Another take on HS2, people were sacked because they weren’t prepared to falsify the real costs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002336f

But it may be reinstated, the Labour Mayors in the North West have collared Starmer about it being finished up to their patch.
I thought he was all about saving money.

Difference is in the vlog they said extend it using private enterprise not the government.

They want to make their minds up, busy trying to renationalise the Railways ( fine by me) but using ‘private enterprise’…..The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing…no surprise there then

it was a railway built close to existing ones anyway and only of use to part of the population anyway. opening up new lines closed quickly by beeching would have helped more and at a smaller cost but would only get local publicity. it cannot be a co incidence that lines closed in the 60,s were left intact until a few years back then suddenly get built on making re opening more or less impossible.

The thing that hacks me off is every time HS2 is mentioned reporters say an upgraded Manchester to Birmingham link is essential and 'the North' is all for it. Nobody north and east of Leeds gives a toss about it.

think there are two different routes now between those cities and a possible third after crewe. how many bloody altenatives do they want. Manchester to sheffield only has one because the brains shut the fast direct one via a new woodhead tunnel to keep open a much slower indirect one. you know HS2 makes sense.

The fact that Manchester is not on the West Coast mainline has always amazed me.

There was another reason

It currently is planned to start at Old Oak Common whereas it was Euston. Will this stretch be resurrected at enormous cost?
Guess who is the MP for Euston?...................................Starmer!

Would it be nice if they spread the Money across the country to benefit everyone instead off splashing it on vanity projects.

Guess what, it has just been announced by the Transport Minister that it is going to be connected to Euston. No one knows the cost or how it will be financed. The current Old Oak Common to Birmingham is said to be £66bn so what the total cost will be in total is anyones guess.I have just googled the current rail distance from London to Birmingham and its 101 miles so the cost per mile is unbelievable .
And yet again the trains on the Boro to Toon line are regularly cancelled.

I never understand how these super lines are vital to the nation because the train journey time is reduced by 30 minutes…and what’s so special about Birmingham?

its our second largest city stuck in the middle of the country and more should be spent around there and less in london including where our national stadium should have been built. then there would have been better reasons for HS2.

HS2 now projected to cost £100bn excluding trains,Euston station and signalling and not completed till 2039. It's only 135 mile from Old Oak Common to Brummie Curzon Street.

For some reason government/council run contracts run into difficulties with over runs and increased costs, contractors run rings round them.
Several countries have established high-speed rail networks, including China, Spain, France, Germany, Japan, and Italy. China leads the world with the longest high-speed rail network, followed by Spain and Japan so why can’t the U.K. ?
China has nearly 30000 miles of high speed rail but obviously not hindered by planning permission and health and safety rules and plentiful of cheap labour.
Biggest mistake ever was selling off the utilities, British Rail our oil and gas snow the the Royal Mail has been to sold to a foreigner.

Yes we sold the family silver for political ideology by corrupt politicians.
Take care for what you wish for folks.

Corrupt politicians and corrupt private companies.

yes take your pick. seems only politician have to suffer that tag and it seems fine for those in the private sector to act the same. jobs for the boy are the same whoever gives em contracts.

In my career mostly in the Oil and Gas sector there was an end product, the quicker the product was out the ground the more money the companies were making, any contractor who didn’t perform wasn’t invited to tender for the next project.
HS2 has no end product therefore no sense of urgency to complete it, it’s a cash cow for private companies, it’s being managed by a company formed by Dept of Transport, the government, why wasn’t it put out to tender for private companies to construct with fixed price contracts and deadlines in place like HS1 and The Channel Tunnel ?

it took the great central railway with victorian building methods just 6 years to construct the 92 mile london extension. a case of building it as quickly as possible to obtain revenue from its building. is that an old fashioned approach now as more profit is made from just building the thing than the use of it once completed could be the case.

Difference is then there wasn’t the planning permission required from anywhere the line passed through.
In China they wasn’t any planning permission for their High Speed Network, anything in the way just got bull dozed and little or no compensation for any owners of property or land.

there was as the start was delayed by the MCC due to its tunneling under lords cricket ground. then you had the rich and very influential land owners you had to worry about where companies had to give them what they wanted or divert the proposed route. it certainly wasn,t just a case of planning and then building.

This doesn’t surprise me, it’s in a few of the news outlets, private contractors run rings round the government.
https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/ ... ns-surface

I think the plan all along, was for HS2 to go from London to Birmingham, the rest of it was just a smokescreen to get people onside. London is overheating, and they needed another London to take the slack, Birmingham got the job.

Watch this, you don't realise the damage these developments cause, just to get some businessmen from Birmingham to London 20-30 minutes earlier.

Medieval churches, peoples homes, they've lived in most of their lives, ancient trees, pubs etc etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze246VOxBT0

i,m just hoping they,ll have faster buses on newly built road to accomodate the rail replacement service a few weeks fter its opened.

Jesus that film is horrendous.
The main reason for HS2 is to build extra capacity (more seats) rather than speed but that is a consequence of a new line

Who’d want to go to Birmingham…

its never once been for that its for them getting away to the only place that seems to exist in england, bloody london. at least jack harper changed his name to london because of the author jack london and not that shithole.

Drove round it plenty of times on the M42, but had no desire to enter inside…..l went there once on a course where we broke the unbreakable piece of kit ….the Yanks were not happy…also went in the pub (Mulberry Bush) not that long before it was blown up..l took it as a warning.

Its probably the worst city in the Uk.

worked on the bus route from coventry to birmingham for a few years in the late 90,s. i,d guess i would not recognise the place now or many of the brummies who were all fine back then. its hard to imagine any city or town thats improved in this country over the last 25 years. if you know of one let me know and its not about fancy brand new town centres either that they like to promote.