[alancalverd (OP)]

Current thinking is that the HS2 rail line from London to Birmingham will cost over £100,000,000,000 - 5 times the original estimate and rising.

It will save 15 minutes compared with the fastest trains running today.

There are about 20,000,000 taxpayers in the UK, so HS2 will cost you £5,000 even if you don't use it.

It now takes 3 hours to travel from Cambridge to Birmingham via London, or 2 hr 45 minutes (at half the price) by direct crosscountry train*. So I will get nothing for my £5000, despite being a frequent rail user.

What benefit will you get?

*Footnote: it's even quicker and cheaper by bus!


 

[Bored chemist]

The point of HS2 is not actually to get people from London to Birmingham half an hour quicker. That would be silly.

Once you realise that, it makes rather more sense.

If you have a new "fast" line then you can run the inter city traffic on it, and leave the other line for improved local services.
And that will allow them to run other local services more efficiently.
So, yes, in fact you will* get a better service for your money.
And, odd as it may seem, "taxpayers" are not the only source of income for the government. Corporations pay tax too (well.. they are meant to).
And, it's business that will really benefit from better transport links.


* OK, if you live long enough to see HS2 completed.

So, it's not £5000 and it's not so that you can get from London to B'ham quicker.

But apart from that, you are right.

[Petrochemicals]

Hire a car(40 quid) or fly (hire a plane and pilot).  Maybe a fast acceleration maglev train link from london to birmingham via  cambridge

[alancalverd (OP)]

If you have a new "fast" line then you can run the inter city traffic on it, and leave the other line for improved local services.

Interesting suggestion. My understanding has always been that the problem with UK rail services is indeed that they all use the same lines, which is why intercity passenger services have to fit in between the slowest freight and commuter trains. Bypassing the slow and stopping traffic only really makes sense if you anticipate huge numbers of passengers and a minimum distance of about 200 miles between stops. As it is, many stations have a "fast through" track already.

It's interesting to calculate the break-even carbon emissions between HS2 and an equivalent air shuttle. My first estimate is about 50 years but I'll have another think in a few days and report here.   

Hire a car(40 quid) or fly (hire a plane and pilot).

The bus from Cambridge to Birmingham costs £13 - why bother to drive yourself? Interestingly, the bus company runs at a profit whilst railway companies, who charge between £50 and £150 for the same trip, are all subsidised.   If I fly my own plane it takes 30 minutes and costs £50 but I can carry 3 passengers, which makes it as cheap as the bus!

[Bored chemist]

This bit

railway companies, ..., are all subsidised. 

highlights the real problem.
We make the investment, but the train operating companies take the profit.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Corporation taxpayers are taxpayers too. The difference is that we get our income from other taxpayers, so Joe Public ends up paying anyway: if corp tax rates rise, so do our prices.

In the bad old days, railway companies were entirely private ventures and made a profit by competing with horses and canal barges. Nowadays, if they can't make a profit in competition with road and air traffic, surely they should either go to the wall along with stagecoaches and river boats, or be fully nationalised as a public service? I find it incredible that you can't run a train profitably for 50 p per passenger mile, whilst airlines charge half that price, go 5 - 10 times faster, and make a profit. Must be something fundamentally wrong with the technology.   

[Petrochemicals]

 

The bus from Cambridge to Birmingham costs £13 - why bother to drive yourself?

Because of knees round elbows, because of 20 stops,  because of an average speed of 20mph.......Because of 40 strangers farting in an enclosed space. You forgot that a car you have to provide fuel so 100miles 15 qiud infuel too, minimum 55 quid.

If a coach had a load of 10 people that would mean a single seat double length. That would be quite good. 10 people would mean pretty direct too so birmingham to cambridge in 1.5 hrs 50 quid at an outside estimate seems good. Only 10 people farting too !!!!!

[Bored chemist]

Must be something fundamentally wrong with the technology.   

AIrcraft aren't obliged to stop here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanlow_and_Thornton_railway_station

[Bored chemist]

The bus from Cambridge to Birmingham costs £13 - why bother to drive yourself?

Because of knees round elbows, because of 20 stops,  because of an average speed of 20mph.......Because of 40 strangers farting in an enclosed space. You forgot that a car you have to provide fuel so 100miles 15 qiud infuel too, minimum 55 quid.

If a coach had a load of 10 people that would mean a single seat double length. That would be quite good. 10 people would mean pretty direct too so birmingham to cambridge in 1.5 hrs 50 quid at an outside estimate seems good. Only 10 people farting too !!!!!

Any minute now, you will invent the taxi.

[Petrochemicals]

Do you know you can have a tunnel to ireland for 50billion ? Probably far better use, something like 70 percent of irish stuff comes this way.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Must be something fundamentally wrong with the technology.   

AIrcraft aren't obliged to stop here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanlow_and_Thornton_railway_station

Nor does the train under consideration, unless there's been a major earthquake that moved Birmingham to Liverpool.

[alancalverd (OP)]

The bus from Cambridge to Birmingham costs £13 - why bother to drive yourself?

Because of knees round elbows, because of 20 stops,  because of an average speed of 20mph...…

er, no. The £13 bus averages 45 mph, which is why it is quicker than the train.

Because of 40 strangers farting in an enclosed space.

and it's airconditioned, and the seats are a lot more comfortable than the crosscountry train!

[alancalverd (OP)]

Do you know you can have a tunnel to ireland for 50billion ? Probably far better use, something like 70 percent of irish stuff comes this way.

Still works out at £1bn per mile, and only takes you to Machynlleth, with a daily stopping service (not Sundays) to Caernarfon if it is in a good mood. And you can expect the cost to double before the first sod is cut.

[Bored chemist]

Nor does the train under consideration, unless there's been a major earthquake that moved Birmingham to Liverpool.

Nobody said it did.
So why did you say that?

[alancalverd (OP)]

I was intrigued by your idiosyncratic example of a place where aircraft are not obliged to stop. Reminiscent of N F Simpson's "Were you, for instance, in Ashby de la Zouche?" "No. I was in London." "So  you absented yourself from Ashby de la Zouche on the day in question...."

So reminiscent of the1950s: Ionesco, Milligan, Albee.... I was momentarily transported to  Stanlow in its heyday. Not that the theatre there was any good, but the plays were rarely interrupted by landing aircraft.

Please indulge an old man. I've just emerged from a Kafkaesque brush with Elfin Safety inspectors who alleged (at the taxpayer's expense) that being somewhere else is  a "special procedure", and my sense of the ridiculous is particularly acute!

[Bored chemist]

Do you understand why I chose Stanlow?

[alancalverd (OP)]

I can see the absurdity of a compulsory stop at a station with no public access, which matches the absurdity of trains not stopping at Durham Tees Valley where the station is actually inside the airport boundary. Or indeed Ronaldsway: the train makes umpteen compulsory stops at individual pubs and crossroads between Douglas and Castletown, but you have to personally ask the driver to stop at the airport. I've not had reason to visit Stanlow since 1963 (I used to be a chemist and was never bored)  but every 3 years I'm one of the privileged passengers who use both Denton and Ronaldsway. 

All part of the charm of British life, but completely irrelevant to HS2.   

[Bored chemist]

completely irrelevant to HS2.   

Perfectly relevant to the issue of why trains make a loss.
They are obliged to do things like stop at stations where there are never any passengers.
Planes, on the other hand, only ever stop where the passengers have travelled to in large numbers.

[AlphBravo]

So probably building a dedicated freight network would be cheaper and more efficient for all concerned, rather than getting a niche service which probably only benefits a small percentile of commuters that would use a more efficient local service given the option and why not at each station log passengers request to embark or disembark , thus reducing delays, maybe the HS2 would then be better placed to do the larger inter city runs

[Bored chemist]

It' probably more worthwhile to look at whether spending the money improving local bus services would be better value.