Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[rodders0223]

Murder Island. What a load of dog wank.

[villa4europe]

17 minutes ago, sidcow said:

When the nation has ground to a complete standstill in 15 years time I don't think putting forward as an excuse "well people stopped using trains for a bit in that Coronavirus pandemic" is going to wash.

And for the 10,000th time it's NOT about getting to London 20 minutes quicker, it's about releasing capacity on the rails for more local services and freight lines.  The trains are packed to capacity and they can't run any more on the rails.  

This argument about being hardly any time saving really pisses me off.  It's about creating massive additional capacity on the railways so we don't have to keep flying/diving/carrying stuff on lorries and instead transport us and stuff in a really environmentally friendly was and as it happens extremely quickly between places.

Before Coronavirus we were creaking.  Look at the number of stories about chaos on the tracks.   Coronavirus is a mere blip on the journey.  In 5 years we'll be creaking again, HS2 even as planned won't be here anywhere near before that time.

completely agree

would add that its only scratching the surface but its maybe the biggest attempt at de-londoncentricisng us they've ever done, they want young professionals who have a better sense for value when it comes to cost of living out of the capital

theres also a lot more money sloshing around this than just the trainline itself, brum alone has this £10bn big city plan, how much of that isnt invested if HS2 isnt coming? i would guess close to half, coventry and even wolverhampton are doing the same, i would guess bits of solihull too and then the northern cities, its feeding the construction industry thats for sure

Edit - FWIW at least a couple of years ago brum was ranked 1st in the country for young professionals, it was Bristol for a long time and it might not be top anymore but brum is definitely a young city 

Edited November 18, 2021 by villa4europe

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

brum alone has this £10bn big city plan, how much of that isnt invested if HS2 isnt coming? i would guess close to half, coventry and even wolverhampton are doing the same, i would guess bits of solihull too and then the northern cities, its feeding the construction industry thats for sure

Yes, it's already driving big investments in Brum 10 years before it's even due to start.   That will be ramping up more and more as it gets closer.

There are already, and will be more big businesses moving headquarters to Brum and all cite HS2 as a reason.

Leeds will miss out on a lot of that now, one of the reasons why they are really annoyed about this.

Brum has probably come out of this better than most.  We're already getting our HS2 Station/Line.   We're now almost guaranteed to get Midland Rail hub which will see new lines into Moor Street and a massive expansion of Moor Street plus a new platform at Snow Hill.

How many cities outside of London have 4 major city centre railway stations?  It makes Brum a hugely well connected city and a big advantage over others.

[villa4europe]

The bad news is that the project is so big that its attracted construction companies like skanska, strabag and dragados...

At ground level though its at least a lot of jobs, Curzon Street alone is forecasted as 1k people 

[The Fun Factory]

31 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

they're doing an absolutely shocking job of getting that message across

i would guess the vast majority of people still think this is about brummies getting to london 20 minutes quicker when they go for shopping trips

The messaging from the start was wrong. They were promoting like you say a short saving of time from Brum to London. The real idea was to increase inter city capacity to free up the old  lines for more shorter distance journeys. Plus all the nimbys and the high cost of doing anything in this country perhaps it was inevitable it would be bodged. I am still quite surprised they actually went ahead with two thirds of the project and not bottled out of it. 

[Davkaus]

In the local press in Nottingham, they're portraying it as a win that the impact on the city will be reduced. Bonkers.

[KentVillan]

4 hours ago, sidcow said:

In what way?

The govt is cutting overall planned spending, but trying to present this as a transfer of resources from one project to another. Scrapping part of the HS2 line isn’t freeing up the budget being claimed, they’re doing the old double counting trick.

That’s my understanding, anyway, but happy to be corrected - it’s so hard to work out because this govt announce things in advance without the necessary detail to interpret what’s really happening (and then U turn).

[The Fun Factory]

It is a disgrace they cancelled the electrification of the midland line, now it is back on. The snow hill line is still dirty diesel and they scrapped electrification from Cardiff to Swansea. How does that square up with decarbonisation?

[Chindie]

Just now, The Fun Factory said:

It is a disgrace they cancelled the electrification of the midland line, now it is back on. The snow hill line is still dirty diesel and they scrapped electrification from Cardiff to Swansea. How does that square up with decarbonisation?

Cost

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The environment.

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, KentVillan said:

The govt is cutting overall planned spending, but trying to present this as a transfer of resources from one project to another. Scrapping part of the HS2 line isn’t freeing up the budget being claimed, they’re doing the old double counting trick.

That’s my understanding, anyway, but happy to be corrected - it’s so hard to work out because this govt announce things in advance without the necessary detail to interpret what’s really happening (and then U turn).

Oh, there is no way that they're going to spend the same amount, there will be savings.  And a lot of the investment IS already committed.  But nevertheless they have done exactly what (national London) press have been saying and cancelled the project and spent more on local services and now being attacked for that.  Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[villa4europe]

4 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Plus all the nimbys and the high cost of doing anything in this country perhaps it was inevitable it would be bodged. I am still quite surprised they actually went ahead with two thirds of the project and not bottled out of it. 

Its what I do for a living, I could go in to long boring stories as to why cost plans are usually utter shite resulting in most projects being over budget 

They usually also don't include contingencies within budgets

I did one about 3 weeks ago for a project in rotterdam that was £75m +/- 30%, we have to do stupid stuff like take equipment rates from 15 years ago and adjust them for inflation, give it a year, price increases, detail design, some risk transfers from the client to us and most importantly actual quotes from suppliers and it'll be a £120m project 

HS2 is the same just on a much much grander scale, it happens every time 

I've had days in my office where I've been given 2 hours to give a non binding estimated price +/- 50% for a concrete tsunami wall in Papa New Guinea...if we'd have developed that further that would have taken some explanation as to why the price changed come the contract signing 

[The Fun Factory]

5 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Oh, there is no way that they're going to spend the same amount, there will be savings.  And a lot of the investment IS already committed.  But nevertheless they have done exactly what (national London) press have been saying and cancelled the project and spent more on local services and now being attacked for that.  Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I think the people who live oop north would say why can't they have both? It shouldn't be a zero sum game. It would have been like London doing Crossrail and never bothering with HS1 to the channel tunnel.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

And for the 10,000th time it's NOT about getting to London 20 minutes quicker, it's about releasing capacity on the rails for more local services and freight lines.  The trains are packed to capacity and they can't run any more on the rails.  

 

It was to start with, then it was about freeing up current capacity for freight, then it was about levelling up and northern regeneration, so to be fair it's had all kinds of justifications attached to it. ALl of which had some level of merit, but there's never been a coherent kind of single message as to why we needed it.

[villa4europe]

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

It was to start with, then it was about freeing up current capacity for freight, then it was about levelling up and northern regeneration, so to be fair it's had all kinds of justifications attached to it. ALl of which had some level of merit, but there's never been a coherent kind of single message as to why we needed it.

Deloitte have a decent report on infrastructure as economical stimulus 

Ze germans definitely do it, they seem to be digging half the country up for roads and train tracks 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

How many cities outside of London have 4 major city centre railway stations?  It makes Brum a hugely well connected city and a big advantage over others.

Birmingham city centre currently has one major railway station. Moor Street and Snow Hill are not major by any stretch of any imagination

[sidcow]

30 minutes ago, bickster said:

Birmingham city centre currently has one major railway station. Moor Street and Snow Hill are not major by any stretch of any imagination

Yeah, read my post again.

After Midland Rail hub Snow Hill will have 4 platforms.  It's already major non London station for a "third station" with passenger numbers way ahead of a typical suburban station and will only get busier.   Moor Street will have I think 6 or 7 platforms. 

Edited November 18, 2021 by sidcow

[bickster]

33 minutes ago, sidcow said:

After Midland Rail hub Snow Hill will have 4 platforms.  It's already major non London station for a "third station"

It really isn't, Snow Hill is an Interchage station, it is serviced by West Midlands trains and one service to London by Chiltern. It is predominantly a local line station. Its passenger numbers are about 5 million a year

By way of contrast, Liverpool Central has 3 platforms (on two levels), it is not a main station, its again a local line service (Northern and Wirral lines) it has 15 million passengers a year. Similarly Liverpool Moorfields has three platforms, that has 7 million passengers a year, it is serviced by the same two lines as Central. Neither of them are major stations or main stations. In terms of passenger numbers Moorfields and Moor Street are roughly the same

Very few places have more than one mainline station. Manchester is about the only city I can think of with Piccadilly and Victoria and even then Victoria is mainly local trains and the two stations exist because of the peculiarities of E-W / N-S networks Birmingham will have two with HS2. The politicians and planners telling you it will have four are wrong, it's pure hype

 

[sidcow]

17 minutes ago, bickster said:

It really isn't, Snow Hill is an Interchage station, it is serviced by West Midlands trains and one service to London by Chiltern. It is predominantly a local line station. Its passenger numbers are about 5 million a year

By way of contrast, Liverpool Central has 3 platforms (on two levels), it is not a main station, its again a local line service (Northern and Wirral lines) it has 15 million passengers a year. Similarly Liverpool Moorfields has three platforms, that has 7 million passengers a year, it is serviced by the same two lines as Central. Neither of them are major stations or main stations. In terms of passenger numbers Moorfields and Moor Street are roughly the same

Very few places have more than one mainline station. Manchester is about the only city I can think of with Piccadilly and Victoria and even then Victoria is mainly local trains and the two stations exist because of the peculiarities of E-W / N-S networks Birmingham will have two with HS2. The politicians and planners telling you it will have four are wrong, it's pure hype

 

Snow Hill right now has more passangers than stations like Bolton, Leicester, Norwich and Wolverhampton.  To say it's not a major train station is just nonsense. 

Moor Street will have 6 platforms and services to all sorts of far places after MRH, mainly East Midlands (far better and faster connections than the current New Street ones) and The South West. 

It's a bloody silly discussion really but I'm really not sure how anyone can say these will not be 4 major stations. 

Edited November 18, 2021 by sidcow

[bickster]

39 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Snow Hill right now has more passangers than stations like Bolton, Leicester, Norwich and Wolverhampton.  To say it's not a major train station is just nonsense. 

You aren't even comparing like for like.

Let me tell you a story about Bolton and Northern Rail. I once went to Blackburn away on a Sunday. My route was Formby -> Southport -> Wigan Wallgate -> Bolton -> Blackburn. It took 4 hours, I can drive it in 45 minutes. In fact I could have driven it, in the time I was waiting for my connection in Bolton. There's a huge reason northern towns have low passenger numbers, the service is shit. None of those trains were late

[villa4europe]

Why English people don't learn foreign languages... 

I've just had an hour long lesson on why a skirt is masculine

Get in the **** sea