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HS2

speedy said:
That is happening, with northern powerhouse rail and the Midlands schemes.
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Hmmm, I'll believe it when I see it/take it. The situation with rail in the North is outrageously poor. I maintain that HS1 is/was totally necessary, as Birmingham at ninety minutes whereas Manchester is a mere two hours despite being another third further seems daft. But I'd rather see better transport in the North to hubs like Leeds and Manchester than another fifteen minutes off a perfectly comfortable and reasonable journey time for both commuters and tourists.

@speedy Your points about HS2 allowing more people to travel South and beyond is good-natured and the right sort of aspiration. However, as long as rail remains completely privatised, most will likely never be able to afford it anyway.
 
Plastic Person said:
Hmmm, I'll believe it when I see it/take it. The situation with rail in the North is outrageously poor. I maintain that HS1 is/was totally necessary, as Birmingham at ninety minutes whereas Manchester is a mere two hours despite being another third further seems daft. But I'd rather see better transport in the North to hubs like Leeds and Manchester than another fifteen minutes off a perfectly comfortable and reasonable journey time for both commuters and tourists.

@speedy Your points about HS2 allowing more people to travel South and beyond is good-natured and the right sort of aspiration. However, as long as rail remains completely privatised, most will likely never be able to afford it anyway.
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Yes whether it's some form of nationalisation or just higher subsidies we need cheaper railway tickets.

Sure, journeys in England aren't too long but I think many overlook Scotland. It still takes 4hr20 from Edinburgh to London, over 7 from Aberdeen.

I'll take the train, but I know many fly from these cities to London
 
Norther powerhouse rail...will never happen.
No actual service until 2032, oh no, make that 2033 because it has already been delayed by a year.
I would travel east on a better network, but I've never had a problem getting a train to London, on the rare occasion I venture that far south.
Continental travel...my passport ran out a decade ago, the only way I will get another would be because of a major lottery win.
 
rob666 said:
Continental travel...my passport ran out a decade ago, the only way I will get another would be because of a major lottery win.
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Rob, I've seen you mention this a few times. Obviously I'm not out to audit you, and it might just not be your thing, but travel to and around Europe is really affordable these days, for coasters or otherwise, and especially with no kids in tow. Save yourself a couple of rounds at Crevettes and hop on a plane!
 
rob666 said:
Norther powerhouse rail...will never happen.
No actual service until 2032, oh no, make that 2033 because it has already been delayed by a year.
I would travel east on a better network, but I've never had a problem getting a train to London, on the rare occasion I venture that far south.
Continental travel...my passport ran out a decade ago, the only way I will get another would be because of a major lottery win.
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How would you go east from Lancashire? :D

EDIT: Got my compass directions mixed up. Yeah, EW travel is not great. Took me four hours to get from Beverley to Blackpool Pleasure beach by train

I understand that you wouldn't see much benefit from HS2. But I hope you see how it'll benefit folks in Manchester, York and Scotland. I want to do more trips to Europe by train, but it's very time consuming, even just to get to London from where I live.

I will likely move down south, or to Europe, once I finish my degree. But my parents won't be moving for the next seven years at least, and I can't see them leaving Scotland. So I would certainly benefit from more high speed rail
 
I used my previous three passports a good deal, done most of europe, but got less and less back from the effort over the years.
At six foot four, dodgy knees and back, seats have got smaller, legroom tighter.
Then there are the environmental concerns of leisure travel.
There are lots of places in Britain I have never visited...
...and I have no intention of going there!
 
IanSR said:
...and then spend what you save on building some more infrastructure to cope with the ever increasing population, nothing big, just little things like hospitals, schools, doctors surgeries, local shops etc.
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I thought I was with you until you said shops?

East - West travel is a pain, it's just taken me 4 hours to get back from Newcastle on the train, in the morning I'm heading to London, a longer journey in half the time. There are some strategic routes that need to be sorted in the North but others will get better quite quickly too.

The replacement of the Pacers is a bigger step than is sometimes recognised because it will allow 150s, 156s, 158s etc to be cascaded onto other routes - with many of them being refurbished to a pretty impressive standard.

I was on a 158 the other night that had a 195 interior, including USB power at every seat. I chose to overlook the train was almost as old as me, because it really didn't matter given the comfort and convenience of the journey.
 
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They've just built 2000 houses on a flood plain near here, but no shops (or schools or doctors) were included, which means my local shop keeper loves it, lots of trade, but his road and the surrounding area is now forever gridlocked because so many people go to him to get their everyday essentials etc. and as a result, the council are now talking about pedestrianising his road. My Doctors has stopped taking on new patients as they cannot cope with the numbers.

Problem would not have happened had they included half a dozen retail units on the estate like most new sensible developments have.

Not really related to HS2 but it's a big bug bear of mine.
 
@IanSR I'm with you on that, but thought you were talking about diverting public money earmarked for infrastructure to be diverted to build shops?

I'm 100% supportive of housing policy being enacted whereby homebuilders are forced to build communities, rather than houses - with provision for appropriate services, playgrounds and infrastructure on a ratio by either land or number of dwellings.

The estates built near me in the late 1980s and early 1990s were derided at the time for not being like 'classic' suburbia, but now those properties are quite sought after and it's clear that they could have been real trailblazers. As part of the development there was a pub, a school and a community centre with good sized green spaces, ponds and playgrounds littered throughout the development.

What has been built lately is horrific. Soulless boxes, built almost on top of each other. They seem to sell within a matter of minutes though, so what do I know.
 
Yeah err no, I agree with you @Rick, I'd prefer the money was put into building new hospitals personally (I'm actually against expansion of existing ones because "expansion" can be a bottomless pit for money to disappear into without any actual expansion) than anything else.
 
That is one of the constant misunderstandings of how the finances work for projects like HS2... that they could spend that money on xxxx...

There isn't any actual money, it is all debt. You can't just transfer that funding to xxxx. The government believes the project will expand the economy enough to generate new income for it to service that debt. The current press speculation says they got those figures wrong.

A hospital, school or whatever expansion programme is not going to work in the same way, it won't generate income to service any debt. There isn't a pot of £56bn+ just sat there looking for a use.... it literally is the proverbial magic money tree that invents the cash for major investments like HS2
 
TheBolt said:
That is one of the constant misunderstandings of how the finances work for projects like HS2... that they could spend that money on xxxx...

There isn't any actual money, it is all debt. You can't just transfer that funding to xxxx. The government believes the project will expand the economy enough to generate new income for it to service that debt. The current press speculation says they got those figures wrong.

A hospital, school or whatever expansion programme is not going to work in the same way, it won't generate income to service any debt. There isn't a pot of £56bn+ just sat there looking for a use.... it literally is the proverbial magic money tree that invents the cash for major investments like HS2
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I hate this. Even if the money spent on HS2 could buy x number of hospitals, it can't pay for all the staff or continued running costs! Pretty sure the NHS costs something like 150bn a year. So cancel HS2 and you may find the NHS for one year tops. Ridiculous.

I spend too much of my time on Twitter, just now I wrote back to someone who claimed HS2 could find a tripling of our bus fleet, 100% deployment of electric buses and free bus fares for "years". Pretty sure it can't.

 
Stoke buses were decent a couple of years ago... Try living where your most frequent bus service is once a month...
 
While that's impressive, the UK has much more red tape, regarding the environment, H&S and the like. Also asian countries tend to knuckle down and get projects done instead of waffling around with last minute changes and going over budget...
 
Suddenly though they find £25bn for road improvements and money for new hospitals! Where's that going to come from? In a so called "Climate Emergency" why are we putting ANY money towards roads??
 
And don't forget a couple of billion being thrown at the bus network.
Anyone would think there was a bloody election on the horizon.
 
rob666 said:
And don't forget a couple of billion being thrown at the bus network.
Anyone would think there was a bloody election on the horizon.
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I read £800 million going towards buses. Which is nothing compared to the road apending
 
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