One of the reasons for why HS2 costs went up goes to your point about ‘why aren’t we spending £100 million on nature restoration programmes?’. HS2 is effectively picking up the tab for lots of local spending projects along the route: eg road widening schemes around a village a few miles from where the line was to run. So potentially HS2 is being used as a vehicle for spending money on other nature projects near the line.
Yeah, the HS2 "green corridor" is a programme of nature restoration along the route which is planting something like 6 or 7 million new trees, and that's before we mention all the green tunnels/bridges along the route, and various other local development funds. In short, there's a lot of projects being bundled under the "HS2" spending package which have nothing to do with building the physical railway.
This is a very good comment. I expect HS2 will seek to minimise opposition by paying for some indirect impacts, which probably includes nature restoration.
If you compare the bat tunnel with other structures along the HS2 route such as green tunnels or bridges, the £100m sum actually comes out pretty favourably. The reality is that this is just how much it costs to build infrastructure of this scale - remember that it is 1km long, designed to last 120+ years, and needs to be able to handle potentially up to 40 trains per hour passing through it on 4 tracks at speeds of up to 250MPH! With that said, I absolutely agree with the need to spend similar amounts of money on other rewilding/conservation projects across the country. It's an absolute travesty that so many badly needed projects are competing for investment, whilst others (such as this) are fortunate enough to get it by virtue of being attached to a larger scheme!
I work in Commercial Real Estate. In my market it takes about $200 Mill USD to make an 11 story building. Engineering a 1km tunnel isn't exactly the same thing (My building stands up, this lays down) but the price doesn't really surprise me. Idk, things are just expensive when you want to do big things. I will not weigh into the ecological value because I'm just some mook without any knowledge.
Well said. I dont forget that this has to cope with two trains passing each other at a combined speed of upto 720km/h. Thats a very high passing speed and a fair bit of pressure.
The whole cost issue around HS2 reminds me of a paper I read a few months ago. The transit costs project did an extensive report about stuff like this (400 pages!) and why it gets so expensive in places like the UK and US while places like Switzerland and Sweden are a fraction of the cost. For example, some of Rome's Underground metro lines are going over budget and getting delayed since-as it's a major historical city sitting on top of ruins-the cost and time jacks up to reroute. It's a shame, since others have mentioned that building HS2 is crucial to add extra capacity to UK rail, which is at capacity and causing a whole load of issues. It needs to be done-for the environment as a whole and for the rail network- but the way the UK builds projects such as this is far from ideal.
That transit costs project was pretty flawed if I recall correctly, I might be mistaken and I might have been looking at a different paper but if it is the one I am thinking of they were looking at light rail costs compared around the world and they used only a select project from my country Australia to justify a ridiculously high cost per km for Aussie LR projects when the project they used was confined to the busiest street in Sydney and ran in to a number of problems of their own creation, whereas there have been half a dozen other light rail projects in Australia before and since that cost much less and shouldn't be all lumped together or ignored like that.
@BigBlueMan118 hmmm might be a different paper? The one I was talking about was their final report, which mainly mentions Boston, Istanbul, Italy, Sweden, and NYC. In their website they have a small section for Sydney but they haven’t gone in depth from what I can see, apart from a mention of Sydney in the conclusion
@leaveCurious, I recommend that you make a video on backyard rewilding to try and get the common person to contribute to rewilding. I am planning on dedicating a whole playlist to this but think that you will have more success as more people watch your videos. I really think that if everyone were to just let a small area of their yard go wild it would make such a difference for nature. I really appreciate what you do! Love your videos!
There is a great channel 'Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't' which is the work of a self-taught botanist who is now staggeringly knowledgeable. He helps people in the USA to get rid of their boring lawns and plant up front gardens with plants native to their areas. This requires little maintenance and enhances the area.
The reason environmental mitigation for HS2 costs so much is that the route was chosen to run straight through the cheapest land and that meant playing dot to dot with the few ecologically rich areas that wasn't already used by us pesky humans. This was pointed out when debated in Parliament, so we knew what we were signing up to. It's anticipated that if completed HS2 will have destroyed or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands and 33 sites of special scientific interest. That's a pretty good hit rate in the UK, as we are already classed by the UN (using the Biodiversity Intactness Index) to be in the bottom 12% of countries in the world for habitat destruction - so managing to find that many sites to damage is a significant achievement by the design team. Therefore, I find it a bit disingenuous for the Chair of HS2 to moan about having to mitigate for the destruction he already knew he was helping to inflict on the world or maybe he's proud to add his own contribution to the biodiversity crisis?
The route was not chosen to run through the cheapest land and it will not destroy or irreparably damage 108 ancient woodlands, but hey what's the point of the truth, eh!
Part of the problem is the disjointed planning system we have, which results in all the expensive legal fees and paperwork every time an interest group objects to not just HS2 but any development. The environmental paperwork of HS2 alone cost more than it cost to BUILD the longest tunnel in the world in Norway. We need something like a Catchment System Operator to facilitate the timely delivery of developments whilst actually increasing the natural capital and biodiversity of the country without all the ad hoc legal obstructions the current planning system enables.
I disagree, its working very well for all the people in the chain, landowners, contracters, designers et all. Remember the £45 million boris bridge ?? Puff.. same idea ;-)) wonderful
100% agree, I think we've ended up with a weird planning system that's really overregulated in some ways and really underregulated in others that somehow chokes both environmental projects and development. It's almost impressive. The only people who currently win are lawyers and rabble-rousers who just want to block any change (that isn't widening a road). Everyone else loses out.
Case in point: the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned 14 mile all purpose road and bridge over the Thames to the East of Dartford, which has soaked up £800m just to prepare the application for a Development Consent Order. The entire project is costed at an estimated £9bn - so the cost per mile may be even more than HS2 (140 miles long)...
Same here. In fact, some bats might just use it for a cave, and end up being splatted on the front of the trains. So a separate artificial cave might be the better idea. Two high walls, or even one high wall right next to the tracks, should keep the bats from harm.
I thought the same. Get a hard winter and they will relocate to the strongest, darkest, out of the wind cave🤨 Not sure how you would avoid that one. A tunnel might have been best
I think we can all agree on the importance of protecting wildlife (why else are we here after all), and I can't help but think that more could have been done to help the bats with a fraction of this money if used well instead of building the tunnel. 100 million is a drop in the ocean, but there's been an awful lot of these drops in the ocean, tunnelling under half the Chilterns to start with. It's frustrating HS2 is very important in increasing capacity on the west coast main line, which is currently both over capacity, but also very vulnerable to disruption as we have no back up route. Getting direct fast trains off the same lines as local trains will allow much more capacity for direct trains as well as allowing us to run more local trains. (If you've ever wondered why long distance trains are so expensive in the UK, there are several reports into it which call out the main reason, demand management, which is reducing demand via pricing as we have insufficient capacity) If we're going to transition away from cars, which in addition to the pollution require so much more space per journey, then projects like this are crucial.
@@macuma5533 Reliable and affordable public transport absolutely does reduce car dependence and use. It's the reason why so many people in London, one of the few places with good public transport has so many people who don't drive (and we don't even need to stop people driving full stop, just moving some of their trips to the train is good), or if you want something including long distance travel Japan, where reliable, fast direct trains take a lot of vehicles off the road for long distance journeys, and one of the reasons they can do that is they don't need to come up with a schedule that runs the shinkansen and the local trains on the same track. Obviously getting a level of service like Japan, where I have friends of mine even in smaller regional cities who feel no need to own a car is a long way off, but we can certainly do better than we're doing.
the problem with pricing is mostly because the trains are owned privately, selling off the trains was a terrible decision and we need to re nationalise it.
@@macuma5533 Rail projects absolutely do help with reducing car use. Ideally it'd be part of a broader strategy of densification (getting rid of NIMBYism etc.) and bike lanes and intra-city subways and such but it will be helpful if that other stuff ever starts progressive
I was confused at first but with your explanation as I understand it it isn't a £100m bat shed, its a covered tunnel for the trains to go through without disturbing the bats. Given its high speed I assume you need a bigger tunnel relative to the size of the trains because of the speed. Of course an actual underground tunnel would cost even more.
1. Once it’s built we will forget the cost (who talks about. HS1 and the Chunnel?) 2. The shed is a pain in the arse, I think that’s accurate. But I don’t think that means it isn’t worth it. It clearly is. 3. Yes more money on restoration preservation good example is bat shed! But I know what you mean.
The main problem with HS2 is no one understands how it’s funded. To my understanding a lot of the money comes from borrowing against future ticket revenue.
Hi, Ali. That's a good selection of veg seeds you're sowing. Good looking parsnips, the parsnips I've grown in containers this year have grown like yours, mixed sizes, any root hairy, but as you say, clean up nicely. Our snow here in North shropshire has now just about gone, and rain has set in, but North UK and Scotland are in for a good covering over the weekend. Take care and stay warm.
You hit the point at the end, take the 100mil let them do what they want with the train and use the 100mil somewhere else that could do so much more than just save one bat colony. Like you said a new environment could be created for whole new colonies elsewhere which would also benefit so many other species etc. we get to precious on the specifics and don’t think of the bigger picture. Losing some of these bats could be a lifeline and new start for future bats and wildlife and create something much bigger and meaningful with the same money.
Expanding the woodland is an obvious further step to support the bats and everything else in this vestige. Yes, it would be new woodland, not ancient, but it would be a scaffolding that could support the populations by giving them the room to expand.
Isn't it strange that HS2 happily ploughed through protected and historical sites but, whenever it came across a rich or connected person's land who didn't want it, the line would be diverted? The entire HS2 has been a blank cheque for companies and landowners.
If we didn't build HS2 we'd need more motorways or air ports, which are environmentally far more damaging. Expanding electric train travel is protecting the environment.
the bigger issue is the nature of train networks and public transportation in the UK in general. Because these are private companies, rather than run under government-owned bodies (as they are in Finland or indeed most other European countries), they are far more expensive for passengers, so their use is much less encouraged. The infrastructure incentivised towards cars certainly doesn't help.
@@xanderomeister7828the fact the trains are privatised is ludicrous, systems just don't work properly when managed by private companies we have seen it time and again certain services need to be government managed
@xanderomeister7828 I agree entirely. But a cheaper, publically-owned public transport system will encourage more users, and the West Coast Mainline is already full. So we'll need a new rail line to support the West Coast Mainline, and if it's not HS2 we'll need to start from scratch
I assume the tabloids did a big headline pun on 'bat shed crazy', to make environmentalism and ecology look 'out of touch' with the common man and with common sense, and something about 'red tape'. And I assume the developers are more than happy to make money out of the tax payer, so they have an incentive to make the project more expensive.
@@jakobrosenqvist4691well several newspapers do like to say environmentalism is stupid and expensive, of course it's because it sells more than presenting a nuanced perspective but doesn't make it less damaging
I recall a BBC R4 programme during the 2016 referendum campaign examining some of the more common reasons why people intended to vote Leave and testing them. One was environmental legislation, and the particular beefs some people had were traced to the entirely unilateral Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
One thing to keep in mind is just how expensive it is to build railways. HS2 costs £396 million per mile so £100 mil for a bat shed isn't really that much more than just 1Km of track.
Wouldn't it be better making (parts of it) an ecoduct so other species can also cross and giving the rest a green roof to help plants and insects. A tunnel or avoiding the wood would of course be better but then you still have another place where you hinder migration of species
Public expenditure rules disallow profiteering and diverting of funds to individuals. All public contracts are generally highly constrained on costs, rates of pay for every defined role and how expenditure is traced and approved. That's not to say that the companies involved aren't making a profit, but it will be a very low profit. More likely is that the costs multiply simply from the sheer number of parties involved and the engineering requirements to build a kilometre long structure that meets all the required standards including safety and quality requirements.
That's correct. Anyone who's ever worked on HS2 will tell you how their life has changed for the better because 80% of the cost estimate for the project they worked on has been directly transferred into their bank account before construction started. That's why they all own second properties and Ferraris now.
HS2's ridiculous cost is in large part due to the issues with government procurement and bidding for infrastructure projects. Companies (that are contracted by HS2) get picked on what they pitch as the cost, but there is very little in the way to stop a company going over cost and then not charging the government for it. How much of it is fixable and how much of it is inherent to how government procurement must work across the world? I don't know. Another factor to the cost is that it is a first-of-kind high speed rail construction for the UK (HS1 being built by a french company). That also increases costs, but with the intent that those costs make future high speed rail developments cheaper (though if that will happen, or the UK capitalises on it and actually builds more High Speed rail, is another question). Thirdly, in defence of the costs, media often treats government spending of taxpayer money as burning it to waste, and ignores the fact that money does go back into the economy. HS2 is one of the (if not the) largest construction projects in europe, with massive numbers of workers in every stage. And once built it has incredible value both financially and in just improving rhe lives of people with better and cleaner transport. All that being said, there is clearly some corruption that has happened here. And it should be investigated and changes made to how we procure projects so we aren't ripped off so thoroughly. The bat tunnel is probably not where the money is being embezzled though.
It is worth considering that all of the companies who are considered to be big enough to do the work are limited in number (and they know that.) The project is the biggest infrastructure project in the UK and only a few companies can do it. If they don't complete their contracts in the agreed time, nobody else can take over from them and the government can't penalise them.
No bidding was done on HS2 as the scope of works at the time the contracts were let was unknown. Instead the contracts have been placed on a cost plus basis. There will be extensions of time clauses in the contracts but damages for late completion can never be claimed back by HS2 as late completion on one contract does not prevent the railway from being used until all the contracts are finished.
At first, I thought this was a bat shed away from the lines to give the bats a forever home. How disappointing. So much destruction and no real restoration.
If half the amount of money were spent on restoring a different landscape somewhere else on the route, or somewhere else in the UK (or even another country?), could there be a bigger benefit? I'm not saying I think the bats shouldn't be protected, but the view that "if it costs £100m to keep these bats safe, then spend it" (12:37) seems like it neglects the opportunity cost of _not_ spending money on a different project, given there's only a finite amount of money available. I really like the nuance you applied after you said that!
There is another significant problem to this method. Maintenence. The upfront cost to build is a serious issue but afterwards any structure requires ongoing maintenence to keep it in a safe and functional condition. There are quite a lot of problems with the HS2 project. The biggest being it doesn't actually connect to HS1 so if you wanted to get a train from Birmingham to Brussels you will have to get off and walk across the gap in London (anyone needing to change from Glasgow Central to Queen street will know how much of a pain that will be). Much as having high speed rail all over the country would be fantastic, the vast majority of journeys people make are short ones. If the aim was to make the biggest possible improvement to the transportation network then doing several smaller, less glamorous, local projects would be of greater benefit. Leeds metro anyone? If there is any money left over, sure build high speed lines but don't operate it as some high profile vanity project, it needs to be cost effective. Yes, high speed rail is expensive and building things is disruptive but the way HS2 has been managed leaves a lot to be desired.
The main issue with HS2 is the politicians. The train lines are full and we need the extra capacity. The politicians chose the wrong option. We could have built the rail line in the M1 corridor, not needed many viaducts or tunnels. It would have been slightly less direct to Birmingham. HS2 has gone up in budget because the original plan was minimal tunnels, bridges and viaducts. Basically tunnels in London and a couple of extra km. However the politicians and the government bodies got involved and now one third of the line in the countryside is going to be on a bridge/viaduct/in a tunnel. This adds massively to the costs. Tunnel construction is the most expensive construction you can build. So if they had built down the side of the motorway in land no one cares about we wouldn't need to do all these expensive mitigations. If you travel by train between Birmingham and the north and south and you will see just how crowded the trains are. I was standing on my last 6 trains even though I booked them all 6+ weeks in advance. We need a body to sort out public transport investment that is politician free, but funded. Then we can get the country the needed investment without politicians changing the scope.
I suspect the extra bridge & tunnel, infrastructure requirements came from angry locals who dislike any change and are willing to lobby to prevent any development they don't want. Though yes, another part of the problem is that the UK DOES have money - Bright Line in Florida, being a private company, didn't have the money to do greenfield development, and so did buy & use right of way next to US 95. The government, having a lot of money, a lot of available credit, and a desire to buy voter's appreciation and votes, has much more financial leeway to do stupid things. When a government (or person) gets enough money, they start solving complex problems by making them merely complicated (by throwing money at it to "solve" all of the complex issues and not think about it). HS2, as much as I like the concept and want it to succeed, the money would be better spent on multiple smaller but also still impactful projects. Standard (non highspeed) rail lines, working with nature rather than brute forcing protectionism (as per video) The US has this problem as well - the viewpoint isn't "we have this money, what're the best things we can do with it", it's "we want to do this thing, with these constraints, and we will take a loan for it because we want it"
at 310kph (200mph ish) the curve radius is 4,500 metres. and lateral by 1m per 200m The M1 corridor would not work.. and if u did.. u block whole motorway to contruct.. Love all these simple solutions..
@@pedromorgan99 ah you are thinking that the line needed to go at 200+mph. I was thinking that would be great but if you can build the whole route for half the cost at 160mph along the M1 corridor with spur to Birmingham and Manchester then it was an option that should have been seriously considered!
They're a tree-roosting species, so it's unlikely they would ever feel at home in a concrete tunnel. Other species might be more at home, but the disturbance from the trains is likely too great.
@SonOfFurzehatt trains aren't cars, they cross more rarely, so actually a lot of species take home around them given they are usually lined with trees and such
Ancient woodland is essentially irreplaceable in any meaningful time scale. We have destroyed almost all of our natural heritage and really need to protect what’s left.
Yes, this seems the most logical approach. Can anyone suggest how much land could have been purchased for this purpose? Are there any other colonies in the UK? Without this bat shed would this colony die? In addition, the rewilded adjacent land could have produced carbon credits to fund further purchases etc.
A 1km long self supported concrete arch wide enough for four lines and tall enough to pass over the powerlines sounds about right for £100m, even if it's not loadbearing like a bridge would be in both cases the weight of the structure is the bulk of the weight it needs to carry, add in 8x or 10x or maybe even more of a safety factor and there is where all the money is going.
Two decades of ecological experience has shown me that when it comes to nature, it has always been a second place to anything else unless its legally required to do something. Typically the minimum legally required to mitigate is carried out, which more often than not, fails to fully mitigate these losses, if at all in some cases. Being such a populated island and the want/ need for development and other human priorities, wildlife will always loose out over other demands. As a species, we continue to refuse to make space for the other species that share our planet. Based on the trends I have seen since the 1980's I don't see this changing.
The government would have been much better off spending the HS2 money on a new signalling system called ERTMS. This would remove signals from the trackside and bring the signalling inside the driving cab of the train. This would help speed up the trains and enable more trains on the lines.
These projects would cost a lot less if politicians didn't use them to make themselves look better or adjust the scope (aka more lines). Majority of the cost is lawyers and paperwork. Construction side is only a fraction. I live in Toronto. We have lots to say about transportation projects that never seem to end.
I don't like the impact on the woodlands either but I just don't understand why a 2 track railway seems to receive so much more backlash regarding its environmental impact than all those 6 lane motorways ever got. All the rhetoric would make you think HS2 is the worst thing that ever happened to the British countryside. Sometimes it feels like people would rather we give up on rail and build more roads that would take up a lot more space and move a lot less people, each in their individual untimetabled car at a 3rd the speed at best and at a snails pace during rush hour.
@lazrseagull54 One sees this all over the world. People will get all worked up over trains and public transportation with all sorts of criticisms of both, but will have no problem whatsoever with more roadways or widening of those that already exist.
I don’t understand how they can build this tunnel without disturbing the bats …you can imagine the infrastructure to build this …huge project like that will have so much machinery etc
Have a look at the National Children's hospital project in Ireland. Its 10x worse for waste as a % of the project. Its going to be the most expensive hospital if not the most expensive building in the world.
Imagine our arteries had to negotiate their path with muscle bone and organ. A country has a right to breathe. People have to realise that we live on a body which requires arterial refits. Compensation should be 20% of double market price with the rest as increments over time.
Major infrastructure projects are nearly always complex and costly. Part of the reason for that is that the estimates of the initial price are usually pitched low to sell the project. Then, add to that court cases, laws, environmental reviews and so on, and the expenditures spiral upwards. However, especially with railroads and metros, once they are completed they prove to be enormously beneficial to the country and the populace. In California in the United States, there is a high-speed rail project that is projected to cost over 100 billion dollars, possibly as high as 130 billion dollars, with a truncated line no less. Still, it is a question of priorities. The lowest figure for the wars the US fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is over 4 trillions dollars, and it is certainly higher. The plan of the Biden administration to flood America with immigrants at the expense of the American taxpayer has probably already cost 150 billion dollars. There are many who would argue that those monies could have been better spent on infrastructure such as railways, including the high-speed one in California.
I would have thought a good old fashioned cut and cover would be cheaper than this scheme. On face value what we have is a business writing huge cheques for it's own benefit.
Sustainable transportation is an absolutely essential front on which to fight not only climate change but also auto-centric sprawl. They should spend nore money on it AND spend more money on expanding natural ecosystems
You briefly mention those bat bridges (which to my understand work, ahem, badly at best) and those projects usually already cost 10m, 15m, 20m (a main cost driver there seems to be monitoring projects, which makes me wonder what included in those alleged 100m). So in that regard what's almost an entire tunnel over a highspeed line doesn't actually sound like that much in comparison ... NIMBYism is the biggest enemy of HS2, that's what lead to way more expensive tunnels, bridges etc. and costly lawsuits than should have been needed. But can't go around pointing out that people are the problem, right? Bats don't have a lobby after all, better pick them.
$100m might be "a drop in the ocean" compared to the projected HS2 build costs, but it wouldn't be a drop in the ocean compared to a well-run project of this type if you catch my drift, it isn't just symptomatic.
My question is: why do we even need high-speed trains? We have managed for hundreds of years without them. I know that isn't your question, but as a society and as a planet, we need to actually rethink these mega-projects and if they are really necessary. Nature is not a straight-line kind of place, so we need to look at transportation solutions that wourk with nature, not that punch straight through it - not to mention all the villages and towns it is going to punch through
I feel like it would have been simpler if they planned to put every even mildly problematic section underground from the start. Like just go around the environment and land owners and backyards. It'd save so much on endless process overhead and lawsuits and everything it'd be worth the fixed premium.
this whole thing feels very in line with the demonising of eco friendly issues that's been happening recently, even calling it a 'bat tunnel' makes it sound like some boogie bat accommodations whereas it's actually a tunnel for the trains, yes it's to protect the bats but calling it a bat tunnel sounds like it's for the bats to live in themselves I think infrastructure wise the UK needs to figure out how to do it more effectively, we desperately need to upgrade our train lines but it just costs so much compared to other european nations, HS2's price is insanely high, but I think that's more to do with the system it's working in than HS2 itself
The fact that in the original plans you had to get off HS1 at St Pancras and walk to Euston station to continue your journey is just crazy. However last I heard was that it wont even start at Euston as it stands. It will start 7 miles away at Old Oak Common. The 'HS2' leg should have been linked to HS1 directly and built to accommodate Eurostar trains. But it did not need to be high speed. It could have avoided lots of sensitive areas and it would have been so much cheaper. The decision to terminate the railway in Birmingham is just the last straw for me. Not a total and utter waste of money, but a railway that provides very little benefits compared to the cost. It's sad to think of how much more effectively that money could have been spent on transport that benefitted commuters and the environment much more.
@davecooper3238 it's going into Euston again? I can't even keep up any more. Back to just a 500 metre or so gap to HS1 then. It's got to at least be getting to Crewe on it's own line to make any sense with regard to capacity, surely?
I would love to get the concrete dimensions I could easily figure out how many cubic yards there is and then cost estimate on the concrete. I’m guessing it wouldn’t be 100 million.
Because of their natural, acute hearing i doubt that the tunnel is a sustainable solution but rather short sighted and robbing the bats of yet another of their natural habitat.
There are probably better solutions but they can actually use a tunnel, bats actually seem to love train tunnels since they only pass sometimes every several hours and they have a lot of room, it's better than a road tunnel and sometimes they hide there as well, although a better planned route which didn't cross through one of the few ancient woodlands would have been a better solution
Lawyer, unnecessary futuristic design, land acquisition, probably some money for the ceo of the company since he is working so very hard, and all the people trying to take a bit in their pocket which always happens in big projects
Honestly it's shocking how the UK has so little forest and protected areas yet they can find land for the railway, most other countries have high-speed going between cities going fine, just don't pass through ancient woodland, let's not act like it's the only solution, this is clearly just going through where the land is cheaper, they are clearly just blaming ecology to justify their missmanagement
The UK actually has more ancient woodland compared to other countries and it's also particularly fragmented and patchwork compared to say, France. Ancient trees in the UK tend to be located on old estates scattered around the country. This makes it quite difficult to route a straight line across the country without hitting several of them regardless of where you draw the line. There's no perfect route.
@ross335 it's very fragmented yes, but there are also very large stretches of the country with barely any woodland left, and it's one of the countries with lest forest cover, don't lie to yourself
@ross335 depends a lot with which country you are comparing it with and you have to play with stats to get it, for example a higher percentage of England's woodlands are ancient in comparison to most other countries but that really means that the only woodland left is ancient with most countries winning when you are working with areas instead of percentages, it's just data manipulation, if I cut every tree in the world except and ancient woods I could effectively say that the world has 100% ancient forests but that wouldn't be true
Give me 50mill and I will teach 100 of the most destructive polluters how to compost! Actually for 50 mill I could probably teach a whole lot more of them how to compost.
I thought that. But it would probably need replacing every few years. And, over the design life of the project (100 years+) that could be more expensive.
legal fee's being spent on our side legal services? services How big is HS2, the 2 billon or "£" pound plus, there doesn't have there own on-site law department, at least planning that has like an open, working lot actually wanting to lay the track and getting land rights sorted before the track gets there?
HS2 is a great project, moving travel away from cars and planes and onto sustainable electric trains. Environmentalists need to support rail projects, like HS2.
My first thought is because the train will be useful for the economy in terms of buisness people of buisness in the north can get to the beating heart in the south and could commute very quickly Which is why they are willing to spend so much also it would improve travel an tourism across the country aswell i suppose In terms of the cost, i think alot of it is to do with the enviroment built in how it will be built (big equipment probably a no go considering the location it would do a ton of damage to the soil) getting equipment up there man hours soil quality truth be told i have no idea how much all of this costs so i cannot say it would be nice if there was a more detailed breakdown as to why they think it will cost this much.
It takes ten minutes off the London to Birmingham journey time. £80bn for that is NOT a good deal. They've already cancelled the northern leg which would have been much more useful.
@alun7006 oh actually I didn't know that they cancelled the northern line tbh that would have been the only reason to build the train in my mind That said I suppose the trains can change and improve the line just has to be there. Still I do agree it is alot I just know bullet trains have got to happen eventually japan's had them since the 1960s lmao That said I did just look it up it says that the fastest commute is 1 hour and 19 minutes currently and HS2 would do it in 49 minutes which is a 30 minute difference, even driving takes hours.
Most of the cost of the railway not the batshed has been stuff like bridges and tunnels those are expensive as hell, but they did a lot more of them than needed because people didn't want a railway ruining their landscape
I feel like a lot of money could have been saved with the use of sheetmetal instead of concrete. Like buddy these bats are not big and aggressive enough for you to need a concrete tunnel.
In Auckland new zealand we have a bridge down the road from me and they found a bat colony under the motorway bats aren't meant to be in Auckland but nature finds a way
taking care of bats is Natural England's job, coming up with a cost effective solution is HS2's job. it is not NE's job to stop HS2 spending money spitefully.
@@Solstice261 seems this country is under occupation by 90 iq obstructionists, accelerationists and who knows what else. what institution operates as advertised right now?
The complaint that HS2 is a funding black hole is, nad has always been, a nonesense whinge. We spend on infrastructure, in this country, a fraction of what France and Germany and other comparable European states do. Surprise Surprise - our infrastructure is shit. This needed done fifteen years ago. Infrastructure projects are often more expensive the longer you leave them, and so this is just what it costs.
Could have just upgraded the existing lines.... You know... bit like smart motorways.... to be fair to smart motorways though... the original schemes around Birmingham (M40, M42 and M6) actually worked..... the spin off more expensive cheaper versions ie... all lanes running were a disaster!... I gave up on them during the M3 conversion (skimp skimp skimp) .. However... hs2 didn't need to be.... just upgrade the existing lines would have been waaaaaaaay cheaper to the tax payer!!
Your question about why this amount of money are available to such a project and not anywhere else!!??? That is pretty simple!!! Do You remember a very famous frase from a film that says "Follow the money!!""????? The reason why is because of where the money are ending up......... in the pockets of rich developers and companies!!!! Kind regards the Danish Viking
That's what I thought, they like tunnels and caves... Perhaps the portals are out of their habitat range or something. I'm sure someone has thought this through. After all, HS2 is a perfectly planned out, logical infrastructure project.
Why not build the bloody thing out of wood - lower carbon and better aesthetics and could be covered with vegetation? But why, dear lord, send a railway line though an ancient forest in the first place, as you say? We have a politician in New Zealand, who arrogantly dismisses an extremely endangered, endemic species of frog as Freddy and if it gets in the of the economy, it's 'goodbye Freddy'. As if we'd ever have any economy at all, without a healthy environment. In the end, 100,000 is huge, but hey, many of our wealthy people could pay for it without thinking. Small change to the billionaires. Let's crowd fund for it. Or better still, just accept that sometimes, it takes a few hours to get from A to B. And I will just conclude by saying Mossy.Earth and Planet Wild.
Sir Jon has failed at pretty much every endevour that he has managed. The budget has increased for routing by tens of billions. Still, lets build straight through a bat village.
This is a gnarly one to take on Rob! HS2 has cut a swathe through SSSI's, nature reserves, archaeological sites and other sensitive landscapes. In one of the most nature depleted countries in the world HS2 has been a further orgy of destruction. Living in Buckinghamshire I've witnessed this first hand. I visited the protest camps at Jones Hill Wood and London Road and marched with XR to protest the destruction of the Wendover Woodhenge. The bat cave is a fig leaf at best to cover the shame of the vandalism carried out in the construciton of this monumental white elephant.
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What do you think about this bat shed? You can get more from Leave Curious here www.patreon.com/c/leavecurious
100 million, that's bat shed crazy! 😂🤣 lol
One of the reasons for why HS2 costs went up goes to your point about ‘why aren’t we spending £100 million on nature restoration programmes?’. HS2 is effectively picking up the tab for lots of local spending projects along the route: eg road widening schemes around a village a few miles from where the line was to run. So potentially HS2 is being used as a vehicle for spending money on other nature projects near the line.
Yeah, the HS2 "green corridor" is a programme of nature restoration along the route which is planting something like 6 or 7 million new trees, and that's before we mention all the green tunnels/bridges along the route, and various other local development funds. In short, there's a lot of projects being bundled under the "HS2" spending package which have nothing to do with building the physical railway.
This is a very good comment. I expect HS2 will seek to minimise opposition by paying for some indirect impacts, which probably includes nature restoration.
If you compare the bat tunnel with other structures along the HS2 route such as green tunnels or bridges, the £100m sum actually comes out pretty favourably. The reality is that this is just how much it costs to build infrastructure of this scale - remember that it is 1km long, designed to last 120+ years, and needs to be able to handle potentially up to 40 trains per hour passing through it on 4 tracks at speeds of up to 250MPH!
With that said, I absolutely agree with the need to spend similar amounts of money on other rewilding/conservation projects across the country. It's an absolute travesty that so many badly needed projects are competing for investment, whilst others (such as this) are fortunate enough to get it by virtue of being attached to a larger scheme!
I work in Commercial Real Estate. In my market it takes about $200 Mill USD to make an 11 story building. Engineering a 1km tunnel isn't exactly the same thing (My building stands up, this lays down) but the price doesn't really surprise me. Idk, things are just expensive when you want to do big things.
I will not weigh into the ecological value because I'm just some mook without any knowledge.
Well said. I dont forget that this has to cope with two trains passing each other at a combined speed of upto 720km/h. Thats a very high passing speed and a fair bit of pressure.
@@boxingfan2281Not necessarily.
The biggest issue is that is called a bat shed - it's not, it's a high speed railway tunnel
The whole cost issue around HS2 reminds me of a paper I read a few months ago. The transit costs project did an extensive report about stuff like this (400 pages!) and why it gets so expensive in places like the UK and US while places like Switzerland and Sweden are a fraction of the cost. For example, some of Rome's Underground metro lines are going over budget and getting delayed since-as it's a major historical city sitting on top of ruins-the cost and time jacks up to reroute. It's a shame, since others have mentioned that building HS2 is crucial to add extra capacity to UK rail, which is at capacity and causing a whole load of issues. It needs to be done-for the environment as a whole and for the rail network- but the way the UK builds projects such as this is far from ideal.
That transit costs project was pretty flawed if I recall correctly, I might be mistaken and I might have been looking at a different paper but if it is the one I am thinking of they were looking at light rail costs compared around the world and they used only a select project from my country Australia to justify a ridiculously high cost per km for Aussie LR projects when the project they used was confined to the busiest street in Sydney and ran in to a number of problems of their own creation, whereas there have been half a dozen other light rail projects in Australia before and since that cost much less and shouldn't be all lumped together or ignored like that.
@BigBlueMan118 hmmm might be a different paper? The one I was talking about was their final report, which mainly mentions Boston, Istanbul, Italy, Sweden, and NYC. In their website they have a small section for Sydney but they haven’t gone in depth from what I can see, apart from a mention of Sydney in the conclusion
@leaveCurious, I recommend that you make a video on backyard rewilding to try and get the common person to contribute to rewilding. I am planning on dedicating a whole playlist to this but think that you will have more success as more people watch your videos. I really think that if everyone were to just let a small area of their yard go wild it would make such a difference for nature. I really appreciate what you do! Love your videos!
There is a great channel 'Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't' which is the work of a self-taught botanist who is now staggeringly knowledgeable. He helps people in the USA to get rid of their boring lawns and plant up front gardens with plants native to their areas. This requires little maintenance and enhances the area.
The reason environmental mitigation for HS2 costs so much is that the route was chosen to run straight through the cheapest land and that meant playing dot to dot with the few ecologically rich areas that wasn't already used by us pesky humans. This was pointed out when debated in Parliament, so we knew what we were signing up to. It's anticipated that if completed HS2 will have destroyed or irreparably damage five internationally protected wildlife sites, 693 local wildlife sites, 108 ancient woodlands and 33 sites of special scientific interest. That's a pretty good hit rate in the UK, as we are already classed by the UN (using the Biodiversity Intactness Index) to be in the bottom 12% of countries in the world for habitat destruction - so managing to find that many sites to damage is a significant achievement by the design team. Therefore, I find it a bit disingenuous for the Chair of HS2 to moan about having to mitigate for the destruction he already knew he was helping to inflict on the world or maybe he's proud to add his own contribution to the biodiversity crisis?
The route was not chosen to run through the cheapest land and it will not destroy or irreparably damage 108 ancient woodlands, but hey what's the point of the truth, eh!
Part of the problem is the disjointed planning system we have, which results in all the expensive legal fees and paperwork every time an interest group objects to not just HS2 but any development. The environmental paperwork of HS2 alone cost more than it cost to BUILD the longest tunnel in the world in Norway.
We need something like a Catchment System Operator to facilitate the timely delivery of developments whilst actually increasing the natural capital and biodiversity of the country without all the ad hoc legal obstructions the current planning system enables.
I disagree, its working very well for all the people in the chain, landowners, contracters, designers et all. Remember the £45 million boris bridge ?? Puff.. same idea ;-)) wonderful
100% agree, I think we've ended up with a weird planning system that's really overregulated in some ways and really underregulated in others that somehow chokes both environmental projects and development. It's almost impressive.
The only people who currently win are lawyers and rabble-rousers who just want to block any change (that isn't widening a road). Everyone else loses out.
Case in point: the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned 14 mile all purpose road and bridge over the Thames to the East of Dartford, which has soaked up £800m just to prepare the application for a Development Consent Order. The entire project is costed at an estimated £9bn - so the cost per mile may be even more than HS2 (140 miles long)...
i genuinely thought is was a long artificial cave for the bats to live in. which would be cool, tbh.
Same here. In fact, some bats might just use it for a cave, and end up being splatted on the front of the trains. So a separate artificial cave might be the better idea.
Two high walls, or even one high wall right next to the tracks, should keep the bats from harm.
I thought the same. Get a hard winter and they will relocate to the strongest, darkest, out of the wind cave🤨
Not sure how you would avoid that one. A tunnel might have been best
I think we can all agree on the importance of protecting wildlife (why else are we here after all), and I can't help but think that more could have been done to help the bats with a fraction of this money if used well instead of building the tunnel. 100 million is a drop in the ocean, but there's been an awful lot of these drops in the ocean, tunnelling under half the Chilterns to start with. It's frustrating HS2 is very important in increasing capacity on the west coast main line, which is currently both over capacity, but also very vulnerable to disruption as we have no back up route. Getting direct fast trains off the same lines as local trains will allow much more capacity for direct trains as well as allowing us to run more local trains. (If you've ever wondered why long distance trains are so expensive in the UK, there are several reports into it which call out the main reason, demand management, which is reducing demand via pricing as we have insufficient capacity) If we're going to transition away from cars, which in addition to the pollution require so much more space per journey, then projects like this are crucial.
Projects like this won't cahnge overreliance in cars at all
@@macuma5533 Reliable and affordable public transport absolutely does reduce car dependence and use. It's the reason why so many people in London, one of the few places with good public transport has so many people who don't drive (and we don't even need to stop people driving full stop, just moving some of their trips to the train is good), or if you want something including long distance travel Japan, where reliable, fast direct trains take a lot of vehicles off the road for long distance journeys, and one of the reasons they can do that is they don't need to come up with a schedule that runs the shinkansen and the local trains on the same track. Obviously getting a level of service like Japan, where I have friends of mine even in smaller regional cities who feel no need to own a car is a long way off, but we can certainly do better than we're doing.
Environmental mitigation is a tiny fraction of HS2 cost. You've swallow right-wing anti-planning propaganda.
the problem with pricing is mostly because the trains are owned privately, selling off the trains was a terrible decision and we need to re nationalise it.
@@macuma5533 Rail projects absolutely do help with reducing car use. Ideally it'd be part of a broader strategy of densification (getting rid of NIMBYism etc.) and bike lanes and intra-city subways and such but it will be helpful if that other stuff ever starts progressive
I was confused at first but with your explanation as I understand it it isn't a £100m bat shed, its a covered tunnel for the trains to go through without disturbing the bats. Given its high speed I assume you need a bigger tunnel relative to the size of the trains because of the speed. Of course an actual underground tunnel would cost even more.
1. Once it’s built we will forget the cost (who talks about. HS1 and the Chunnel?)
2. The shed is a pain in the arse, I think that’s accurate. But I don’t think that means it isn’t worth it. It clearly is.
3. Yes more money on restoration preservation good example is bat shed! But I know what you mean.
@Group51
Yes, once it's built, finished and successful, people will not be talking about the cost anymore.
I feel very strongly that you should refer to it as "the bat cave"
Thank you for your advocacy.
The main problem with HS2 is no one understands how it’s funded. To my understanding a lot of the money comes from borrowing against future ticket revenue.
Less about being borrowed against ticket revenue, more to do with being borrowed against the future economic growth the line would bring
Hi, Ali. That's a good selection of veg seeds you're sowing. Good looking parsnips, the parsnips I've grown in containers this year have grown like yours, mixed sizes, any root hairy, but as you say, clean up nicely. Our snow here in North shropshire has now just about gone, and rain has set in, but North UK and Scotland are in for a good covering over the weekend. Take care and stay warm.
You hit the point at the end, take the 100mil let them do what they want with the train and use the 100mil somewhere else that could do so much more than just save one bat colony. Like you said a new environment could be created for whole new colonies elsewhere which would also benefit so many other species etc. we get to precious on the specifics and don’t think of the bigger picture. Losing some of these bats could be a lifeline and new start for future bats and wildlife and create something much bigger and meaningful with the same money.
Expanding the woodland is an obvious further step to support the bats and everything else in this vestige. Yes, it would be new woodland, not ancient, but it would be a scaffolding that could support the populations by giving them the room to expand.
I'm so happy I found your channel! Every video is so interesting, and its great to have such a chatty vid still be so informative. You're the best!!
what a mess, I truly hope they come up with a solution that actually WORKS.
Thanks for this and maybe give us a follow up if you can bear it as the shed materialises.
Isn't it strange that HS2 happily ploughed through protected and historical sites but, whenever it came across a rich or connected person's land who didn't want it, the line would be diverted?
The entire HS2 has been a blank cheque for companies and landowners.
If we didn't build HS2 we'd need more motorways or air ports, which are environmentally far more damaging.
Expanding electric train travel is protecting the environment.
the bigger issue is the nature of train networks and public transportation in the UK in general. Because these are private companies, rather than run under government-owned bodies (as they are in Finland or indeed most other European countries), they are far more expensive for passengers, so their use is much less encouraged. The infrastructure incentivised towards cars certainly doesn't help.
@@xanderomeister7828The use is much less encouraged but the trains are still massively overcrowded - more capacity is objectively needed regardless
@@xanderomeister7828the fact the trains are privatised is ludicrous, systems just don't work properly when managed by private companies we have seen it time and again certain services need to be government managed
@xanderomeister7828 I agree entirely. But a cheaper, publically-owned public transport system will encourage more users, and the West Coast Mainline is already full.
So we'll need a new rail line to support the West Coast Mainline, and if it's not HS2 we'll need to start from scratch
I assume the tabloids did a big headline pun on 'bat shed crazy', to make environmentalism and ecology look 'out of touch' with the common man and with common sense, and something about 'red tape'. And I assume the developers are more than happy to make money out of the tax payer, so they have an incentive to make the project more expensive.
I don't think it's that deep. I think it's as simple as "Big number + silly sounding this" sells a lot of news papers.
@@jakobrosenqvist4691well several newspapers do like to say environmentalism is stupid and expensive, of course it's because it sells more than presenting a nuanced perspective but doesn't make it less damaging
I recall a BBC R4 programme during the 2016 referendum campaign examining some of the more common reasons why people intended to vote Leave and testing them. One was environmental legislation, and the particular beefs some people had were traced to the entirely unilateral Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
One thing to keep in mind is just how expensive it is to build railways. HS2 costs £396 million per mile so £100 mil for a bat shed isn't really that much more than just 1Km of track.
yo make a good point here i wont lie, still an offensive cost tho
Around 40m per kilometre in Germany. But I guess you're more than happy to waste public money
And Scottish taxpayers contribute to this, like they did to the channel tunnel and anything else Westminster decide to be UK national infrastructure!
HS2 costs are NOT normal railway construction costs my guy, they're 10x what hsr in China costs and 8× what it costs in continental Europe
That's bat shed crazy... I'll be here all night
Wouldn't it be better making (parts of it) an ecoduct so other species can also cross and giving the rest a green roof to help plants and insects. A tunnel or avoiding the wood would of course be better but then you still have another place where you hinder migration of species
Yeah great idea, do you have a spare £200m to add even more to it?
about 80 of those £100m are going straight down the "managers" pockets, the rest will be spend on actually building the tunnel.
That's how it goes, sadly.
straight into legal fees actually, that bat shed took years to get approval to get built, thousands of billable hours for the HS2 legal team
Public expenditure rules disallow profiteering and diverting of funds to individuals. All public contracts are generally highly constrained on costs, rates of pay for every defined role and how expenditure is traced and approved. That's not to say that the companies involved aren't making a profit, but it will be a very low profit. More likely is that the costs multiply simply from the sheer number of parties involved and the engineering requirements to build a kilometre long structure that meets all the required standards including safety and quality requirements.
That's correct. Anyone who's ever worked on HS2 will tell you how their life has changed for the better because 80% of the cost estimate for the project they worked on has been directly transferred into their bank account before construction started. That's why they all own second properties and Ferraris now.
HS2's ridiculous cost is in large part due to the issues with government procurement and bidding for infrastructure projects. Companies (that are contracted by HS2) get picked on what they pitch as the cost, but there is very little in the way to stop a company going over cost and then not charging the government for it. How much of it is fixable and how much of it is inherent to how government procurement must work across the world? I don't know.
Another factor to the cost is that it is a first-of-kind high speed rail construction for the UK (HS1 being built by a french company). That also increases costs, but with the intent that those costs make future high speed rail developments cheaper (though if that will happen, or the UK capitalises on it and actually builds more High Speed rail, is another question).
Thirdly, in defence of the costs, media often treats government spending of taxpayer money as burning it to waste, and ignores the fact that money does go back into the economy. HS2 is one of the (if not the) largest construction projects in europe, with massive numbers of workers in every stage. And once built it has incredible value both financially and in just improving rhe lives of people with better and cleaner transport.
All that being said, there is clearly some corruption that has happened here. And it should be investigated and changes made to how we procure projects so we aren't ripped off so thoroughly. The bat tunnel is probably not where the money is being embezzled though.
It is worth considering that all of the companies who are considered to be big enough to do the work are limited in number (and they know that.) The project is the biggest infrastructure project in the UK and only a few companies can do it. If they don't complete their contracts in the agreed time, nobody else can take over from them and the government can't penalise them.
No bidding was done on HS2 as the scope of works at the time the contracts were let was unknown. Instead the contracts have been placed on a cost plus basis. There will be extensions of time clauses in the contracts but damages for late completion can never be claimed back by HS2 as late completion on one contract does not prevent the railway from being used until all the contracts are finished.
You could make 300 bike sheds for that amount of money
If you know, you know.
At first, I thought this was a bat shed away from the lines to give the bats a forever home. How disappointing.
So much destruction and no real restoration.
If half the amount of money were spent on restoring a different landscape somewhere else on the route, or somewhere else in the UK (or even another country?), could there be a bigger benefit? I'm not saying I think the bats shouldn't be protected, but the view that "if it costs £100m to keep these bats safe, then spend it" (12:37) seems like it neglects the opportunity cost of _not_ spending money on a different project, given there's only a finite amount of money available. I really like the nuance you applied after you said that!
There is another significant problem to this method. Maintenence. The upfront cost to build is a serious issue but afterwards any structure requires ongoing maintenence to keep it in a safe and functional condition. There are quite a lot of problems with the HS2 project. The biggest being it doesn't actually connect to HS1 so if you wanted to get a train from Birmingham to Brussels you will have to get off and walk across the gap in London (anyone needing to change from Glasgow Central to Queen street will know how much of a pain that will be). Much as having high speed rail all over the country would be fantastic, the vast majority of journeys people make are short ones. If the aim was to make the biggest possible improvement to the transportation network then doing several smaller, less glamorous, local projects would be of greater benefit. Leeds metro anyone? If there is any money left over, sure build high speed lines but don't operate it as some high profile vanity project, it needs to be cost effective. Yes, high speed rail is expensive and building things is disruptive but the way HS2 has been managed leaves a lot to be desired.
The main issue with HS2 is the politicians. The train lines are full and we need the extra capacity. The politicians chose the wrong option. We could have built the rail line in the M1 corridor, not needed many viaducts or tunnels. It would have been slightly less direct to Birmingham. HS2 has gone up in budget because the original plan was minimal tunnels, bridges and viaducts. Basically tunnels in London and a couple of extra km. However the politicians and the government bodies got involved and now one third of the line in the countryside is going to be on a bridge/viaduct/in a tunnel. This adds massively to the costs. Tunnel construction is the most expensive construction you can build. So if they had built down the side of the motorway in land no one cares about we wouldn't need to do all these expensive mitigations. If you travel by train between Birmingham and the north and south and you will see just how crowded the trains are. I was standing on my last 6 trains even though I booked them all 6+ weeks in advance. We need a body to sort out public transport investment that is politician free, but funded. Then we can get the country the needed investment without politicians changing the scope.
I suspect the extra bridge & tunnel, infrastructure requirements came from angry locals who dislike any change and are willing to lobby to prevent any development they don't want.
Though yes, another part of the problem is that the UK DOES have money - Bright Line in Florida, being a private company, didn't have the money to do greenfield development, and so did buy & use right of way next to US 95.
The government, having a lot of money, a lot of available credit, and a desire to buy voter's appreciation and votes, has much more financial leeway to do stupid things. When a government (or person) gets enough money, they start solving complex problems by making them merely complicated (by throwing money at it to "solve" all of the complex issues and not think about it).
HS2, as much as I like the concept and want it to succeed, the money would be better spent on multiple smaller but also still impactful projects. Standard (non highspeed) rail lines, working with nature rather than brute forcing protectionism (as per video)
The US has this problem as well - the viewpoint isn't "we have this money, what're the best things we can do with it", it's "we want to do this thing, with these constraints, and we will take a loan for it because we want it"
at 310kph (200mph ish) the curve radius is 4,500 metres. and lateral by 1m per 200m The M1 corridor would not work.. and if u did.. u block whole motorway to contruct.. Love all these simple solutions..
@@pedromorgan99 ah you are thinking that the line needed to go at 200+mph. I was thinking that would be great but if you can build the whole route for half the cost at 160mph along the M1 corridor with spur to Birmingham and Manchester then it was an option that should have been seriously considered!
Won't the bats take up residense or would it be too noisy / windy?
They will, if the trains stop.
Like how animals nest in cars if they aren't used for long enough
I thought the same.
They will probably like in tunnels
They're a tree-roosting species, so it's unlikely they would ever feel at home in a concrete tunnel. Other species might be more at home, but the disturbance from the trains is likely too great.
@SonOfFurzehatt trains aren't cars, they cross more rarely, so actually a lot of species take home around them given they are usually lined with trees and such
Why not use the 100M used to purchase adjacent land to expand the forest and habitat for the bats?
cos it takes hundreds of years for"ancient" woodland to form
Bc thats not how it work
They don't care
And old growth forest would take 6-8 centuries to grow
Ancient woodland is essentially irreplaceable in any meaningful time scale. We have destroyed almost all of our natural heritage and really need to protect what’s left.
Or spend the money funding conservation work in the global south, almost certainly having have far more benefit for the same investment
Yes, this seems the most logical approach. Can anyone suggest how much land could have been purchased for this purpose? Are there any other colonies in the UK? Without this bat shed would this colony die? In addition, the rewilded adjacent land could have produced carbon credits to fund further purchases etc.
A 1km long self supported concrete arch wide enough for four lines and tall enough to pass over the powerlines sounds about right for £100m, even if it's not loadbearing like a bridge would be in both cases the weight of the structure is the bulk of the weight it needs to carry, add in 8x or 10x or maybe even more of a safety factor and there is where all the money is going.
A fair chunk of money is coming from Networo Rail to accommodate four tracks.
Totally agree that funding for nature projects that consider the future potential are better funded.
Two decades of ecological experience has shown me that when it comes to nature, it has always been a second place to anything else unless its legally required to do something. Typically the minimum legally required to mitigate is carried out, which more often than not, fails to fully mitigate these losses, if at all in some cases. Being such a populated island and the want/ need for development and other human priorities, wildlife will always loose out over other demands. As a species, we continue to refuse to make space for the other species that share our planet. Based on the trends I have seen since the 1980's I don't see this changing.
The government would have been much better off spending the HS2 money on a new signalling system called ERTMS. This would remove signals from the trackside and bring the signalling inside the driving cab of the train. This would help speed up the trains and enable more trains on the lines.
The government is spending money on ERTMS, but that will not increase capacity, by more than a few percent.
These projects would cost a lot less if politicians didn't use them to make themselves look better or adjust the scope (aka more lines). Majority of the cost is lawyers and paperwork. Construction side is only a fraction. I live in Toronto. We have lots to say about transportation projects that never seem to end.
I don't like the impact on the woodlands either but I just don't understand why a 2 track railway seems to receive so much more backlash regarding its environmental impact than all those 6 lane motorways ever got. All the rhetoric would make you think HS2 is the worst thing that ever happened to the British countryside. Sometimes it feels like people would rather we give up on rail and build more roads that would take up a lot more space and move a lot less people, each in their individual untimetabled car at a 3rd the speed at best and at a snails pace during rush hour.
@lazrseagull54
One sees this all over the world. People will get all worked up over trains and public transportation with all sorts of criticisms of both, but will have no problem whatsoever with more roadways or widening of those that already exist.
There was plenty of opposition to the A34 Newbury bypass and M3 extension through Twyford Down.
I don’t understand how they can build this tunnel without disturbing the bats …you can imagine the infrastructure to build this …huge project like that will have so much machinery etc
Have a look at the National Children's hospital project in Ireland. Its 10x worse for waste as a % of the project. Its going to be the most expensive hospital if not the most expensive building in the world.
Imagine our arteries had to negotiate their path with muscle bone and organ.
A country has a right to breathe. People have to realise that we live on a body which requires arterial refits. Compensation should be 20% of double market price with the rest as increments over time.
Major infrastructure projects are nearly always complex and costly. Part of the reason for that is that the estimates of the initial price are usually pitched low to sell the project. Then, add to that court cases, laws, environmental reviews and so on, and the expenditures spiral upwards. However, especially with railroads and metros, once they are completed they prove to be enormously beneficial to the country and the populace.
In California in the United States, there is a high-speed rail project that is projected to cost over 100 billion dollars, possibly as high as 130 billion dollars, with a truncated line no less. Still, it is a question of priorities. The lowest figure for the wars the US fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is over 4 trillions dollars, and it is certainly higher. The plan of the Biden administration to flood America with immigrants at the expense of the American taxpayer has probably already cost 150 billion dollars. There are many who would argue that those monies could have been better spent on infrastructure such as railways, including the high-speed one in California.
Some simple embankments either side, or lowering the line into a small cutting, would be simpler and cheaper.
I would have thought a good old fashioned cut and cover would be cheaper than this scheme. On face value what we have is a business writing huge cheques for it's own benefit.
Sustainable transportation is an absolutely essential front on which to fight not only climate change but also auto-centric sprawl. They should spend nore money on it AND spend more money on expanding natural ecosystems
£100m? That's bat-shed crazy!
You briefly mention those bat bridges (which to my understand work, ahem, badly at best) and those projects usually already cost 10m, 15m, 20m (a main cost driver there seems to be monitoring projects, which makes me wonder what included in those alleged 100m). So in that regard what's almost an entire tunnel over a highspeed line doesn't actually sound like that much in comparison ...
NIMBYism is the biggest enemy of HS2, that's what lead to way more expensive tunnels, bridges etc. and costly lawsuits than should have been needed. But can't go around pointing out that people are the problem, right? Bats don't have a lobby after all, better pick them.
$100m might be "a drop in the ocean" compared to the projected HS2 build costs, but it wouldn't be a drop in the ocean compared to a well-run project of this type if you catch my drift, it isn't just symptomatic.
My question is: why do we even need high-speed trains? We have managed for hundreds of years without them. I know that isn't your question, but as a society and as a planet, we need to actually rethink these mega-projects and if they are really necessary. Nature is not a straight-line kind of place, so we need to look at transportation solutions that wourk with nature, not that punch straight through it - not to mention all the villages and towns it is going to punch through
Another great video Rob. I emailed you my views. 👍
That tunnel is just another avenue for certain individuals to siphon money from.
I feel like it would have been simpler if they planned to put every even mildly problematic section underground from the start. Like just go around the environment and land owners and backyards. It'd save so much on endless process overhead and lawsuits and everything it'd be worth the fixed premium.
Profit comes first.
Where the bat shelter is on the former great Central Railway.
this whole thing feels very in line with the demonising of eco friendly issues that's been happening recently, even calling it a 'bat tunnel' makes it sound like some boogie bat accommodations whereas it's actually a tunnel for the trains, yes it's to protect the bats but calling it a bat tunnel sounds like it's for the bats to live in themselves
I think infrastructure wise the UK needs to figure out how to do it more effectively, we desperately need to upgrade our train lines but it just costs so much compared to other european nations, HS2's price is insanely high, but I think that's more to do with the system it's working in than HS2 itself
The fact that in the original plans you had to get off HS1 at St Pancras and walk to Euston station to continue your journey is just crazy. However last I heard was that it wont even start at Euston as it stands. It will start 7 miles away at Old Oak Common.
The 'HS2' leg should have been linked to HS1 directly and built to accommodate Eurostar trains. But it did not need to be high speed. It could have avoided lots of sensitive areas and it would have been so much cheaper.
The decision to terminate the railway in Birmingham is just the last straw for me. Not a total and utter waste of money, but a railway that provides very little benefits compared to the cost. It's sad to think of how much more effectively that money could have been spent on transport that benefitted commuters and the environment much more.
HS2 is going into Euston. It will also be going past Birmingham joining the West Coast Line near Lichfield.
@davecooper3238 it's going into Euston again? I can't even keep up any more. Back to just a 500 metre or so gap to HS1 then.
It's got to at least be getting to Crewe on it's own line to make any sense with regard to capacity, surely?
I would love to get the concrete dimensions I could easily figure out how many cubic yards there is and then cost estimate on the concrete. I’m guessing it wouldn’t be 100 million.
Because of their natural, acute hearing i doubt that the tunnel is a sustainable solution but rather short sighted and robbing the bats of yet another of their natural habitat.
There are probably better solutions but they can actually use a tunnel, bats actually seem to love train tunnels since they only pass sometimes every several hours and they have a lot of room, it's better than a road tunnel and sometimes they hide there as well, although a better planned route which didn't cross through one of the few ancient woodlands would have been a better solution
no wonder we can't build anything here anymore though, 8000 legal hurdles are mad
I am surprised Rachel Reeves has not come up with a plan to save this 100 million so she can spend it on nice clothes for government ministers!!
There is no way the building of the shed costs 100 mill. It's the lawyers and such that the money has been spent on.
Lawyer, unnecessary futuristic design, land acquisition, probably some money for the ceo of the company since he is working so very hard, and all the people trying to take a bit in their pocket which always happens in big projects
Honestly it's shocking how the UK has so little forest and protected areas yet they can find land for the railway, most other countries have high-speed going between cities going fine, just don't pass through ancient woodland, let's not act like it's the only solution, this is clearly just going through where the land is cheaper, they are clearly just blaming ecology to justify their missmanagement
The UK actually has more ancient woodland compared to other countries and it's also particularly fragmented and patchwork compared to say, France. Ancient trees in the UK tend to be located on old estates scattered around the country.
This makes it quite difficult to route a straight line across the country without hitting several of them regardless of where you draw the line. There's no perfect route.
@ross335 it's very fragmented yes, but there are also very large stretches of the country with barely any woodland left, and it's one of the countries with lest forest cover, don't lie to yourself
@@Solstice261 It has less tree cover but a lot more of what it does have is ancient woodland when compared to other countries. This is just a fact.
@ross335 depends a lot with which country you are comparing it with and you have to play with stats to get it, for example a higher percentage of England's woodlands are ancient in comparison to most other countries but that really means that the only woodland left is ancient with most countries winning when you are working with areas instead of percentages, it's just data manipulation, if I cut every tree in the world except and ancient woods I could effectively say that the world has 100% ancient forests but that wouldn't be true
Give me 50mill and I will teach 100 of the most destructive polluters how to compost! Actually for 50 mill I could probably teach a whole lot more of them how to compost.
just red tape costs ontop of the usual overpriced UK infrastructure.
What's wrong with netting?
I thought that. But it would probably need replacing every few years. And, over the design life of the project (100 years+) that could be more expensive.
I hate HS2 with every bone in my body. However, if we made it look like a huge batmobile as it shot out of the bat cave, that would be cool
The cost of high speed rail is about £33m/km anyway. so this tunnel at only 1km isnt so significant
I’ve got that in my ash tray!
my thoughts went to Nairobi Kenya railway bridge ,the bridge reaches a height over 50 meters.
legal fee's being spent on our side legal services? services How big is HS2, the 2 billon or "£" pound plus, there doesn't have there own on-site law department, at least planning that has like an open, working lot actually wanting to lay the track and getting land rights sorted before the track gets there?
HS2 is a great project, moving travel away from cars and planes and onto sustainable electric trains. Environmentalists need to support rail projects, like HS2.
The scale of this sounds batshed crazy
Cool project though.
My first thought is because the train will be useful for the economy in terms of buisness people of buisness in the north can get to the beating heart in the south and could commute very quickly
Which is why they are willing to spend so much also it would improve travel an tourism across the country aswell i suppose
In terms of the cost, i think alot of it is to do with the enviroment built in how it will be built (big equipment probably a no go considering the location it would do a ton of damage to the soil) getting equipment up there man hours soil quality truth be told i have no idea how much all of this costs so i cannot say it would be nice if there was a more detailed breakdown as to why they think it will cost this much.
It takes ten minutes off the London to Birmingham journey time. £80bn for that is NOT a good deal. They've already cancelled the northern leg which would have been much more useful.
@alun7006 oh actually I didn't know that they cancelled the northern line tbh that would have been the only reason to build the train in my mind
That said I suppose the trains can change and improve the line just has to be there.
Still I do agree it is alot I just know bullet trains have got to happen eventually japan's had them since the 1960s lmao
That said I did just look it up it says that the fastest commute is 1 hour and 19 minutes currently and HS2 would do it in 49 minutes which is a 30 minute difference, even driving takes hours.
Most of the cost of the railway not the batshed has been stuff like bridges and tunnels those are expensive as hell, but they did a lot more of them than needed because people didn't want a railway ruining their landscape
Should have just bought those big tunnel boring machines they made the chunnel with, could have dug a line the entire way for the same price....
I feel like a lot of money could have been saved with the use of sheetmetal instead of concrete. Like buddy these bats are not big and aggressive enough for you to need a concrete tunnel.
In Auckland new zealand we have a bridge down the road from me and they found a bat colony under the motorway bats aren't meant to be in Auckland but nature finds a way
Wonder how much of the HS2 budget is going to legal actions
remove the cappo from your guitar you are gonna damage it! :D
taking care of bats is Natural England's job, coming up with a cost effective solution is HS2's job. it is not NE's job to stop HS2 spending money spitefully.
Well NE doesn't seem very good at protecting nature so maybe they should be in charge of HS2
@@Solstice261 seems this country is under occupation by 90 iq obstructionists, accelerationists and who knows what else. what institution operates as advertised right now?
The complaint that HS2 is a funding black hole is, nad has always been, a nonesense whinge. We spend on infrastructure, in this country, a fraction of what France and Germany and other comparable European states do. Surprise Surprise - our infrastructure is shit. This needed done fifteen years ago. Infrastructure projects are often more expensive the longer you leave them, and so this is just what it costs.
Bag of nails a set of ladders and a lot of bat boxes would have been a lot cheaper.
Sir bro is stuffed up in the head.
Land cost adds up a lot - and hs2 has had to over pay in a lot of cases
Could have just upgraded the existing lines....
You know... bit like smart motorways.... to be fair to smart motorways though... the original schemes around Birmingham (M40, M42 and M6) actually worked..... the spin off more expensive cheaper versions ie... all lanes running were a disaster!... I gave up on them during the M3 conversion (skimp skimp skimp)
.. However... hs2 didn't need to be.... just upgrade the existing lines would have been waaaaaaaay cheaper to the tax payer!!
Your question about why this amount of money are available to such a project and not anywhere else!!???
That is pretty simple!!!
Do You remember a very famous frase from a film that says "Follow the money!!""?????
The reason why is because of where the money are ending up......... in the pockets of rich developers and companies!!!!
Kind regards the Danish Viking
How long before the bats decide the tunnel is a good roosting site.
Bechstein bats are a tree-roosting species, so it's unlikely they will move in.
how about a net?
If they build a 1km long concrete tunnel....wont the bats just move in there?!
That's what I thought, they like tunnels and caves... Perhaps the portals are out of their habitat range or something. I'm sure someone has thought this through. After all, HS2 is a perfectly planned out, logical infrastructure project.
Bechstein bats are a tree-roosting species, so it's unlikely.
@@SonOfFurzehatt I see--thank you
Why not build the bloody thing out of wood - lower carbon and better aesthetics and could be covered with vegetation? But why, dear lord, send a railway line though an ancient forest in the first place, as you say? We have a politician in New Zealand, who arrogantly dismisses an extremely endangered, endemic species of frog as Freddy and if it gets in the of the economy, it's 'goodbye Freddy'. As if we'd ever have any economy at all, without a healthy environment. In the end, 100,000 is huge, but hey, many of our wealthy people could pay for it without thinking. Small change to the billionaires. Let's crowd fund for it. Or better still, just accept that sometimes, it takes a few hours to get from A to B. And I will just conclude by saying Mossy.Earth and Planet Wild.
Sir Jon has failed at pretty much every endevour that he has managed.
The budget has increased for routing by tens of billions.
Still, lets build straight through a bat village.
very interesting...
it cost 90mil to plan and propose it
Classic beurocracy. Wasting taxpayers money and being entirely ineffective
Protecting endangered species is not bureaucracy. HS2 has been a blank cheque for companies, landowners and politicians.
@ HS2 is what I’m talking about. I love civil engineering but this project is just failing whilst wasting our money.
Another way to transfer wealth from the commons to the rich!
This is a gnarly one to take on Rob! HS2 has cut a swathe through SSSI's, nature reserves, archaeological sites and other sensitive landscapes. In one of the most nature depleted countries in the world HS2 has been a further orgy of destruction. Living in Buckinghamshire I've witnessed this first hand. I visited the protest camps at Jones Hill Wood and London Road and marched with XR to protest the destruction of the Wendover Woodhenge. The bat cave is a fig leaf at best to cover the shame of the vandalism carried out in the construciton of this monumental white elephant.
"£100 million bat shit"
It's bat shed crazy
HS 2 Is an Insane Money Pit......a colossal waste of money.
Should be Manchester not Birmingham
It's bat shed crazy, is what it is!!