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March 29, 2024, 12:07:35 AM

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HS2 Leeds to Birmingham line scrapped

Started by Fambo Number Mive, November 15, 2021, 04:49:41 PM

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Fambo Number Mive

Instead the lines between Leeds and Sheffield and between Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway will be upgraded.

Do many people use East Midlands Parkway? Or is it more of an interchange station?

QuoteThe government is also expected to put money aside to explore setting up a tram service for Leeds.

I would imagine some kind of light rail service for Leeds would be a good idea but all this promises is to "explore it". Why not build a tram service for Leeds, extend it to areas like Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield, even Harrogate. It would attract businesses to the region and be a boost for local residents.

So does this mean that Phase 1 stays? Because I thought the whole of HS2 was going to be reviewed

More information at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59292120

Blumf

Does Leeds still have those special guided bus lanes? (Super Bus?)

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I believe Leeds is the biggest city in Europe without any mass transit system or integrated network.

They won't get a tram network and even if by some miracle they do it will be a horrific Edinburgh style fiasco. We will be lucky if it extends from one end of the Headrow to the other, let alone Harrogate.

Scheme after scheme has failed on cost, so now you have posters telling people to travel green, but the buses and trains are shitty, congested and late and the road network is shitty and congested. An all round horrible place to travel around.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

They already had a great network back in the day of course, then the motor car arrived.


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 15, 2021, 05:25:40 PM
I believe Leeds is the biggest city in Europe without any mass transit system or integrated network.

They won't get a tram network and even if by some miracle they do it will be a horrific Edinburgh style fiasco. We will be lucky if it extends from one end of the Headrow to the other, let alone Harrogate.

Scheme after scheme has failed on cost, so now you have posters telling people to travel green, but the buses and trains are shitty, congested and late and the road network is shitty and congested. An all round horrible place to travel around.

Sounds like they need some fucking TROLLEYBUSES

Ambient Sheep

Looks like this thread might be informative, although I've only skimmed it myself:

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hs2-rail-extension-to-leeds-set-to-be-scrapped.224851/


EDIT: Particularly this post:

QuoteSome contributors to this thread seem to be unaware of previous and current discussion in other threads (now in the speculation subforum) and of the large number of previous leaks.

The gist of previous leaks is that the south and north ends of the eastern arm of HS2 will go ahead.  The south end will be from the junction with HS2 phase 1 at Curdworth to the MML near East Midlands Parkway.  The north end will be from Leeds to the Sheffield - Church Fenton line at Clayton.

The BBC national lunchtime TV news didn't mention the northern section and gave the impression that  only the south end will go ahead, but Look North (Leeds) was a bit more detailed and made it clear that the northern section is still on.

dissolute ocelot

It's incredibly stupid, it would only make any kind of sense if they're planning to stop the whole thing. High speed rail is only really worthwhile if you build a lot of it: the time savings are greater, particularly if you're wanting to discourage internal flights, and the cost per mile falls as you build more due to greater expertise, experienced suppliers, design and implementation experience, economies of scale regarding trains and equipment, etc. Just being able to get from London to Manchester a bit faster isn't really much of a gain for the price: you could buy a lot of people Teslas with the money they're spending.

Obviously not surprising in a nation that only ever wants to do things on the cheap, to the least possible extent. Leeds/Bradford/etc needs public transport improvements to complement existing rail. But we need a combination of national and local public transport, they're not an either/or proposition. Otherwise the best you can hope for is a few people driving to parkway stations, not a real shift in transport modality.

Although I like the suggestion on railforums of upgrading the East Coast Main Line instead.

Sebastian Cobb

Isn't the problem with upgrading the ecml that it's kind of critical and we don't have any redundancy to put things onto while the works take place?

Fr.Bigley

They've been toying with the "Supertram" here in Leeds since the early 90s when my uncle was on the steering group for the thing to break ground.

We're talking nearly 30 years of council greed, wasting money on sending delegates on big boy beans all over Europe costing tens of thousands. There has been numerous failed tendors, false promises and overly ambitious plans from a council that has been known for years to haemorrhage cash on superfluous nonsense.

Leeds will get an underground before it gets a tram system.


Motorway city aye, but now a complete shit show for those not in the car.

Gurke and Hare

Leeds should get trams, but not as far as Harrogate - trams are best suited to server densely populated areas, and there's big empty bits between the two. Maybe a tram-train would be a decent idea though.

pigamus

It's going to take fucking forever anyway, why not just agree to it and kick the can down the road 40 years?

Shame really, was looking forward to visting the NORTHERN POWERHOUSE when it was finished.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 15, 2021, 07:07:57 PM
Isn't the problem with upgrading the ecml that it's kind of critical and we don't have any redundancy to put things onto while the works take place?

How did they get the WCML upgrade done? Were there just loads of closures?

hamfist

Leeds needs to do a Ceaucescu and just bulldoze a straight line in from each point of the compass.

Unlike Ceaucescu they then need to rag a sexeh tramline on it, and line the sides of it with solar / wind / renewable grid powered low cost workplaces of all kinds.

Might suggest it to the nice lady at Leeds council next time I see her.

purlieu

Glad they're knocking down all that ancient woodland for a Birmingham to London shuttle. What a fucking joke.

pigamus

Come on, it's enabled all those jokes about nobody wanting to get to Birmingham quicker, it's worth the money

druss

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 15, 2021, 05:25:40 PM
Leeds. An all round horrible place to travel around.
I don't know if it has since improved but I remember 15 years ago a wrong turn at rush hour could add an hour to your journey.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 15, 2021, 07:43:11 PM
How did they get the WCML upgrade done? Were there just loads of closures?
Sure I read - in one of my Trevor Trainspotter moments - that when they electrified the WCML in the 60s, they were still able to run Manchester to London services from Central Station via Matlock and Nottingham. Once the work was complete, services to the capital exclusively run from Piccadilly and Central was closed down.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on November 15, 2021, 08:21:09 PM
Sure I read - in one of my Trevor Trainspotter moments - that when they electrified the WCML in the 60s, they were still able to run Manchester to London services from Central Station via Matlock and Nottingham. Once the work was complete, services to the capital exclusively run from Piccadilly and Central was closed down.

Reinstate the Great Central!

I was talking about the upgrade in the 2000s when they upgraded it to allow 125mph (a downgrade from the original plan to upgrade it for 140mph, because a British rail project wouldn't be the same without doing a half arsed job).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: purlieu on November 15, 2021, 08:05:20 PM
Glad they're knocking down all that ancient woodland for a Birmingham to London shuttle. What a fucking joke.

Still much better value than the lower-thames crossing though.



buzby

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 15, 2021, 08:53:15 PM
Reinstate the Great Central!
Can't Large sections of it are built over now .The Stokport Tiviot Dale line became the M63 (now te M60).
Quote
I was talking about the upgrade in the 2000s when they upgraded it to allow 125mph (a downgrade from the original plan to upgrade it for 140mph, because a British rail project wouldn't be the same without doing a half arsed job).
From this government report about upgrading the WCML again instead of building HS2:
"The WCML renewal and modernisation programme lasted a decade and when it was completed in 2008, it had involved one hundred million person-hours of work. Major works of this nature on live railways are inevitably disruptive to the travelling public.

The WCML programme meant that for over five years, passengers endured route diversions and rail replacement bus services during weekend closures of sections of line. Furthermore, a section of route via Stoke-on-Trent had to be closed entirely for over two months in 2003.
"

Fambo Number Mive

Over £5bn for a road tunnel that will become as congested as the road it is relieving.

We need to stop building new roads and invest in decent public transport.

bgmnts

Literally fuck anywhere that isn't a big city. Just bulldoze it all for the young beautiful wealthy cultured city folk to go from city to city.

Anywhere provincial to be done up to give the city people places to relax away from The City.

Icehaven

Quote from: pigamus on November 15, 2021, 08:10:25 PM
Come on, it's enabled all those jokes about nobody wanting to get to Birmingham quicker, it's worth the money

And get away faster too, albeit to London.

Johnny Foreigner

Leeds is well-connected; loads of trains pass through it. If coming from the York direction, Sheffield is more out-of-the-way than Leeds or even Doncaster.
Travelling from anywhere between Skipton and York will force you to go through Leeds. Leeds to Harrogate is a 40-minute train journey. A tram would take, what, three hours? 

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: buzby on November 15, 2021, 09:25:09 PM
Can't Large sections of it are built over now .The Stokport Tiviot Dale line became the M63 (now te M60).

Yeah but it's an HS2 thread so somebody had to say it.

Fr.Bigley

The problem is Leeds' basic infrastructure framework, a really good motorway system (even if I hate driving it) that can have you either side of the country in 60 mins flat, London in 2 hours and Edinburgh the same. The rail network is second to none in terms of geography, its 150k passengers per day attest to the great links.


It's the inner city and suburbs that have been shafted. I do think topography has a part to play though. Leeds is hillier than Sheffield best on a slighter gradient. Hard to widen road that have been widened and over utilised.

Tough call

purlieu

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 15, 2021, 08:53:15 PM
I was talking about the upgrade in the 2000s when they upgraded it to allow 125mph
Oh, this was fun. My parents live in Hinckley, which had two trains an hour in each direction. The result of the WCML upgrade meant that our branch line was totally cut off from the other tracks at Nuneaton, meaning the train to Coventry was scrapped. A whole year of no trains all weekend while work was done, and the result being we had our hourly service cut in half.

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 15, 2021, 09:16:14 PM
Still much better value than the lower-thames crossing though.


What a time to be alive.

richjj1978

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on November 15, 2021, 06:59:46 PM
It's incredibly stupid, it would only make any kind of sense if they're planning to stop the whole thing. High speed rail is only really worthwhile if you build a lot of it: the time savings are greater, particularly if you're wanting to discourage internal flights, and the cost per mile falls as you build more due to greater expertise, experienced suppliers, design and implementation experience, economies of scale regarding trains and equipment, etc. Just being able to get from London to Manchester a bit faster isn't really much of a gain for the price: you could buy a lot of people Teslas with the money they're spending.

Obviously not surprising in a nation that only ever wants to do things on the cheap, to the least possible extent. Leeds/Bradford/etc needs public transport improvements to complement existing rail. But we need a combination of national and local public transport, they're not an either/or proposition. Otherwise the best you can hope for is a few people driving to parkway stations, not a real shift in transport modality.

Although I like the suggestion on railforums of upgrading the East Coast Main Line instead.

The real reason is probably because the London to Manchester/Glagow traffic on the west coast main line screws local services from Coventry to Wolverhampton via New Street and all the small stops in-between. As well as the trains running from London to Moor Street / Snow Hill that snarl up everything from Worcester to Stratford.

There's not huge traffic going west to east that interferes with train flows.

Ian Drunken Smurf

I was getting genuinely excited about a train service in the UK that might not be shithouse... I'll content myself with the Koralm Tunnel and Semmering Base Tunnel here in Austria that will rock!