of Commons Committee report, see especially Ch 5, seems to take the same view that I suggested this list of benefits was not stable from the start, but added to as time went along. A commentator there calls it "benefit hunting". It didn't help public confidence in the benefit case that we had a KPMG business case claiming agglomeration benefits between Birmingham and London, that didn't pass the laugh test, and a PWC report revealing problems with the cost and benefit realisation, that was sat on for 2 years.

But the ultimate problem, as I would see it, is that the objectives the first author sets out are a bit too generic to define the precise scope of HS2. I know you have pointed to reports in the past which claim that the HS2 scope is optimised. But that is within quite a narrow context. Greater problems of poor capacity, slow journeys and poor connectivity in our rail system are evident on quite different route axes, especially between northern and midland cities, where rail has a poor market share of journeys on those axes. It was always controversial whether HS2 would help levelling up, as evidence appeared to show such railways avoid the need for, rather than facilitate, development in outlying regions. I'm aware that the management of Manchester etc is much in favour of it. And no one really believes conservatives talking about levelling up. So it has never been quite clear that just this scope is the best way to spend money to gain just these benefits.

Ultimately, precisely what HS2 is for and how it delivers it were never pinned down to the precision of the Crossrail case, and the cost estimates were also less well pinned down. And if they had been, it would have been much more resistant to the damaging buggering about it suffered as realities emerged.

Up here in Yorkshire, we're interested to see how spending oodles of cash on a London to Birmingham line will help levelling up, especially after Crossrail has been built with some Government support. To be fair they did at least promise to electrify our line to London. It never happened of course, but I'm sure they'll promise it again before the election
I'm peeved because the original HS2 plan would have put London an hour travel time away from our house