Scrapped HS2 bike path "5 times better value"

[661-Pete]

See here:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... hs2-itself

I didn't know about the bike path proposal, and it wouldn't have benefited me personally, but depressing all the same. I suppose what it all boils down to, for the companies building this wretched thing (I'm one of those who doesn't see the point of HS2 btw), is getting 'payback' for their investment. A well-used cycle route certainly benefits the overall economy, in terms of better public health and lower energy consumption, etc. etc. I suppose it's on this basis that the "£3.45-£8.69 per £1" payback is calculated.

But - unless a toll were levied for using the cycle path (horrors!! ) - it doesn't directly 'pay back' the contractors themselves.

Any thoughts? Who would have used the proposed path? Any prospect of the decision being reversed somehow?

[atlas_shrugged]

Complete madness not to build the parallel maintenance track / Greenway for these reasons:

Rail tracks require maintenance access roads which are often perpendicular to the rail track. Put these roads parallel end-to-end next to the track and you have your Greenway which can also be used by track maintenance vehicles.

Passengers require access to the stations and vulnerable users may not be able to use the roads safely (wheelchairs, kids etc). Many passengers need to avoid rip-off car parking charges at the stations. Providing Greenways solves these access problems.

There is a health payback with Greenways because of active travel, environment improvements, congestion improvements etc. The governments should pass on these savings to the contractors building the Greenway. The UK is after all the fattest EU western nation.

Maintenance contractors can lower carbon footprint vehicles to traverse the Greenway in order to access the track. Currently large vans are used to transport only e.g. two maintenance engineers. Journey times are also long because the route is not direct.

A parallel Greenway actually adds to rail passenger traffic because tourists may use the Greenway and then take a rail journey back.

[reohn2]

What can we expect in modern day backward thinking UK?

Nothing would surprise me in this septic isle

[thelawnet]

The Guardian is being misleading, as usual. A feasibility study was conducted, but it would not be accurate to say it was 'scrapped' as there were never at any point plans to fund it.

This is the full study:

http://assets.dft.gov.uk.s3-eu-west-1.a ... -study.pdf

The study was London - Aylesbury - Banbury - Birmingham Intl, with a spur to Birmingham, then Birmingham Intl- Nottingham - Sheffield - Wakefield, then Wakefield - Leeds and Wakefield York. The other branch being Birmingham Intl -Crewe and then branches to Manchester, Crewe & Wigan

Essentially it would involve adding in various bits of infrastructure to complete a (largely off-road) route each section, linked with access through pedestrianised urban areas.

One thing it is NOT is a parallel cycle HS2 greenway, some sort of utopian pothole-free hundreds-of-miles-long path where you could zip along at 25mph, but rather trying to make existing patches of off-road infrastructure into more of a continuous journey via access improvements. The 'greenway' term refers simply to an off-road path such as a towpath or path through a park.

The reasoning for the network is to relieve blight caused by HS2; however it is not clear that HS2 is going to cause blight, but rather might enrich certain areas. There isn't really an obvious reason why a long distance rail path should be accompanied with similar path, because they aren't really correlated at all. HS2 goes non-stop from London to Birmingham, so a cyclepath in say Aylesbury has literally no relevance to it. Working out how to get cyclists on and off the trains and to and from the stations would be more useful, but otherwise they might as well build a cycleway following any existing rail line such as the East Coast Mainline, or in areas where the rail service is slow and poorly used.

[brynpoeth]

Bizarre, trains at 300 kmh and cyclers at 20 kmh

A high-speed line was built from Frankfurt/M to Koeln in Germany, now people commute absurd distances to their lucrative banking jobs, lots more energy and resources are used, madness
Doubtless the same would happen in the UK but the Grauniad also reports that a third of uk firms plan to leave so there shall be no need for hs2

[mjr]

Not a surprise, sadly. Cycleways have been returning over £5 per £1 spent lately, despite some bloopers, whereas HS2 will do well to break even.

I suspect that cycleway idea was in there as national government repeating a tactic used by local government for years: include a cycleway in a project, thereby reducing the number of cyclists objecting, then you can cancel some or all of it (or not fund that bit or whatever weaseling is in favour) when the motorised bit exceeds its budget, as they almost always do.

One saving grace is that I don't think they used cycling budgets to part fund HS2, unlike local councils who have used this trick to reshape traffic light crossroads and build new car parking spaces, counted as cycling project spending.

And as I wrote, despite that sort of abuse, they've been averaging £5 benefit for each £1 spent.

Just imagine what the benefit could be if more of the cycling budget was actually spent on helping cycling!

[Bonefishblues]

You should get together with a guy on another forum - it's uncanny how similar your ideas are

[brynpoeth]

You should get together with a guy on another forum - it's uncanny how similar your ideas are

What forum please? You may reply by pm if you dare not name it here

[mjr]

You should get together with a guy on another forum - it's uncanny how similar your ideas are

My hair's better!

[Bonefishblues]

You should get together with a guy on another forum - it's uncanny how similar your ideas are

My hair's better!

An, but he's definitely got the better commuter bike!

[1066enthalpies1939]

You should get together with a guy on another forum - it's uncanny how similar your ideas are

My hair's better!

An, but he's definitely got the better commuter bike!

Name the name

[Bonefishblues]

My hair's better!

An, but he's definitely got the better commuter bike!

Name the name

Avatar in the other place tells all.

[atoz]

I'm not a HS2 fan either. A fraction of the bloated budget could have gone on improving local rail services. That would have put an end to the insanity that 2 largeish towns locally that have a regular bus sconnecting the two that takes practically an hour to do 8 miles due to wall to wall traffic, but runs every 10 mins. The train by contrast is only hourly service but takes 22 mins. And you lose the will to live if you're waiting for a bus when the local colleges classes finish, because all the students hit the bus station at the same time. You can wait up to 30 mins just to get on a bus then. Some of those students could have gone on the local train, if it was rather more frequent.

I'm quite in favour of cycle paths next to railways though- handy for commuters and leisure riders. If the Woodhead route is ever reinstated as a passenger rail route, that would be the way to go.

[pga]

I attended the meeting where the HS2 cycleway was introduced. Yes there was scepticism about HS2 but if we could get a decent national cycleway on the back of it it was worth going along with it. Of course even then it was realised that this was perhaps going to be an attempt to encourage support for HS2 itself.

Investment in cycling and walking needs to be made in urban areas. The financial returns are obvious to all, except to a Government more concerned with Brexit than meeting the greater challenge of climate change and global warming/air pollution that contribute to it. Cycling ticks every box.

[Richard D]

Complete madness not to build the parallel maintenance track / Greenway for these reasons:

Rail tracks require maintenance access roads which are often perpendicular to the rail track. Put these roads parallel end-to-end next to the track and you have your Greenway which can also be used by track maintenance vehicles.

Passengers require access to the stations and vulnerable users may not be able to use the roads safely (wheelchairs, kids etc). Many passengers need to avoid rip-off car parking charges at the stations. Providing Greenways solves these access problems.

There is a health payback with Greenways because of active travel, environment improvements, congestion improvements etc. The governments should pass on these savings to the contractors building the Greenway. The UK is after all the fattest EU western nation.

Maintenance contractors can lower carbon footprint vehicles to traverse the Greenway in order to access the track. Currently large vans are used to transport only e.g. two maintenance engineers. Journey times are also long because the route is not direct.

A parallel Greenway actually adds to rail passenger traffic because tourists may use the Greenway and then take a rail journey back.

I had no idea that this was ever considered officially, but as soon as I heard of HS2 I thought that such a (mostly) parallel maintenance road/cycle path would make total sense. Which pretty much guarantees that it’d never get built, of course.

The route for HS2 absolutely blights many of our local lanes, which will require quite a lot of changes to routes that local clubs have been riding for years. They’ve already announced plenty of roads that will be closed - small ones, less used by cars, in other words exactly the sort of lanes we cycle. Same happened when they built the BNRR (M6Toll). Having at least some of HS2 paralleled by cycle path would have made a huge difference to how much of an impact the railway line will make, but no.