The latest HS2 scandal

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 Offwidth 17 Dec 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/17/hs2-misled-mps-about-cost-o...

It is highly unlikely this project would have been approved by MPs even at the current estimated cost. Can this still be stopped or is it the biggest 'runaway train' in history? Some independant estimates of cost claim the real figure is closer to £80 billion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23744619

Since we were already at £56 billion before todays news broke, the old cost worries now look plain silly.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/26/hs2-budget-david-higgins-ne...

To anticipate the usual HS2 arguments, claiming I'm biased and ignorant, I'm an Engineer and have always supported well costed rail investemnts. For me investment in rail infrastucture away from London , especially in the north of England,  should have been a massively bigger priority. Instead we have this growing money pit sucking any possibility away from such sensible spending.

 

 

 NorthernGrit 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

Of course it can be stopped. I doubt it will however, particularly under the current government.

Post edited at 09:33
 Rob Exile Ward 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

Seems to me we are currently rudderless, the government is in complete meltdown over Brexit and has no time or energy for anything else. The Labour party (and even the LibDems, dear God) are staring at open goals and are just turning round and trotting back up the pitch. The news is so much dominated by Brexit that the scandal that is Crossrail hardly caused a ripple.

HS2 MUST be stopped, we don't need another £80 billion vanity project, we need 80 £1 billion investments.

 

 Richard J 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

One does have the sense of quite a few fiscal illusions being shattered at the moment.  Another £12 billion added to the deficit through ONS changing the way it accounts for student loans in the national accounts:

https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2018/12/17/accounting-for-student-loans-how-we-are-...

 Cú Chullain 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

I was reading the other day about a new 170 mile rail line being built between Lyon and Turin. Just over 35 miles of route will be a tunnel under the Alps, quite a feat of engineering. This project has suffered its own set backs and revised costs but it is still a damming indictment of HS2 when a rail line literally under the Alps and nearly twice the distance as HS2 costs 27 billion euros compared to £100 billion between London and Birmingham.

pasbury 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

Another bullshit vanity project.

Small localised initiatives to solve transport problems work pretty well and cost a lot less than this bollocks but goes against the whole 'I've got a bigger project than you' dick waving mentality of the tossers who come up with these ideas.

 Greenbanks 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

Its the engineering equivalent of the NHS. The real cost of materials & directly involved planners, civil and railway engineeers and the bods who actually do the graft to realise the drawings, is dwarfed by the burgeoning band of 'consultants' working at a distance and with very little accountability. These comprise the oily-tongued brigade who bandy around the usual lexicon of management-speak and get paid the earth for doing so, Strip these leaches out and the cost would be halved. But the present (and previous) administrations are fixated and inflexible.

A tragi-comedic project, just like the UK is becoming to onlookers from other nations. The decline of Spain in the 17th Century pales into insignificance.

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 Tyler 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

£56 billion to fund moving govt funded projects to the north (it Manchester which is itself getting too big) would be a bigger boost than HS2 will ever be.

 Mike Stretford 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth: We do need a new London - Birmingham line but not the rest of it and not at the planned speed. We need lots of rail investment all over but  remember the west coast line serves the most populated urban areas of the country and the last section is a bottle neck that that effects the rest of it.

The cost is scandalous but the big scandal is this is going on for most infrastructure projects and is also common at local government level (overpricing). We don't have people with any experience of what things should cost in the right posts.

 

Removed User 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

There us no requirement for a high speed N-S link. What is needed is rail capacity. Getting to northern cities 20 minutes quicker isn't going to benefit many people, least of all the ordinary people in the north of England.

 Will Hunt 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Removed UserDeleted bagger:

Having spoken to somebody who has worked on an HS2 contract, this is where the benefit of HS2 actually lies. It has been poorly marketed around the speed of the line only, when really the significant benefit is in having a second set of tracks going N-S, when currently we make do and mend with the east coast line. Some people complain about crowded trains, yet can't see the value in more than doubling capacity? Strange.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and hazard a guess that the cost of a "low" speed line and a high speed line are more similar than the cost of a "low" speed line and doing nothing (which does in itself incur a cost in lost opportunity).

F*ck it, since I'm throwing around barely researched hunches, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that digging a big tunnel under the Alps sounds like child's play when compared to negotiating access and compensation arrangements for literally thousands of individual landowners who are all going to be very cross that you're building a train line through their property.

 La benya 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

I agree. Digging a hole is obviously cheaper than forcibly removing thousands of middle class people. Just look at how much tunnelling through London for Crossrail and tideway has cost. About £20b in total through the most densely congested underground area anywhere.

Aside from that, the cost doesn’t seem to be value for money 

 sbc23 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

As above, it’s the next big ‘London’ project that is, again, ridiculously over-priced.

The only time I’ve ever written to my MP was the day I realised that Heathrow Runway 3, was/is going to cost 57 times(!) as much as Manchester Runway 2 did, even after adjusting for inflation.

It’s simple, just build some proper f*cking infrastructure in the north! It’s cheaper, there’s no local resistance and it’s needed more. 

And no, I don’t count spending £1bn and 5 years converting the hard shoulder of the M60 to a running lane as proper infrastructure.

 NathanP 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

There seem to be two very different 'scandals' there:

1. The estimate of purchasing properties was underestimated by a few hundred million pounds - lots of money to an individual but in a £56bn project thats not even a rounding error.

2. A free market think tank (I wonder what their start point is on big government projects funded by taxation) says it might be much more than the current estimate if you include lots of things going wrong and lots of things not actually in the scope of the project, like any infrastructure projects and future investment (brought about as a result of economic growth from the new rail line) in places it goes near. Well no s**t Sherlock.

Why stop at £80bn, why not say £150bn or use the "CND costing Trident method" and quote the full lifetime costs of the project and anything vaguely related to the project (the cup of coffee my grandson might buy on the train in 2057, for example). 

We desperately need more rail capacity, the extra cost of high speed isn't that much, and anywhere you build a long rail line in the heavily developed South and Midlands is going to interact expensively with a lot of private houses, business and existing infrastructure. 

 Will Hunt 17 Dec 2018
In reply to sbc23:

No resistance in the North? Tell that to would-be-frackers!

 sbc23 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

The fracking resistance isn’t actually stopping anything or costing any significant money beyond 10 police and a welfare unit.

The longest I’ve been delayed on the A583 outside the fracking site is about 10mins. Normally 1-2mins

Contrast that with a 40-60min delay, every bloody day at the end of the M61, along with thousands of other people. I did that trip into Manchester about 700 times in the car and 200 times on the train. In the end I gave up and got a different job. 

Post edited at 17:06
In reply to Offwidth:

I don't like like the whole concept.  It is like what the Japanese did with their high speed rail: make it easier and faster for everybody to get to Tokyo and the consequence is that Tokyo is the best place to put everything.    It's a way of sucking more and more of the economic activity in the UK towards London.

We should do the opposite and put in new transport infrastructure which makes communications between and within other regions more efficient and does not connect to London so that business and public sector organisations have a reason not to locate in London.

 neilh 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

We are good at managing these big construction projects when compared with other countries. Apparently the typical overspend is 45% outside the Uk. In the past few years the uk has been very good at being on target ,but recently has  been creeping to7 %.it is still considerably better than most.

As per Economist which looked at overspends a few weeks ago. 

 MG 17 Dec 2018
In reply to NathanP:

> and anywhere you build a long rail line in the heavily developed South and Midlands is going to interact expensively with a lot of private houses, business and existing infrastructure. 

So don't. Build things in the North for less money, greater and wider economic benefit, and regeneration. Complaining the South is overcrowded and expensive, and then spending billions to make it more so is absurd. 

 JayK 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

Amazing to see some positivity on this forum. Just to add - the redevelopment in Birmingham is insane. They're actually going to start running out of unused brownfield lands soon. Some parts of the city are completely unrecognisable. Not only that, but the independent food and drink culture is booming. I know more people who are from down south who are moving up here, then were from Birmingham and are moving down there.

Obviously this is all my first hand experience rather than what I've read in the news or on a forum.

 wintertree 17 Dec 2018
In reply to sbc23:

> The fracking resistance isn’t actually stopping anything or costing any significant money beyond 10 police and a welfare unit.

Likewise the resistance failed to stop the giant new open cast (!) coal mine (!!) on my Northern neck of the woods.  Ecologically and environmentally heinous compared to fracking.

 sbc23 17 Dec 2018
In reply to wintertree:

I worked on the M1 widening J25-J28 at Nottingham. £330M for one extra lane each side x 15miles 

We delayed a section of the works because someone spotted a single active bird's nest in some trees we needed to demolish to cut an embankment. Meanwhile, our largest supplier was busy blasting 80,000 tonnes of aggregate out of Bardon Hill every Tuesday & Friday. 

We actually finished the road ahead of programme, but had to leave a 50mph speed limit in place for several weeks because the only means of advising motorists of temporary speed reduction (e.g. an accident) was with a managed motorway speed sign (mandatory speed inside a red circle). This would have technically illegal because the government hadn't anticipated us finishing early and hadn't yet passed the 'The M1 Motorway (Junctions 25 to 28) (Variable Speed Limits) Regulations 2011'.

I find it truly bizarre how we approach things in the UK. No shortage of people saying things can't be done, but no proper support for good ideas that are actual deliverable solutions to our problems.  

Post edited at 19:36
OP Offwidth 17 Dec 2018
In reply to sbc23:

Just watched Panorama, will link later.  The way HS2 is treating small business with compulsory purchases, ignoring the impact on cash flow looks scandalous. The Birmingham line has an estimate of £56 billion on its own. 45% overspend would be a luxury. It doesnt matter how much the line is needed if MPs would not have approved it if they knew these costs.

 Martin W 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

> I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and hazard a guess that the cost of a "low" speed line and a high speed line are more similar than the cost of a "low" speed line and doing nothing (which does in itself incur a cost in lost opportunity).

You're pretty much right there.  It's not really "high speed": it's just a modern main line.  It would probably cost only a vanishingly smaller amount to build it "slow".

The current WCML has been optimised to within an inch of its life, there's basically nowhere left to squeeze more capacity out of the existing infrastructure.  So a new main line is the only realistic way to provide more capacity, and these days a "high speed" line is what the industry sells you for that.  The higher running speeds are near as dammit a free additional benefit.

 wintertree 17 Dec 2018
In reply to Martin W:

> You're pretty much right there.  It's not really "high speed": it's just a modern main line.  It would probably cost only a vanishingly smaller amount to build it "slow".

My limited understanding is that the big cost difference between “high speed” and “slow” for a new line is in land acquisition - the faster you run, the larger the “minimum radius of curvature” becomes for your bends.  This means bigger bends and less flexibility over route choice and therefore land purchases.  Literally less wiggle room when it comes to going around expensive properties.

 

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 Will Hunt 18 Dec 2018
In reply to Offwidth:

The two sections of the panorama program that seemed to have any value were the bits about some old costs being presented for approval and the way that small businesses have to move which seems totally wrong. About 10 minutes of programme, that. The rest of it was emotive but ultimately completely unsurprising. Some people have had their houses compulsory purchased to make way for massive national infrastructure? Surely not?! 

Post edited at 07:01
OP Offwidth 18 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

There was plenty more than that. People can judge for themselves:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bw9c2y/panorama-hs2-going-off-the-r...

The single private house featured on the show was there as there was seemingly no attempt by HS2 to provide proper details on fair funding as yet, despite the purchase date being close, so they could fairly move. If I lived in an Elizabethan manor house in a pleasant setting near London, I'd expect a bit more progress and clarity that a fair price would be paid in a way that I could move to a new property without too much disruption.  Such people as those affected being pissed off and emotive is hardly a real shocker. It was fully consistent with what the whistleblower said: that the company never had proper planning arrangements around their compulsory purchase duties and as a result were struggling to keep a lid on costs in this area (and so cuting corners on their responsibilities). The biggest cost increase factor: that contractor budgets were looking increasingly unrealistic were only touched on..I would have liked more on that but details are currently too opaque. To me HS2 have added gross incompetance to what was always a white elephant. The original costs of £33 billion were for a bigger project as key aims have already been shaved and the current £56 billion budget looks completly unrealistic.

High speed lines are a lot more expensive and much less energy efficient. You say we need the capacity but thats only due to our London centric UK rail model. Freight could be better moved to the north from arriving at northern ports than from the SE through London. By the delivery date we might be running a lot more virtual meetings, significantly cutting business travel to London. I'd also question the priorities inside the project.. phase 2 where northern cities are connected should have been done first. As it looks now Parliament have every liklihood of cancelling the much more benefical phase 2 on costs grounds.

Again to be clear I support infrastructure investment overall but HS2 was never really required and its massive overspends will suck funding from more important and worthwhile infrastructure needs elsewhere.

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OP Offwidth 18 Dec 2018
In reply to Will Hunt:

A helpful reminder on the politics that kick-started the project (against advice it was not needed in the Eddington report in 2006) .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24661963


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