BBC Panorama programme on HS2 Monday 16th September at 8PM

[lachlan]

HS2 was marketed badly from the outset. It was always about providing additional capacity to relieve our existing overcrowded routes, which could only be done properly with the construction of a new railway, and since this was going to be necessary, the marginal cost of making it high speed was small enough to make it well worth the additional cost of doing so. This should always have been a focus of selling it to the country, but sadly the marketing of HS2 was woefully lacking.

As for its huge cost over-runs, I’m not sure why people in this thread are so dismissive of the Panorama presentation when a great deal of the concern expressed was about this very fact, which is hardly a falsified concern. As shown in the programme, Andrew Bruce and Doug Thornton appear to have been treated extremely badly, being dismissed from their jobs as soon as they sought to be honest about the cost over-runs. It brought to my mind the disgraceful cover-ups and silencing of whistle-blowers in the Post Office scandal. Did Panorama somehow misrepresent this situation?

At the same time that HS2 was being developed there was a serious proposal for Maglev and later there was HSUK, but people on this forum have been quick to dismiss both as crayonista exercises by enthusiasts who had little concept of real costs. Perhaps someone with greater expertise than myself then, could explain why Maglev and HSUK both deserved such scorn, and why HS2 doesn’t?

The high speed was also necessary to allow HS2 to carry trains to Edinburgh, York, Newcastle etc and still be faster than existing lines despite the longer distance. Of course that doesn't matter so much now the eastern leg being cancelled (despite being perhaps the most transformative in terms of connectivity)

 

[Ediswan]

I have not been following the HS2 saga in detail, but I did watch this. Lots will previously have been said in specialist media that I don't read. Was anything in the Panorama report new, fresh to the public domain ?

 

[Mikey C]

The high speed was also necessary to allow HS2 to carry trains to Edinburgh, York, Newcastle etc and still be faster than existing lines despite the longer distance. Of course that doesn't matter so much now the eastern leg being cancelled (despite being perhaps the most transformative in terms of connectivity)

I don't think anyone was suggesting it should be a 125mph railway, but if they had made it a standard high speed 186mph railway (like HS1) rather than a 225mph one, it could have been bendier and taken a different route, requiring far fewer tunnels and viaducts.

 

[may032]

I have not been following the HS2 saga in detail, but I did watch this. Lots will previously have been said in specialist media that I don't read. Was anything in the Panorama report new, fresh to the public domain ?

The only part I wasn’t aware of was the alleged toxic culture in HS2 Ltd. Everything else in the programme has been covered extensively and with more balance/rigour.

 

[DiscoSteve]

If anyone thinks that HS2 was put in a hideously expensive 30-odd mile tunnel under the Chilterns because the line needed to be straight and level they are kidding themselves - an army of self entitled nimby's (with their Conservative MP backers) who do not give a sh*t about anywhere north of Watford Gap were hell bent on that tunnel being built to preserve their property values. Simple as that. And that fact was not discussed in the slightest last night.

 

[Energy]

If anyone thinks that HS2 was put in a hideously expensive 30-odd mile tunnel under the Chilterns because the line needed to be straight and level they are kidding themselves - an army of self entitled nimby's (with their Conservative MP backers) who do not give a sh*t about anywhere north of Watford Gap were hell bent on that tunnel being built to preserve their property values. Simple as that. And that fact was not discussed in the slightest last night.

Whether the tunnel was spurred on by property values or nature concerns, it was very unlikely HS2 would get through the AONB on the surface with the intense controversy.

When Arup prepared their route for HS1 they followed the principles of:

• Parallel existing motorways and railways where possible
• Avoid AONB, and expect to tunnel beneath them.

HS2 failed to learn from the success of HS1, the route barely parallels existing transport links and they managed to choose one of the largest gaps when crossing the Chiltern AONB.

A HS1-like route would have likely followed the M40 most of the way.

 

[Shrop]

I don't think anyone was suggesting it should be a 125mph railway, but if they had made it a standard high speed 186mph railway (like HS1) rather than a 225mph one, it could have been bendier and taken a different route, requiring far fewer tunnels and viaducts.

I'm not sure just how much difference this speed differential would have made on the costs for viaducts and tunnels etc, it would be interesting to know what any comparison studies showed for this, and for each section too (Phase 1, Phase 2a etc).

Perhaps 186mph would have been enough to reach Manchester and Leeds, and the difference between 186 and 225mph on the short stretch from London to Birmingham really wouldn't have cost many minutes at all. Where 225mph would have made most sense would have been if HS2 had been intended to reach Newcastle and Edinburgh (and thereafter perhaps back down to 186mph to Glasgow). But HS2 was never really about going that far was it? Crumbs, I might almost have agreed with Andrew Gilligan there, when he said that high speed trains are pointless for journeys below 200 miles. Heaven forbid that I should agree with him!

 

[jon0844]

The high speed was also necessary to allow HS2 to carry trains to Edinburgh, York, Newcastle etc and still be faster than existing lines despite the longer distance. Of course that doesn't matter so much now the eastern leg being cancelled (despite being perhaps the most transformative in terms of connectivity)

I think we could accept that any new line would allow for faster trains, but I don't think it was the main selling point. It could certainly be used to justify the building of a new line over upgrading existing ones of course, when it comes to comparing costs.

Frankly, upgrading legacy lines would be far more expensive and disruptive, and almost certainly impact homes and businesses far more - so the business case would have been in favour of HC2 (or would that be HC1?!).

Putting so much of HS2 in a tunnel was mad, but it's already been explained above. If built in a suitable cutting as much as possible, it would have been near invisible, easier to maintain, and likely very quiet. Certainly better than the traffic on roads that will still be used by people who won't use the train as a result of ageing and unreliable infrastructure.

 

[Mikey C]

Whether the tunnel was spurred on by property values or nature concerns, it was very unlikely HS2 would get through the AONB on the surface with the intense controversy.

When Arup prepared their route for HS1 they followed the principles of:

• Parallel existing motorways and railways where possible
• Avoid AONB, and expect to tunnel beneath them.

HS2 failed to learn from the success of HS1, the route barely parallels existing transport links and they managed to choose one of the largest gaps when crossing the Chiltern AONB.

A HS1-like route would have likely followed the M40 most of the way.

Agreed, the point made by the programme was that the 225mph line required a very straight route, whereas a 186mph one could have taken a bendier route following existing busy corridors much more closely. Which is what HS1 did, with a tunnel under Bluebell Hill to get between the A2/M2 corridor, and the M20 corridor.

I'm familiar with one of the farms featured (just south of Wendover) as I've walked through there both before and during construction (it's on the Chiltern Way trail).

As a sop to the people of Wendover, which after the Wendover Bottom viaduct has HS2 passing by in a green tunnel, the footpath alongside the Wendover canal has been upgraded by HS2. It's now a very pleasant walk!

 

[Ediswan]

As a sop to the people of Wendover, which after the Wendover Bottom viaduct has HS2 passing by in a green tunnel, the footpath alongside the Wendover canal has been upgraded by HS2. It's now a very pleasant walk!

I had to look that up. Was expecting something new and innovative. In reality, PR speak for a centuries old technique.

 

[Haywain]

As a sop to the people of Wendover, which after the Wendover Bottom viaduct has HS2 passing by in a green tunnel, the footpath alongside the Wendover canal has been upgraded by HS2.

And stuff like that adds to the costs of the project. It seems to be a problem with some infrastructure projects that there's both gold plating and extraneous works on top to pay for.

 

[philosopher]

I think we could accept that any new line would allow for faster trains, but I don't think it was the main selling point. It could certainly be used to justify the building of a new line over upgrading existing ones of course, when it comes to comparing costs.

Frankly, upgrading legacy lines would be far more expensive and disruptive, and almost certainly impact homes and businesses far more - so the business case would have been in favour of HC2 (or would that be HC1?!).

The programme never looked at what alternatives there were to HS2, how feasible they were, what they would cost, what benefits they would have provided and whether they would have been implemented.

Most notably, if HS2 was cancelled in February 2020, which the programme mentioned as the latest it could have been cancelled, I think it would have been very unlikely that the government would have used the money saved on other rail transport projects. The simple reason for this is due to all that happened in the years after February 2020. The Covid lockdowns started a month later, which cost the government vast amounts of money fund and drastically reduced rail use, which the railway has yet to fully recover from. This was followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and associated hike in energy costs, which further led to vast unforeseen spending from the government.

Therefore, the government would have seen spending money on HS2 alternatives as very low down the list in spending.

 

[Haywain]

The simple reason for this is due to all that happened in the years after February 2020. The Covid lockdowns started a month later, which cost the government vast amounts of money fund and drastically reduced rail use, which the railway has yet to fully recover from. This was followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and associated hike in energy costs,

Another factor around the same time is Brexit, which significantly changed the availability and cost of the construction industry workforce.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Despite the negative comments on this thread, I will endeavor to watch this when I am back in the UK. Sounds like it was not balanced though.

 

[geoffk]

I really was disappointed! I’m open-minded to HS2 criticism, but this wasn’t a serious analysis of the issue. I expected so much more from Panorama…

I've watched it now and learnt a lot more about the culture of HS2. Tony Berkeley is a freight man isn't he and I've heard him talk a lot of sense in the past. HS2 would of course release capacity for more freight but this wasn't mentioned, nor were the possible alternatives to providing the required capacity. Why is the UK apparently so bad at managing these mega projects (including Cross Rail/Elizabeth Line of course)?

 

[eldomtom2]

Therefore, the government would have seen spending money on HS2 alternatives as very low down the list in spending.

Well, in the event, the government saw spending money on the HS2 that was planned as very low down the list. I think the programme was primarily arguing that a different design should have been selected much earlier.

 

[Energy]

Perhaps 186mph would have been enough to reach Manchester and Leeds, and the difference between 186 and 225mph on the short stretch from London to Birmingham really wouldn't have cost many minutes at all. Where 225mph would have made most sense would have been if HS2 had been intended to reach Newcastle and Edinburgh (and thereafter perhaps back down to 186mph to Glasgow).

I'd argue we'd have been better off adopting a 186mph minimum with an aim to higher speed, assume slab track regardless. If 186mph allows a route much cheaper, excellent, if 200mph is barely much more than we may as well spec that.

 

[Mikey C]

I'd argue we'd have been better off adopting a 186mph minimum with an aim to higher speed, assume slab track regardless. If 186mph allows a route much cheaper, excellent, if 200mph is barely much more than we may as well spec that.

Once you've chosen the route then there's probably little cost difference between building it for the different speeds, but if you design a route from the start for lower speeds, you can choose a cheaper route.

 

[may032]

Actually, the intent of programmes like Panorama is to be critical and not, in this case, to be a PR promotion for HS2 . You will be pleased to learn your prediction was correct however. That, and normals, strangely, do take an interest in transport projects even more so in the case of the funding of this unwarranted white elephant and cash cow to be milked dry by construction companies.

" No link was made between the protests and MPs forcing route changes and tunnelling that added significant cost. The numbers used also appeared to lack the context of inflation, and they included the circa £35bn initial estimation that was slightly misleading as the act of parliament was not based on that number."

You must have missed the bit showing a collection of MP's outside Downing St, there to lobby for route changes away from their constituencies. That, and the reference to 11 miles of tunnels, under the Chilterns, plus, another 22 miles out of the total length...inflation was certainly mentioned as was the willingness of the Gov't to keep pouring money in. The reaction to the interview by a schoolboy to Boris, naturally, saying you just keep digging a deeper hole, was telling.

What I meant was that I don’t recall the programme explicitly linking the MPs forcing the use of extensive tunnelling to the increase in cost. It’s all very well highlighting the spiralling costs, but it would have made sense to pin point what drove those cost increases

 

[may032]

Once you've chosen the route then there's probably little cost difference between building it for the different speeds, but if you design a route from the start for lower speeds, you can choose a cheaper route.

In retrospect, 186mph on a curvier route would have been fine, and probably have been cheaper, with the stump we’ve been left with. But at the time, the intention was for a full-Y shape network with 16-17 tphpd, and AIUI, that level of capacity needed the extra speed.

 

[Energy]

As a sop to the people of Wendover, which after the Wendover Bottom viaduct has HS2 passing by in a green tunnel, the footpath alongside the Wendover canal has been upgraded by HS2. It's now a very pleasant walk!

I don't really mind "sops". A new footpath or village hall is chump change for a project the size of HS2 and its nice to get some benefit for the locals.

Once you've chosen the route then there's probably little cost difference between building it for the different speeds, but if you design a route from the start for lower speeds, you can choose a cheaper route.

HS2 had to prepare a lot of route options, you can find them in various PDFs online. Allowing route options to have different max speeds depending on how curvy they are I think is better than choosing fixed 186mph, and it ending up being barely cheaper, or designing 225mph and it being much more expensive.

 

[jfowkes]

At the same time that HS2 was being developed there was a serious proposal for Maglev and later there was HSUK, but people on this forum have been quick to dismiss both as crayonista exercises by enthusiasts who had little concept of real costs. Perhaps someone with greater expertise than myself then, could explain why Maglev and HSUK both deserved such scorn, and why HS2 doesn’t?

Maglev trains on the scale of countries do not exist (Japan is trying), they are very energy intensive and would be a completely separate network - you can't run maglev trains on the normal rail network. Also the energy use is huge. You don't have the friction from the wheel/rail interface but that's nothing compared to the air resistance.

As for the HSUK proposals, it's very likely they would have ended up been even more expensive than HS2. They would have required a lot of very expensive and disruptive work done to the classic network to re-scope it for higher speeds. Like the WCML upgrade project on steroids.

HS2 is known, proven technology. Normal high speed trains on normal rails with normal signalling. You can take fault with the route selection, or the financing, or the high design speed, or whatever, but the fundamental concept of a high speed rail network largely separated from the classic network but still interoperable is proven. That's the reason HS2 is a thing. Because it's more or less what's been done elsewhere in the world and it works.

 

[eldomtom2]

You can take fault with the route selection, or the financing, or the high design speed, or whatever, but the fundamental concept of a high speed rail network largely separated from the classic network but still interoperable is proven.

That's true, though I'll note that most serious alternate proposals didn't ditch that concept.

 

[Harpo]

And stuff like that adds to the costs of the project. It seems to be a problem with some infrastructure projects that there's both gold plating and extraneous works on top to pay for.

Plus variations and risk ownership.

Suppliers who are under contract love variation as there is no pricing competition.

Then there’s the decision on where the risk of unknowns sit. If you expect a supplier to bear that burden alone then expect it to be baked into their price. And the bean counters will doubtless add a contingency to that too.

 

[Snow1964]

Perhaps 186mph would have been enough to reach Manchester and Leeds, and the difference between 186 and 225mph on the short stretch from London to Birmingham really wouldn't have cost many minutes at all.

Roughly speaking there is a 100 miles between London and Birmingham where maximum speed would be possible, excluding the lower speeds near terminus.

At 186mph (just over 3 miles a minute), the 100 miles takes 31 minutes. At 225mph takes 27 minutes, so the extra speed only saves about 4 minutes. It is questionable regarding if extra cost of straighter alignment to save 4 minutes was sensible spending.

More significantly for time is if platform turnouts are capable of good speed, don't want to be crawling whilst the back of a 400m train clears the junction when it could be doing 60+mph on full acceleration away from a stop. Similarly a train approaching a platform going through crossovers with the stop mark 400m along platform could waste minutes if slowing early then crawling to stop marker.

 

[lachlan]

Roughly speaking there is a 100 miles between London and Birmingham where maximum speed would be possible, excluding the lower speeds near terminus.

At 186mph (just over 3 miles a minute), the 100 miles takes 31 minutes. At 225mph takes 27 minutes, so the extra speed only saves about 4 minutes. It is questionable regarding if extra cost of straighter alignment to save 4 minutes was sensible spending.

More significantly for time is if platform turnouts are capable of good speed, don't want to be crawling whilst the back of a 400m train clears the junction when it could be doing 60+mph on full acceleration away from a stop. Similarly a train approaching a platform going through crossovers with the stop mark 400m along platform could waste minutes if slowing early then crawling to stop marker.

But then if you consider the original plan was a fast line all the way to Crewe, Manchester, and Leeds it makes more sense as I believe there were trains first stop Crewe planned.

 

[Shrop]

At 186mph (just over 3 miles a minute), the 100 miles takes 31 minutes. At 225mph takes 27 minutes, so the extra speed only saves about 4 minutes. It is questionable regarding if extra cost of straighter alignment to save 4 minutes was sensible spending

Unless I'm mistaken, Network Rail count a delay of less than 5 minutes as being "on time" for shorter distance trains, which grows to 10 minutes for longer distance trains. In this context the extra cost for that 4 minute saving really would be questionable!

 

[Harpo]

the extra cost for that 4 minute saving really would be questionable!

All journey time reductions gain a combination of hard immediate savings and softer economic benefits especially when journey times drop to round numbers.

On hard savings just getting HS2 sets back to London 8 minutes (4 minutes each way) earlier could mean needing one less complete trainset and crew to operate a 8TPH service, potentially saving a massive 7 figure sum. Admittedly though, that would be small beer on HS2!

 

[Shrop]

Maglev trains on the scale of countries do not exist (Japan is trying), they are very energy intensive and would be a completely separate network - you can't run maglev trains on the normal rail network. Also the energy use is huge. You don't have the friction from the wheel/rail interface but that's nothing compared to the air resistance.

Of course air resistance is huge at high speeds, but is it any greater than for conventional trains IF they were both travelling at the same speed?

As for the HSUK proposals, it's very likely they would have ended up been even more expensive than HS2. They would have required a lot of very expensive and disruptive work done to the classic network to re-scope it for higher speeds. Like the WCML upgrade project on steroids.

HSUK proposals were certainly optimistic with the costings probably downplayed considerably. However, their route choices were considerably better. A better researched HS2 scheme using some of the HSUK route suggestions (which WERE around when HS2 was being developed albeit by people other than HSUK) is what should have happened, rather than the obsession with benefitting Heathrow.

HS2 is known, proven technology. Normal high speed trains on normal rails with normal signalling. You can take fault with the route selection, or the financing, or the high design speed, or whatever, but the fundamental concept of a high speed rail network largely separated from the classic network but still interoperable is proven. That's the reason HS2 is a thing. Because it's more or less what's been done elsewhere in the world and it works.

I'm not entirely disagreeing about the benefits of inter-operability, but look what's actually happened with HS2 - this very "benefit" is now leading to LOWER capacity between Birmingham and Manchester, due to the smaller passenger capacity than existing trainsets. So using this known and proven technology perhaps isn't all it's cracked up to be!

 

[jon0844]

There's another thing that most people don't talk about with HS2 and that's the ability to run wider or taller trains, with the increased space making journeys more comfortable.

Only now people are confused when they hear about trains being wrong for the line, with no true understanding of why. Without the extensions, it just isn't worthwhile building new rolling stock that can't go 'all the way' so everyone gets a worse experience with less passenger capacity.

Upgrading the WCML or ECML wouldn't allow these benefits either, so would have been a factor in deciding the best options.