Wow! An incredible amount of information to assimilate there, explained in the most expert way, but nonetheless, my mind is literally blown! The weekly episode of Green Signals has definitely become my 'fix' for current issues in the rail industry. Excellent work Nigel, Richard and Steph! 👍👍
Probably the most fascinating talk so far and they've all been pretty fascinating. I have to say the more I hear about the thought and care that went into the design of HS2 and the lack of thought and care that went into the cancellation of 2A and 2B, the more I despair. Still let's keep positive, I'd love to hear more about how HS was built around the world and the mistakes made and how HS2 was designed to correct those mistakes. Thanks!
Excellent discussion! I’ve not yet finished the episode but my view is that the Government have been so short sighted it’s unbelievable. It seems to me the whole point of HS2 was to futureproof. Yes it’ll cost us now but we’ll reap the benefits in the future. I despair at the thought of what’ll happen next I shall carry on listening later!
I’ve now finished the episode and it was truly fantastic. Thank you so much to you and to Professor Andrew for the calm, considered and incredibly informative discussion. I am a swearer but I try not to online but gosh I was swearing so much about the “client”’s lack of understanding The phrase “customer is always right” certainly does not apply in this context. Their absolute failure to understand how critical Phase 2b is quite unbelievable. It’ll cost the country more in the future. I despair honestly. Now with the GE and likely change of Government will Phase 2 be resurrected I wonder?
My goodness, I emerged from watching this in a foul mood! I cannot believe that anyone of note in the government could watch this and still think that Phase 2A of HS2 can be abolished without severe consequences, and more than that, without undermining the whole point of the project in the first place. As you pointed out Nigel, for once, for once, we had an infrastructure project that was designed to be, as far as can ever be done, future proofed! It irritates me beyond belief how shortsighted some of out lords and masters are!
A month ago we had a new government who inherited a 1945 situation: *1)* 1.5m homes short; *2)* £5 trn in debt; *3)* Existing rail is a shambles (being nationalized); *4)* Roads full of potholes; *5)* Army needs expanding: *6)* 35,000 short of policemen; *7)* NHS falling apart; *8)* Schools underfunded; *9)* Homelessness rife; *10)* Etc. The new gvmt will not be bringing phase 2 back from the dead. The money is just not there even if they wanted to, which they do not. They do look more focused on local & regional rail.
Excellent conversation. Andrew McN is spot on. A great pity that politicians never have sufficient attention spans to listen, understand and then make rational decisions. Sure, HS2 Ltd hasn't done itself many favours re cost control, but with Sunak's bonkers decision the business case for what's left of HS2 is now shot to bits. WCML is now to be burdened with a half-baked new junction at Handsacre, just a few miles wrong side of its weakest link, the Shugborough bottleneck, without any investment whatever committed to do something about it. NR costed for DfT a Stafford Bypass (Colwich-Norton Bridge) over ten years ago but that got locked away in the cupboard. Crazy.
Best build 2A and save on the Old Oak Common to Euston tunnel. OOC is better connected than Euston. But if 2A is built the HS2 trains need to be tilting to maximise WCML running. On the original HS2 plan Liverpool as on HS2 track until Crewe, 40 miles from the city, then on the WCML. Liverpool was about 30 mins slower to London than adjacent Manchester, which current the have time parity. Most of the time to Liverpool from London is on the WCML. Why? The HS2 trains did not tilt, they would be running slower than the existing trains serving the city. Obviously using tilting HS2 trains would make it faster. Take away some bottlenecks and faster again. So terminating HS2 at Crewe does make some sense. A bypass tunnel under Crewe even more sense again.
I would focus on the 1st Phase of the HS2 London to Birmingham. Once the trains are running (Money coming in). Then carry on with the other half of the HS2. Full Teams Ahead . Once finished it will be a masterpiece of Railway. Regards 🇿🇦.
Having the client (the government) provide adequate contingent funding will always be a problem for multi-year schemes when annularity is a treasury restriction. That means any of the budget not invoiced by the end of March is lost for the project and from the DfT for that financial year (April to March). These funds can rarely be spent on other pending fast delivery projects unless funding is relinquished mid-year and this underspend (construction) but overspend (design and admin extension or increase in workload / low productivity) blocks many worthy smaller capital funded projects for the following year when additional allocation for the delayed critical project is needed. It would be a lot easier if the treasury were to provide the funds to an escrow account facility and the treasury / PAC audited it two years later. The normal multi-layer internal financial controls would still be present. 😎😇
Can you run two HS2 services and two WCML services from Manchester to London / near London if you’re sharing the Manchester to Litchfield section capacity, especially if HS2 prices are 30% more? Birmingham to London would be much more interesting as it would use completely separate lines. Will the government cancel the direct voyager service and force Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton terminating services to miss out Birmingham New Street and Birmingham International stations to stifle the competition. Or are these services together with North West services (Liverpool, Preston, Glasgow, Edinburgh) going to terminate at Birmingham and Crewe and force a change to expensive HS2 rolling stock? In that case, shouldn’t they develop Litchfield as the HS2 terminus / interchange point? HS2 might bring in the more costly, 2 hour longer service to Central London for many? Will HS2 allow standing on its phase 1 service as is often the case for current trains? HS2, the speedy train company have to announce “We have called the BTP, who will take an hour to gather at Old Oak Common to eject these Bolshi commuters, trying to get home to their families, from this service so there will be a delay of two hours for this 5:30pm service”.
Manchester to London services will be shared between the WCML and the HS2 route as the service provider for both the WCML and HS2 will be Avanti West Coast trains and all Avanti hi speed services from Manchester to London Euston will use the HS2 route stated in offisial HS2 docoments
Hi guys, I viewed the TSC performance and this podcast. I am completely onside that we must get to Crewe. Maybe a question for a future show is--- suppose Phase 2b is dead. How does capacity stack up on the WCML north of Crewe? Without 2b, do you really need to go to Weaver Junction? Shades of sixty years ago, I know.
Thanks Peter. I suspect the 'top level' answer is that without HS2 Phase 2a especially, then we will run out of capacity along the Trent Valley at some point - though exactly when and where depends on a few variables. But that's not really the point is it? If we know we are going to run out (as Grant Shapps himself once said) by the 2030's we need to address it now.
@@GreenSignals I think I am making two points really. The first is that if you want to revisit the economic case for 2a without 2b now, as I agree we should, then the study area needs to extend at least to Warrington and Manchester, The second is that the results of that need to give a strong indication of whether the mainly two track section up to Weaver Jct will work with no Golborne.
Great discussion once again. Big mistake not starting HS2 in the north. Issue is sunak only thinking of cost and not whats good for the country. Agree we need 2a but for scotland we need up to preston too! Keep those guests coming and maybe network rail to explain why so many signal and infrastructure issues on east coast.
Not sure I agree that starting HS2 in the north would have been the right thing to do. One of it's primary objectives was to support levelling up (closing the gap on GVA per capita) and connecting with London is important for that. The Golborne link would have been such a boon for north west services and Scotland but sadly, that was canned first. Great idea re East Coast. We have plans for guests from Network Rail - so watch this space! And thanks for such great feedback. It is much appreciated.
I'm not entirely convinced that Sunak's decision was to save money in the short term. Surely he and his advisors could see that with his party's dwindling popularity defeat at this year's General Election was becoming a certainty and that by Cancelling 2A he could buy votes from the Northerners by using the savings to promise a lot more smaller projects, more quickly, across the north.
I come to this a few months late. I am moving towards an idea that HS2 should simply take the Birmingham fast services from Euston, plus a smaller flow - maybe Chester/Holyhead? The rest of the existing Pendolino services should perhaps continue to use Euston WCML. On a related note, what is planned for the current Pendolino services to Wolverhampton? Will they have to continue to use the classic route?
I'm afraid that rather ignores the fact that the single most important revenue flow in the country is Manchester - London. Need to protect that. Not sure why Chester / Holyhead gets such treatment. Irrelevant really in the context of the rest of the WCML services.
@@GreenSignals That's one view, but the point that you made is that the Manchester service needs to be protected, as do the freight paths. My thought, though rather at a tangent is this - if there is a capacity problem, why not put the HS2 services into a separate area (i.e. not using WCML at all if possible) until the capacity issues have been eased? I picked the Holyhead service purely as an example of a less critical service as far as WCML throughput is concerned. It could equally well be another service pattern that has less critical requirements than the Manchester service. I think we are all saying that the current situation is unworkable. I don't see that putting the Manchester service at risk of having to be reduced from three an hour just because of junction issues and Old Oak Common issues is a viable solution.
Try reading Railway periodicals and watch the mass amount of official HS2 videos on the subject, Pendolino trains will not use the HS2 route, these will be new build specialised trains and Chester/Holyhead services will not be able to use the HS2 route and Wolverhampton service with no access to the HS2 route will use the existing WCML route either going through B/Ham New Street Station or divert at Stechford in Birmingham abd travel through Aston, Perry Barr Hampstead,and Bescot and into Wolverhampton
As a Stafforshire lad, please, please will you start calling Colwich Junction Col-wich, not Colitch! There is a place near Nottingham called so but spelt Colwick!
The main problem for the layman such as me with HS2 has been the joke costings from the get-go. It smells of "bait and switch" tactics being used on the taxpayer, even if that's not the truth. It's easy to say that builders will over-engineer the solution when asked to guarantee their work, but why doesn't the industry figure that out and provide specs for contractors to build to accordingly? It's fine to blame the client for constant changes - perfectly valid criticism for sure - but equally as a taxpayer I do want these construction guys on the hook for the performance of what they build. Otherwise, we'll get a bodged-up cheapie still at a high cost. Nobody ever supplies government at low cost: they're exceptionally poor buyers who are there for the taking, and gone in 4 years anyway. We the great unwashed were quoted around £35bn for the whole thing, now it's £105bn for a small part of it. Nobody believes even the little bit we're getting will come in at £105bn, so the credibility of the industry with the man in the street is shot. The rail industry has to take the wrap for it - managing the client is a massive part of any business, and rail fails that test. When the rail industry can bring a project in even vaguely on budget, they might be trusted to undertake a vast one such as this. The fact the HS2 trains will have drivers is testimony to the lack of technical ambition but vast overrun of cost that makes projects such as these sitting ducks for critics. Even the name is misleading - we were sold speed, then when the trains were dropped from 250mph to whatever they'll end up at, we were told it was always all about capacity and the speed was a red herring. Fine - but call it HC2 then, and perhaps build it with four tracks, not two!! For all the vast expertise and love of railways on this video, rail still accounts for a tiny fraction of passenger and freight movements. Roads are what pays the country's bills, not rail, and thus rail has radically to improve its cost-effectiveness from construction to operations to win the hearts and minds of the taxpayers and to be seriously critical to an increasingly WFH population. All that said, thank you for a very interesting, informed and calm discussion. Very enjoyable and informative. 👍
Thanks - some thought provoking comments there. We'll pick some of those up in a future episode - especially your last comment about rail accounting for a tiny fraction of passenger and freight movements. When you look at the numbers for trips over, say, 5 miles in length, the picture starts to shift dramatically. So we'll definitely come back to that point. Glad you enjoyed though and that it stimulated such considered comments. Cheers. Richard
@@GreenSignalsappreciate the response - thank you! I write as a "critical friend" to the railway - someone with zero involvement in it, but who sees a service that didn't work under nationalisation, and often doesn't work under [quasi] privatisation, either. Appreciate that BR worked miracles within its budgets, but politics will never put the necessary resources into rail since there are very few votes in it compared to building a new hospital, so the service is always make-do-and-mend when in the public sector. Ironically, when politicians do pour resources in, as with HS2, that doesn't work either, so they can't win! 🤷🏻♂ Genuinely interested to hear these well-informed discussions, so please take my comments in that vein. I'd like to see the panel challenge the shibboleths of rail a little more and question everything. An industry that doesn't appear even to have driverless test trains running, (as a business response to staff shortages, improved rolling stock availability etc.), doesn't seem to be one that's pushing itself outside its comfort zone to any degree. (Perhaps they have this technology all done and ready to go, and it's only union pressure that prevents it being implemented?) Look forward to future episodes! 👍
One of the principal reasons for keeping fully automatic operation of any train service in a low key (or too difficult file) is the fear that public perception of the safety compromises is just not worth the effort. It would be relatively easy to make the HS train operation fully automatic BUT Joe Public, having alighted from the Clapham Omnibus, expects a fully trained competent human being to start the things and be there to take over when the brown stuff enters the turbo propelled rotating object. Value for money? Very doubtful.
@@Naladin1you're quite right. The unions will portray automation as "putting profit before people", railway management hasn't the vision or technical know-how even to consider it, and the media will rip it to shreds; automated trains won't get out of the siding once the Daily Mail has finished with the idea. The Aussies are already running ginormous driverless freight trains, and an innovative country - probably in Asia - will figure this out for sure. Drivers have only been operating the doors on various London underground lines since the late 1960s with zero accidents due to their not driving the train, but I guess 55 years isn't quite long enough to truly test it. If you were to design a transit system capable of being fully automatic, you'd draw a railway. Only railway management can't see that. I marvel and despair in equal quantities at the complete lack of ambition of HS2 to innovate in any area other its own brand of project management. One of the key problems with rail from the customers' point of view is cancellations, often caused by staff shortages, often very late in the day. Whilst automation saves some needlessly high salaries for relatively simple and tedious jobs, far more importantly, it removes the bottleneck of staff shortages whilst increasing the capability to utilise rolling stock more intensively. Automatic trains work on Sundays without a murmur or considering that their terms and conditions are under intolerable threat. The public will be fed the notion that a driver will actually be in control on HS2, when by the time a human running a 400 ton train at 200+mph has perceived a lorry laying across the line two miles distant, he'll have around 30 - 35 seconds to bring the train to a complete stop, assuming his reactions are pretty good. With signalling moved into the cab, (as it is apparently to be on HS2 - until they cancel that, too), the driver is pointless. It's not a technical leap to connect said signalling directly to the fly-by-wire controls of the train for a full autopilot experience. The driver would then be better employed serving sandwiches in the buffet car, helping passengers and catching fare dodgers.
As a former pre construction manager working for a national Contractor I can assure you Contractors do not provide specifications- designers do. Neither are specifications over engineered. They are engineered to a factor of safety which is backed by the insurance industry. Regarding HS2 I'm told nobody did a cost budget. I'm told the go-ahead if it could be built for 32.70 billion so HS2 said it could.
It's great to get an insight as to why your industry fails..... Rail (in the UK) hasn't really done technology and capability development for over a century. Rather than polling other railway people in other countries HS2 should have been looking at other industries. If you look at dynamic industries they don't worry about future proofing because today's solutions will be obsolete anyway in the near future. Ergo there shouldn't be as much worrying about the need to build a second line at a later date when the first one reaches capacity, the first one validates your business model and gives you the licence to build the second and many more. Much better than a half built "gold plated" solution which then puts everyone off building high speed rail for a generation. HS2 should really have been a rolling programme to put a high-speed rail line to the top 20 population centres, the first line built should have been the one with the easiest geography and the weakest local opposition. Hence by the time you are planning to plough through a rich AONB you can show that actually your viaducts are beautiful and the trains not that noisy. Also your contractual structure will be by that point a smoothly puring engine not a debacle where everyone "transfers risk" and thus builds contingency on contingency, gold plates every solution and makes their profit suing everybody.
But it's o.k. for new roads & Motorways, where the land take is much more & which only encourages more & more road traffic, pollution, parking problems & accidents onto our already congested roads? This cannot go on, as it's total madness! If you look at HS1, it has blended very well into the landscape & unlike the parallel motorway, which is a blot on the landscape.
@@jimmaggs8183.. research shows that even if HS2 had been built in full, traffic on the M40 & M1 would reduce by less than 1%. Due to the omnishambles that our railways have become & the insane ticket prices, domestic flights are on the increase .. both of these stats make a mockery of HS2's "green" credentials - even HS2 Ltd have confirmed that the railway will NEVER be carbon neutral during its expected 120 year lifetime. It's an environmental disaster of epic proportions & Britain's biggest infrastructure mistake in half a century .. after all the cancellations, what we've been left with is effectively a shuttle service between London & Birmingham where very little of the route will be "high speed" anyway.
@@d1btd3265 It is well known that Motorway building blights the country side and does not blend in concidering there are massive junctions like Spaggetti junction in Birmingham and then you have 6 lanes, 2 hard shoulders and a central reservation. All HS2 will be is a 2 track railway which over years will blend in like so many other Railway lines in the country
Having the client (the government) provide adequate contingent funding will always be a problem for multi-year schemes when annularity is a treasury restriction. That means any of the budget not invoiced by the end of March is lost for the project and from the DfT for that financial year (April to March). These funds can rarely be spent on other pending fast delivery projects unless funding is relinquished mid-year and this underspend (construction) but overspend (design and admin extension or increase in workload / low productivity) blocks many worthy smaller capital funded projects for the following year when additional allocation for the delayed critical project is needed. It would be a lot easier if the treasury were to provide the funds to an escrow account facility and the treasury / PAC audited it two years later. The normal multi-layer internal financial controls would still be present. 😎😇
No one in their right mind could listen to this and still conclude we don't need to build 2a as a minimum
Understandably, we rather agree with that sentiment!
Wow! An incredible amount of information to assimilate there, explained in the most expert way, but nonetheless, my mind is literally blown!
The weekly episode of Green Signals has definitely become my 'fix' for current issues in the rail industry. Excellent work Nigel, Richard and Steph! 👍👍
Thanks Brian!
The government currently have no idea what they are doing. Scraping hs2 north of Birmingham is massively short sighted.
We agree - a very short sighted decision that will quickly unravel.
What a wonderful discussion. Everybody listening to each other and giving reasoned logical discussions. Really enjoyed that. Thank you
You are most welcome. Thanks for such lovely feedback - it is much appreciated. Richard
Just echoing Richard's thanks for such kind words. Do stay with us! Lots more to come.
Wow, Andrew was superb. His knowledge is incredible on all aspects of this project. I was really impressed by this discussion.
Hi Jim. Thanks and we totally agree - Andrew was (and is!) superb. Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.
A superb episode hearing what top experts have to say about HS2
That's very kind, thank you!
Probably the most fascinating talk so far and they've all been pretty fascinating. I have to say the more I hear about the thought and care that went into the design of HS2 and the lack of thought and care that went into the cancellation of 2A and 2B, the more I despair. Still let's keep positive, I'd love to hear more about how HS was built around the world and the mistakes made and how HS2 was designed to correct those mistakes. Thanks!
Thanks! Really appreciate the feedback. We will certainly be looking at HS around the world at some point.
What a great discussion. It ought to be compulsory viewing for the current cabinet.
Thanks Jamie! We enjoyed the discussion as well. More to come….!
Excellent discussion! I’ve not yet finished the episode but my view is that the Government have been so short sighted it’s unbelievable. It seems to me the whole point of HS2 was to futureproof. Yes it’ll cost us now but we’ll reap the benefits in the future. I despair at the thought of what’ll happen next
I shall carry on listening later!
I’ve now finished the episode and it was truly fantastic. Thank you so much to you and to Professor Andrew for the calm, considered and incredibly informative discussion.
I am a swearer but I try not to online but gosh I was swearing so much about the “client”’s lack of understanding
The phrase “customer is always right” certainly does not apply in this context. Their absolute failure to understand how critical Phase 2b is quite unbelievable. It’ll cost the country more in the future. I despair honestly.
Now with the GE and likely change of Government will Phase 2 be resurrected I wonder?
Thanks! It is such a frustrating topic isn't it? So short sighted!
My goodness, I emerged from watching this in a foul mood! I cannot believe that anyone of note in the government could watch this and still think that Phase 2A of HS2 can be abolished without severe consequences, and more than that, without undermining the whole point of the project in the first place. As you pointed out Nigel, for once, for once, we had an infrastructure project that was designed to be, as far as can ever be done, future proofed! It irritates me beyond belief how shortsighted some of out lords and masters are!
Rishi didn't care. Tories don't care.
A month ago we had a new government who inherited a 1945 situation:
*1)* 1.5m homes short;
*2)* £5 trn in debt;
*3)* Existing rail is a shambles (being nationalized);
*4)* Roads full of potholes;
*5)* Army needs expanding:
*6)* 35,000 short of policemen;
*7)* NHS falling apart;
*8)* Schools underfunded;
*9)* Homelessness rife;
*10)* Etc.
The new gvmt will not be bringing phase 2 back from the dead. The money is just not there even if they wanted to, which they do not. They do look more focused on local & regional rail.
Thanks!
Great value!!!!
Thanks Donald. Really pleased you think so and the Super Thanks is much appreciated.
Excellent conversation. Andrew McN is spot on. A great pity that politicians never have sufficient attention spans to listen, understand and then make rational decisions. Sure, HS2 Ltd hasn't done itself many favours re cost control, but with Sunak's bonkers decision the business case for what's left of HS2 is now shot to bits. WCML is now to be burdened with a half-baked new junction at Handsacre, just a few miles wrong side of its weakest link, the Shugborough bottleneck, without any investment whatever committed to do something about it. NR costed for DfT a Stafford Bypass (Colwich-Norton Bridge) over ten years ago but that got locked away in the cupboard. Crazy.
Cancelling Phase 2A in particular is indeed crazy. We agree.
Best build 2A and save on the Old Oak Common to Euston tunnel. OOC is better connected than Euston.
But if 2A is built the HS2 trains need to be tilting to maximise WCML running. On the original HS2 plan Liverpool as on HS2 track until Crewe, 40 miles from the city, then on the WCML. Liverpool was about 30 mins slower to London than adjacent Manchester, which current the have time parity. Most of the time to Liverpool from London is on the WCML. Why? The HS2 trains did not tilt, they would be running slower than the existing trains serving the city. Obviously using tilting HS2 trains would make it faster. Take away some bottlenecks and faster again.
So terminating HS2 at Crewe does make some sense. A bypass tunnel under Crewe even more sense again.
Hopefully the new government will sort things out in a rational way.
We all have our fingers crossed Alex!
I would focus on the 1st Phase of the HS2 London to Birmingham. Once the trains are running (Money coming in). Then carry on with the other half of the HS2. Full Teams Ahead . Once finished it will be a masterpiece of Railway. Regards 🇿🇦.
Having the client (the government) provide adequate contingent funding will always be a problem for multi-year schemes when annularity is a treasury restriction. That means any of the budget not invoiced by the end of March is lost for the project and from the DfT for that financial year (April to March). These funds can rarely be spent on other pending fast delivery projects unless funding is relinquished mid-year and this underspend (construction) but overspend (design and admin extension or increase in workload / low productivity) blocks many worthy smaller capital funded projects for the following year when additional allocation for the delayed critical project is needed. It would be a lot easier if the treasury were to provide the funds to an escrow account facility and the treasury / PAC audited it two years later. The normal multi-layer internal financial controls would still be present. 😎😇
Can you run two HS2 services and two WCML services from Manchester to London / near London if you’re sharing the Manchester to Litchfield section capacity, especially if HS2 prices are 30% more?
Birmingham to London would be much more interesting as it would use completely separate lines. Will the government cancel the direct voyager service and force Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton terminating services to miss out Birmingham New Street and Birmingham International stations to stifle the competition.
Or are these services together with North West services (Liverpool, Preston, Glasgow, Edinburgh) going to terminate at Birmingham and Crewe and force a change to expensive HS2 rolling stock? In that case, shouldn’t they develop Litchfield as the HS2 terminus / interchange point? HS2 might bring in the more costly, 2 hour longer service to Central London for many?
Will HS2 allow standing on its phase 1 service as is often the case for current trains? HS2, the speedy train company have to announce “We have called the BTP, who will take an hour to gather at Old Oak Common to eject these Bolshi commuters, trying to get home to their families, from this service so there will be a delay of two hours for this 5:30pm service”.
Manchester to London services will be shared between the WCML and the HS2 route as the service provider for both the WCML and HS2 will be Avanti West Coast trains and all Avanti hi speed services from Manchester to London Euston will use the HS2 route stated in offisial HS2 docoments
Have you guys ever thought about longer trains?
Hi guys, I viewed the TSC performance and this podcast. I am completely onside that we must get to Crewe. Maybe a question for a future show is--- suppose Phase 2b is dead. How does capacity stack up on the WCML north of Crewe? Without 2b, do you really need to go to Weaver Junction? Shades of sixty years ago, I know.
Thanks Peter. I suspect the 'top level' answer is that without HS2 Phase 2a especially, then we will run out of capacity along the Trent Valley at some point - though exactly when and where depends on a few variables. But that's not really the point is it? If we know we are going to run out (as Grant Shapps himself once said) by the 2030's we need to address it now.
@@GreenSignals I think I am making two points really. The first is that if you want to revisit the economic case for 2a without 2b now, as I agree we should, then the study area needs to extend at least to Warrington and Manchester, The second is that the results of that need to give a strong indication of whether the mainly two track section up to Weaver Jct will work with no Golborne.
Great discussion once again. Big mistake not starting HS2 in the north. Issue is sunak only thinking of cost and not whats good for the country. Agree we need 2a but for scotland we need up to preston too! Keep those guests coming and maybe network rail to explain why so many signal and infrastructure issues on east coast.
Not sure I agree that starting HS2 in the north would have been the right thing to do. One of it's primary objectives was to support levelling up (closing the gap on GVA per capita) and connecting with London is important for that. The Golborne link would have been such a boon for north west services and Scotland but sadly, that was canned first.
Great idea re East Coast. We have plans for guests from Network Rail - so watch this space! And thanks for such great feedback. It is much appreciated.
I'm not entirely convinced that Sunak's decision was to save money in the short term. Surely he and his advisors could see that with his party's dwindling popularity defeat at this year's General Election was becoming a certainty and that by Cancelling 2A he could buy votes from the Northerners by using the savings to promise a lot more smaller projects, more quickly, across the north.
I come to this a few months late. I am moving towards an idea that HS2 should simply take the Birmingham fast services from Euston, plus a smaller flow - maybe Chester/Holyhead? The rest of the existing Pendolino services should perhaps continue to use Euston WCML. On a related note, what is planned for the current Pendolino services to Wolverhampton? Will they have to continue to use the classic route?
I'm afraid that rather ignores the fact that the single most important revenue flow in the country is Manchester - London. Need to protect that. Not sure why Chester / Holyhead gets such treatment. Irrelevant really in the context of the rest of the WCML services.
@@GreenSignals That's one view, but the point that you made is that the Manchester service needs to be protected, as do the freight paths. My thought, though rather at a tangent is this - if there is a capacity problem, why not put the HS2 services into a separate area (i.e. not using WCML at all if possible) until the capacity issues have been eased? I picked the Holyhead service purely as an example of a less critical service as far as WCML throughput is concerned. It could equally well be another service pattern that has less critical requirements than the Manchester service. I think we are all saying that the current situation is unworkable. I don't see that putting the Manchester service at risk of having to be reduced from three an hour just because of junction issues and Old Oak Common issues is a viable solution.
Try reading Railway periodicals and watch the mass amount of official HS2 videos on the subject, Pendolino trains will not use the HS2 route, these will be new build specialised trains and Chester/Holyhead services will not be able to use the HS2 route and Wolverhampton service with no access to the HS2 route will use the existing WCML route either going through B/Ham New Street Station or divert at Stechford in Birmingham abd travel through Aston, Perry Barr Hampstead,and Bescot and into Wolverhampton
As a Stafforshire lad, please, please will you start calling Colwich Junction Col-wich, not Colitch! There is a place near Nottingham called so but spelt Colwick!
Consider us told! We will do our best in future!
The main problem for the layman such as me with HS2 has been the joke costings from the get-go. It smells of "bait and switch" tactics being used on the taxpayer, even if that's not the truth.
It's easy to say that builders will over-engineer the solution when asked to guarantee their work, but why doesn't the industry figure that out and provide specs for contractors to build to accordingly? It's fine to blame the client for constant changes - perfectly valid criticism for sure - but equally as a taxpayer I do want these construction guys on the hook for the performance of what they build. Otherwise, we'll get a bodged-up cheapie still at a high cost. Nobody ever supplies government at low cost: they're exceptionally poor buyers who are there for the taking, and gone in 4 years anyway.
We the great unwashed were quoted around £35bn for the whole thing, now it's £105bn for a small part of it. Nobody believes even the little bit we're getting will come in at £105bn, so the credibility of the industry with the man in the street is shot. The rail industry has to take the wrap for it - managing the client is a massive part of any business, and rail fails that test.
When the rail industry can bring a project in even vaguely on budget, they might be trusted to undertake a vast one such as this. The fact the HS2 trains will have drivers is testimony to the lack of technical ambition but vast overrun of cost that makes projects such as these sitting ducks for critics. Even the name is misleading - we were sold speed, then when the trains were dropped from 250mph to whatever they'll end up at, we were told it was always all about capacity and the speed was a red herring. Fine - but call it HC2 then, and perhaps build it with four tracks, not two!!
For all the vast expertise and love of railways on this video, rail still accounts for a tiny fraction of passenger and freight movements. Roads are what pays the country's bills, not rail, and thus rail has radically to improve its cost-effectiveness from construction to operations to win the hearts and minds of the taxpayers and to be seriously critical to an increasingly WFH population.
All that said, thank you for a very interesting, informed and calm discussion. Very enjoyable and informative. 👍
Thanks - some thought provoking comments there. We'll pick some of those up in a future episode - especially your last comment about rail accounting for a tiny fraction of passenger and freight movements. When you look at the numbers for trips over, say, 5 miles in length, the picture starts to shift dramatically. So we'll definitely come back to that point. Glad you enjoyed though and that it stimulated such considered comments. Cheers. Richard
@@GreenSignalsappreciate the response - thank you!
I write as a "critical friend" to the railway - someone with zero involvement in it, but who sees a service that didn't work under nationalisation, and often doesn't work under [quasi] privatisation, either. Appreciate that BR worked miracles within its budgets, but politics will never put the necessary resources into rail since there are very few votes in it compared to building a new hospital, so the service is always make-do-and-mend when in the public sector. Ironically, when politicians do pour resources in, as with HS2, that doesn't work either, so they can't win! 🤷🏻♂
Genuinely interested to hear these well-informed discussions, so please take my comments in that vein. I'd like to see the panel challenge the shibboleths of rail a little more and question everything. An industry that doesn't appear even to have driverless test trains running, (as a business response to staff shortages, improved rolling stock availability etc.), doesn't seem to be one that's pushing itself outside its comfort zone to any degree. (Perhaps they have this technology all done and ready to go, and it's only union pressure that prevents it being implemented?)
Look forward to future episodes! 👍
One of the principal reasons for keeping fully automatic operation of any train service in a low key (or too difficult file) is the fear that public perception of the safety compromises is just not worth the effort. It would be relatively easy to make the HS train operation fully automatic BUT Joe Public, having alighted from the Clapham Omnibus, expects a fully trained competent human being to start the things and be there to take over when the brown stuff enters the turbo propelled rotating object. Value for money? Very doubtful.
@@Naladin1you're quite right. The unions will portray automation as "putting profit before people", railway management hasn't the vision or technical know-how even to consider it, and the media will rip it to shreds; automated trains won't get out of the siding once the Daily Mail has finished with the idea.
The Aussies are already running ginormous driverless freight trains, and an innovative country - probably in Asia - will figure this out for sure. Drivers have only been operating the doors on various London underground lines since the late 1960s with zero accidents due to their not driving the train, but I guess 55 years isn't quite long enough to truly test it. If you were to design a transit system capable of being fully automatic, you'd draw a railway. Only railway management can't see that.
I marvel and despair in equal quantities at the complete lack of ambition of HS2 to innovate in any area other its own brand of project management. One of the key problems with rail from the customers' point of view is cancellations, often caused by staff shortages, often very late in the day. Whilst automation saves some needlessly high salaries for relatively simple and tedious jobs, far more importantly, it removes the bottleneck of staff shortages whilst increasing the capability to utilise rolling stock more intensively. Automatic trains work on Sundays without a murmur or considering that their terms and conditions are under intolerable threat.
The public will be fed the notion that a driver will actually be in control on HS2, when by the time a human running a 400 ton train at 200+mph has perceived a lorry laying across the line two miles distant, he'll have around 30 - 35 seconds to bring the train to a complete stop, assuming his reactions are pretty good. With signalling moved into the cab, (as it is apparently to be on HS2 - until they cancel that, too), the driver is pointless. It's not a technical leap to connect said signalling directly to the fly-by-wire controls of the train for a full autopilot experience. The driver would then be better employed serving sandwiches in the buffet car, helping passengers and catching fare dodgers.
As a former pre construction manager working for a national Contractor I can assure you Contractors do not provide specifications- designers do. Neither are specifications over engineered. They are engineered to a factor of safety which is backed by the insurance industry. Regarding HS2 I'm told nobody did a cost budget. I'm told the go-ahead if it could be built for 32.70 billion so HS2 said it could.
It's great to get an insight as to why your industry fails..... Rail (in the UK) hasn't really done technology and capability development for over a century. Rather than polling other railway people in other countries HS2 should have been looking at other industries. If you look at dynamic industries they don't worry about future proofing because today's solutions will be obsolete anyway in the near future. Ergo there shouldn't be as much worrying about the need to build a second line at a later date when the first one reaches capacity, the first one validates your business model and gives you the licence to build the second and many more. Much better than a half built "gold plated" solution which then puts everyone off building high speed rail for a generation. HS2 should really have been a rolling programme to put a high-speed rail line to the top 20 population centres, the first line built should have been the one with the easiest geography and the weakest local opposition. Hence by the time you are planning to plough through a rich AONB you can show that actually your viaducts are beautiful and the trains not that noisy. Also your contractual structure will be by that point a smoothly puring engine not a debacle where everyone "transfers risk" and thus builds contingency on contingency, gold plates every solution and makes their profit suing everybody.
So glad they're no longer carving up the countryside for this debacle.
But it's o.k. for new roads & Motorways, where the land take is much more & which only encourages more & more road traffic, pollution, parking problems & accidents onto our already congested roads? This cannot go on, as it's total madness!
If you look at HS1, it has blended very well into the landscape & unlike the parallel motorway, which is a blot on the landscape.
@@jimmaggs8183 nice straw man argument.
@@jimmaggs8183.. research shows that even if HS2 had been built in full, traffic on the M40 & M1 would reduce by less than 1%.
Due to the omnishambles that our railways have become & the insane ticket prices, domestic flights are on the increase .. both of these stats make a mockery of HS2's "green" credentials - even HS2 Ltd have confirmed that the railway will NEVER be carbon neutral during its expected 120 year lifetime.
It's an environmental disaster of epic proportions & Britain's biggest infrastructure mistake in half a century .. after all the cancellations, what we've been left with is effectively a shuttle service between London & Birmingham where very little of the route will be "high speed" anyway.
You'd rather have a new motorway, ripping up 3 times as much land... so enormous gas guzzlers can avoid the jams.
@@d1btd3265 It is well known that Motorway building blights the country side and does not blend in concidering there are massive junctions like Spaggetti junction in Birmingham and then you have 6 lanes, 2 hard shoulders and a central reservation. All HS2 will be is a 2 track railway which over years will blend in like so many other Railway lines in the country
Having the client (the government) provide adequate contingent funding will always be a problem for multi-year schemes when annularity is a treasury restriction. That means any of the budget not invoiced by the end of March is lost for the project and from the DfT for that financial year (April to March). These funds can rarely be spent on other pending fast delivery projects unless funding is relinquished mid-year and this underspend (construction) but overspend (design and admin extension or increase in workload / low productivity) blocks many worthy smaller capital funded projects for the following year when additional allocation for the delayed critical project is needed. It would be a lot easier if the treasury were to provide the funds to an escrow account facility and the treasury / PAC audited it two years later. The normal multi-layer internal financial controls would still be present. 😎😇