HS2 alternatives based on 51m's suggestions

[The Ham]

Having reviewed the 51m's headline figures for the alternative spending rather than building HS2 I've found the following.

For information the headline figures were:
- £2bn spend on railway improvements
- £14bn spending on roads
- £10bn spend on broadband
- £17bn spend on core city infrastructure
- £7bn funding to Local Enterprise Partnerships

Compare this to what the government has already spent/promised
- 2017 enhancements spend of £4.1bn
- £15.2bn budget for major road schemes for 2015-2020
- £9bn spent on fast Broadband speeds (leading to a more than x10 increase between 2009 and 2018 from 4.1 to 45mb/s - average household speeds)
- (unknown figures for core city infrastructure)
- £12bn will be given to LEP's by 2021

Given the above, where most of the requirements for alternitves for HS2 having been met or nearly meet, then I have the following questions:

- does this mean that HS2 is no longer needed or was 51m wrong and the ache spending had had little impact on the need for more rail investment?

- what other alternatives should be considered or should we just get on with HS2?

 

[Bletchleyite]

HS2 is needed south of Birmingham to relieve the south WCML. It's basically 2 extra tracks that are high speed because they might as well be, though I agree with the proposal to reduce it to 300km/h or 186mph (i.e. a classic TGV route) as that is quite adequate for that purpose and it appears it will save a fare chunk of dosh on both trains (as a simple UK-gauge TGV would do as the train - basically a modern-day Eurostar TMST) and track.

North of Birmingham I believe there is a far poorer case, and I'd put the savings on that into a project to properly upgrade provincial rail and make it into something that far more resembles what the South East has. Manchester, for instance, needs its urban rail upgrading to Merseyrail standards. Electrification, new stock and targetted new infrastructure with capacity rather than speed being the view.

 

[tbtc]

Having reviewed the 51m's headline figures for the alternative spending rather than building HS2 I've found the following.

For information the headline figures were:
- £2bn spend on railway improvements

What are these £2bn of railway improvements that we could be investing in instead?

That's my problem with all of this - what's the alternative railway investment? Most of the time, solving a problem (e.g. Welwyn viaduct) just pushes the problem a few miles along the track (the lack of four track south of Peterborough or the bottlenecks as you get closer to London).

As we've found with so many Victorian lines tinkering with one problem area may shave a minute off the journey time but then you'll run into the same old problems at the next flat junction or slow curve or catch up the stopper that shares the same tracks.

 

[The Ham]

What are these £2bn of railway improvements that we could be investing in instead?

That's my problem with all of this - what's the alternative railway investment? Most of the time, solving a problem (e.g. Welwyn viaduct) just pushes the problem a few miles along the track (the lack of four track south of Peterborough or the bottlenecks as you get closer to London).

As we've found with so many Victorian lines tinkering with one problem area may shave a minute off the journey time but then you'll run into the same old problems at the next flat junction or slow curve or catch up the stopper that shares the same tracks.

I very much agree, £2bn doesn't get you a lot in terms of rail improvements. The point in starting this thread is that 51m's "alternitve" has pretty much already happened and there's still a need for more rail capacity.

As such unless there's some good alternitves which we should be pursuing instead of HS2 (and it would be good to know what these are) then we should probably get on with HS2.

 

[swt_passenger]

Surely 51m’s shopping list was all to be spent in the close vicinity of the original HS2?

What government has since announced are national figures, many projects being nowhere near HS2?

I suspect comparisons are a complete waste of time?

 

[The Ham]

Surely 51m’s shopping list was all to be spent in the close vicinity of the original HS2?

What government has since announced are national figures, many projects being nowhere near HS2?

I suspect comparisons are a complete waste of time?

The road section of the report says:

Many local authorities across the country have ‘shovel ready’ schemes to repair, upgrade and enhance local road networks

Which would imply nationally and bit just locally to HS2.

On Broadband it says:

51m proposes the creation of an ‘intervention fund’ of at least £10 billion by the Department for Culture Media and Sport to support the development of ultra-fast broadband (100 MB/s) across key cities, other major population centres and areas where there are clusters of small and medium enterprises.

Again that implies nationally. What the government had done is spent its money in the areas where there wouldn't be the return on high speed broadband, i.e. those rural areas with lower population densities. This may not result in higher top speeds, but does improve the average speeds. It also means that those in rural areas, who often have to travel more and longer distance than those in cities, are able to benefit from broadband more.

With regards to the city centre cites getting more funding, that's something that is already being called for in addition to HS2. Such as the dualling of the A303, which Highways England are consulting on.

On the LEP's 51m tasks about each getting an average of £225 million (totalling £7bn), and listing LEP's around the country, including the South West and Anglia.

As such I would suggest that they are taking about nationally, and therefore the comparison made is broadly valid (although they have listed example projects which haven't been given the go ahead, but the funding had been made and the decision made to user it in other ways).