2015 General Election

[Harv]

Also this Government is trying to develop and build a 21st century railway to rival those on the continent, it's called HS2 and has been widely belittled and condemned by those on the left.

And to be fair, also by many on the right. You don't get much further right than UKIP and they're dead against it. And this YouGov poll states that at least half the members from every party don't want HS2 (https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/09/09/majority-now-oppose-hs2/).

Whereas the nationalisation of the railways is obviously an ideological argument between the left and right, I think HS2 basically just comes down to a personal opinion rather than a left or right mentality. People from both ends of the political spectrum have different ideas on it.

 

[BigT]

It's not that black and white, remember most of the people in the areas affected are Tory voters!
So in actual fact it would be easier for the Tories to not try and push this through.

We either want a 21st century train line or we don't but let's stop moaning about the poor train service and then criticising the solution.

 

[Danza91]

Also this Government is trying to develop and build a 21st century railway to rival those on the continent, it's called HS2 and has been widely belittled and condemned by those on the left.
You can't have it both ways.

I'm not sure that £50bn (which is the budget for it now, who knows what that will rise to) on HS2 is the way forward. Pro-HS2 folk can't seem to decide whether it's about speed, capacity or reducing the North/South divide. In time, London, Birmingham et al would probably thrive from it, but what about the smaller towns and cities? HS2 won't benefit a large amount of the UK.

 

[DiogoJ42]

If HS2 doesn't get built, then there will be no HS3, and so on. All high speed networks have to start somewhere.

 

[BigT]

The route encompasses Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Stoke, Litchfield as well as Birmingham.
I'd say that covers a good part of England.

What do you want? High speed that stops at every small village?

 

[John]

Our cities and large towns are too close to each other for a super high speed service. I'd rather see the money spent on a larger number of small scale improvement projects, such as more electrification and better trains. Most places already have pretty fast services to London, but if you want to go anywhere else it's something of a lottery.

 

[Danza91]

The route encompasses Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Stoke, Litchfield as well as Birmingham.
I'd say that covers a good part of England.

What do you want? High speed that stops at every small village?

Yes, because that's exactly what I was saying.

 

[BigT]

We keep moaning about how French and German rail systems are better than the UK, we then get a Government offering to build a TGV line in the UK and we still moan it's too expensive and not needed.
No wonder nothing gets built.

 

[Martin]

It won't reduce the north-south divide. It'll increase it. It's a way to get more people commuting in to London. No one who lives in London is going to commute to Birmingham.

 

[Danza91]

The difference is we're a small island where our cities are close together when compared with France and Germany, reducing the need for HS2.

I 100% agree that something has to be done about the current rail infrastructure in the UK, but I just haven't been convinced that throwing £50bn (probably more) at HS2 is the solution.

 

[AstroDan]

HS2 is not the solution. It is a very nice vanity project and showcase but it won't develop the core of our railway infrastructure.

Our cities and towns are a few miles apart.

TGV in France can run 200km before stopping such is the geography and land space.

HS2 is passing 1 mile from me but there'll be no station anywhere so what's the point?

 

[Harv]

Would have been a nice gesture for them to propose building the line stretching across the belt of Northern cities first, wouldn't it? Then the huge percentage of the population that doesn't live in London may be a little more than lukewarm about the whole project.
Don't get me wrong, I actually think the project is a good idea (people moan about the costs, but look at how much we spend on roads and transport a year anyway, and the rather arbitrary "so many billion pounds" becomes less staggering) - I just don't buy into the whole idea that it will cure the North/South divide. It will essentially just encourage intelligent and hardworking individuals in the North to bring money and trade into London, further reinforcing the notion that the rest of England is just one big suburb for the capital. It may not even have been technically possible (I am no engineer), but a line in the North before the South would have had a lot of significance, both symbolically and logistically.

 

[Poisson]

The lines up here need new trains before anything

 

[Martin]

I don't know much about trains so this could all be rubbish but I'll give my thoughts anyway.

As someone who's local operators include the infamous Northern Rail, I agree we should be focussing on fixing what we've got. Get the south east mainlines electrified, improve the west coast mainline so the Pendolinos can go full speed, and get new rolling stock, the 70s and 80s built stuff really isn't good now, most of it was't great then either. Privatisation was supposed to fix that, the idea being competition would compel them to invest, but the need to make profit means there's a lot of junk on the railways.

I'm much more interested in things the improvements for Manchester's stations, and if HS3 wasn't a blatant token gesture and an empty carrot to try to win northern votes, I'd be very excited for that, the current links between the major northern towns and cities could be better. On a smaller scale, the two stations in my town are very badly connected. There's one bus an hour, but only on weekdays and it stops early evening,it's timetabled so that it leaves before trains arrive, it's too far to walk and there's rarely any taxis outside. One is on a line between Manchester and North Wales, the other is on the west coast mainline, you'd think there'd be a better way to connect at the place they literally cross over each other. Doesn't have to be trains as that would be expensive, but some sort of shuttle bus or something would be great.

HS2 will only shave maybe half an hour off my journey to London, it only takes 2 hours now. Or if I want to save money I can get there in three hours for £20. HS2 will likely be a lot more expensive, not to mention that it'll probably increase all prices to pay for it, and it won't really have much benefit to justify the cost, unless maybe if you live in London.

 

[GaryH]

Totally agree about this project, complete waste of money. If they instead spent the money on modernizing the current rolling stock, stations and lines, then it would improve things for people up and down the country, not just those, yet again, in London.

 

[Jonathan]

HS2's not a bad idea in principle, but I think the rail network needs improving elsewhere. As most of you know, I lived in Cornwall for 14 years, and when I took the train to London or Birmingham or wherever, it took ages. One of the most infamous stretches of line on this route is the line between Newton Abbot and Exeter which runs along the coast at Dawlish. It won't have escaped your attention that last year, storms forced the closure of the line due to the sea washing it away. It took several weeks to repair and re-open the line. 9 locomotives (plus carriages/freight wagons) and 18 multiple-unit trains were trapped west of Dawlish. Some were used to transport passengers across the limited network, and others had to be transported by road to other depots to be serviced and used elsewhere on the network.

Since then, there have been talks to plan for another line to be constructed somewhere in Devon so that if this happens again, trains will still be able to run down through Devon and Cornwall from the rest of the country. The preferred route at the moment is one going across the top of Dartmoor, using the Dartmoor Railway via Okehampton, then joining on at a new line at Tavistock, which would then head down to Bere Alston and join the main line again at Plymouth. This route seems sensible, but trains would have to reverse at Exeter St David's to head up to Okehampton and Tavistock, and then again at Plymouth to go into Cornwall - this would add a few minutes extra to the journey at each end, which would not be ideal. Other options include routes between Newton Abbot and Exeter which would avoid Dawlish, and I believe that one of these routes would be better - it wouldn't add much onto the journey, it'd probably be faster than the current Dawlish route, and express trains could be exclusively transferred to this new line through tunnels, meaning that the stations along the coast could be served by a more frequent local service. The exact route that this 'Dawlish Avoiding Line' could take is up for debate, though - it could take up track bed that was closed years ago, or a route that was proposed for this exact purpose in the 1930s (construction started in 1939, but stopped after the outbreak of World War 2).

Also, the South West has to cope with an ageing fleet of diesel multiple units (DMUs). For years, they have had cast-offs from other areas of the country as they get new trains. I think the last of these DMUs to be built new for service in the South West were constructed back in the 1940s or 1950s. There's the chance that trains currently in service in the Thames Valley will be used on local routes in the South West once Crossrail is in operation at the end of the decade. This would be good, as newer trains would be in service, but I would much rather have new trains constructed for the South West.

So, yeah - in short, HS2 isn't a bad idea, but I would much rather see the money be used in other areas of the country so that they can get improved rail services, most importantly (for me, at least) the South West. I know this has gone rather off-topic, but I think it's a relevant point to make with the general election looming in less than three months.

 

[Martin]

The idea of a network connecting just the cities and major towns, no stops in between, with superfast trains, and good connections from from stops to outlying towns and stuff, is a good idea. The south east as Jonathan points out, is badly cut off from the rest of the country, as well as being very susceptible to weather, none of it is electrified either (although they are in the process of electrifying some of it), so there really does need to be improvements there.

 

[GaryH]

*South West

 

[Jonathan]

The idea of a network connecting just the cities and major towns, no stops in between, with superfast trains, and good connections from from stops to outlying towns and stuff, is a good idea. The south east as Jonathan points out, is badly cut off from the rest of the country, as well as being very susceptible to weather, none of it is electrified either (although they are in the process of electrifying some of it), so there really does need to be improvements there.

Electrification is only going as far as Newbury and also Bristol, IIRC - no further south than that. I agree that it should go further down the region, but the costs could be huge.

 

[Ted]

Here's my two cents on the whole HS2 subject.

Instead of building it, I think they should electrified the line between Marlyebone and Birmingham Snow Hill. Currently this journey takes about 90 mins to 2 hours to complete, compared to the journey between Euston and Birmingham New Street which is about an hour and a half. However, the line between Snow Hill and Marylebone currently isn't electrified and electric would actually reduce the journey time as electric trains are faster. The capacity isn't as tight as the West Coast Main Line and the tickets are cheaper (Plus Moor Street, Snow Hill and Marylebone are more pleasant than New Street and Euston )

It's easy to take the money and improve the connectivity between the towns as well. Some routes like the one between Exeter and Plymouth via Dawlish that Jon pointed out badly needs a new route to avoid a recap of what happened to the sea wall last year. The whole South West as a whole needs a great rail infrastructure investment, it's as bad as it what it is in the North, if not worse. They use similar stock like Pacers, Sprinters which are quite unreliable and old now, and the intercity trains to Paddington are now nearly 40 years old! There's stuff like Crosscountry's voyagers which are newer, but they're not really good...Electrifying it down to at least Exeter would also speed up the journey time to cities like London and Birmingham greatly.

Meanwhile the railways in the North do seem to be getting some love. Like the electrification between Manchester Victoria and Liverpool Lime Street, and between Lime Street and Wigan. With plans to electrify the line between Leeds and Victoria and the improvements at Picadilly and Manchester Airport. But there's still a lot to do to improve the railways in the North of England.

In short, I think the HS2 money would be better off being spent elsewhere, and a lot more people would benefit more than if it were built.