HS2 era condannato a essere un disastro, diciamo addetti ai lavori – a causa di un “problema in questo paese”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l8kq52y8o
di insomnimax_99
HS2 era condannato a essere un disastro, diciamo addetti ai lavori – a causa di un “problema in questo paese”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l8kq52y8o
di insomnimax_99
30 commenti
and i suspect they dont mean immigrants…
but you could almost hear the racist dog whistling from here
“because we live on a small, highly populated, property-owning, democratic island.”
aka the chinese would pay you, bulldoze your house and get on with it, and we cant. But Boris’s dad made a nice chunk of cash out of it…
“Sized up alongside the international alternatives, the plan was impressive: in France, high-speed trains run at 200 miles per hour; HS2 was to be built to withstand 250mph. In Japan, 12 trains run between Tokyo and Osaka every hour; HS2 would be capable of running 18 trains an hour going in and out of London Euston in that time. That’s one every three minutes.
To have any chance of doing this, however, the railway had to be as straight as possible. Slowing down to take bends around villages, woodland or canals wasn’t an option. Faster trains also required more sophisticated junctions, and stronger slab track.
Andrew suggests no analysis was done to set out comparisons of what the savings would be if trains ran at the slower speeds of Eurostar services in the south of England.”
“Take the case of Dobbins Lane in Buckinghamshire. In April, the local council considered planning permission for HS2 to upgrade a farm track running into a nearby field. This work was needed in order to build an underground box to monitor groundwater levels, which in turn was a requirement of a tunnel being dug through the nearby hills. Without it, HS2 warned, delays could cost tens of millions.
But more than 800 local residents signed a petition against works because of a temporary increase in road traffic: 60 lorries would need to reach the site during a 12 week period.
And the request for planning permission was rejected – another potential cost added.”
ah joys of democracy, sell everything off, and then realise your skint and in huge amounts of debt.
If they’d started in Manchester and worked down it would have been finished, but they didn’t listen so what people said would happen did happen, stuff away from London was cancelled.
Outsiders largely say the same thing. This country cannot get any infrastructure done on schedule or on budget.
I never hear talk of corruption with regard to HS2 but someone is making staggering amounts of money out of this.
There is corruption at every level on infrastructure in this country. From maintenence of roads to big national projects like HS2. Public contracts are inflated and seen as easy money for shareholders.
£600m/£700m per mile, absolutely crazy to save 10 minutes on a unnecessary journey
I’ve been listening to Kate Lamble’s podcast about HS2
It tells the same story contained in her linked article, but it’s interesting to hear those directly involved explaining how and why they went wrong
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002fv89](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002fv89)
>As politicians set about trying to get approval to make HS2 run straight and fast, they came across another obstacle.
>Much of the route cut through rural constituencies, represented mostly by Conservative MPs, who made it clear to then-Prime Minister David Cameron that their approval for the project would require serious negotiation and compromise.
>Ministers picked something unusual to make it happen: a hybrid bill, only the third of its kind enacted since 1992.
>These allow MPs to vote on whether a piece of infrastructure should go ahead, but those directly affected are given the right to petition against it and ask for details to be changed.
***
>”I was told that [the bill] basically gave the planning approval,” says Patrick McLoughlin, who was the Transport Secretary between 2012 and 2016.
>”Of course, it subsequently turns out that that was not the case.”
>In reality, the hybrid bill only offered “deemed planning permission” – HS2 say they have since needed to acquire more than 8,000 further permissions from councils and other agencies.
If the Tories hadn’t fucked up the HS2 legislation and instead grown a backbone and passed ironclad legislation that instantly granted permission to all HS2 works, no ifs, no buts, no pissing around, I reckon we’d have been able to build HS2 in full including the eastern leg to Leeds.
HS2 shouldn’t have needed permissions from any other authority other than parliament. 8000 further permissions is insane.
If we don’t fix our planning system our grandchild will be even poorer than we are and our politics will descend into an increasingly bitter competition to hand out resources. The planning system is strangling our country, and it’s destroying the hopes and dreams of millions of people
We once had a levelling up minister but I imagine he ‘levelled up’ his own constituency or had the gold plating gold plated in Tunbridge Wells, like when Rishi ‘man of the people’ Sunak had the National Grid upgraded just for his swimming pool. HS2 went over budget by twelvtythree trillion because of protestors of course, not.
Private contractors, governments inability to do things by the state, NIMBY’s, terrible planning laws, costly paperwork, consulting and anything else you can name.
With the rise in telecommuting it was completely unnecessary but sunk cost fallacy kept them pouring taxpayers money into a bottomless pit (where lawyers, consultants and officials gladly scooped it all up).
Follow the money:
New research reveals extent of Conservative Party’s financial reliance on property sector
https://www.transparency.org.uk/news/new-research-reveals-extent-conservative-partys-financial-reliance-property-sector
IMO HS2 was always the wrong answer to the capacity question. It would have be better to build a new trunk railway with a much lower top speed which served more places. Revival of the Great Central main line is always trotted out when this comes up but that was yesterday’s railway.
Creating more stops would have dealt with many objections and environmental issues could have been minimised with less obsession about how straight the route was, paralleling roads and using old rail beds where feasible.
The article referred to the UK being a property owning democracy which means compulsory purchase is going to be expensive. Rather than penny pinching just pay up because the overall cost will be peanuts against the cost of a new railway.
If the cancelled sections are reactivated these principles should be adopted.
Reading this, and how much cost came from grift from (mostly Tory) MPs looking for carve outs for their constituencies in return for planning permission, it’s all the more galling that the government is now selling off the land for the later legs of HS2.
We will eventually need those lines, and have to start paying for the same permissions and land all over again.
Some few people have been making bank off this project.
So much stupid shit gets in the way of it.
It should have been completed by now and should be a symbol of national pride, showing that the country that invented the locomotive is still capable of improving it even hunders of years later.
We’ve lost all sense and ability of long-term ambition and project planning. Disgraceful.
This video gives an excellent breakdown of just how bad we have gotten at building things in this country.
https://youtu.be/UtApa3PA0J4?si=oTRwTHbvcG1fL-1S
Here are two problems I think optimise the UK
“But government reviews now suggest this ambition had an insidious cultural impact – and that the vision to build the best possible line is what “drove the scope and dramatically increased cost.” We obviously don’t want the best and don’t want future proofed.
“Much of the route cut through rural constituencies, represented mostly by Conservative MPs, who made it clear to then-Prime Minister David Cameron that their approval for the project would require serious negotiation and compromise.” Individual Tory voters hold more power than the national interests or what’s good for the nation.
I’ve never believed it was about tunnelling like one popular video described, because other nations have built transport links through and across mountains cheaper and faster. UK is a lawfare culture, though a paradoxical one. Commit billions in fraud via HS2 or design for mass death with Grenfell and you get a slap on the wrist, but build an extension slightly too tall or wide or upset a bat and planning permission comes down on you like lightning.
They criminally undervalued its costs because they wanted to green light it
Should be fining all these colsultign and contracting firms who take the pee with massive fees. Im not a fan of China but they could have done this faster and a lot cheaper
We will soon arrive at the cancellation and public inquiry stage if the public fight over blame is getting started
I’ve expected it ever since the northern legs started getting cancelled. And I expected the northern stages to be cancelled from the start.
This country is a joke, our ancestors would laugh at our complete failure to achieve anything of national importance in our lifetimes.
I can’t wait for the day when “manchester” and “london” aren’t the only things this country think exist.
Who could’ve predicted the line wouldn’t go all the way north? (Every northerner)
Who could’ve predicted the cost would balloon? (Every person with a brain)
Who even thought this line was required? (Rich people in London/Manchester)
>Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown was a Conservative MP and was one of the committee members who heard out petitions. “I remember very clearly one of the Secretaries of State for Transport, after an afternoon session, say, well done, Geoffrey, you’ve just cost us another couple of hundred million this afternoon.”
This would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that hundreds of millions were being wasted.
So many issues with the entire project. Starting off with the cost, to then actually planning the route, getting it built, the list goes on.
Government didn’t plan it correctly and the fact that more rail networking is needed up North is more of an issue. If the Government get the Northerns on board then it would have been fine. They didn’t and it’s cost them.
If you give contracts to whichever company says they can do it the cheapest, and they then reveal that they cannot in fact realistically deliver what they promised for that price, you end up with a project that costs more than you originally thought.
At the very least the government should have people like structural engineers etc on a board that selects which company to work with, so they have some idea as to whether or not the cost and time frame the company is quoting is anywhere near realistic
The gov first set up large regulatory barriers, the gov next continued regulatory certainty, costs ballooned, project basically cancelled.
1. Bring in numerous private contractors rather than doing a unified, government-run project
2. Cut back services in the North
3. Refuse to give Cymru its due funding by lazily classing it as an “England and Wales” project
4. Destroy ancient woodland
5. Run way behind schedule
6.?
7. Someone profits
Is it all about the money 💰 and corruption? Its like corruption is one of the few growing industries. When they put the tram in Manchester they closed the bury line and worked twenty four hours a day on it. You could see the lights at night moving steadily through the towns.
What gets me abut the way the Tories ran the project is that it was designed to help clear the congestion along a specific section of the WCML…. And through Tory sabotage, through corruption, through plain old stupidity…
We decided to start of the bit that turns away just before that section… Thus making the congestion WORSE… Then cancelling the northern leg IN MANCHESTER.
It beggars belief how badly the Tories ran HS2 and there needs to be a proper inquiry as to what happened.