HS2's latest reset ditches autonomous train tech to get project back on track

HS2 is set to ditch some of its most ambitious railway technology in a bid to make Britain's most troubled infrastructure project easier to finish. A report by spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) published on Monday reveals the Department for Transport (DfT) has agreed changes to simplify parts of the railway's …

[Maurice Mynah]

HS 2 late

So how much travel time will this new railway save Andy Burnham on his commute to and from "No 10 in Manchester"?

(Actually I suppose he'll be well retired before it opens.)

[Oh Matron!]

Re: HS 2 late

It's not even going to Manchester, thanks to the Tories. Or did you forget that?

[David Austin]

Re: HS 2 late

Genuine Question: Has Mr. Burnham talked about re-implementing Phase 1b and 2 to Manchester and Leeds? I get the feeling he'd like that with his transport credentials, but Is that practicable or feasible at this stage?

This project has been an expensive omnishambles - starting from selling it to the public as High Speed rail rather than a needed capacity upgrade - but there's very few rail projects I can think of in the last 30 years that we ended up regretting building, even with cost overruns (Looking your way, Elizabeth line...)

[david 12]

Re: HS 2 late

very few rail projects I can think of in the last 30 years that we ended up regretting building

It wasn't clear if this was a rail project, or a research project.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: HS 2 late

Considering the messiah complex of the politicians involved, it was meant to be all things to all men.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: HS 2 late

Don't forget civil service only caring about their golden penshions.

[Sproggit]

Re: HS 2 late

It was neither.

It was a project to transfer an obscene amount of money to Tory donors and friends of George Osborne, using a massive rail project as the cut-out.

The "current" part of the project, "Phase 1" is supposed to deliver 140 miles (224 km) of track for an estimated £102.7 billion [in 2025 £].

So that works out at just short of £460 million per *kilometre* of track laid.

Or, put another way, not far off **half a million quid per metre of track**.

Making this the most expensive rail project, anywhere in the world, by the inevitable country mile.

It isn't the cost of laying the actual track that has made this so expensive, mind... Nor is it the heavier civil engineering [cuttings, tunnels, etc.]... It is the cost of the compulsory purchase orders for the land for the selected route.

Please refer back to previous reference to "donors and friends" for context.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: HS 2 late

These things wouldn't have happened if SFO, NCA and others were doing their jobs. But it is safer to see nothing, say nothing and protect that golden penshion at all cost.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: HS 2 late

Why downvotes? As it seems nobody, who could do something about it, stopped for a second and thought "hang on a minute, why does cost so much? where the money is going and why?" and so on.

It's nah nah nah I can't see anything, I must protect me penshion.

[ChoHag]

Re: HS 2 late

Because you're a stuck record.

It doesn't even matter if you're right any more, you're just annoying.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: HS 2 late

The Jubilee Line Extension cost £206k per metre back in 1999 which is the equivalent of £400k per metre now. Overall it cost the same as HS1 (which had the same length of tunnel) and the entire WCML renewal project combined.

There was a proposal to terminate the Edinburgh trams at Haymarket as the costs went wild. At that stage the remaining work to extend the system to the middle of the city, requiring only one mile of track from Haymarket to Princess St and two miles of overhead - was more than the entire Nottingham tram system; track, overhead, trams and depot.

Nobody has any incentive to control the costs of government-funded infrastructure projects.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: HS 2 late

I would argue that the technical difficulties of digging a tunnel underneath one of Europe's biggest cities with a hundred years of existing buried sewer, electrical, water, telecoms infrastructure and half a dozen tube lines without disturbing any of the buildings above may involve slightly higher costs than running a straight railway through some farmland.

Unless any homeowner within 10miles of the route could object to absolutely anything and every beetle had to be protected.

[Falmor]

Re: HS 2 late

Living quite close to HS2, its not so much through farmland as under it. Not that they are tunnelling, the dig down, put the tunnels in and the fill over the top of the tunnels. No idea of what that does to costs though.

[David Hicklin]

Re: HS 2 late

> Living quite close to HS2, its not so much through farmland as under it. Not that they are tunnelling, the dig down, put the tunnels in and the fill over the top of the tunnels. No idea of what that does to costs though.

It all adds to the cost, I have read that one third of the trip to London will be in tunnels or deep cuttings so not much to look at, maybe the short journey time will be a blessing in that respect

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: HS 2 late

But the tunnels and cuttings are mostly to avoid people in expensive houses being able to see the trains and so claiming it's needed to protect the beetle's habitat.

Very little of the tunneling is to navigate the Berkshire alps

[StewartWhite]

Re: HS 2 late

It was only on the final leg of our scaling of Walbury Hill that Sherpa Ten-ZING! pointed out the snow-capped peak with its resident Himalayan Vultures circling ominously overhead.

We swiftly put the Union Jack atop the summit and breathlessly retreated from its vast altitude (974 ft and counting!) to have a celebratory pint of ale and a pork pie at the Crown and Garter!

[Roland6]

Re: HS 2 late

Are you trying to say - in the quietly understated English way, you successfully climbed the north face of Walbury Hill and made it back to base camp…

[StewartWhite]

Re: HS 2 late

Indeed! Next up on our tour of slightly hilly places in England (after Lime Kiln Hill in Cambridge):

Climbing up on Solsbury Hill

I could see the city light

Wind was blowing, time stood still

Eagle flew out of the night

[Roland6]

Re: HS 2 late

>Next up on our tour of slightly hilly places in England

I would add Gas Hill in Norwich to your list...

[David Hicklin]

Re: HS 2 late

> Making this the most expensive rail project, anywhere in the world, by the inevitable country mile.

However once you look at all the tunnelling (some cut and cover), viaducts and sheer amount of civil engineering needed to build this thing (in large part thanks to the NIMBY's) it is very easy to see why it has cost so much.

Add into that the almost constant changing requirements as bit by bit it got cut back (which in itself cost a lot of planning and land/housing purchases) it is no wonder it is this expensive.

[Roland6]

Re: HS 2 late

> (in large part thanks to the NIMBY's)

You really need to listen to the BBC podcast Derailed. Basically, the politicians hobbled the project by wanting a super-duper new shiny at a bargain basement price.

TPTB thought they were being clever by having a Hybrid Bill, only problem was having put all the stuff in the hybrid bill and signed it off it had to deliver the stuff agreed even though events such as tunnelling rendered many originally envisaged mitigations unnecessary. Much of the civil engineering is necessary because of the decision to go for a 400km/h trackbed which requires a concrete base and be more of a straight line than a 300km/h trackbed as used on HS1.

My opinion was the original price was way too low, as it not only made many assumptions (it included only a 300km/h trackbed, next to no tunnelling, minimal budget for land purchasing, plus it didn't satisfy many of the governments mandatory requirements, hence the project always was going to go over "budget". From the rough back-of-the-envelope calculations I did, it seems HS2 is due to come at around the same amount as if the entire London-Birmingham line had been tunnelled... So set against that budget it is not doing badly...

[Terry 6]

Re: HS 2 late

Even worse, the speed promise is what has made teh project so damnably expensive.

At those speeds they need it to run in a straight line as much as possible, as I understand it.

And that means you can't avoid difficult or expensive locations. There's a village- lose the village. There's a farm, buy the farm There's a natural obstacle, remove the obstacle.Not just purchasing cost,but delay, inquiries, appeals and so forth. All to shave a few minutes off a journey that could be speeded up better by having good transport links at either end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: HS 2 late

They could have delivered much of the passenger capacity increase by sorting out WCML congestion into Euston, and also pushing freight off to a dedicated set of tracks…(like the under utilised Chiltern Line - back to state run Sep 2026).

… or almost for free by moving it out of peak hours or run more overnight (where maintenance allows).

That being said post Covid, with WFH … has traffic even returned to normal baseline levels yet ?? If not, AI will be coming for another bite at that.

By the time HS2 is delivered/complete, the needed capacity increase may have just completely evaporated.

[David Hicklin]

Re: HS 2 late

> sorting out WCML congestion into Euston

Going to downvote you there as nobody wants to go back to the hell that the WCML "upgrade" was a few years back. Years of Rail Replacement Buses and massive cost overruns that did not deliver fully as it got canned towards the end as thus unfinished.

Main problem with WCML is that there are sections that can't be give more capacity without demolishing a huge amount of housing that grew up alongside it - just witness the protests of HS2 going *near* somewhere.

[Roland6]

Re: HS 2 late

Trouble is, HS2 doesn't remove the need for the massive overhaul and upgrade of the WCML.

[rg287]

Re: HS 2 late

They could have delivered much of the passenger capacity increase by sorting out WCML congestion into Euston

Nope. Get bent. Downvoted. You do not make statements like that without offering a sensible proposal for how. Otherwise it's just FUD and "Oh no, but what about this other hyperloop thing we could do.".

Network Rail are not stupid. They make their money from track access charges.

If they could improve capacity to Euston they would - but it's rammed. Platform capacity is at a premium.

And you're more broadly wrong as well. Sorting out WCML congestion into Euston does not fix platform constraints at Birmingham New Street or Manchester Picadilly. Curzon Street will let them literally triple the number of local cross-city services, which Brum desperately needs (currently there are long distance trains parked on through-platforms at BNS for 30mins doing crew changes, which block the possibility for local/regional through-services. BNS was never supposed to be a terminus for long-distance services).

That being said post Covid, with WFH … has traffic even returned to normal baseline levels yet ??

Yes. The mainline traffic bounced back by the end of 2022, albeit with long-distance leisure making up for a lot of commuting.

Nationally, overall ridership was sat at 98% of pre-COVID for a long time, but this was because London commuting has remained down and did not reflect wider trends. A bit like saying average (mean) wealth has gone up but really it's just a couple of billionaires getting richer and the median is static. It's a function of bad stats.

Many areas have seen ridership bounce to 140% of pre-COVID levels. We need express trains off the legacy network to make space for local and regional services.

[Roland6]

Re: HS 2 late

After all the arguments about capacity, one of the big impacts of all the cutbacks being made to HS2 is on its capacity...

[really_adf]

Re: HS 2 late

A railway line is a very long term investment. Better to build a forward-looking alignment now than realise your mistake of not doing so, being effectively stuck with a limitation for decades, in (say) 20 years.

A more winding track of of course longer and more complex to build so some cost is offset.

[rg287]

Re: HS 2 late

Even worse, the speed promise is what has made teh project so damnably expensive.

At those speeds they need it to run in a straight line as much as possible, as I understand it.

This is basically irrelevant. Running it anywhere in the Home Counties is going to be expensive. A straight line means you use less land than a (longer) wiggly route, but does also mean you sometimes clip an expensive bit of property. These two things somewhat balance out. Also, you'd have to be an absolute de Pfeffel Johnson to build a brand new Inter-City railway in the 21st century and not build as straight as possible. Conventional HS stock will do 180-200 mph, and that's what the track will be laid for, but they've very sensibly bought and civil-engineered the alignment to be good for 250+mph so that in 50 years as material science moves along, you can upgrade with new overhead lines and rail tech and run at high speeds - without having to buy bits of land to straighten out the bends that would be left if you half-arsed it in the first place. Passive provisioning is a good thing. We know from the West Coast Route Modernisation that torturing higher speeds out of old track is far more expensive, disruptive than new build, and basically not worth doing. Electrifying and fixing knackered bridges and stuff, sure. But trying to get a 80mph line to 120mph to avoid building a new Inter-City Route is a way to madness. Anyone who disagrees with this presumably issues developer laptops with 4-8GB of RAM and instructs users to come back and ask for 16GB when they really need it. It's 2026, not 1826.

The major cost centres of HS2 are:

* The stations. In France, stations are built by the cities. A new LGV project would actually be scoped from the equivalent of the M25 to Birmingham International. The new stations and approaches would be scoped separately. So when people take Project Cost/Route KM and come up with a much larger number than the French equivalent, it's because it's an apples-to-steak comparison.

* Constant spec changes - started building and then politicians got their crayons out. de Pfeffel is personally responsible for £1.5Bn of waste when he tore up the Euston Station drawings and decided he knew better than the rail engineers.

* HS2 Ltd. Why the fuck they set up a special-purpose Ltd company instead of just having Network Rail be the commissioning body is beyond me.

* Treasury Intransigence - They have this weird desire to smooth spending as if they don't have a central bank at their beck and call. You want to build infrastructure as quick as possible in order to start realising the economic gains of that outlay as quickly as possible. Slowing down and "smoothing" spending costs more overall and delays the economic gains.

* NIMBYs - The Acts of Parliament authorising the route didn't authorise enabling works. So HS2 Ltd have been stuck in a position where they have an Act of Parliament saying "You can build a railway through this bit of land", but they've then had to apply for planning to build an access road or groundwater monitoring station - which local councils have refused. This - perversely - lengthens the disruption and uncertainty for local residents because you've got half a railway built through, but certain works are artificially lengthened and a subset of councillors feel smug about their petty "act of resistance" that - overall - changes nothing.

* Skills shortage. Because we do start-stop development and then the workers disperse to other industries, it's required a huge training and apprentice programmes. Countries that do rolling programmes don't have this issue because they just keep rolling hard-won skills and experience forward instead of having to reinvent the wheel for every new project.

[ChoHag]

Re: HS 2 late

> there's very few rail projects I can think of in the last 30 years that we ended up regretting

Is that because the projects were even one of well managed, on budget, or on time, or simply because we need vastly more railways and no matter how badly done any of them is it's like a drop of water to a man dying in the desert?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: HS 2 late

"his transport credentials"

What, so he can make HS2 as crap as TFGM?

[Bonzo_red]

ATO Costs

What estimates were given for the additional costs of NOT implementing ATO? I can well imagine that the train drivers will insist on additional pay to drive these new-fangled high speed trains.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: ATO Costs

It's a reasonable question but one of the main problems with HS2 is that it was loaded up with the best of everything, especially the stuff that didn't already exist. There was already enough to do with the planning and engineering, so avoid the sunk cost fallacy and focus on getting trains rolling. This is basic idea behind the agile approach – do what you can now.

Autonomous driving systems are coming and can be retrofitted at some point in the future. More important are the subsystems such as signalling that need to use the moden ECTS.

[cyberdemon]

Re: ATO Costs

Yes exactly!

When the train companies were trying to get rid of guards on trains, I was saying No, don't get rid of the guards, get rid of the drivers! The guard is needed to make sure all the passengers are OK, and they are perfectly capable of "Driving" the train (i.e. controlling when the doors open/close and deciding when the train is ready to leave - the train could do the rest itself)

If a human is in low-level command of a train (i.e. controlling the traction motors with a joystick) and we still rely on signal lamps, then it risks all kinds of undefined behaviour i.e. SPADs (Signal Passed at Danger) like the crash that happened last week.. (which could have been a lot worse had the train been going faster)

And given the shortage of train drivers (i.e. people who are willing to do such a boring, monotonous, high-responsibility job and complete the rigorous training) yes, a cohort of drivers for HS2 could be a lot more expensive than throwing away whatever work has already been done on autonomous operation. It would also lumber us with the costs of installing an old-fashioned signalling system

[Aladdin Sane]

It would be great if, just for once, our government (national & local) could find something off the shelf at the start of the project instead of spunking billions of pounds on bespoke solutions every fucking time?

[Jason Bloomberg]

I would love to see a list of projects, how much they were expected to cost and how long they would take, alongside actual cost and time taken, how much they were expected to save and how much they did save or cost.

A column indicating if they were supported by the public, or predicted to be an absolute disaster, might show some interesting correlations.

How many major projects achieved what they were meant to? How many failed, as had been predicted?

[Aladdin Sane]

There'll be a long list of projects that were delivered on time and in budget because those aren't the kind that make the news. But the money spaffed on absolute disasters will eclipse them. A large proportion of said money will be down to governments slowing down or reducing procurement, thus exposing themselves to inflation and eroding economies of scale.

[Jason Bloomberg]

There'll be a long list of projects that were delivered on time and in budget because those aren't the kind that make the news.

That's often said and it may be true, but it's hard to find even a short list, and I admit I would struggle to name successful projects.

Given the usefulness of an "it isn't all bad" list I am surprised nobody has produced one. Maybe it is because failures are so extreme that successes won't make a dent in those.

[StewartWhite]

A successful project

In answer to your question, Cambridge North station was delivered ahead of time and below budget so it just goes to prove that it is possible to build a station in the 21st century despite the supposed impossibility of building a station at Euston (ok, I get that Euston is on a much larger scale but really, two unsuccessful designs and millions of £ spaffed away aren't a good advert for the birthplace of railways) because the secrets of building stations were lost shortly after the last pyramid of Giza had its topping out ceremony apparently.

[Sub 20 Pilot]

There will be no large projects in that list. Small projects maybe, I have worked on a number of public sector contracts in the low millions and they are carried out by local-ish contractors who know what they are doing and have a reputation to maintain. That is they are not too big to fail like the usual suspects, GS4 or whatever they are called this week, SERCO, Capita etc etc.

From what I can see over the last 30 odd years of PFI and the like, these outfits know they will pick up the next job regardless of how spectacularly they fucked up the one they are on today so no incentive not to. If you are building a new hospital or school on a flat bit of ground there will be no unforseen issues unless the project brief has been put tgether by idiots(OK there is the answer..)

You do your services and ground investigations and infrastructure consultations which should have been done as part of the brief, then the rest is easy. If you forgot to price for the lifts or the roof or the VAT or whatever then that is a negligence or incompetence issue and not a technical issue.

[Tron]

We should have outsourced it to Japan.

We'd have shinkansen running on it by now.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

Not with our planning laws.

[wolfetone]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

The major problem with HS2 is that the work has been outsourced. And outsourced by the outsourcers. On and on and on, until the bottom outsourcer wants more money. Then the one above asks the one above for more.

Isn't the figures for this something stupid like £170 million per mile spent already? When Artemis 2 cost something like £6,000 per mile?

Actually that's how we fix it. Scrap the rail. Set up a space ship thing to go from London to Birmingham. That'll be cheaper.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

Even cheaper would be to rename both cities to London/Birmingham. No travelling needed.

[MachDiamond]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

"On and on and on, until the bottom outsourcer wants more money. Then the one above asks the one above for more."

The bottom outsourcer figures out that they grossly underbid the contract and will go into administration if they don't get paid more money. Either the budget is increased or there will be many muddy fields with stacks of random materials being nicked, set on fire or just crumbling into dust.

[Red Ted]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

One of the (many many) problems with HS2 was that it was started just after Carillion went bust, and the government were nervous that no one would bid if it was a fixed price contact, so bids were accepted on "Cost Plus" basis where an estimate of cost was given and then the contractor builds it and adds a percentage to the final cost (may, or may not be) the around the estimate.

However, if you're building a bridge and you could build one design for £1million or different design for £2million, you build the £2million one as then you can charge 10% (or whatever) of £2million.

[Roland6]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

The work wasn't just outsourced, so was the risk - hence the contractors naturally increased their prices to ensure what they delivered managed the liability...

[StewartWhite]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

Can I have a super saver return to Alpha Centauri please, coming back Thursday?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

If it was run by certain Japanese supplier, we would all be in prison for fare evasion way before this thing would be built.

[PhilipN]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

China. It'll be done by the autumn and another runway at Heathrow in their spare time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We should have outsourced it to China.

In the UK? It would dissolve before the train reached the station at the far end of the line.

[David Hicklin]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

> China. It'll be done by the autumn and another runway at Heathrow in their spare time.

To do it the China way would mean burying the NIMBY's in the viaduct foundations

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

You say that as though it were a bad thing.

I would happily tell all NIMBYists to piss off and have done so repeatedly on my developments and others I have worked on.

Around here these arseholes object to almost every planning application and the spineless turds in the local authority bow to their demands.

The same NIMBY arseholes are usually the ones complaining bitterly in a few yaeras time that house costs are high and that their little Nutella of Tarquin-Storm can't afford to buy one.

The idiocy is high. You almost couldn't make it up.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

The Scottish government has spent around £500m on two Scottish-built ferries, one of which is in service but is plagued with problems and the other of which is nowhere near completion, six years late, and may yet have to be scrapped. Meanwhile the IoM government bought a slightly larger ferry from South Korea which entered service only a month later than hoped and came in on budget at £80m, one third of the cost (per ship) of the SNP's calamity.

[David Hicklin]

Re: We should have outsourced it to Japan.

> Scottish-built ferries

But is that the fault of the SNP or just a reflection on how bad UK industry (still) is ?

[Charlie Clark]

That wasn't really related to automated train operation.

[PCScreenOnly]

Fiasco

Just when your think it can't get any bigger, POP, out comes another

[Bebu sa Ware]

High Speed to the Scrubs ?

WikiP states 2036 as the earliest passenger carrying service.

Ten years, two five year parliamentary terms by which time the Screaming Raving Loony Party will have turfed the Slightly Quieter Raving Loony Party (aka Reform) out of government. Plus ça change…

Not that Australia's high speed rail project is shaping up much better but to be fair the distances are orders of magnitude greater.

[Ochib]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

I bet there are less NIMBY's in Australia and it's easier to make a the track a straight line

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

Fewer

[Roland6]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

>Ten years

That's ten more years for a project first unveiled by New Labour in 2009...

"Formal" construction work started in 2020, "preparatory" construction work started in 2016 in anticipation of the Bill for Phase I getting Royal assent (which happened early in 2017).

What isn't clear is to what extent the "on the ground construction work" for Phase I is getting delayed. As it seems much of recent news has been about cost reduction on things other than the trackbed, which is still being constructed to 400km/h.

[Red Ted]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

One of the (many many) problems with HS2 was that some tit in Whitehall wanted to have the fastest train set so said it should be a 400km/h railway. HS1 is a 300km/h railway and some of the more recent TGV lines are 320km/h. So they have introduced two problems:

1) You need to develop 400km/h trains, rather than using existing 300km/h designs.

2) At 400km/h you need a straighter railway to run that fast.

[Roland6]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

You have over looked the third problem:

There are no 400km/h lines in the UK, so you have nowhere, until HS2 is complete, to actual test the trains at speeds above 300km/h….

[rasputinjones]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

You've seen Utopia. They've had quite a few feasibility studies into HSR and the numbers just don't add up in our quiet little corner of the world. The solution? Stop doing feasibility studies.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: High Speed to the Scrubs ?

Please note the two aforementioned Raving Loony Parties are in no way affiliated to the "Official Monster Raving Looney Party"

RIP Lord Sutch

[ComicalEngineer]

Vanity

As a regular rail traveller:

The current journey time from Warrington or Manchester to London is 2.05 hours. A trip I do regularly. 2 hours is just time to have some breakfast, have a quick look at the newspaper (crossword in my case) and go through my presentation or meeting notes before arriving at Euston. Even with the Manchester extension the super new trains were only going to "save" 30 minutes at best on a London trip.

Personally I'm quite happy with a 2 hour trip.

HS2 was advertised as being a capacity increase as the WCML is running at capacity and has a mixture of slower 75mph goods trains local trains and 125mph Pendolinos. This causes issues at several points on the network, especially the single track each way sections.

Bear in mind the Dr Beeching closed the third route to the North, that being the Great Central main line to Manchester via Leicester and Nottingham.

Given the relatively small geographical size of the UK compared to say, France or Spain, there is no real case for travelling at 225mph. This was pure vanity and willy waving on the part of a well known party loving politician with scruffy hair.

Building a railway for 225mph is a lot more difficult than for 125mph as you have to go more of less in straight lines or at least very large radius curves.

Another issue is that the HS2 trains won't fit in a standard platform, the coaches are too long for standard curved platform and the wrong height.

An utter fustercluck from day 1.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Vanity

I have a different view. Why build with yesterday legacy technology.

We should have been aiming for 400-500mph, show everyone how it's done.

Currently HS2 is only making Russia jealous. They'd love to get to that level of corruption.

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

I’m sure Musk could convince you to buy his set of vacuum tubes; if you believe him, they are the future of travel…

[MachDiamond]

Re: Vanity

"Even with the Manchester extension the super new trains were only going to "save" 30 minutes at best on a London trip."

If the end result is nearly the same, there's little novelty in being able to go like mad in a few sections. It's the same issue with the Northeast corridor in the US. Unless you are traveling between relatively few station pairs, the extra cost of the Acela isn't worth it. The standard trains wind up nearly as fast for much less. I've seen some breakdowns of the time improvements with standard trains if they slotted in express and semi-express runs.

As a photographer, I've learned that many times it's not the gear, but the skill in using it. I see images taken with cameras older than I have that are incredible which tells me I haven't maxed out what my gear can already do. It also tells me that my camera and lenses are just fine so the gear I might need is better lighting, which is loads less expensive.

One of the things I love about trains is I am forced to do things that need doing as I'm constrained from doing other things that let me avoid those tasks. Pencil, paper, brain and time can get many things done. I have a stack of projects that I never seem to move the needle on. If I had to take the train, it would be a good chance to take some of those folders/notebooks with me and see where I could get with them. I'd leave the electronics stowed. Trying to do CAD on a train is a real PIA, but sketches come out good enough.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Vanity

"Building a railway for 225mph is a lot more difficult than for 125mph"

Back in the '70s, the InterCity 125/HST service was only meant to be a stopgap until the Advanced Passenger Train/APT was introduced.

In the end, the HSTs proved to be a success, giving tangible reduction in travel times and increased service levels compared to what was available at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_125

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train

With increased remote working, the focus on better work/life balance, commuting long distances should not be a priority.

HS2, or a more pragmatic version should have been developed North to South, and better East/West rail in the North would have benefitted the communities up there

[lglethal]

Re: Vanity

"... and better East/West rail in the North would have benefitted the communities up there."

Well yes, but do you know how much added expense it would cost to go from East to West via London? I mean it just makes the whole project unfeasable! What? What's that? You dont need it to connect to London? Of course you need it to connect to London! Going East to West, but not stopping in London. No. No, I dont think anyone could possibly contemplate doing that. That's just silly. Like your Butler suggesting you were an Ascot tie to the Balmoral. It's just not done...

[Albert Coates]

Re: Vanity

Your valet - whose job it is to dress you - might have a few words to say to the butler about the speed at which the front door gets opened.

[lglethal]

Re: Vanity

Oh No! I've been outed! Oh the shame! That the world should know we were too poor for a Valet! That we had to rely on Jeeves the Butler for preparing our clothes... Oh the shame! My parents couldnt even afford to send me to Eton... I had to make do with Harrow... Oh the shame of it...

[MachDiamond]

Re: Vanity

"In the end, the HSTs proved to be a success, giving tangible reduction in travel times and increased service levels compared to what was available at the time."

125mph might be an ideal train speed for the longer routes. Beyond a certain distance, most people are gong to fly if they have any sort of time issue. LHR to EDI is 1:30 in flight time plus getting to/from airports, plus strip searches..... call it 5-6 hours. A train is 9ish hours if it makes it. 8ish hours to drive including a stop for lunch. It would be crazy to take a flight from London to Manchester since driving could be less, more direct and far less unwelcome groping. Without shopping for prices, a train might be less expensive for the extra hour or two it might take depending on your starting point.

The equations aren't linear and have dead bands. There's also the issue that HSR is so much more expensive that it serves fewer people for a given amount of expenditure. The UK has more passenger train service than the US which make US HSR projects are more suspect since that money could build 100mph class passenger rail that could serve more people. Every time the California HSR project publishes their budgets, they always seem to be short tens of billions in funding that needs to be found. And that just for a 175 mile section in the middle of the state that won't be useful. It's also a duplicate of what's already there. If the existing rail had the money to go over/under level crossings and ran mostly on its own tracks, it would be even faster. The trains themselves can go much faster than they are run at the moment. Big funding could have gone to a tunnel to get out of the Los Angeles basin and to the central valley railhead eliminating a 2-hour bus ride.

TL:DR, sometimes all that's really needed is a few things to get rid of bottlenecks. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Vanity

The problem with UK rail, which HS2 was intended to solve, is that the bottleneck is the capacity of the existing network. In order to encourage more use, and offloading the roads, you need more stopping trains. Adding them to the existing schedule means fewer express and freight trains, which dumps their load back onto the roads. The solution is to move express trains onto dedicated track, like HS2. Absolute speed isn't a priority, as you say, just reasonable, reliable, speed

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

> Adding them to the existing schedule means fewer express and freight trains

There is an extensive freight only rail network, that doesn’t often get in the news. Although the HS2 route destroyed a key north-south freight corridor…

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

>” TL:DR, sometimes all that's really needed is a few things to get rid of bottlenecks. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.”

I suspect because of the stupidity of having to get between Euston and St.Pancreas, many will still fly Birmingham-Paris (red eye) rather than take HS2-HS1… If services ever reach Glasgow or even Manchester, I expect the absence of a non-stop sleeper service will be even more of an issue…

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

>” or a more pragmatic version should have been developed North to South”

My pitch (well before Brexit) was for a HS1-London-Cardiff-Dublin-Belfast(*) service. The laugh was the Welsh and Irish sections would have attracted EU development funding.

(*) unfortunately the nature of the north channel makes extension to Scotland very expensive, but not impossible.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Vanity

the nature of the north channel makes extension to Scotland very expensive, but not impossible.

There's also the problem of Beaufort's Dyke, and all the munitions dumped in it over the past 100+ years, which makes tunnelling somewhat tricky.

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

Beaufort Dyke is located in the north channel…

Would not be surprised if a Russian trawler hasn’t already planted devices necessary resolve the munitions problem, and scatter the nuclear waste across a larger area…

[David Hicklin]

Re: Vanity

Totally agree - should just have extended HS1 which is plenty fast enough and already proven

[rg287]

Re: Vanity

The current journey time from Warrington or Manchester to London is 2.05 hours.

The current journey from Manchester to London blows through little mothballed stations like Wedgwood and Barlaston without stopping. Because of the demand for inter-city services, local services have been cancelled in their favour, despite demand and a thousand new houses being built next to Wedgwood.

The entire point of HS2 is to remove those non-stop services that blight towns and villages to no local benefit off onto their own line (the equivalent of a motorway) so that locals can have local services back. The current situation is like someone driving from Manchester to Birmingham nad going through the centre of Wilmslow, Congleton, Stone, Cannock, etc instead of using the M6.

But you're happy with your 2hr trip to London, so fuck the rest of us plebs.

Building a railway for 225mph is a lot more difficult than for 125mph as you have to go more of less in straight lines or at least very large radius curves.

So... if we eventually hook it up to HS1 (which will happen), you're happy for Manchester-Amsterdam services to crawl along at 125mph before getting to London and putting the hammer down and doing the 180mph that HS1 is capable of. On what planet do fifth columnists like yourself live?

Worse yet, you want to build a wiggly line which locks it to 125mph forever - even if you operated at 125mph on opening day, obviously you build it to a minimum of 190mph - the thing the French have been doing since the 1970s (LGV Sud-Est opened 1981 doing 190mph), so that you have the scope to upgrade in future.

Another issue is that the HS2 trains won't fit in a standard platform, the coaches are too long for standard curved platform and the wrong height.

Get a clue. They do. From day one, the trains will pull off at Lichfield and stop at places like Stafford and Stoke on their way to Manchester. There was initially an idea of a mixed fleet of HS2-only and "Classic Compatible" trainsets but they've now standardised on a single class.

[RMclan]

Re: Vanity

One of the major ideas behind HS2 was actually to turn Birmingham into a dormitory city for people working in London because house prices in London have become so expensive.

There have already been a large number of developments of rentable apartments within close proximity to Curzon Street Station and more are planned.

There is a new development recently completed next door to where I live and only 15 minutes walk or 4 minutes by bus from Curzon Street. It has 484 apartments (132 x 1 bed, 344 x 2 bed and 8 x 3 bed) , so accommodation for 1000+ people but only 56 car park spaces and 112 bicycle spaces.

Within 20 minutes walk of Curzon Street I know of over 1500 apartments built in the past 4-5 years and they all have two things in common, firstly an almost complete lack of car park spaces and secondly ease of access to Curzon Street by bus, tram or walking.

They haven't even really started on the redevelopment of the Digbeth area of Birmingham city centre, just to the South and South East of Curzon Street, but there are thousands more apartments being planned for that area which is to be rebranded as Eastside.

[rg287]

Re: Vanity

One of the major ideas behind HS2 was actually to turn Birmingham into a dormitory city for people working in London because house prices in London have become so expensive.

A major idea that didn't make it into the original paper High Speed Rail (commissioned by Brown, delivered to Cameron), nor was recognised in the Oakervee Review.

I mean, you might be right... but it is a conspiracy theory because there's no evidence of it outside Stop HS2's plaintive cries of "But nobody cares about getting to London 20 minutes quicker".

And even if some nefarious brandy-swilling illuminati types do hold that view, the requirement to unblock existing lines for local and regional services is undeniable and true. Any argument against HS2 is also an argument against having built the motorways in the 1970s.

There have already been a large number of developments of rentable apartments within close proximity to Curzon Street Station and more are planned.

Yup. This is what happens if you announce new infrastructure - you get inward investment, much as Stratford saw huge private investment when the government built out a load of infrastructure to support the Olympic Park. What's interesting is that in many other countries, the rail operators are encouraged to buy up and develop areas around new stations, capturing some of that increased land value (that is a direct result of taxpayer investment). This is very sensible - if a business is going to locate in an office because of it's proximity to a major station, it is better that their rent goes to the rail operator to subsidise fare and operations (the value of that office is partly because of the money government has spent). But in the UK we let those profits get privatised.

This is one of the points Burnham has been making about building/funding HS2/NPR/other infrastructure - you can partly fund it through land value capture by examining the pre- and post-investment land values and applying a modest tax to the difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Vanity

Johnson didn't start HS2. Labour proposed it, by the time the Tory/Lib Dem coalition came about and green lit the project they didn't have much choice given how much had already been done and spent on it.

[Roland6]

Re: Vanity

>” they didn't have much choice given how much had already been done and spent on it.”

The sunk cost fallacy…

It was more about all the investment promises made to try and keep MP’s happy…

[rg287]

Re: Vanity

Labour proposed it, by the time the Tory/Lib Dem coalition came about and green lit the project they didn't have much choice given how much had already been done and spent on it.

What is this drivel.

* The Tories started talking about HSR at their 2008 party conference.

* Labour were a bit cool on it, but in 2009 Brown commissioned a Command Paper which was delivered after the 2010 election to Cameron/Clegg.

* Cameron absolutely could have buried it - it was a pre-viability study. The idea they "didn't have much choice" is an outright lie. Anyway, all the major parties approved of it and committed to moving it forwards.

* In 2019 Johnson commissioned the Oakervee Review, with the hope it would recommend that costs had spiralled and everything was too expensive. Inconveniently, the review concluded that it was absolutely necessary and cancelling HS2 at that late stage would create all sorts of supply-chain issues for suppliers who had already started kitting up with contracts in hand. The idea of "we'll spend it on the existing lines" was identified as nonsense which would take many years and cost more for less.

* In 2021 Johnson cancelled HS2 to Leeds anyway, because he hates devolution and anything north of the M4.

* Sunak later cancelled the Birmingham leg stating that "the facts have changed" without being drawn on which facts. He then announced "Network North" which has been cooked up the night before by his SPADS in their hotel. The DfT knew nothing about it and they basically just listed out a bunch of projects which had already been funded.

[smudge]

feasibility testing

simplifying the railway would also avoid the time and expense of proving it could safely operate at 360 km/h while avoiding the risk that testing might ultimately show the higher speed was not feasible.

Sounds like the sort of testing I'd rather not be involved in.

How exactly do they determine that the higher speed is not feasible?

[stiine]

Re: feasibility testing

A rail crash occurs?

[rg287]

Re: feasibility testing

How exactly do they determine that the higher speed is not feasible?

Not through crashing trains. The question of proving the trainsets is more of assessing the sweet spot of speed; comfort and maintenance/wear. It's no different to doing acceptance tests/sea trials of a new warship. You shake it down and check everything is working as intended. The problem we have with HS2 is that there isn't a test track in Europe that can go all the way to the higher speeds - so we would have to trial the rolling stock on HS2, which would then incur delays if problems are found with the rolling stock. Normally you would have already certified the rolling stock by the time the track is ready for opening. This is why they're proposing to certify the stock to lower speeds, open at lower speeds, and they can then run the acceptance trials and tests over the next year or so and increase the speeds.

We know the higher speeds are perfectly possible - the rail speed record is 357mph, set by a French TGV on the (then) new LGV Est in 2007. To achieve this they had to adjust the tension on the overhead wires, raised the voltage (31kV up from 25kV), used a specially prepared train with larger wheelsets and a few other tweaks. You could run passenger services at that speed but it would eat the infrastructure and be immensely maintenance intensive/expensive. So we can do it. We just don't.

As an aside, they achieved a speed of 225mph in 1981 and 320mph in 1990. So when people whinge about "Oh, but 220mph would be the fastest revenue service in the world, it's gold-plated speculative risk", like yes, most lines still run 180-190mph, but people have been studying this for 40 years. They just don't get to build new lines very often.

HS2 is using slab track, which is newer tech (but well proven) rather than the traditional ballast on LGV. Slab gives better dimensional rigidity and lower maintenance costs than ballast, so there's no real question that HS2 could support a train running at 300mph+ provided that the alignment is straight enough (which it is). We just don't want to pay for those tickets or have it constantly closed for maintenance.

[Wiretrip]

They should have just built it using off the shelf TGV tech, like HS1. It would have been up and running before the Tories could sabotage it.

[Phil O'Sophical]

France does have the advantage of being twice the size of the UK with a lot more flat empty space to build lines. Just running TGV rolling stock wouldn't have made that much difference.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Should have

dug up Brunel and got him to build it

London to Bristol (about 120 miles) started 1835, finished 1843. and that line was built to 125 mph running even if Mr Brunel did not have the trains that could do that.......

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should have

Not to mention building to a proper gauge for wide trains, instead of the horsecart axle width that some berk oop north slavishly followed..

[PhilipN]

Re: Should have

Someone with the gumption to scout every inch of the system on horseback. Try and find an engineer prepared to do {the modern equivalent} today.

[lglethal]

Re: Should have

Try and find the manager willing to pay to let the Engineer do that!

I know more than enough engineers, that during the planning phase for any large site, would love to go out and make sure the site matches the plans. But funnily enough, it never happens because "Of course the plans are right! Why would you need to go in person? that's just wasting time and money..."

[MachDiamond]

Re: Should have

"Someone with the gumption to scout every inch of the system on horseback. Try and find an engineer prepared to do {the modern equivalent} today."

I'm sure one could be found. The issue would be that land owners would not take kindly to some damn stranger camping on their land with loads of strange contraptions they don't understand.

There's so much GIS data these days that there's no need to do much scouting on foot/horseback. It's mostly updating land maps so they fit with the far more precise data that is available. I know my property is off in some records even thought its staked, which is the legal definition of where my land is located.

[Enough]

I like Count Bin Face's idea of renaming it FFS1.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too big to fail.

It looks like we're stuck with this white elephant, I wish they'd just invested the money to improve the infrastructure we already have.

[Tubz]

£46B white elephant across all political parties for the Southerns to live in the countryside and get to London a few minutes quicker. Imagine giving that cheque to education or MOD, local road improvements.

[MachDiamond]

MoD has enough money as it is. Expanding a few local roads to match better with population growth would be a good start. I suck at backing up.

[Roland6]

It only helps those Southerns living in throwing distance of Birmingham and possibly Manchester. Those Southerners living south of Birmingham in places like Bicester will be able to watch HS2 whilst they wait for their all stations service…

[Ken Y-N]

Japan's Maglev is slightly cheaper!

Despite being 90% underground, including most of the stations, and tunnelling through bloody great mountains, and all the complex maglev infrastructure, they are projecting in UK quids about 200 million per kilometre. There also doesn't seem to be any actual evidence that land acquisition and associated costs is a major factor for HS2.

Fire icon for all the money going up in smoke.

[rg287]

Re: Japan's Maglev is slightly cheaper!

And it still doesn't work.

China built their Shanghai Maglev to much fanfare but it now operates to 200mph to save on maintenance costs because at 300mph it was eating itself alive.

And Maglev can't switch onto the existing railway to continue north (or integrate to HS1 in future).

Maglev is a truly point-to-point system which can't play nice as part of a larger system. If we had a saturated High Speed line (as Japan does from Tokyo to Osaka) then maglev might be a natural progression, but you need your conventional network for local/regional travel, high speed for IC travel and then maglev is only worth layering across the top when the HSR network is straining.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any rail project you build today

Is always cheaper than one you build tomorrow.

Hang the cost, build!

[Roland6]

Re: Any rail project you build today

A reason why I objected to HS2, to build it properly needed a realistic budget, not bargain basement price the politicians wanted. Plus for the politicians to not interfere. Remember it is the politicians desire to cut costs and corners that is the reason HS1 (London-Folkestone) is so compromised.

[RMclan]

Are they actually building anything?

I pass by the site of the new Curzon Street station in Birmingham every day to and from work and progress appears to be almost non-existent

They started construction there in 2021. They finished the installation of the 2000+ vertical piles in March this year.

A few days ago they started the installation of the 550+ cross beams.

The station is new set to be opened to passengers some time between 2036 and 2039, 15-18 years after they started it.

On the other hand, China built the Chongqing East station (the largest station in the world) in 6 years and 7 months (started November 2018, opened to passengers June 2025) .

Curzon Street will have 7 platforms and 2 tracks, Chongqing East had 15 platforms and 27 tracks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Are they actually building anything?

China does have the advantage that it just jails or shoots people who dare to protest about government steamrollering over their property, though.

[short]

Re: Are they actually building anything?

Sure, we can protest, but if it's an NSIP (Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project), the protest does fuck-all, they take your land, livelihood and previous life, and that's that.

Until you've had the pleasure of being steamrollered by a huge international company, backed by the full might of the government you thought was, at least in part, there to protect its citizens from such things, you can't possibly be sufficiently bitter or cynical.

[RMclan]

Re: Are they actually building anything?

> China does have the advantage that it just jails or shoots people who dare to protest about government steamrollering over their property, though.

The land for Curzon Street was cleared in 2018, it was previously the site for a large ParcelForce depot and a few student housing blocks. They spent over 2 years doing archeological surveys on the site and then didn't start construction until 2021.

The surveys found 6500 skeletons which had to be excavated and the remains of the worlds oldest locomotive turntable/roundhouse. I don't know what's happening with the roundhouse/turntable remains, but the skeletons are being moved to a nearby cemetery for reburial.

[IWVC]

I must protect my pension

“….. I must protect my pension….” has been raised as a possible reason for government delays. As someone who worked for 30 years as a civil servant (now retired so yes I have a pension), including a short time in rail related issues, I’d like to comment on this.

First, the demise in Ministers getting independent, balanced, information on the pros and cons of a policy was undermined by the Thatcher era that privatised / sold off / closed Government research labs such as the TRRL (transport), Warren Springs Lab (Environment), Agricultural research labs etc. etc. Their reasoning being that the Government doesn’t need to pay for independent research which, they claimed, simply duplicates what the industry(ies) carry out.

Second, politicians of all parties know that being unpopular results in being out of a lucrative job fairly quickly so devolve responsibilities as widely as possible while keeping hold of the overall purse strings. So national parliaments, Mayoral fiefdoms, transport systems get set up so that those running the country at that level have to take the difficult decisions when less money than they asked for is forthcoming and get the blame for when things go wrong.

Third, the incoming “Blair” administration had watched and absorbed every episode of “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” and vowed to dismantle as much of the civil service as they could – especially the “Sir Humphries”. Having found that they couldn’t replace the civil service with their own people (the CS works for the Crown, not the Government) they swamped the system with hundreds of their own political advisors and made it clear that the CS job was to implement the Government policy and not provide advice which may indicate difficulties. Up to that point it was clear to civil servants that the job required that advice was balanced, so ministers were fully aware of potentially negative issues. This policy trickled down to all levels in the form of HR reforms – no one was expected to stay in the same job for more than 3 years, ostensibly for career development but conveniently ensuring no one was around to point out why earlier attempts to do something failed, and then linking annual salary reviews to completing preset tasks thus eliminating any thoughts of “hang on this is clearly not working, and we need to rethink it” or promoting the “only way we’ll get this done [in time] is to throw even more money at it” approach.

Finally, my (thankfully) short experience in rail related policies convinced me that no minister had the balls to challenge the huge costs related to rail infrastructure and services. They were aware that costs were unrealistically high. My personal view is that anyone involved in supplying the rail industry with “things” or services thinks up a number which may be about right and then multiply by 10 before submitting it to the government.