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HS2 is officially ‘unachievable’ after being given red rating
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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The delay and spiralling cost seems to be a mixture of government failure, local issues, national anti HS2 campaigns, poor planning by the contractors building the thing.
What, in your opinion, could this government (or the next Labour government) do to enable 21st century transport infrastructure to be built across the country (north to south, and east to west)?
The failure of this project is set purely at the heart of government and their steam roller ideology. They miss-read the feeling of the areas they wanted to bulldoze. I doubt any section of the line came in on budget. I would not be surprised if this was just another excuse to fund donors.
How could it be done better? Not waste money in other areas. Claw back that money lost through fraud that no one in government cares about. Take some good non political advice with a proper feasibility study.
I disagreed massively with the HS2 scheme. London has had enough money spent on it. The rest of the country could really use some good transport, and that does not need to be attached to London. This was just another of Johnson's vanity projects. And as we have seen with everything Johnson touches he care nothing about the cost to the tax payers.
Labour will do a better job with any projects they push forward, because the Murdoch media is a lot more critical in their reporting on non Tory governments. Everything is broken in this country now thanks to the current crew. It will be an uphill struggle to fix anything once they are gone. The thing I want to see fixed most is our FPTP voting system. I want to remove this dominance that the two parties have on this country. Johnson was bad, but it just as easily have been Corbyn. We need to remove the ease with which extremists can manipulate the system.
100% agree with this. Not sure how PR in itself will build rail infrastructure 🤷 but I agree with the sentiment.
The rail affects a very small part of the country. Both parties have ignored it for decades.
I firmly believe that if we do not plug the gap in our voting system, then the next extremist group to gain power will be very much worse than what we see now. They will take what they have learned to abuse and expand on it. We may never have an election again after that without a civil war. I am not overly confident about Starmer, if I was being honest. He is being more than a little underhanded with the rank and file of the party. I get why he took on the Corbynites, especially with Corbyn being a thorn for his own agenda. But Starmer seems to have taken it upon himself to oust anyone with a different opinion. Removing opposing views is not a good thing for a party. That was exactly how Johnson ran his ship.
So yes the transport system is important. It generates cash for the country after all. I just don't view in the same light as others do.
HS2 is the investment in local transport up and down the country that we need. The point isn't to get people to and from London faster and the fact that you think that is a failure of their marketing.
The point of HS2 is to move all of the longer distance services between the larger cities on to their own line, reducing the effect of mixed traffic and allowing for many more local and freight services on the existing lines. This then lets local councils massively improve their own local systems, such as the plan for a huge increase in transport in the East Midlands that can't happen since the eastern leg of HS2 was cut back.
I live in the NE there is zero benefit for our area. No benefit for Scotland, Wales or Ireland come to think of it. I am all for spending on transport. I just think London has had enough in that area. HS2 is not about links to Manchester btw. It is about more links to London so people can commute from further afield.
Did you read my comment? It isn't about links to London. It's about capacity across the network, it just happens that the best way to create that capacity is to build new links to London, because then you can remove all of those fast moving intercity trains off of the existing network and just have the local and freight services that can then bunch up more closely together and run way more frequently. It does have benefits beyond where it runs, for example by releasing capacity in Birmingham New Street, we can run more frequent trains out to Aberystwyth. I'd argue that most of GB does benefit, by getting faster journey times and released capacity when they travel into areas that are affected, but even then, does every project need to benefit everyone? I'm all for more investment beyond the areas that directly benefit on top of this.
Go back to the drawing board - look at what we need.
A stronger E-W connection - we need one of those fancy drilling machines they buried after Crosstalk and it can dig road and rail tunnels through the Pennines east of Manchester (if you look on the map everything just peters out or has to go up and around). That gives quite and direct links through to the A1 and you can then have a high speed line between Hull and Liverpool (which will cut out a lot of freighter traffic having to go round).
It was always important that our high speed network connected with Europe's in order to cut flights but the end of HS2 comes into the wing side of London. You really want a high speed rail line down the east coast up to Edinburgh and across to Glasgow that continues on to the Channel Tunnel.
You could then put in other lines - Glasgow to Crewe to Birmingham to Bristol and the SW. Cardiff to London. If you must you could then link Birmingham to London but you are only shaving minutes off the journey at that point.
You then end up with a high speed east coast line, a west coast line and Scottish, north and south cross lines. Along with improved road links under the Pennines.
We used to have a stronger E-W connection, the Woodhead line. It was even electrified before being finally closed, the track lifted, and the tunnels filled in.