UK Strategic Planning

[bickster]

11 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

Like a massive credit card.

actually like paying off a credit card with another credit card. The first price is paid for with bonds usually

[MakemineVanilla]

14 hours ago, villa4europe said:

 

Again, HS2 is not about a quicker train, it's about investment, economic growth and the construction industry 

 

I like Andy Hamilton's suggestion that the first phase should have been from Birmingham to Manchester, because at least when the project is abandoned, the North will be left with something.

 

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

 

I like Andy Hamilton's suggestion that the first phase should have been from Birmingham to Manchester, because at least when the project is abandoned, the North will be left with something.

 

Hmmm, that would actually leave cities like Liverpool abandoned to Express trains to the capital. It wouldn't be as useful as he thinks

[chrisp65]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

It hasn’t “sucked” money away from anywhere. It’s not the subtle (credit to you for that) Plaid argument which I am trying to address, it’s more the maths side side v slightly pejorative language. I completely get and agreed that different choices could have been made instead of HS2. I tend to favour other choices myself. What I dispute is that money has been deducted from Wales transport budget and been spent instead on an English rail line. It has hasn’t been.    What’s been done is a ton of extra money from the UK Government has been allocated to HS2. Because the Gov’ts and transport advisors deem that England and Wales will get transport benefits from HS2, but Scotland and NI won’t, under the Barnett formula those 2 nations have to be given proportionate sums extra for their transport networks.

Im completely ok with an argument that says it would have been a better use of the HS2 money to have been spent instead on Felixstowe or Lampeter or Holyhead or Durham or wherever. That’s fine. It’s the bit about deducting money from Wales or anywhere else that is, as I understand things, not true. 

What about this wording: England and Wales had some money, jointly, and all of it was spent in England. Because of this England and Wales money that was all spent in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland also got some money. The Welsh Affairs Committee in Westminster considered this and recommended Wales should have an uplift in its budget as England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were having additional investment, but the Westminster Government decided this wasn’t necessary, as they would get benefit from HS2 being constructed in the England part of England and Wales. Nobody actually physically removed budget from Wales, they just didn’t get money when England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland did.

Unrelated to the above, the electrification of the GWR railway route was stopped at Cardiff. There wasn’t enough money to electrify through to Swansea so that got cancelled in 2018. They electrified 90% of the route. Completing the work and allowing electric trains to run the entire route would have cost an extra £150 million. Luckily, they started work at the London end, so they got their spend and their upgrade. 

 

 

 

[bickster]

22 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

There wasn’t enough money to electrify through to Swansea so that got cancelled in 2018. They electrified 90% of the route.

Liverpool to Leeds was meant to be electrified and the lines upgraded

Not happening

The fastest train to Manchester from Liverpool takes an hour, its 35 miles. LOndon takes just over 2 hours its 200 miles away

Jesus don't attempt it from Southport whatever you do, you'll travel through the land that time forgot, that line even still has semaphore signals. One Sunday I set off from Formby 5 hours before kick off in Blackburn (which would take me 45 mins in a car). I just about had time for a pint with @blandy before the game and I went by train because I wanted a drink. That journey required 4 changes including an hour wait in Bolton and a train from Bolton to Blackburn that seemed to be pulled by a single donkey

It isn't just Wales that has these projects not happen.

There are also simple cheap projects that should happen but never do

Burscough has two friggin stations, two, its a very small town. It has two stations because it has an East / West line (Southport to Wigan and beyond) and a North South Line (Ormskirk to Preston) To get from  Burscough to Preston, is two trains with a mile walk between the two burscough stations because those lines don't meet, the E/W one goes over the N/S one but get this, they used to meet until Beeching. Beeching axed the connection, the Burscough Curves. They just need to do a bit of remedial work and lay track / signalling, in the grand scheme of things, its pennies. The embankments are still there. SOuthport has a station with tons of platforms but only runs services out on two lines. Its infuriatingly stupid

But none of that means that HS2 is a bad idea either

[chrisp65]

27 minutes ago, bickster said:

Liverpool to Leeds was meant to be electrified and the lines upgraded

Not happening

The fastest train to Manchester from Liverpool takes an hour, its 35 miles. LOndon takes just over 2 hours its 200 miles away

Jesus don't attempt it from Southport whatever you do, you'll travel through the land that time forgot, that line even still has semaphore signals. One Sunday I set off from Formby 5 hours before kick off in Blackburn (which would take me 45 mins in a car). I just about had time for a pint with @blandy before the game and I went by train because I wanted a drink. That journey required 4 changes including an hour wait in Bolton and a train from Bolton to Blackburn that seemed to be pulled by a single donkey

It isn't just Wales that has these projects not happen.

There are also simple cheap projects that should happen but never do

Burscough has two friggin stations, two, its a very small town. It has two stations because it has an East / West line (Southport to Wigan and beyond) and a North South Line (Ormskirk to Preston) To get from  Burscough to Preston, is two trains with a mile walk between the two burscough stations because those lines don't meet, the E/W one goes over the N/S one but get this, they used to meet until Beeching. Beeching axed the connection, the Burscough Curves. They just need to do a bit of remedial work and lay track / signalling, in the grand scheme of things, its pennies. The embankments are still there. SOuthport has a station with tons of platforms but only runs services out on two lines. Its infuriatingly stupid

But none of that means that HS2 is a bad idea either

It absolutely isn’t just Wales, it’s just that’s the bit I know about, I’ve tried to stress that.

It’s exactly my point, all those projects that lack £150 million, or £2 billion or £5 billion, or the building of 400,000 new homes, everywhere, all over the place. I would suggest they offer more levelling up and more of a boost than a single £80 billion project that boosts a very limited number of places where one of those places… is London.

 

[bickster]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It absolutely isn’t just Wales, it’s just that’s the bit I know about, I’ve tried to stress that.

It’s exactly my point, all those projects that lack £150 million, or £2 billion or £5 billion, or the building of 400,000 new homes, everywhere, all over the place. I would suggest they offer more levelling up and more of a boost than a single £80 billion project that boosts a very limited number of places where one of those places… is London.

 

Totally disagree

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

Totally disagree

Well I guess we can all come back in the year 2050 and review.

But a sustained 16% dip in passenger numbers from pre covid levels would see a negative return on the £80 billion investment. Right now, February 2023, we’re more like 25% down on pre covid rail use. So I guess we’ve got to hope people will always need to commute and we don’t get a taste for working from home.

Spending £80 billion on becoming more energy self sufficient, reducing energy costs for every business the length and breadth? Far more equitable. I bet we could even give a good proportion of those commuters a free ipad with teams and zoom pre installed.

[blandy]

20 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

the £5 billion taken from Wales transport budgets

.

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Nobody actually removed budget from Wales

That's it. That was my comment, originally, Chris.

A lot of the other stuff you posted about all this I agree with, or at least sympathise with your view.

As @bickster and you and others have said, the rail network in West Lancs, for one example is dreadful. And that's without going into the abject record of Avanti West Coast, Northern Rail and so on, in actually having trains turn up at all, or turn up on time.

As you've highlighted there are so many places which you (and I) think are in greater need of investment now, and have been for years. Like you said earlier in the week, it ought to be possible to do both - it's only political will from the current gov't that's stopping it. And because it is possible to do both, that's why no money has been removed from anyone's budget. Parts of England and parts of Wales will benefit from the freeing up of the current lines when HS2 comes on line. Some more than if they had their own local improvements, some less and some not at all. At the very least those untouched parts, like with Scotland and NI, ought to have money allocated to them as a priority.

The government knows there is a major problem - remember all that Northern Powerhouse bollex, and the Midlands Engine. All just faded away and scaled right back. What does Cornwall and the South West get from HS2, or the North East. The South East gains, Manchester area gains (eventually) and then the Crewe area. Places like where you, or I or Bickster live maybe get a very small benefit from it all, if any.

[Lichfield Dean]

6 hours ago, limpid said:

Cost me £40 return last week with an anytime return.

Maybe it's still better value if you buy well in advance or something. That does sound more like the prices I remember.

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

.

That's it. That was my comment, originally, Chris.

A lot of the other stuff you posted about all this I agree with, or at least sympathise with your view.

As @bickster and you and others have said, the rail network in West Lancs, for one example is dreadful. And that's without going into the abject record of Avanti West Coast, Northern Rail and so on, in actually having trains turn up at all, or turn up on time.

As you've highlighted there are so many places which you (and I) think are in greater need of investment now, and have been for years. Like you said earlier in the week, it ought to be possible to do both - it's only political will from the current gov't that's stopping it. And because it is possible to do both, that's why no money has been removed from anyone's budget. Parts of England and parts of Wales will benefit from the freeing up of the current lines when HS2 comes on line. Some more than if they had their own local improvements, some less and some not at all. At the very least those untouched parts, like with Scotland and NI, ought to have money allocated to them as a priority.

The government knows there is a major problem - remember all that Northern Powerhouse bollex, and the Midlands Engine. All just faded away and scaled right back. What does Cornwall and the South West get from HS2, or the North East. The South East gains, Manchester area gains (eventually) and then the Crewe area. Places like where you, or I or Bickster live maybe get a very small benefit from it all, if any.

Well those are defo my words quoted back at me. The first one, I was just plain wrong. The second one has some pretty tight quoting to remove some context. If three people take all the money from a pot for four people, has the fourth person had money taken off them? But I think I’m getting hung up on my own pedantry.

I think any payback this project will bring east or west of the immediate stations along the route, in excess of the original cost, will be minimal. But until we can look back on ten years of it being fully open and what businesses sprung up where, it will just be opinions. 

 

 

 

[limpid]

18 hours ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Maybe it's still better value if you buy well in advance or something. That does sound more like the prices I remember.

Bought on the Monday. Two singles. No restriction on the return, but outbound was off peak. @The_Revwasn't driving it though.

[blandy]

17 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Well those are defo my words quoted back at me. The first one, I was just plain wrong. The second one has some pretty tight quoting to remove some context. If three people take all the money from a pot for four people, has the fourth person had money taken off them? But I think I’m getting hung up on my own pedantry.

I think any payback this project will bring east or west of the immediate stations along the route, in excess of the original cost, will be minimal. But until we can look back on ten years of it being fully open and what businesses sprung up where, it will just be opinions.

The selective quoting - I removed the "physically" before removed, because no one moves money physically any more (apart from G4s bank vans, obvs). The rest of your post I didn't quote just for brevity and because I either (as I said) agreed or sympathised with. there was no intention to misrepresent. Sorry if I did.

It's not true to say Wales hasn't had any money from HS2

Quote

Wales has received about £755m as a result of HS2-linked funding so far, according to the Welsh Government.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51460737

In the longer article there's a lot of comment or reporting or opinion which echoes what you've posted, but I'm (perhaps too much) just here, talking about the finance stuff and numbers side of it. It's not a wholly equitable proportionate spend, England being 19 times the population of Wales but so far more than 19 times the money spent has been in England, so comment about that is valid. What isn't (as I understand it) valid is for people to claim that either money has been taken away, or no extra money has been given to or spent on Wales due to HS2. Like I say, I sympathise with views around who benefits the most, who doesn't benefit as much or at all and how it might have been better spent - that's a different subject to the one I initially jumped on, which was the "money taken away" one. The one about how much and where and how - I broadly agree with you, so not much I can add, there.

[chrisp65]

In the article you’ve quoted, it says Wales will lose £150 million a year every year due to HS2. So that £750 Million will hopefully offset the first 5 years of that loss.

Hopefully they sent a thank you card for receiving 15% of the compensation they could have had.

HS2 will perpetuate the current problem. This is a project with London at its heart, it starts in London, it gets people to or from London quicker. If it works it gets more people to and from London from a greater geographical distance. This can only increase London’s GDP, which will increase the dependence on London from everywhere else which is then supposed to be grateful that London may distribute some crumbs around the rest of the country. Providing of course, they don’t need a King Charles Monorail to Kew or a Prince Andrew Grand Sewer first.

When Westminster does turn its mind to the next truly big project, what are the chances of it being to help Bristol (access London), or Norwich (access London), or Hastings (access London). Just like the billions for Crossrail, or the billions for Eurostar, or the billions for expansion at Heathrow it will essentially be about London.

I know there are quoted cases of companies already pushing operations out of London and this is being touted as proof of concept. But are we really to believe they’ve moved a decade early in anticipation and that long term people will be working in Crewe and commuting there from their London home? I’d love to see the wage structure that spawns that lifestyle choice. If the project had started in Edinburgh or Leeds, if they kept Crewe on programme but delayed Old Oak Common then I could believe in it.

Being super sceptical, I’d also point out that its odd a project primarily about freeing up capacity and track around middle england, and absolutely not about how fast you can get to London, is (from HS2’s own website) commissioning new bullet train technology capable of 225mph for the new dedicated London track. That feels like a strange priority to spend billions on, if the aim is to help get freight and commuters from Shrewsbury past Wolverhampton.

[blandy]

51 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

in the article you’ve quoted, it says Wales will lose £150 million a year every year due to HS2

It quotes the Prof as saying that yes. It also quotes the DfT as saying it'll benefit N Wales by 50 million a year. I have no idea which, if either, is right. I suspect neither will be right - it's pretty impossible to predict the future, and how work patterns will change and all that. I'm just as, if not more sceptical of the claims for the future financial benefit for parts of or all of England. When was the last time anyone accurately predicted anything of this nature? And when does anyone ever go back and say "over the last 10 years, we've measured the benefit of [whatever infrastructure] and found that the prediction made by that Professor, or that Department was pretty much right or completely wrong" - it doesn't happen.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I know there are quoted cases of companies already pushing operations out of London and this is being touted as proof of concept

On the London thing, and this isn't meant to be a repudiation of what you say, because undoubtedly London is far too powerful and influential and over-represented, if that's the right word - the UK is too centralised...

...but. Look at the M40. I dunno exactly when it opened, but it was in my lifetime and along its route loads of stuff has sprung up, towns expanded, business parks, houses you name it. And towns and villages have been boosted by people moving there (to spend their money) because they could now commute to London in an hour or whatever. It's not a complete analogy, as obviously the motorway has plenty junctions and the train won't (afaik). But for example, someone could live near to a station and commute to and from that London but be spending their wages in a warwickshire town or a cheshire town or etc. perhaps, in the same way?

[blandy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Being super sceptical, I’d also point out that its odd a project primarily about freeing up capacity and track around middle england, and absolutely not about how fast you can get to London, is (from HS2’s own website) commissioning new bullet train technology capable of 225mph for the new dedicated London track. That feels like a strange priority to spend billions on, if the aim is to help get freight and commuters from Shrewsbury past Wolverhampton.

And also,  yes, the claimed benefits and primary reasons touted for HS2 have been at best muddled and mixed. It's been speed to London, it's been "to Boost Manchester and Leeds and Birmingham" it's been "to free up capacity on local lines" it's been to move freight from the roads...all sorts. I guess it'll likely do all of that to some degree or other. Same as Greener transport and climate change is another "benefit" as is "job creation in [areas]" and just "modernising Britain's rail network"...

The costs are obviously the actual expenditure, but also the people's homes demolished, ancient woodland destroyed, local noise from trains, loss of habitat for wildlife, loss of farmland and so on. And the model for it to actually work well - if it's a Tory model, pure market forces privatised venture stuff, who's going to really be the biggest beneficiaries? Not the likes of us, for sure, not the people whose taxes pay for it.

[chrisp65]

14 minutes ago, blandy said:

It quotes the Prof as saying that yes. It also quotes the DfT as saying it'll benefit N Wales by 50 million a year. I have no idea which, if either, is right. I suspect neither will be right - it's pretty impossible to predict the future, and how work patterns will change and all that. I'm just as, if not more sceptical of the claims for the future financial benefit for parts of or all of England. When was the last time anyone accurately predicted anything of this nature? And when does anyone ever go back and say "over the last 10 years, we've measured the benefit of [whatever infrastructure] and found that the prediction made by that Professor, or that Department was pretty much right or completely wrong" - it doesn't happen.

Yes, it says North Wales will benefit by £50 million, it then says from Westminster Govt’s own figures, South Wales will lose out by £200 million, hence my figure of a net loss of £150 million. It’s a projection, no idea if its right.

Elsewhere in the same article, it states Wales has 11% of all the rail track, but 2% of the budget. 2%. 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

Yes, it says North Wales will benefit by £50 million, it then says from Westminster Govt’s own figures, South Wales will lose out by £200 million, hence my figure of a net loss of £150 million. It’s a projection, no idea if its right.

Elsewhere in the same article, it states Wales has 11% of all the rail track, but 2% of the budget. 2%. 

Yeah it does.

I hope you don't think I'm arguing that Wales shouldn't have whatever the right amount of money spent on rail etc. I'm certainly not. On the amount of track how do costs work out - where's the expense - I mean if you have a large mostly rural area with long stretches of track between junctions, signal boxes, stations etc is the cost lower per mile to maintain all that, because it's actually the complicated bits that demand the time and effort, or is it like if you have a more packed, less rural area, like say the West Midlands, with loads of signal boxes, junctions and stations, that that is cheaper per mile to maintain?

So to re-emphasise. I agree with you that Wales (or Lowestoft or Cornwall or the North etc.) needs more focus on sorting out the creaking rail and other infrastructure and London perhaps should get back in the queue for a while, if there's not enough money to go round.

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

I mean if you have a large mostly rural area with long stretches of track between junctions, signal boxes, stations etc is the cost lower per mile to maintain all that, because it's actually the complicated bits that demand the time and effort, or is it like if you have a more packed, less rural area, like say the West Midlands, with loads of signal boxes, junctions and stations, that that is cheaper per mile to maintain?

Yes but also the rating speed of the track also has an impact, a big chunk of Wales track mileage is not high speed