#RailNatter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ม.ค. 2025
- Well, as predicted by me in 2018, and then essentially confirmed as inevitable two years ago on release of the Integrated Rail Plan, this Conservative government of Hunt, Sunak and Harper have cancelled HS2, leaving the most expensive section between London and Birmingham as a rump to be picked at by Treasury vampires until it is impossible to deliver the full scheme.
There's so much to talk about, so rather than going though anything in a structured way, let's make this an open Q&A like our first episode many moons ago... It's the first PROPER LIVE one in a long while, so tune in and let's go!
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Being drunk with a bunch of lads and making up railway infrastructure projects in a hotel room is, like, THE DREAM! But not like this!
Its a thing I have done more than once before and yet all we ever get is more roads roads roads
@@scitchmunkey5587 Blame Ernest Marple, He wanted every one off the train into cars, i made a classic joke of the Luton Airport car park fire last night on social media as people lost their cars in the awful fire, that 1,000 cars off the roads now they need to find an alteractive maybe take the train.
I’ve written to my mum’s Labour MP (Batley and Spen), I’ve written to my own Tory bot in Bury North. But I’ve also written to Andy Burnham and Tracy Brabin as Manchester and West Yorkshire mayors pointing out the long term value of HS2 in fighting climate change. They were both heavily in favour of HS2 as it would help solve a lot of the public transport issues in their patches so I asked them to escalate the issue within Labour and try to prevent the land sell-off happening. Safeguarding the land is essential to my mind in ensuring future generations can build HS2 at some sort of viable price tag. With this in mind I also wrote to the Good Law Project and Gina Miller taking the angle that this decision not only to arbitrarily cancel the project but also to sell the land off was an abuse of executive power and that the land sell off in particular should be sanctioned by Parliament. Will it work? I doubt it but at least it made me feel better. Thanks for an interesting discussion though. The CAD plans were informative and illustrative.
Do you mind if I ask how you phrased it? I'm writing to my (Tory) MP as well but given his responses to previous emails I'm not sure how to properly get through to him.
@@tomwatts703 Said I was very angry about how HS2 had been cancelled on the whim of a PM alone with no consultation and purely to appease the right wing nutters in his party and shore up his political position. Said I was also very worried about how Parliament could debate and authorise a major infrastructure project but then have it cancelled and the land sold off to prevent anyone else from doing it without further scrutiny and recourse to Parliament.
@@dominicjackson2498 thanks very much, I'll write to whoever I can, it's definitely better than doing nothing at least.
Your ideas are spot on, particularly converting all the planned HS stations as through stations. In difficult, depressing times lacking any real vision, you bring hope.
I still have hope that Labour will push HS2 through... It doesn't make sense for them to announce it now, it would only lose them votes and give Tories a hammer
This derailment might actually make things bad enough by 2025 that labor could be "taking pragmatic choices".
It's absolutely ridiculous we don't have a long term high speed rail plan
Couldn't agree more.
Think of the jobs this would create and if our government ever thought about the majority of us who are working class, they'd realise the job creation from the construction, to the new trains and reduced journey times across the country increasing the economies of all the stations on the HS2 original plan but with a continuous sensible ambition to push upto Scotland in future in a planned way.
Freeing up more space for freight to remove some of the strain off the motorways reducing not just some of the long distance lorries but with sensible pricing for passenger services giving a viable alternative to driving whether for business or pleasure.
But we don't have a government like that and probably never will.
Nice to know part of this plan was to re-brand Preston as Manchester. I heard about this from Nick Ferrari of all people but this is the first time actually seeing the drivel with my own eyes.
With Euston '"cancelled" is now a good time to call for St Pancras International to be replaced by a through station, that will take Eurostar services and Javelin services to Birmingham Curzon Street?
I think the value of the HS1 to HS2 link is entirely dependent on being in Schengen. If you have to do passport control and customs in Birmingham it would make picking up additional passengers in St Pancras tricky, so you either make it a drop off only place, or have a dedicated Paris to Birmingham train coming through the channel tunnel in place of one of the Paris to London trains. Without Schengen it's probably better to have everyone change at St Pancras. What is needed instead is a good way to change onto the train to Birmingham with lots of baggage. Whether HS2 comes to Euston or not, it will be a train from Euston, as that's where the WCML goes too. I'm not sure whether the Tube (Victoria or Northern Line) is a good way to do that, as they're very crowded and there's a lot of steep escalators.
~45:00 re Liverpool-Manchester it’s quite simple.
Liverpool limestreet- via wcml onto the freight only line via Warrington bank quay low level/fiddlers ferry power station
That route is a mess, though. Not really ideal for minimising generalised journey times.
@@GarethDennisTV it would be a hell of a lot cheaper though than building a new line
@@gwrydd depends by what measure! cheaper if you just mean capital cost of building a physical line, but not necessarily cheaper if you look at the costs of creating and operating a railway over its lifespan
There's a petition on 38 degrees to halt the sale back of the land bought up for HS2
Phew!
Another great RailNatter, Gareth. I guess the problem with the 6 platform Euston is that there will not be enough platforms to turn all the trains needed to use HS2 to its full capacity. Fortunately the West London Line goes from OOC to Clapham Junction, so my proposal would be to send the HS2 trains that cannot be turned at Euston along the West London Line to Clapham and hence to the old Eurostar platforms at London Waterloo. I can see that this would mean upgrading both the West London Line and the Waterloo Station throat, although the latter was improved for Eurostar services back in the 1990s. One major advantage would be the improvement in connectivity between southern England and the rest of the UK.
The PWI linespeed video is here: th-cam.com/video/jg3TZqNrIwQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=oVFMSO36wQWW8EEy
Rishi has basically killed the whole project. I can see it ending up like HS1 with reduced services and low uptake due to cheaper fares on other services to more useful destinations such as Cannon Street in the heart of the City rather than St Pancras which is well away from the financial district. Old Oak Common will be even worse so why pay more to use it over the WCML services? It wouldn't surprise me if they pull back funding on HS2 even further and leave it as an unelectrified single track serviced by DMUs or lend them some old steam trains and run it as a heritage line.
I had assumed that the Handsacre link was going ahead. i'm confused now?
Same, there is so much work being done right now between the delta junction and Handsacre, it just seems madness to stop and leave a random bridge over the M42 and massive scars in the landscape around Lichfield.
having had the Norton Bridge flyover ,all that we needed was a by-pass at Stone to avoid the 25mph psr @@YetAnotherGeorgeth
Hoping the incoming Labour government carries out a full review of HS2 and it's cancellation under the pretext of learning lessons for future projects. If they announce the review now it may dissuade sales of the safeguarding land.
Could there be any possibility of the extra HS2 platforms being built at another London terminus?
Could I ask, what is this farrigdon Hbf idea about?
if the western hs line dosen't go to bristil how do you o to eiter wales or iclude ne-sw crossy contry line.
"The challenge with our rail network is that it's rubbish" 😁
Why not build new rapid transit lines in Leeds with through running ability and run extra trains through it instead of adding platforms
HS2 MUST BE FULLY BUILT
Cancel the section of the project which is well underway. Magic. Pay more to clean up the mess than to finish the damned thing.
Still think mainline HS2 should go via sheffield, then split to Leeds/Manchester
the northern part of hs2 should be desinded to be usable by long distace friegth trains too.
No. HS2 was only designed for one track in each direction. Freight trains will take massive chunks out of the timetables.
You complained about the treasury here, but I don’t think this was a treasury decision, given Jeremy Hunt by all accounts was against this decision. It seems that he and Andy Street are the reason for saving Euston (in some form)
This is a personal decision from Sunak. He appears to be a self assured and stubborn moron.
Yes, this does seem to have been a personal decision as part of his job interview... So saying, plenty of people in Treasury will have been cheering when the news was announced. I'm sure plenty weren't, mind you!
A little offended that you circled the south west. I know politicians talk about the north south divide, however, the southwest has some of the poorest places in the country, and is at a same level if not worse as the rest of the north. It's really a south east divide. We're very lucky to have gotten any investment
Only because they called it Network North! I lecture on the disparity in investment, and it's always a toss up between NI, the EM and the SW.
iths2 should be a major issue in the next election. it never has really had a national referendum about it.
this is good, big policy like this shouldn't be decided by referendum
A comment as a libation for HS2.
how much can westminster afford to spend on hs2. why isn't it set up like he staes where all level of government can fund big inferstucucter programs.
Anything north of Watford is never going to happen. Need people to go 30seconds faster across London, let's spend billions on it.