Boris folly #347 gets green light.

[bgmnts]

Happening! God knows who is benefiting from this, who is getting the backhanders and for how much.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51443421

Poor Ryalls:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51458604

[SteK]

Chris Grayling to lead the team...

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I think it's a good thing really.  They should have it going all the way up to Scotland.

[BlodwynPig]

I think it's a good thing really.  They should have it going all the way up to Scotland.

This will not have nay net worth

[momatt]

It's only just got the green-light?  Hasn't this already been going on and costing £millions for years?
I don't get it!

[Fambo Number Mive]

I think the second section is far more useful than the first section.

How many people commute from Birmingham to London? Don't most people using the current lines go either from somewhere nearer London to London or somewhere nearer Birmingham to Birmingham? I guess you could go from Birmingham interchange to Birmingham Curzon Street or Old Oak Common to Euston.

I imagine that this project will end up not being completed by the time William is on the throne.

[Blumf]

How many people commute from Birmingham to London?

I think that's the point, turn Brum into another suburb of London.

[SteK]

All this to cut 30 mins off a journey? Why not make the trains more office-like with proper internet etc since only business men can afford the £300+ fare anyway...

[Fambo Number Mive]

Will tickets for HS2 cost more than other rail tickets (already very high) and will other rail tickets need to go up in order to help pay for HS2?

[dissolute ocelot]

Will tickets for HS2 cost more than other rail tickets (already very high) and will other rail tickets need to go up in order to help pay for HS2?

It's being separately funded so in theory other tickets won't subsidise it. Rail tickets are a mess right now; peak-time tickets are priced artificially high to try and get people travelling at non-peak times when trains are near-empty. Because everyone wants to travel in rush hour. HS2 tickets shouldn't be more expensive, as long-distance rail tends to be more profitable than local services, and it has to compete with cheap plane fares (at least going to Manchester/Leeds). But frankly who knows?

This sort of infrastructure is always built by egotistical, grandstanding politicians, but it requires competence as well as arrogance. And the first hundred miles is always the most expensive by a large amount, because it's a lot harder than it looks and you need to build up competencies, trained workers, etc. If it doesn't go to Scotland (and Cardiff and Exeter) it's going to be a waste. EDIT: And over a bridge to Dublin, obviously.

[shiftwork2]

Particularly enjoyed Jeremy Vine (of this parish) earlier talking to a lady who complained she would be dead before this is finished.  On enquiring how old she was she replied 'I'm 70' to which he replied 'not looking good'.  And that's why he's paid the big bucks.

Of course she has studiously avoided using any infrastructure that may have been built and paid for before she was born.

[paruses]

There's no real need to cut the time from EUS to BHM. On the fast train it's only over an hour anyway. It's getting out the other side which is an absolute cunt - I used to have to get off at Rolfe Street or SGB - it took almost as long to do that as it did to get to Euston.

Yes, I am still very bitter about it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think the second section is far more useful than the first section.

How many people commute from Birmingham to London? Don't most people using the current lines go either from somewhere nearer London to London or somewhere nearer Birmingham to Birmingham? I guess you could go from Birmingham interchange to Birmingham Curzon Street or Old Oak Common to Euston.

I imagine that this project will end up not being completed by the time William is on the throne.

people keep moving further from London, so doing some work at home or brum then a few days in the city is becoming more appealing. It's shit that it's only seen as land people can occupy while serving London, rather than building business in the Midlands or the North but that's what you get with the business obsessed.

[gilbertharding]

All this to cut 30 mins off a journey? Why not make the trains more office-like with proper internet etc since only business men can afford the £300+ fare anyway...

Well, no.

All this to free up capacity on the existing lines, without 20 years of complete weekend shut-downs.

And fares:

There has been no announcement about how HS2 tickets will be priced, although the government said that it would "assume a fares structure in line with that of the existing railway" and that HS2 should attract sufficient passengers to not have to charge premium fares.[164] Paul Chapman, in charge of HS2's public relations strategy, suggested that there could be last minute tickets sold at discount rates. He said, "when you have got a train departing on a regular basis, maybe every five or ten minutes, in that last half-hour before the train leaves and you have got empty seats...you can start selling tickets for £5 and £10 at a standby rate."[165]

An off peak return London to Birmingham ticket costs £70 now.

[BlodwynPig]

"HS2: Helping to Spread the Coronavirus Up and Down the Lower Half of Britain"

[touchingcloth]

I'm just gonna come right out and say it I don't give a fuck.

But given you can already get from Manchester to London in under 2 hours, what is point?

[idunnosomename]

Garun melt alert

https://mobile.twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1227232083820634112

Pop out for tea in Birmingham said absolutely nobody ever, from Leeds or otherwise

[Zetetic]

All this to cut 30 mins off a journey?

The better argument is that it frees up other lines for more stopping services and freight.

I'm on the fence, overall.

(There should - but won't - be Barnett consequentials for Wales, Scotland and NI.)

[imitationleather]

Garun melt alert

https://mobile.twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1227232083820634112

Pop out for tea in Birmingham said absolutely nobody ever, from Leeds or otherwise

£100+ return for an evening out in Brum!

It's a bit like saying I could go meet Bazzy Admin for a chekky bit of Pokemon Go just because the flight time there is under an hour. Yeah it doesn't take long but that doesn't mean it's practical.

It's a bit annoying how The Entire North always just equals Manchester.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The better argument is that it frees up other lines for more stopping services and freight.

I'm on the fence, overall.

(There should - but won't - be Barnett consequentials for Wales, Scotland and NI.)

How much would rail services and freight benefit by pouring all that HS2 money into improving the tracks and rolling stock we have?

More, probably, but then you'd not have a big new line to show for it.

[Zetetic]

I'm entirely unsure, to be honest.

(I'm aware that there's some disagreement about whether HS2 is the right bit of track to free up capacity, or whether it'll just shift the bottlenecks. But this is well into my ignorance.)

[Ambient Sheep]

Not a folly.

It really is mostly about freeing up capacity on the existing West Coast Main Line which is stuffed to the gills already with too many express services and not enough stoppers.

It'll be like adding a pair of super-fast lines alongside the existing two fast lines and two slow lines... only without all the mad disruption and even more demolition that that would entail.

It's a shame that most of the news coverage has been focussed on the shorter journey times -- understandably leading to the "all that money for half-an-hour off the journey time, woo yeah" reactions -- rather than the overall benefits it will bring all railway users.

No excuse for not paying poor bastards like the Ryalls decent compensation though.

[Ambient Sheep]

How much would rail services and freight benefit by pouring all that HS2 money into improving the tracks and rolling stock we have?

From lurking on railforums, where this is a hot topic, this gets argued a fair bit, but from my limited reading they seem roughly 70/30 in favour of HS2.

Most of the 30% are arguing for the money to instead be spent on other regions of the country (mainly on electrification) rather than on improvements to the WCML.

I freely admit I'm not that up with it though because, as you can imagine, the HS2 threads are many and massive... but that's the rough impression I get.

[Bazooka]

Strange it's not going to Hull, or Soho of the North as it's more commonly known.

[bgmnts]

Boris Johnson's response to Welsh Labour about this being an absolute fucking pisstake and taking away a shitload of funds from Wales was something about getting the M40 done.

Genuinely would be happy if he dies, not even joking. Fucking horrible nasty cunt.

[Zetetic]

I imagine we'll see a lot of noise from the "UK" Labour party and its members about the Barnett consequentials though.

[Icehaven]

I live in Birmingham, I'll never be able to afford to get a mortgage so I'm genuinely concerned about what this is going to do to rents here in the next decade. I'm 40, unlikely to ever earn much more than I do now and I can barely afford the rent on a 1 bedroom flat, so if all this shit sends Brum rents through the roof I'm going to have to just...I genuinely don't know. HS2 didn't exist when I moved here, and while I understand transport infrastructure needs to develop and improve, being a potential loser in the advancement of that is pretty shit.

[Ambient Sheep]

Oh god yeah, I hadn't thought of that. :-(

Aside from you, that could really fuck things up for a LOT of people.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah but think of all the cereal cafes and that.

[Bazooka]

Yeah but think of all the cereal cafes and that.

All the farms that aren't flattened on the route will only grow avacados.