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Re: HS2

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 3:26 pm
by plodder
HS2 is being built and we aren’t going to stop it. We can, however, engage positively with it, recognising that if done right, it works towards our Green transport goals. We must campaign to ensure that:
  • its route minimises degradation and erosion of natural habitats and respects nearby communities;
  • it interacts in a positive way with its environment, using high-quality architecture and sensitive integration with landscape and townscape;
  • anyone or any environment affected by its construction or operation impacts is fairly compensated using best-practice habitat enhancement and restoration and noise / access abatement;
They also point out
It’s absorbing campaigning energy which would be much better directed at the Government’s road-building programme RIS2, which is an order of magnitude more destructive to habitats, communities and well-being and which is a massive CO2 generator;
https://hs2.green/who-we-are/

Sounds like you should sign up?

Re: HS2

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:56 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Worthy goals for sure. But looking round their site, it seems to be mostly disagreeing with other 'greens' about the level of environmental damage being done, and a bit of saying "don't worry about that anyway, some of these roads coming up are even worse" which is a fair point as far as it goes, but seems to contradict the
We must campaign to ensure that:
  • its route minimises degradation and erosion of natural habitats and respects nearby communities;
  • it interacts in a positive way with its environment, using high-quality architecture and sensitive integration with landscape and townscape;
  • anyone or any environment affected by its construction or operation impacts is fairly compensated using best-practice habitat enhancement and restoration and noise / access abatement;
bit - none of those points are currently met, so they're position seems to be that we must simultaneously campaign for those things but also ignore them and focus on roads instead. I was trying to find the environmental campaigning pages of their site, but they seem to be few and far between among all the "pipe down, other greens" ones.

Which is a bit confusing.

I'm still not convinced that campaign energy spent on HS2 is at the expense of campaigning against roads anyway. And at least Highways England have committed to No Net Loss, unlike HS2.

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:12 am
by plodder
You need to read up on, say, the Lower Thames crossing to HS2 before you can get away with glib comments like that.

There is absolutely a finite amount of campaigning energy and it diminishes every time people realise they’re barking up the wrong tree.

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:54 am
by Woodchopper
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:56 pm
I'm still not convinced that campaign energy spent on HS2 is at the expense of campaigning against roads anyway.
I don't buy that argument either. It'll apply to an individual but organizations can grow as they get volunteers or donations. So if a message is popular it'll generate more capacity.

That said, I do think that exaggerated claims have a negative effect. They reinforce perceptions that in general environmental campaigners in general are prone to exaggeration, which makes it easy for people to decide not to do anything about global warming and other real problems.

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:09 pm
by El Pollo Diablo
There are, of course, several problems at work here. If it is the case that HS2 could be doing better in terms of biodiversity - and I'm not questioning that point, just acknowledging that some don't believe it - then there are several sources of that.

One of the things to bear in mind is that the transport secretary was, for three wholly unwelcome and infuriating years to those of us in the transport sector, Christopher Stephen Grayling. He's a f.cking idiot. You don't need me to tell you that. But if you've never had to see the impact of his being secretary of state for the area that you have some good knowledge and experience in, it's quite hard to understand just how sh.t he is/was.

I've told this story before, but it's worth re-emphasising to try to get across the purity and strength of his closed-mindedness and idiocy. Some of the work I and my team do contributes to understanding the whole life costs of different options for investment in the railway. In track, one of the big innovations is under-sleeper pads. They're not exactly advanced tech - they are literally just foam pads attached to the underside of concrete sleepers (the preferred sleeper type on the railway), which cushions the interface between sleeper and ballast, and reduces the forces transferred to the ballast. Over time, ballast - the stones used to support railway sleepers - wear down from the repeated force of trains passing over them, and reduce in size. This leads to uneven compaction and that, in turn, can cause various other issues including corrugation of the rails. Certain refurbishments may be done, and actions such as tamping or stoneblowing can help. Eventually, though, the ballast needs renewing. This requires closure of the railway, typically booked years in advance, and is a job which is extremely heavy on materials, plant and labour. It's expensive. Under-sleeper pads hugely extend the lifetime of the ballast between renewals, by about 40%, for an up-front spend of around 2% extra. From a whole life cost perspective, they're an absolute no-brainer, so much so that they're now required by policy in Network Rail.

East West Rail, however, isn't internal to Network Rail (despite several NR staff working on the project development) - it's a separate company. As part of the specification of the reinstatement of the line, under-sleeper pads were recommended as being required on the basis of whole life cost. During "value engineering" workshops, however, which are basically just excuses for lowering the spend regardless of impact*, the pads were removed from the spec on the say of Grayling himself, because they cost extra money. 40% extra life of the track up in smoke, because of his stupidity. EWR have made other terrible decisions, such as not electrifying from the start**. But nonetheless, hopefully you can see the impact that these stupid decisions have on how things go.

Grayling was, unfortunately, SoS for much of the key period of the development of the specification for HS2. Despite them having the enormous budget they do, they are looking at every point for how to avoid spending too much money. Naturally, this doesn't extend to the number of directors they have or the compensation they pay to their contractors, and HS2 have got a good team looking at whole life cost-based decision making for the infrastructure itself (led by someone from our team). But when it comes to things like cycle lanes or meeting biodiversity commitments which lie outside of the assets directly managed by the company, those are the sort of "green crap" areas where Grayling would have been pushing them to cut costs. HS2 and Network Rail have had, shall we say, "discussions" around issues such as interfaces between the two railways, and particularly EWR alignment north of Aylesbury. HS2 are trying their best to transfer as much of the cost out of their own project as possible. It makes sense, but doesn't always fly.

None of this is trying to excuse anything, just to explain. A £100bn budget is, of course, absolutely enormous. But be aware that hidden within that budget are some often furiously energetic discussions about how far that stretches and what HS2 can avoid doing - discussions encouraged, of course, by the government, who would rather it didn't cost £100bn, but a lot less.


*see the Grenfell Tower Inquiry for more details
**a decision which Grant f.cking Shapps has recently supported, because oooh big shiny battery trains. Network Rail's decarbonisation strategy will see all but the most uneconomic 10% of the railway electrified, which will eventually include EWR. Grant Shapps is a moron.

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:33 pm
by El Pollo Diablo
Looks like the final protestor has left the tunnels outside Euston, leaving behind the phenomenal achievement of delaying the construction of a taxi rank by about four weeks, less time than Boris Johnson managed through his sheer lack of ability to make a decision

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:30 pm
by Bird on a Fire
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:09 pm
There are, of course, several problems at work here. If it is the case that HS2 could be doing better in terms of biodiversity - and I'm not questioning that point, just acknowledging that some don't believe it - then there are several sources of that.

One of the things to bear in mind is that the transport secretary was, for three wholly unwelcome and infuriating years to those of us in the transport sector, Christopher Stephen Grayling. He's a f.cking idiot. <expands at length>
Thanks for this post, EPD - it's an interesting insight. I've long suspected that some of the issues were basic penny-pinching, and the way Grayling combines a price-of-everything-value-of-nothing attitude with being, as you eloquently put it, a f.cking idiot, does suggest he may deserve a reasonable share of the blame.

The comparison with under-sleeper pads is a really nice example of how short-term cost-cutting undermines the long-term objectives of the project, and it's one I'll try to remember. I've not seen any challenges to the £150m price tag in the Wildlife Trusts report (and doing those kinds of large-scale connectivity exercises is their bread and butter, so I'd expect them to be roughly correct), which puts it in a similar price ballpark. "A green corridor: the under-sleeper pads of biodiversity compensation" has a nice ring to it.

I do hope folk can keep the pressure up so that the next phases go ahead with better attention to the conservation aspects.

Re: HS2

Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 7:48 pm
by plodder
This aerial shot of the trackbed gives an idea of the immense destruction being caused by the huge scar on the landscape resulting in the destruction of blah blah blah

https://mobile.twitter.com/CEaston66/st ... 6494433282

Suggest googling A14 construction photos for a comparator.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 8:24 am
by El Pollo Diablo
This looks like a move in the right direction
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... dApp_Other

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:17 am
by plodder
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:54 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:56 pm
I'm still not convinced that campaign energy spent on HS2 is at the expense of campaigning against roads anyway.
I don't buy that argument either. It'll apply to an individual but organizations can grow as they get volunteers or donations. So if a message is popular it'll generate more capacity.
I don't think this view is correct. Point me towards the well organised and highly publicised campaign against new roads please?

e.g.

https://twitter.com/AdamWJT/status/1367068017423704064

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:19 am
by plodder
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Mar 03, 2021 8:24 am
This looks like a move in the right direction
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... dApp_Other
what, the balanced reporting from the guardian?

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:40 am
by El Pollo Diablo
Ha, well quite. For a paper which says that editorially it supports HS2, it sure seems like it very strongly doesn't like HS2.

Re: HS2

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:39 pm
by Fishnut
Not quite HS2, but for those who worry that road expansion schemes don't get sufficient scrutiny, it looks like things might be changing. I haven't bothered to read the report to see if climate concerns factored in to the cost-benefit analysis but we can only hope.

Re: HS2

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 4:21 pm
by El Pollo Diablo
HS2 posts moved from Usual midsession by-election beating, or signs of change? thread

I suspect that HS2 has become a sort of nebulous category issue that represents all the problems with the world, rather than a specific and direct cause of issues in and of itself. I can well imagine that opposing HS2 has become, in the area, something which one has to do if one doesn't want to be outcast. It may be in tunnel in the area, but people have been opposing it for so long I doubt that matters any more really.

That said, if the project has created sensitivities around planning reform, then fair enough - that'll be easy to exploit locally, but may be harder to do so nationally in a couple of years' time.

Re: HS2

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:08 pm
by Bird on a Fire
To be fair I think the PR around HS2 has been handled pretty badly. Even if the nearest case of contractors trespassing or an ancient woodland getting felled (which is also happening to build access roads to areas that will ultimately be underground etc), people talk, they go out to walk their dogs etc., and feel protective of nature locally. The "conversation" between conservation groups and HS2 Ltd ended with an incredibly sour falling out, and I bet RSPB and similar membership levels are quite high in more affluent areas of the home counties.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:01 am
by plodder
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:08 pm
To be fair I think the PR around HS2 has been handled pretty badly. Even if the nearest case of contractors trespassing or an ancient woodland getting felled (which is also happening to build access roads to areas that will ultimately be underground etc), people talk, they go out to walk their dogs etc., and feel protective of nature locally. The "conversation" between conservation groups and HS2 Ltd ended with an incredibly sour falling out, and I bet RSPB and similar membership levels are quite high in more affluent areas of the home counties.
It also ended up with wildly exaggerated rhetoric being bandied about about the impacts of HS2 and a willful misunderstanding of what the project is actually for, which probably didn't help rally round the locals either.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:31 am
by Woodchopper
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:08 pm
To be fair I think the PR around HS2 has been handled pretty badly. Even if the nearest case of contractors trespassing or an ancient woodland getting felled (which is also happening to build access roads to areas that will ultimately be underground etc), people talk, they go out to walk their dogs etc., and feel protective of nature locally. The "conversation" between conservation groups and HS2 Ltd ended with an incredibly sour falling out, and I bet RSPB and similar membership levels are quite high in more affluent areas of the home counties.
It also ended up with wildly exaggerated rhetoric being bandied about about the impacts of HS2 and a willful misunderstanding of what the project is actually for, which probably didn't help rally round the locals either.
If its anything like local opposition to wind power that I've seen, for many people its not a matter of a cost benefit analysis. Instead its an example of how a distant government has imposed things that local people didn't ask for, still don't want after they've been consulted, and will mainly benefit other people who live a long way away. Start there and people will believe and use any 'fact' or argument which supports their opposition.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:37 am
by IvanV
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:01 am
It also ended up with wildly exaggerated rhetoric being bandied about about the impacts of HS2 and a willful misunderstanding of what the project is actually for, which probably didn't help rally round the locals either.
You know what it's actually "for" then? Do tell. I'm sure we'd all love to know, the government included.

As far as I can tell, when first accepted by the government, it was a cover-story for refusing to expand Heathrow or SE airport capacity in general. Since they now don't mind expanding Heathrow, or SE airport capacity in general, that one has gone out of the window. Since then it has been "for":

- increasing the integration between disparate regional economies - at least that was the main issue in the initial KPMG business case that was much ridiculed
- levelling up between the north and south - though many people have argued the evidence of similar projects shows that it won't have that effect, and there are much better ways of spending so much money to that end
- increasing rail capacity between London and various places - though it is a very expensive way of doing that
- reducing carbon - though it is questionable it will do that, or not very much, and there are much better ways of spending so much money to that end

This process of devising a project for a reason, then losing that reason, and then ploughing on regardless without its original reason, or trying to make it fit a new reason, is a common feature of major policy cock-ups.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
by El Pollo Diablo
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:45 pm
by plodder
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.
Lol yes.

Ivan this chap is a good place to start, he's got also got a blog, and twitter etc, and he's well informed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gy1GNAD9Yk

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:14 pm
by IvanV
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:45 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.
Lol yes.
It is interesting to know that you both think this, and think it amounts to a cogent reason. As a professional transport policy economist, who has carried out many rail project appraisals, I have a more nuanced view of such things. But this is not a place to into detailed HS2 debates.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:20 pm
by TAFKAsoveda
IvanV wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:14 pm
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:45 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.
Lol yes.
It is interesting to know that you both think this, and think it amounts to a cogent reason. As a professional transport policy economist, who has carried out many rail project appraisals, I have a more nuanced view of such things. But this is not a place to into detailed HS2 debates.
I believe EPD may have some relevant knowledge too.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 5:16 pm
by jdc
IvanV wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:14 pm
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:45 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.
Lol yes.
It is interesting to know that you both think this, and think it amounts to a cogent reason. As a professional transport policy economist, who has carried out many rail project appraisals, I have a more nuanced view of such things. But this is not a place to into detailed HS2 debates.
If you are looking for detailed HS2 debates, there's a 2020 thread here viewtopic.php?f=10&t=748&p=15785&hilit=hs2#p15785 and a more recent one here from 2021 viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2154&p=68556&hilit=hs2#p68556

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 5:56 pm
by Bird on a Fire
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:08 pm
To be fair I think the PR around HS2 has been handled pretty badly. Even if the nearest case of contractors trespassing or an ancient woodland getting felled (which is also happening to build access roads to areas that will ultimately be underground etc), people talk, they go out to walk their dogs etc., and feel protective of nature locally. The "conversation" between conservation groups and HS2 Ltd ended with an incredibly sour falling out, and I bet RSPB and similar membership levels are quite high in more affluent areas of the home counties.
It also ended up with wildly exaggerated rhetoric being bandied about about the impacts of HS2 and a willful misunderstanding of what the project is actually for, which probably didn't help rally round the locals either.
I mean, it's a net negative biodiversity "green infrastructure" project at a time when housebuilding, highways and network rail have all committed to net positive (and AFAIK they all use the same metrics).

I accept it's necessary for expanding rail capacity and don't oppose the project (even if the budget is more than the entire contested sum rich countries promised to deliver to poor countries under the Paris Agreement, but have yet to stump up). But the impacts on habitat have been very badly handled, and you won't find a conversation professional in England who disagrees with me. I even called it a PR issue in my post.

Thought that post would bait you, though. I've still got it.

Re: HS2

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 5:57 pm
by Bird on a Fire
IvanV wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 4:14 pm
plodder wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:45 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:56 pm
It's to increase rail capacity. And yes, it's expensive, but there aren't any better ways to provide the same huge increase in capacity as HS2.
Lol yes.
It is interesting to know that you both think this, and think it amounts to a cogent reason. As a professional transport policy economist, who has carried out many rail project appraisals, I have a more nuanced view of such things. But this is not a place to into detailed HS2 debates.
Word to the wise, Ivan - much as I enjoy a good argument from authority, I wouldn't try to pull rank on EPD on rail capacity.