HS2

[BobSweet]

I hear that the National Trust have a dedicated team to look after the NT interests on the HS2 route. Does Cycling UK also have anyone dedicated to HS2 to campaign to stop them closing some of our cycling roads?

Thanks

Bob Sweet

[Paulatic]

I understand they've a team on the job.
Dedicated to rebranding it probably into T fafS ( pronounced Tee faffs )


Trains for a few Southerners

[gaz]

Official Blurb from Cycling UK, May 2014: http://www.cyclinguk.org/news/lets-get- ... out-of-hs2

Mention in Campaign News, March 2016: http://www.cyclinguk.org/publication/cy ... march-2016

[Richard D]

I'm betting that they will close LOTS of our cycling roads.

I'm also betting that they could put in bridges and underpasses to keep those routes open, but they won't.

I also believe that the Germans/Dutch would build a service road alongside the line to aid in construction, which would be converted into a cycle superhighway once the line was built. I bet that they don't do that either.

[horizon]

CTC isn’t taking sides on whether or not to build HS2 Phase 1

No, and they don't really need to say anymore - it says it all.

[gaz]

I'm betting that they will close LOTS of our cycling roads.

I don't believe a single cycling road was lost to HS1 in Kent, I'm fairly confident that footpaths, bridleways and by-ways were all maintained too. There have been some minor re-alignments but I can't think of any outright closure.

[Paulatic]

Any bridges or underpasses you do get are not guaranteed to stay. In the last 12 years I've witnessed 3 routes, within 5 miles of me, crossing the West Coast Mainline being stopped up. Argument being they cost too much to maintain and bring upto to speed standards.
I've a bridge 60 yds from where I'm sitting now which moves 1.5 " when trains go over it. It was redecked in 97. Now they are monitoring it and talking of closing it. If they do then everytime I leave my house it will add 1.5 ml to every journey.

[Steady rider]

How much time will be saved by passengers in a year using HS2?
How much will it cost to the tax payer per year?

If for example it saves 1 million hours per year and costs £1 billion per year (on average over a 30 year period), this i would estimate would be 1,000,000,000 / 1,000,000 = £1000 per hour. Has anyone precise figures?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... iteria.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03 ... st-of-hig/ some costs for building

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... tee-report
It seems MPs are not clear about the benefit to cost aspects.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16473296

The Department for Transport says there will be almost 15,000 seats an hour on trains between London and the cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds - treble the current capacity.

Does the country need 15000 people arriving in London per hour? plus the other routes, even more. Designing for increasing congestion?

[Bonefishblues]

CTC isn’t taking sides on whether or not to build HS2 Phase 1

No, and they don't really need to say anymore - it says it all.

Serious Q - why would it?

[Richard Fairhurst]

I also believe that the Germans/Dutch would build a service road alongside the line to aid in construction, which would be converted into a cycle superhighway once the line was built. I bet that they don't do that either.

Believe it or not, a Dutch consultancy (Royal Haskoning) has been engaged to study a possible cycle route parallel to HS2! I suspect it might end up more as an NCN-style route rather than a smooth strip of uninterrupted bike-only tarmac - the blurb says "a national North-South leisure and utility cycleway by joining local links using a combination of canals, upgraded rights of way, old railways or field edge boundaries". But it will be interesting to see what happens.

[PH]

In the meantime, the electrification of the East Midlands Mainline is again in doubt. Really they ought to be making what we have work better before this.

[ianrobo]

CTC isn’t taking sides on whether or not to build HS2 Phase 1

No, and they don't really need to say anymore - it says it all.

Serious Q - why would it?

I would hope not, CTC is a cycling campaign not a rail one, for the record I support HS2 fully but not the place to go into that.

Also locally here I ride a lot of the roads HS2 will cross in Warwickshire and Staffordshire and if M6Toll is an example access will be kept and most of the roads are A or B anyway.

CTC of course should campaign for cycles to be allowed on HS2, for routes to be protected but most of all new routes created.

[landsurfer]

Where existing roads will be crossed underpasses and bridges will be installed .... un-mettalled tracks i doubt it.
However where farmers can prove either a right of way or required farming access they will provide crossings.
The type of crossing depends on the access, Public footpath/ right of way will probably be a foot bridge.
Farm machinery access will be considered on a total farm access basis, if there is a bridge 1 mile down the track they will not build a second, the farmer can drive over the first point of access.
We may have to cycle further to get to where we are going .... but we are a Touring Club ...... so thats not a problem is it .

[Steady rider]

Appendix A – HS2 Rural Road Design Criteria
may have a few points

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... iteria.pdf

[Stevek76]

How much time will be saved by passengers in a year using HS2?
How much will it cost to the tax payer per year?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hs2+economic+case+S%26A


You should be able to cobble some figures together from those reports.

From what I can gather the initial demand forecasting and economics for HS2 was basically rubbish possibly due to overconfidence in the scheme (they only really focused on the savings for users on work time) and possibly due to a lack of skill set for such work in the UK (the way rail is privatised has meant most rail forecasting has ended up being empirically based elasticity models - which are fine for improvements to existing routes - not great for entirely new ones).

Also splitting the scheme into bits was a stupid idea from the start. As much as you could easily damage or fail entirely the economic case for a network of segregated cycle paths by splitting it into individual segments, the same applies to high speed rail. London - Birmingham on its own is always going to be low value.