HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

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Sweep
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Sweep »

Unless I'm very much mistaken this new way forward is costing way way less than the original plan for these HS2 arms.
So it seems abundantly clear to me that the north has been shortchanged.
And led up the garden path/lied to.
For this change to be honest the spare money would have to be spent on more northern transport infrastructure improvements - and there's a hell of a lot that are needed. Have been for decades.

If I'm mistaken in my reading of the funding, someone by all means enlighten me.
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Pinkie
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Pinkie »

Sweep wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:09pm Unless I'm very much mistaken this new way forward is costing way way less than the original plan for these HS2 arms.
So it seems abundantly clear to me that the north has been shortchanged.
And led up the garden path/lied to.
For this change to be honest the spare money would have to be spent on more northern transport infrastructure improvements - and there's a hell of a lot that are needed. Have been for decades.

If I'm mistaken in my reading of the funding, someone by all means enlighten me.
Well it depends! On if you thought the investment was in anyway a good investment that would change the lives of millions of people for the better, ie show an economic return to the tangible betterment of all. I have some doubts on that, thinking it more a vanity project that at best means slightly less inconvenience for bussness travelers! Who are general the only ones who can afford the train fare on a regular basis.

If I'm correct spending less money we havent got seems a good decision.

The fact that they are not intending to spend the money saved, which they cant afford , on other infrastructure projects doesnt make a lot of differance. Those wouldnt be done if the line was built anyway. So the only loosers are the people of Leeds and surrounding area who fancied a day out in London with half an hour knocked off the journey time.

I am doubting that there are many people in london who ever thought what about a weekend in leeds ?, so one way traffic for the most part and money leaving, rather than joining the local economy
Last edited by Pinkie on 20 Nov 2021, 12:45pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sweep
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Sweep »

Pinkie wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:36pm
Sweep wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:09pm Unless I'm very much mistaken this new way forward is costing way way less than the original plan for these HS2 arms.
So it seems abundantly clear to me that the north has been shortchanged.
And led up the garden path/lied to.
For this change to be honest the spare money would have to be spent on more northern transport infrastructure improvements - and there's a hell of a lot that are needed. Have been for decades.

If I'm mistaken in my reading of the funding, someone by all means enlighten me.
Well it depends! On if you thought the investment was in anyway a good investment that would change the lives of millions of people for the better, ie show an economic return to the tangible betterment of all. I have some doubts on that, thinking it more a vanity project that at best means slightly less inconvenience for bussness travelers! Who are general the only ones who can afford the train fare on a regular basis.

If I'm correct spending less money we havent got seems a good decision.

5he fact that they are not intending to spend the money saved, which they cant afford on other infrastructure projects doesnt make a lot of differance. Those wouldnt be done if the line was built anyway. So the only loosers are the people of Leeds and surrounding area who fancied a day out in London with half an hour knocked of the journey time.
So you've confirmed that the spare money isn't being spent on local transport infrastructure in the north.

There's masses of stuff that needs doing in the north - just a few - railway lines that are there that could be re-opened, integrated bus ticketing systems, trams, bus routes restored. London's excellent transport system isn't all used by high-flying execs but by normal folk going about their lives.

Folk in the north would like to do the same.
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Pinkie
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Pinkie »

Sweep wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:43pm
Pinkie wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:36pm
Sweep wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:09pm Unless I'm very much mistaken this new way forward is costing way way less than the original plan for these HS2 arms.
So it seems abundantly clear to me that the north has been shortchanged.
And led up the garden path/lied to.
For this change to be honest the spare money would have to be spent on more northern transport infrastructure improvements - and there's a hell of a lot that are needed. Have been for decades.

If I'm mistaken in my reading of the funding, someone by all means enlighten me.
Well it depends! On if you thought the investment was in anyway a good investment that would change the lives of millions of people for the better, ie show an economic return to the tangible betterment of all. I have some doubts on that, thinking it more a vanity project that at best means slightly less inconvenience for bussness travelers! Who are general the only ones who can afford the train fare on a regular basis.

If I'm correct spending less money we havent got seems a good decision.

5he fact that they are not intending to spend the money saved, which they cant afford on other infrastructure projects doesnt make a lot of differance. Those wouldnt be done if the line was built anyway. So the only loosers are the people of Leeds and surrounding area who fancied a day out in London with half an hour knocked of the journey time.
So you've confirmed that the spare money isn't being spent on local transport infrastructure in the north.

There's masses of stuff that needs doing in the north - just a few - railway lines that are there that could be re-opened, integrated bus ticketing systems, trams, bus routes restored. London's excellent transport system isn't all used by high-flying execs but by normal folk going about their lives.

Folk in the north would like to do the same.
I'm not disagreeing that money should be invested in the north. But 5those infrastructure projects would not be done if the line was completed anyway.

So nothing has changed as a result of the cancellation.

They have cancelled because they cant afford to do it, so there is no money either way.

If they should get involved in borrow and spend economics Is a slightly different issue. Perhaps or we may end up being governed by the IMF like we did last time they tried it
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Sweep
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Sweep »

Pinkie wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:49pm
They have cancelled because they cant afford to do it,
Well they should have done their sums properly before promising it very recently then.

Either they are incompetent or PR driven liars.

Am afraid that you have confirmed the puffery behind the supposed "levelling up".

Am in London. A absolute fortune has been spent on transport in London in recent years.

Just some small projects which come to mind, which were afforded, despite absolutely massive cost overruns.

Complete rebuild of London Bridge station - a marvel.
Thameslink.
London Overground network
St Pancras and Kings Cross - transformed
Crossrail

Popping back a few years, lots of other stuff - incuding the fact that London was never subjected to the chaos of bus deregulation. Good for the soul of the north apparently but not to be visited on London.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by atoz »

Someone questioned why you would need cross Bradford connections that would mean connections to Scotland. That would be a useful side effect. Actually it's the cross Bradford option that is most useful. Travelling across Bradford by any method is not great now. A unified station would help, and not just Bradford locals. People living on the Calder Valley rail route would benefit e.g if they want to travel to the Aire valley and beyond.

The current interchange station has the big advantage of being bang in the middle of town, and next to the bus station. The St James Market proposal was further out, so I don't know how that could be considered helpful. This for a small minority of business travellers. These days you can do meetings over Zoom or Teams. The rejected plan was a ridiculous white elephant irrelevant to local needs, reducing Bradford rail to a park and ride drop-off. It's certainly made me think carefully about the way I vote, given the way our local politicians backed this scheme.

When we've had a business targeted train from Bradford to London it never did much business, travelling via Leeds of course. But in fact there is still the direct Grand Central option available that doesn't go into Leeds. For the amount of business involved it will do the job.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by thirdcrank »

It's possible to travel by train from Leeds to Shipley (now part of Bradford and on the other side from Leeds) in something under 15 minutes IIRC. The line roughly follows the route of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which doesn't serve the centre of Bradford, in spite of there being a Canal Road which does. Once upon a time Bradford had a branch of the L&L but it became an open sewer and was filled in.

The "Grand Central option" went over my head. Most of the stations on the line between Bradford and Leeds - Laisterdyke, Stanningley, Bramley, Armley, Holbeck - were closed in the Beeching era but New Pudsey was opened near Dawson's Corner. IIRC This was intended to be the station of the future for intercity travel to and from W Yorks, complete with what was thought to be an adequate car park (although the parking space now shared by ASDA and M&S at Owlcoates was undeveloped then.) The transport plans then included the connection of the M1 to the A1 - the Kirkhamgate - Dishforth motoway passing nearby, but PUDMAG thought differently and that plan was dropped.

The main railway terminal in W Yorks is now Leeds (City) Station, which is a major cause of congestion in a city centre in .. er ... terminal decline but not so grim as Bradford.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Stevek76 »

The grand central option was never anything more than back of the envelope fantasy. HS2 already uses parts of the GC alignment where appropriate, the rest either doesn't go to major population centres and/or has already been substantially built upon. The alignment is also only 'fast' by Victorian standards, mostly 90mph or so with plenty of bits slower.

Sweep wrote: 21 Nov 2021, 6:32am
Pinkie wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:49pm
They have cancelled because they cant afford to do it,
Well they should have done their sums properly before promising it very recently then.

Either they are incompetent or PR driven liars.

Am afraid that you have confirmed the puffery behind the supposed "levelling up".
As a capital project the concept of 'affordability' is economically illiterate. The only thing that matters is whether it is 'value for money' (and that needs to extend beyond directly quantifiable elements to also include strategic aims etc) and whether sufficient resources are available to deliver it.

As for the changes, they are an incoherent mess that have rightly been comprehensively dismantled by people who actually know what they're talking about with the rail network.

HS2 (and subsequently NPR) has never been about saving X minutes for business users (which at any rate are only about 40% of long distance rail travel), it's about a major capacity uplift for the three major North-South mainlines. Dropping the eastern leg messes this up for two of these. This is not an uplift that can be matched by upgrading existing lines, that simply isn't possible. Lesser capacity uplift is possible but would cost as much, lead to decades of disruption and bus replacement services and be just as destructive. The revised journey times in the new plan are utter garbage, some might be achievable but only by devastating local service provision in the North to allow the train paths for the high speed service.

Ultimately the eastern leg will be required anyway, so all this is really doing is a short term cost saving for long term increase. Unfortunately the treasury appears stuffed full bean counters who've no concept of the proverb about a stitch in time, they've plenty of form with this, even in the South with constant delays for electrification as well as not electrifying the new East-West rail line from the start.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Stevek76 »

Pinkie wrote: 20 Nov 2021, 12:49pm If they should get involved in borrow and spend economics Is a slightly different issue. Perhaps or we may end up being governed by the IMF like we did last time they tried it
The economics of 'last time' were a very different place. Everyone runs on fiat currencies now, it is impossible to get into an equivalent balance of payments crisis as it sorts itself out via exchange rates which we no longer attempt to keep fixed. Not to mention that the present balance of payments makes the situation in '76 a drop in the ocean and the cost of something like HS2 an irrelevance. Our BoP is as it presently is because we buy lots of cheap stuff from China.

At any rate, damaging your long term productivity potential by crippling infrastructure is not going to help any future BoP situation.

The main risk of domestic infrastructure spend is shorter term inflationary pressures, particularly if resources are fully utilised (the brain drain of Brexit will not have helped that or the BoP situation due to the impact on exports). There are ways to manage that but given they tend to involve raising taxes to remove excess money from the economy, something the present government doesn't want to do and when it does, does it in the worst way possible, by directly taxing jobs. :roll:
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by thirdcrank »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59541369

There's a bizarre choice of image to illustrate this piece about levelling up.

Is it simply because they need a stock picture of housing up North, or is it meant to be a joke?
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by mjr »

thirdcrank wrote: 5 Dec 2021, 10:16pm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59541369

There's a bizarre choice of image to illustrate this piece about levelling up.

Is it simply because they need a stock picture of housing up North, or is it meant to be a joke?
BBC News is still in London and didn't move to Salford with the rest of it. The picture is what they think the north looks like.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by pwa »

I do smile when people talk about HS2 as though it is a central part of levelling up. It may be if you live in Manchester, but it isn't if you live in South Wales. HS2 will go from somewhere a couple of hundred miles from me to somewhere else nearly as far away, and my chances of ever finding it useful are close to zero. It is less useful to me than that cross-London thing they have been building for a decade. And that in itself is pretty irrelevant to me. The trouble is that these mega projects tie up such a lot of our national investment in relatively small areas, leaving the rest of the UK not benefiting much and deprived of investment in our own tired and failing infrastructure. I am not using trains in South Wales because they tend to be ram packed, with a significant risk of having to stand. Nothing in the pipeline will be changing that.
Last edited by pwa on 10 Dec 2021, 7:17am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by Sweep »

thirdcrank wrote: 5 Dec 2021, 10:16pm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59541369

There's a bizarre choice of image to illustrate this piece about levelling up.

Is it simply because they need a stock picture of housing up North, or is it meant to be a joke?
that story does make it pretty clear that the "levelling up" is just so much waffle.

Just a line thought up to chuck into a photo opportunity.

On a par with Peppa Pig.

If it means anything, it doesn't yet - they clearly haven't sat down to work anything out.
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by RickH »

pwa wrote: 6 Dec 2021, 5:33am I do smile when people talk about HS2 as though it is a central part of levelling up. It may be if you live in Manchester, but it isn't if you live in South Wales. HS2 will go from somewhere a couple of hundred miles from me to somewhere else nearly as far away, and my chances of ever finding it useful are close to zero. It is less useful to me that that cross-London thing they have been building for a decade. And that in itself is pretty irrelevant to me. The trouble is that these mega projects tie up such a lot of our national investment in relatively small areas, leaving the rest of the UK not benefiting much and deprived of investment in our own tired and failing infrastructure. I am not using trains in South Wales because they tend to be ram packed, with a significant risk of having to stand. Nothing in the pipeline will be changing that.
I can't comment on South Wales but I heard a quite convincing argument from a rail engineer about how HS2 taking express trains out of Birmingham New Street would greatly benefit services from Aberystwyth to/through Birmingham.

It is talked about in this video
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Re: HS2 and "Leveling-Up"

Post by pwa »

RickH wrote: 9 Dec 2021, 8:25pm
pwa wrote: 6 Dec 2021, 5:33am I do smile when people talk about HS2 as though it is a central part of levelling up. It may be if you live in Manchester, but it isn't if you live in South Wales. HS2 will go from somewhere a couple of hundred miles from me to somewhere else nearly as far away, and my chances of ever finding it useful are close to zero. It is less useful to me than that cross-London thing they have been building for a decade. And that in itself is pretty irrelevant to me. The trouble is that these mega projects tie up such a lot of our national investment in relatively small areas, leaving the rest of the UK not benefiting much and deprived of investment in our own tired and failing infrastructure. I am not using trains in South Wales because they tend to be ram packed, with a significant risk of having to stand. Nothing in the pipeline will be changing that.
I can't comment on South Wales but I heard a quite convincing argument from a rail engineer about how HS2 taking express trains out of Birmingham New Street would greatly benefit services from Aberystwyth to/through Birmingham.

It is talked about in this video
Yes, mid Wales rail does feed into the Midlands. But mid Wales is not the populous part of Wales. Okay Aber and Newtown might see an improvement in train provision, but Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend, Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea won't. My own use of rail has been mainly Bridgend / Cardiff, and that will remain the crowded experience it has long been, so I won't do it. I'm not paying for that. Large tracts of the UK will see no real benefit from HS2, but I fear investment in our own infrastructure will be delayed or cancelled because of it.
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