HS2 Manchester to be scrapped

Today's dose of utter madness, HS2 is useless for 10 minutes of extra time, has become we wanted it!!!!!

You would struggle to find a single politician who thought that HS2 was a good deal at £100 Billion.

Yes, I agree that there were many who wanted it at £30 Billion - but, as the costs have risen, the political support has ebbed away..

Hindsight is a wonderful thing Pacifico. You are probably right that if the true project costs were known in 2009, it probably wouldn’t have gone ahead.

When the decision to go ahead was taken they made some poor decisions - partly from arrogance partly for party political reasons. What was essentially a project driven by need to address capacity became obsessed by speed - it would have been far cheaper to make it slightly slower but the politicians wanted the glamour of ultra high speed and party political reasons meant that the line came agonizingly close to Heathrow but didn’t as would have been logical route through it connecting the north to the world. A tunnel through the chilterns added huge further costs and few of the lessons of HS1 were learned meaning we reinvented the wheel again. They also would have been better building north south rather than south north.

Yet another example of gross mismanagement by the Tories in government I am afraid.

The history though and already committed cost is now irrelevant
We now have a choice of a) a railway line between an outer suburb of London and Birmingham or b) completing the project to Euston and Manchester. All that matters for that decision should be a comparison of the difference in projected economic benefit between the two and the additional cost from now of doing B rather than A. As far as I know those figures are not publically available.

We know now that this project will have been a disaster which ever option is taken. We don’t know which option is the least disastrous.

They were in power in 2010-2012 when the decision to build HS2 was taken and the route chosen. Anything else?

Sadly Dappy, I suspect helping you out a little would not be nearly enough.

Regarding high-speed rail in the UK, I was originally a supporter of it if only because it's one of the attributes of a proper, first-world nation.

However the debacle of HS2 (and by extension, Crossrail) and particularly the anarchic state of both financing and schedule has converted me to the opposite camp.

I think it should be scrapped and the money spent instead on bringing the network up to continental standards in respect of electrification, loading gauges and high-capacity i.e duplex rolling stock.

Regarding Red Rackham's remarks about piggy-back freight, I think it is wrong that the haulage industry should decide what travels by rail and what does not. Every truck that arrives at one of the Channel ports and is destined for north of London should be transported by rail to a hub in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or wherever. The basic infrastructure already exists in the form of Eurotunnel and once the vehicles are loaded they can be transported to wherever their destination. The earlier remarks about electrification and loading gauge obviously apply.

Ref piggy back, we went into this in some detail on the other forum. Plans were fairly advanced but it was scrapped because ultimately England is too small to make it pay. Hauliers were not in favour because the majority of them didn't want to travel directly from Dover or the South East to a hub in Birmingham. The reason piggy back and high speed rail works in Europe is because Europe is much bigger than England. Come on Dan buck your ideas up theres a good chap.