HS2 will common sense prevail?

The subject of HS2 has been discussed here before and my view was and still is that its £56bn that could be spent to benefits us all not just a minute number of the population that need to get to and from London a little quicker.

The new cost is discussed further down the articee-

In July, the current chairman of the project reportedly warned that the total cost could rise by £30bn - up from the current budget of £56bn.

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BBC news -

The government is launching a review of high-speed rail link HS2 - with a "go or no-go" decision by the end of the year, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said.

It will consider whether and how the project to connect London, the Midlands and northern England should proceed.

Billions have already been spent, but Mr Shapps refused to rule out scrapping it entirely.

He said it was "responsible" to see whether the benefits really "stack up".

Phase 1 of the development between London and Birmingham is due to open at the end of 2026, with the second phase to Leeds and Manchester scheduled for completion by 2032-33.

It is designed to carry trains capable of travelling at 250mph

When asked about the money already spent on the project, Mr Shapps said: "Just because you've spent a lot of money on something does not mean you should plough more and more money into it."

He said ministers were asking the reviewers "just give us the facts".

"Go and find out all the information that's out there… genuinely what it would cost to complete this project, and then we'll be in a much better position to make that decision - go or no-go by the end of the year."

The review will be chaired by Douglas Oakervee, a civil engineer and former chair of HS2 Ltd.

Lord Berkeley, another civil engineer who worked on the construction of the Channel Tunnel, will act as his deputy. The Labour peer has previously been critical of the project.

A final report will be sent to the government in the autumn.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49420332

Not really answering the question, but I think that the money invested in this should be used to buy back the railways and then reduce the cost of a ticket for the tax payer. Blows my mind how expensive train travel is in this country.

It always amazes me how these government funded projects always always go massively over budget and noone ever seems to be held responsible. Either they are providing the estimate massively under costing on purpose to win the contract/approval for the project, or they are incompentent. Either way something is not right and someone should be held accountable.

mozza said:

Blows my mind how expensive train travel is in this country.

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And up here (northern rail) how awful the service is.

MrL73 said:

It always amazes me how these government funded projects always always go massively over budget and noone ever seems to be held responsible.

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Nearly double already according to the BBC article.

Same with the new hospital in Liverpool that Carillion were building all stop, the old saying comes to mind were there is money there's a fiddle someone somewere is getting very rich

Well it's a case of 'Cui bono' - who benefits -- not the likes of us I'm thinking!
Just follow the money
Cheers

mozza said:

Not really answering the question, but I think that the money invested in this should be used to buy back the railways and then reduce the cost of a ticket for the tax payer. Blows my mind how expensive train travel is in this country.

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The state already owns the existing infrastructure, that's what Network Rail is for. What the state doesn't own are the trains that run on it, only the licences that TOCs buy for mega sums at the beginning of the franchise, with the money going to HM Treasury. However some franchises do, from time to time, operate under the direct control of the state, according to circumstances which may dictate that.
Railways are expensive to run and it has been recent government policy to shift some of the burden away from the state through subsidy onto the people who use them. And typically people moan about old trains but replacing them with new rolling stock consumes £100millions.
Perhaps the discussion should be about how much the public subsidy should be for running an efficient rail network system, which for example takes traffic off our conjested roads..

chesters-mild said:

Well it's a case of 'Cui bono' - who benefits -- not the likes of us I'm thinking!
Just follow the money
Cheers

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Probably your pension fund assuming you have one.

It's a complete pisstake.
Companies purposefully under bidding and the ramping up the costs.

In the real world, if I told my customer a project would cost £50k and it actually ended up costing 60, my customer would just say "unf*cking lucky mate, you lost money on that one!"

Railways are an out dated concept. Where do they exist without subsidies? Also countries with high speed railways have generally found that rather than spreading the business and wealth to the regions, they tend to concentrate it in the bigger city. Why have an office in Leeds if it is only a short journey?
I also believe that saving an hour on the train is not important if you have to get to the city centre station and then get to your destination at the other end. Even if you save half of your time on the train the total door to door journey might only be 25% quicker. Total waste of money to help a tiny fraction of the populace at everyone else's expense.

Duxuk said:

Railways are an out dated concept.

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Why? Fine, you wouldn't build a railway to link two remote places - there wouldn't be the demand to justify it. But, my reading of the situation in much of commuter-belt England is that there isn't the capacity to keep up with demand. Are the newly-built extensions to the Manchester Metro useless and outdated?

mozza said:

Not really answering the question, but I think that the money invested in this should be used to buy back the railways and then reduce the cost of a ticket for the tax payer. Blows my mind how expensive train travel is in this country.

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We had to go down to York for a day last week, thought we would let the train take the strain until we learnt it would be £280 return for the two of us (standard class)
300 mile round trip to drive, 50 mpg = £36

I don't like driving but for £40 an hour it wasn't that bad - £240 is a lot of hard cash ....

Hoppyland said:

Are the newly-built extensions to the Manchester Metro useless and outdated?

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No way are they outdated, they are always full of folk and the truth is we need even more. I use them all the time
Cheers

Anyone who has ever worked on the railways would understand why it is so expensive. The hoops you have to jump through for health & safety and other matters mean that when pricing a job, you estimate the cost of the job, double it, add on your margin then submit this number as your quote.

Then there's the fact that they are only fully utilised for 2-3 hours per day, 5 days a week.

How much better could that £56 billion have been spent on creating a genuine high speed road network, rather than our current motorways, which are regularly limited to 50, 40 or even 30 mph.

As for improving railways, get more freight on the rails (off peak), with dedicated rail freight teminals, also improve access to the railways by providing strategic stations with sufficient and reasonably priced parking.

I don't know if this is true but up here we only have small stations with short platforms so they cannot add extra cartridges and therefore overcrowding is always going to be an issue, if this is the case use some of the money to lengthen the platforms.

Thats right Chippy. Scrap HS2 (not just because it will run 1/4mile from my house) and spend all the proposed money on the existing network and infrastructure, make platforms longer and put extra carriages on! Its not brain surgery!

I'd scrap HS2 and put the money elsewhere. Although I'm a Londoner born and bred, it's just another massive project making it slightly easier for London and the southeast and is ignoring the rest of the country, as usual.
On the subject of budgets, it seems that history has failed to teach any government anything about how to properly budget and tender. For example, the Scottish parliament building, 935% over budget! Take that in for a moment.... nearly 1000 percent! The London Olympics, 265% over budget. I remember at the time it was announced and the first budget for it quoted laughing out loud and saying to my wife that that was the biggest load of bulls#it I'd heard in quite a while.
Frankly, it's either historical rank stupidity in the political classes(not an unreasonable claim actually), or it's criminal. I'm going for the second choice myself. So much money flows around these contracts that I suspect backhanders and bribes are dished out all over the place as public money is seen as a gravy train if you're in the right place.
My own council of Croydon is approving the sales of loads of bits of land it owns for pittances, to a council approved building firm to build housing. But it's a husband and wife team on both sides. The one on the council approves the cheap sales, the other one is director of the company that gets the land. It's bonkers!
Apply this sort of stuff to HS2 and it's tens of billions of pounds and the scale of the gravy train(ouch pun) is just that much larger.

I'm all for faster journey times, but perhaps the money would be better value spending on other choke points on the railways adding some extra track and upgrading rolling stock so less delays

I voted other as I don't know enough about it but it does seem everything that needs public funds and private companies we get the worst of both worlds.