[Travel] HS2 to be scrapped?

[Husty]

Of course. But not when it's been administered/run and executed by morons.

It’s not. The environment for infrastructure projects in this country is utterly broken.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

here here, always nimbys wherever you build it, the same people were saying we couldn't afford the Olympics and should be scrapped.

Call it what you will but for those of us living with this sort of disruption for 8-10 years (an example today is 2 lots of roadworks and a road closure on a 12 mile journey) so we can build a shit train track that doesn't even get to its end point at either end are right to feel a bit pissed off with the whole thing. It doesn't get to London, It won't go to Manchester, It won't really help with capacity. What exactly is the point?

The Olympics showed what can be done in this country. HS2 is going to be a monument to bad financial planning, poor decision making and Corporate greed.

 

[Pevenseagull]

Maybe scrapping it will go a little way towards paying for abolishing inheritance tax.

 

[Husty]

Call it what you will but for those of us living with this sort of disruption for 8-10 years (an example today is 2 lots of roadworks and a road closure on a 12 mile journey) so we can build a shit train track that doesn't even get to its end point at either end are right to feel a bit pissed off with the whole thing. It doesn't get to London, It won't go to Manchester, It won't really help with capacity. What exactly is the point?

The Olympics showed what can be done in this country. HS2 is going to be a monument to bad financial planning, poor decision making and Corporate greed.

The Olympics worked because we just said yeh f*** it lets do it properly and went along with it. It cost a fortune but people didn't care.

The same should have happened with HS2. It should have been started about 3 years earlier than it was, just throw all the NIMBY court cases out. That would have kept costs down. Politicians should have done a better job of backing the project. Lots of the land could have been bought sooner and that would have kept costs down. Deciding halfway through to scrap bits has wasted money already spent on obtaining planning and design for those bits....

Yes, the project has been totally mis-managed but that's Tory politicians faults, not anybody else's. Not the people in-charge of HS2.

Of course, all the muppets in the home counties who have been most inconvenienced by these things will continue to vote Tory in their droves

It is f***ing ironic that the same people who spent years fighting it in court, ensuring it cost a fortune are now going 'well I told you it would cost a fortune' as though its some kinda gotcha. It's not - they're just self-centred c*nts.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

The same should have happened with HS2. It should have been started about 3 years earlier than it was, just throw all the NIMBY court cases out. That would have kept costs down. Politicians should have done a better job of backing the project. Lots of the land could have been bought sooner.

What you describe there is "Living in China"

You are talking about no appeals process for people losing their homes. Whatever your politics, I'm not sure that's a vote winner.

 

[beorhthelm]

The Olympics worked because we just said yeh f*** it lets do it properly and went along with it. It cost a fortune but people didn't care.

The same should have happened with HS2. It should have been started about 3 years earlier than it was, just throw all the NIMBY court cases out. That would have kept costs down. Politicians should have done a better job of backing the project. Lots of the land could have been bought sooner and that would have kept costs down. Deciding halfway through to scrap bits has wasted money already spent on obtaining planning and design for those bits....

there's the problem, you cant simply throw out the court cases, have to follow due process. we're constantly hamstung by our law around this. to my mind only two major projects have completed on time, Olympics and Millenium Dome, because there was broad support, clear deadline and proper crapholes with limited nimby action.

we must change law to allow major projects, or development agreed in local plans, to go through without years of obstruction. this was suggested a few years ago but all the politicans ran away from it when came to the crunch, as the anti-development lobby is too noisy and seen as a vote loser. they'll happily promise targets for house building, infrastructure spending, but not tackle this massive hurdle to delivering on those promises.

 

[A1X]

Call it what you will but for those of us living with this sort of disruption for 8-10 years (an example today is 2 lots of roadworks and a road closure on a 12 mile journey) so we can build a shit train track that doesn't even get to its end point at either end are right to feel a bit pissed off with the whole thing. It doesn't get to London, It won't go to Manchester, It won't really help with capacity. What exactly is the point?

The Olympics showed what can be done in this country. HS2 is going to be a monument to bad financial planning, poor decision making and Corporate greed.

Wrong. It won't help with capacity as much as it fully would, but it will make a huge inroad into the capacity crunch.

 

[A1X]

 

[Husty]

What you describe there is "Living in China"

You are talking about no appeals process for people losing their homes. Whatever your politics, I'm not sure that's a vote winner.

Lots of countries do a better job of central planning than the UK. Its possible to do such things without 'living in China'

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Nobody will remember the budget when the thing is up and running. Nor the here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians. A lot of the Victorian railway entrepreneurs whose names are long forgotten went bust building the very same infrastucture that we rely on to this day. And how often did the Channel Tunnel cause political storms by going wildly over budget before it finally opened for business? Nobody gives it a second thought now, nobody cares. You're building an infrastructure for the next hundred years. Just build the damn thing!

Then build HS3 down to West Country...

This.

Although since it (probably) isn't about money (with the Tories happy to spaff tax payers' money when it is going into the pockets of their chums, vide the Covid mega-spaff), what is it about, all this 'we may have to look at this again' bolleaux? Is it a vote-winner to walk away from the work done so far, leaving it like an abandoned Nazi megastructure (five past seven, Channel 5)? Who would applaud that?

My guess is that the red tape over planning, appeals (from bat collision awareness to the countryside alliance's fears over loss of animals to hunt and kill) and all the infrastructure knock-in, from getting electric supplies from 15 different franchises, three of them French and two Chinese, and arranging for drainage with eight privatized water companies (two German, one Polish, and one Rwandan), etc., means that most of the people doing the work are spending 95% of their time crouching round a brazier with a Ginster's faux meat pie, a soggy roll up, and a warm mug of (shut the f*** up) tea.

Yes, the tories can see that we will still be looking into a future of continued pissing about with all this in 50 years time, with absolutely nothing happening apart from spiralling costs, come election eve. So it is best all round for the future of the conservative part to kill the hyrda now before it grows even more heads.

Nevertheless.... On the bright side, judging by the last 13 years, they will completely f*** the who cancellation up, setting up the spending of even more money to finish off some sad and pointless part of it, yet still with no end in sight.

 

[The Clamp]

Have they perhaps given all our money away to their chums and have none left to spend on improvements?

Well, of course they have.

I expect they’ll raid our pension pots before being booted out in 2024.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

This.

Although since it (probably) isn't about money (with the Tories happy to spaff tax payers' money when it is going into the pockets of their chums, vide the Covid mega-spaff), what is it about, all this 'we may have to look at this again' bolleaux? Is it a vote-winner to walk away from the work done so far, leaving it like an abandoned Nazi megastructure (five past seven, Channel 5)? Who would applaud that?

To be clear walking away from what they've done to date is an absolute no no. Given the old adage that pictures speak louder than words, I'll try and post some of the current shitshow later on in the week when I walk the dog.

On my journey to work is 100 feet piles of dirt, 3 unfinished bridges and a load of trenches that should one day house a train line. The ship has sailed from walking away from London to Birmingham notwithstanding that they currently won't get to Euston.

 

[chickens]

in France they rush through new train lines. They’re pretty brutal in dealing with obstinate land owners and environmentalists. There was a R4 doc on the differences about 10 years ago. They said something like we build one new railway bridge per annum, after a very long process. Whilst the French built 100 new bridges a year. Run centrally, any entity trying to stop it is brushed aside.

So privatisation and fragmentation has weakened us? Crumbs. Who could have guessed.

France still has to obey the same level of European regulation, so the fault for our crumbling infrastructure can’t be laid at Europe’s door, it appears that our government are incompetent, not that it isn’t possible to build infrastructure cost effectively.

 

[Weststander]

So privatisation and fragmentation has weakened us? Crumbs. Who could have guessed.

France still has to obey the same level of European regulation, so the fault for our crumbling infrastructure can’t be laid at Europe’s door, it appears that our government are incompetent, not that it isn’t possible to build infrastructure cost effectively.

France started construction of its high speed network in 1976. Tory and Labour governments here have delivered the sum total of St Pancras to The Tunnel.

The EU are fully supportive of brand new high speed networks through national parks and semi wilderness. Currently on the side of France in driving through a new Alpine line from Lyons to Turin, despite mass protest from French environmentalists. Remember Corbyn and his side of the Left always called it a capitalist club. That means wealth generation for business. If that overrides nature, so be it.

I’m not linking continental Europe as a cause in any way to the UK’s antiquated and expensive railways, I’ve never heard anyone attempt that.

 

[RexCathedra]

One man, one car, burning hydrocarbons. The way God intended it.
You can always build more lanes.

 

[Weststander]

One man, one car, burning hydrocarbons. The way God intended it.
You can always build more lanes.

View attachment 167080

By Clackett Lane?

 

[vegster]

Every other country seems to be able to build major infrastructure in a quarter of the time and often a quarter of the cost that it takes us..it took almost three years to dual a mile of the A259 between Ferring and Angmering... huge amounts of money for the consultants and crap contractors...

 

[wigman]

Every other country seems to be able to build major infrastructure in a quarter of the time and often a quarter of the cost that it takes us..it took almost three years to dual a mile of the A259 between Ferring and Angmering... huge amounts of money for the consultants and crap contractors...

It was over 4 years actually.
Feb 2019 to April 23.

 

[clapham_gull]

Crossrail 2 has been kicked into the long grass.

Every other country seems to be able to build major infrastructure in a quarter of the time and often a quarter of the cost that it takes us..it took almost three years to dual a mile of the A259 between Ferring and Angmering... huge amounts of money for the consultants and crap contractors...

To be fair other countries have their cock ups too.

Spain has wasted billions / gone over budget on a number of infrastructure projects, municipal buildings and that famous disused airport.

 

[chickens]

France started construction of its high speed network in 1976. Tory and Labour governments here have delivered the sum total of St Pancras to The Tunnel.

The EU are fully supportive of brand new high speed networks through national parks and semi wilderness. Currently on the side of France in driving through a new Alpine line from Lyons to Turin, despite mass protest from French environmentalists. Remember Corbyn and his side of the Left always called it a capitalist club. That means wealth generation for business. If that overrides nature, so be it.

I’m not linking continental Europe as a cause in any way to the UK’s antiquated and expensive railways, I’ve never heard anyone attempt that.

I’m in partial agreement with you, we’ve done less than the minimum to expand/upgrade the rail network, though am left wondering if the French are fast at building infrastructure or not? They sounded it from your first post, but now the difference is that they started in 1976.

Regardless it sounds as if any major infrastructure projects require nationalised or at least tightly controlled industries coupled with central control of the projects, rather than the dogs dinner of fragmented and privatised ownership we have here today.

I am personally less keen on new roads than rail projects, but as somebody else drily pointed out above, it’s pretty irrelevant in the U.K. because people can’t afford train travel. Private motoring (or even flying) is the cost-effective option over distance, which suggests a colossal leak of taxpayers money going into the infrastructure firms bidding on these projects.

I say this as somebody living in a part of the U.K. that effectively closes every time there’s a crash on the M4. I would love our railways to be reliable and affordable. That isn’t currently the case.