Bletchleyite
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Also to consider is energy consumption at different speeds, though. China runs the 400km/h maglev at 300 most of the time for this reason.
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Should HS2 be scrapped?
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irish_rail
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I wander if insisting on driverless trains adds much to the cost???
It's not going to have driverless trains
irish_rail
On Moderation
Well you know what I mean. The driver will only open and close doors , so like the central bit of Crossrail line.
I don’t know what you mean. Are you thinking of driving to the speed permitted, rather than coloured lights? That is standard for high speed around the world, and required here.
HSTEd
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No, adding ATO adds no significant additional costs, since the vast majority of the hardware and equipment was going to be installed regardless for ETCS.
D6130
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Judging by her interview on the Radio 4 'Today' programme this morning, @jfollows ' favourite MP - the awful Esther McVey - is all for scrapping it. Sorry, I can't do a link, but if anyone is really interested in hearing her opinions, you can listen to the interview on BBC Sounds.
According to her it is "sucking life out" of northern local transport and has decided that HS2 is now £120bn, with no source for that figure. On a side note, she currently hosts a show on GB News with her MP husband and is being investigated by Ofcom for impartiality on that show for interviewing Jeremy Hunt.
But that's not how it works.
There wasn't a bundle of notes (a large bundle) in a safe at the DfT marked "HS2".
Every project is assessed individually.
By the "whole thing" do you include the parts already under construction? Returning the landscape back would cost a few billion more and take years. What are you going to do with the bridges and tunnels already built? What should be done with the construction sites at Euston, OOC and in Birmingham city centres?
uglymonkey
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If we did "scrap it" not one penny of its proposed qudrillion £ budget would be spent instead on the existing network, it it existed as real money and not loans and promises, they would just spend it on paper clips and other stuff.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I suppose the concrete bits would just revert to nature , like those stations on the northern extension and all the Beeching stations and infrastructure.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I suppose the concrete bits would just revert to nature , like those stations on the northern extension and all the Beeching stations and infrastructure.
Why has HS2 ended up being so expensive?
The project is shrouded in uncertainty and other countries’ railway constructions appear to be cheaper
www.theguardian.com
It's an unbelievable 10x the cost of similar projects in Europe. Scrap it. Find out why it's so expensive, then start over.
If it was 200mph, M25 to the Birmingham ring road, not tunnelled under an AONB, you'd get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the cost.
Spain and France are way more mountainous than the UK, and they don't have these problems.
HSTEd
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Which just means it will be 30 years more before anything happens, and that assumes you can magically cut out the rot that caused this.
It would not be 10% of the cost, it would be more like 80% of the cost, given the tunnel construction is one of the few things that have actually gone somewhat well.
And you'd get almost no benefits because you wouldn't be able to run many trains on it given the lack of capacity on the lines in Birmingham and London.
A succesful HSL project in the UK is unlikely to more than superficially resemble any project in France and Germany, at most it would resemble an Alpine Base tunnel, but more likely projects in China and Japan.
France has half the population density of the UK, Spain is a third as much as the UK, more or less.
Population density being so low means that surface construction has less stuff in the way, not just objectors but also physical infrastructure that has to be moved to make room for the construction.
Mountains have long since ceased to be a major cost driver on high speed lines, especially given that HSLs can now be built with sustained 4% gradients (as they have been in Germany).
In high population density areas surface construction is a disaster waiting to happen, the Chinese know this, Japan knows this, and it is a lesson that HS2 fundamentally refused to learn. They then designed their line based on lousy land cost estimates and we all paid the price. The lesson of China and Japan is to put it in tunnels or on viaducts for the vast majority of the length.
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Additionally, we have ridiculous exercises like a massive CFD and scale model testing programme to develop entrance hoods for tunnels. These huge hoods are then being built on all the phase one tunnels, for the stated purpose of reducing the amount of spoil excavated from the tunnels by 1.5 million cubic metres.
I very much doubt the marginal cost of the larger diameter tunnels and extra spoil disposal would have been greater than the development programme, let alone the design, construction and maintenance cost of said hoods.
And the problems caused by smaller diameter tunnels in maintenance and future capability limits.
There are numerous articles like this available, discussing how resources and time were spent on trying to optimise tiny portions of the construction, including things like repeated redesigns of ventilation/access shafts in an attempt to marginally reduce the build cost. It certainly paints a picture of consultants running up huge bills overdesigning things rather than actually building anything.
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It was a large bundle of loans in a safe at the DfT marked HS2.
HSTEd
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Expending capital on regional transport projects that will never cover their operational costs will result in substantial additional claims on the taxpayer for decades to come.
The amout of capital you will get for that £70bn will be far less than £70bn.
As an example, even pre coronavirus (18-19) Merseyrail burned £130m in subsidies each and every year. That is billions of operational costs that the Treasury would be on the hook for if it approved a similar scheme.
The amout of capital you will get for that £70bn will be far less than £70bn.
As an example, even pre coronavirus (18-19) Merseyrail burned £130m in subsidies each and every year. That is billions of operational costs that the Treasury would be on the hook for if it approved a similar scheme.
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The sub/urban bits are the most in need of new capacity. Not building the urban sections provides almost none of the benefit as you can't run any new trains into the cities, which is where people want to goWhy has HS2 ended up being so expensive?
The project is shrouded in uncertainty and other countries’ railway constructions appear to be cheaper
It's an unbelievable 10x the cost of similar projects in Europe. Scrap it. Find out why it's so expensive, then start over.
If it was 200mph, M25 to the Birmingham ring road, not tunnelled under an AONB, you'd get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the cost.
Spain and France are way more mountainous than the UK, and they don't have these problems.
Why has HS2 ended up being so expensive?
The project is shrouded in uncertainty and other countries’ railway constructions appear to be cheaper
It's an unbelievable 10x the cost of similar projects in Europe. Scrap it. Find out why it's so expensive, then start over.
If it was 200mph, M25 to the Birmingham ring road, not tunnelled under an AONB, you'd get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the cost.
Spain and France are way more mountainous than the UK, and they don't have these problems.
The question is, are we comparing like for like?
For example are those overseas HSR projects building several large terminal stations within major cities?
Likewise are the TGV lines expected to carry the same sorta of numbers as HS2 (technical before the Eastern leg was cut, the predicted passenger usage for HS2 services was to be the same as the whole of the TGV network)?
Brescia-Verona is broadly comparable to Phase 2a, no urban segments, no major geographical challenges. Half the expected cost per km
Sonik
Member
Being in Tatton McVey is a NIMBY, no different to Greg Smith.
These folks just look for any random mud they can throw to try to stop the thing getting built through their constituencies.
Was the 400m by any chance proposed when the HS1-HS2 link was still on the table?
HSTEd
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400m is used pretty widely however, it is used extensively in Japan and China for example.
It's not just a European thing.
RobShipway
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I think what everyone needs to ask themselves, is as a country do we want to be cutting carbon emissions? If so the only way that can really be done is to get the lorries on the rails where possible. To do that capacity is needed on the rails, most specifically on the West Coast Main Line. But there is no capacity there currently on the WCML, so to enable that to happen we needed to have built HS2 about 10 years ago.
The reason why the cost has gone up is that the Government did not take out the loan for the cost of HS2, when loans where at 2.8%, they are doing it at the cost of loans at today's value which is about 12%.
If HS2 is scrapped, then over the last few years the countryside within the UK has been ruined for no reason and the UK within the next 10 years will see very little growth as without HS2 there is very little chance that businesses within the UK can expand, without the extra freight capacity that would be provided with having HS2.
The reason why the cost has gone up is that the Government did not take out the loan for the cost of HS2, when loans where at 2.8%, they are doing it at the cost of loans at today's value which is about 12%.
If HS2 is scrapped, then over the last few years the countryside within the UK has been ruined for no reason and the UK within the next 10 years will see very little growth as without HS2 there is very little chance that businesses within the UK can expand, without the extra freight capacity that would be provided with having HS2.
fishwomp
Established Member
Do you suggest that instead of doing simulation (CFD) and scale model work, they could have just dug the tunnels and discovered afterwards that the pressure waves were too large for comfort?
CFD isn't expensive, digging the wrong hole is.
HSTEd
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No, I would expect them to follow well established practice rather than trying to prove that they know better than everyone else in the world.
This entire project was only necessary because they didn't want to build the tunnels used everywhere else.
There would have been no need for CFD and scale model testing of tunnel hoods if they designed a tunnel that didn't need them.
They decided to run up a huge bill to avoid a much smaller bill of actually following international practice.
In this case they decided they were going to dig the wrong hole (and they knew it to be the wrong hole!) then spent huge sums of money trying to justify doing it.
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Japan showed that you do need hoods. Have you seen any tunnel mouth built to avoid the air pressure problem without hoods?
HSTEd
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Japanese tunnel hoods are normally retrofits added after the fact and are nothing like the size of those being employed on HS2. Indeed these effects were discovered during the commissioning of the San'yo Shinkansen and it was already too late to actually change the design of the tunnels, hence the long noses on Japanese Shinkansen stock.
And the Japanese have learned their lesson and adopted larger diameter tunnels, just like everyone else has done.
Noone else is putting hoods on their tunnels that even approach the size of the ones HS2 is.
(And that document admits this and points out that the alternative to the outsized hoods was 1.5m cubic metres additional excavation).
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I'm not doubting that the UK has higher costs, the question was asking; was the cited X10 cost a like for like comparison.
A X2 cost factor could be within what we could expect (for example higher land/staff costs, more feelings needing to be brought, etc.) although even that could still be a bit higher that we "could" have got it for.
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