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On the environmental impact; if not trains people will and do drive, isnt that worse?
Only if you don't restrict driving at the same time. (Almost) e/Every politician is scared of that, and probably doesn't personally agree. The thing that most don't understand in transport policy is that it doesn't work so simply that you just increase capacity for the more sustainable modes and people will just switch because the 'alternative' offer is so positive. No, you have to make a clear decision of increasing the modes you want and then actively, i.e. not just by saying 'oh, people will follow us and do the right thing', reduce the modes you don't want. However, capacity for driving is constantly increased in one way or another, while all that rail can muster is a misconceived large project. I have no idea what would happen if HS2 were cancelled (it won't be because too many influential people are involved), but it probably won't be 'instant proper rail policy'.
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Back to the protesters, who need the oxygen of publicity, and probably just oxygen. This sounds grim:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/hs2-protest-euston-activists-tunnel-flooded-b917972.html
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Potentially you read an article by Gareth Dennis? He's pretty prolific on twitter and has written some nice articles about the historic woodland and capacity issues.
A great introductory twitter tread from him can be found here -- this is what changed my view on HS2 originally...
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I think they have not communicated the objectives of HS2 very well, focusing on getting from London to Birmingham 3 minutes quicker (or whatever) isn't going to enthuse people, but decent local services might.
Absolutely. I have had misgivings about the project, wondering if the same business models etc are valid post-covid, less demand for in-person meetings etc - but also aware that I don't know much about it. All I see is this London to Birmingham high-speed stuff and ancient woodlands. This evening's browse on lufguss has been enlightening.
Even the govs response to the petition upthread repeats it:
HS2 will provide essential North-South connectivity, greater capacity and shorter journey times. This railway will play a vital role in delivering the Government’s carbon net zero objectives.
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Some interesting perspectives here:
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More action:
The environmental activists in the network of tunnels in front of Euston station in central London have launched an emergency legal action against safety regulators.
It has been confirmed that there are nine protesters in the tunnel constructed as a protest against the high speed rail link HS2 [...]
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isnt it a mix of a vicious cycle and no1 including policy makers have answers to 'why not invest in xxx instead of HS2 now that its gone down so deep?'
Silvertown should be stopped but HS2, I am not. sure, I think I am almost pro-HS2.
It is grim to travel to north by train in terms of cost and time it takes, so people drive.
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Nice 'like father, like son' story here:
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I think I've posted about this before, but I simply don't think 'more transport capacity' is the answer, whether that's road or rail. It's a pious hope that people will drive less if you increase railway capacity, but that only applies to people who already want to travel by train in preference to driving. Sure, there are some, but if you build more rail capacity on top of the existing (and constantly-increasing) road capacity, you cause more travel, full stop. All I've seen suggests that driving then doesn't go down but rather increases, for the simple reason that processes that increase the need to travel, by whatever mode, then accelerate even more. The thinking that it's OK to have functions far apart that should be close together becomes more normal, because we have great transport links, right?
People sometimes think we must already have hit 'peak travel', but we definitely haven't; that would only be if everybody didn't live anywhere permanently, which is never going to happen. There is immense potential still for the need to travel to increase that we haven't tapped yet.
Transport policy is essentially driven by the idea that in order to grow the economy, we must create more movement, so that more connections can be made more easily. This means more transport capacity. However, this also ends up changing the economic landscape, and in turn people's travel behaviour, which becomes less efficient (when they make bad choices), or is forced to become less efficient (e.g. when they can no longer do what they would choose to do).
The economic landscape can be changed by fewer big players capturing larger markets, e.g. you build a dual carriageway out of town to the out-of-town hypermarket and the shops in the traditional, well-connected centre suffer, because a single competitor now only needs one site, instead of many smaller city-centre ones, to attract large numbers of customers who fill their car boot there. Transport choices are affected because where people might have walked or cycled, they now drive.
Railways are obviously not as bad as motorway-building, but initially they did much the same things that motorways have been intensifying. If you build railways, whether suburban commuter railways or major railways connecting cities that don't stop in the smaller places, there likewise tends to be concentration of activity, which in itself isn't a bad thing, but which if driven to excess is not desirable. I happen to think that we've long exceeded a desirable balance between over-concentration and even distribution in land development, and that we must reduce transport capacity, alongside a better organisation of the economy. I would support removing motorways and replacing them with railways on the same alignments, alongside lower-capacity roads, returning dual carriageways to lower-capacity roads, and so on, while doing the necessary work on re-planning land use to reduce the need to travel first and foremost.
I doubt that explains it well enough, but in a nutshell--reduce capacity, reduce the need to travel, and rebalance the economy to benefit smaller, more local players.
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Well, obviously--most people would be against it right now. I suspect the vast majority would be against it. HS2 is still just another step in the wrong direction. It's not a question of 'do something that practicable now-ish vs. kicking things into the long grass' but of what our direction should be.
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In addition, High Speed Rail competes with short haul flights, which are far worse for CO2 emissions as we all know. Just as the London-Paris short haul flight market nosedived (if you'll pardon the expression) when the CTRL was opened, so will the market for flights on the London-Manchester/Leeds/Newcastle routes once HS2 is opened.
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Yes, but unfortunately that also freed up airport capacity to handle more long-haul flights. Whatever positive effect the CTRL may have had was vastly offset by that. Air travel has grown massively, especially since about 2000. Quite simply, as stated before, if you increase capacity for people to travel in motorised machines, they will travel even more in motorised machines.
NB I'm not against high-speed rail per se, but there is so much wrong with our transport system at the moment that it is really not among the measures we need the most.
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The thinking that it's OK to have functions far apart that should be close together becomes
more normal, because we have great transport links, right?HS2 is actually meant to combat this. The point is that you move the Direct Lines services off the West Coast Main Line which means you can run more stopping services which means that you can stimulate the local economies along the line. It makes travelling 20 minute journeys much easier locally because rather than having only two services an hour between these local places you can up it to a service every 5 minutes or so because these services no longer have to make way for the fast through services.
There's a lot of very clever planning that has gone into HS2 which actually makes it a lot more attractive to people like yourself. Its main aim is not to cut off 20 minutes on the journey from London to Birmingham, that's actually a byproduct of it. It's just not marketed in a very good way because it's a much better tag line to say "Get from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster!" rather than "Make a difference to the local economies between Coventry and Milton Keynes!".
There's a lot of things that could also drive the cost down, if you drop the line speed by a few kmph it would significantly save on the cost of it and if it had a clever procurement model it could also drive the cost down - but the UK rail industry is not known for being modest and having a clever procurement model.
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Some legal action, it seems the judgement was immediately appealed against:
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Quite keen on HS2 as it goes, for reasons others have mentioned. I think most people in the UK desire some or all of visiting friends and family, delivery of goods from outside their postcode and accessing services which their region doesn't specialise in. You'll be hard pressed to get the Emirates Stadium experience in Pontefract. Or receive specialist neuroendocrine tumour treatment in Newquay. Anything that helps achieve all this in a more timely, reliable, and environmentally friendly manner seems reasonable.
As regards the carrot/stick argument. Old (2017) but good article on why modal shift in transport relies on making private car use more difficult rather than providing good alternative infrastructure.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage
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I’m opposed to HS2 for two reasons:
One, the damage being brought on the country. I’ve been to some of the construction sites and it really is breathtaking how much damage is being caused.
Secondly, the justification for the route is ultimately continued economic growth. At some point consumption has to slow down, it’s obviously unsustainable. When do we do this? HS2 is locking in greater consumption for our lifetimes and beyond.
If we are setting an example of how to deal with the climate emergency by increasing our trading capacity at the expense of our natural heritage (when we already have one of the most depleted ecosystems anywhere in the world) and the continued high carbon outputs then the rest of the world are either laughing at us or following suit.
Except of course the low lying nations who are screaming at us to stop. -
Capitalism. You can't just coast or stand still, continuous growth (of a business, a country is a business effectively) is required, if your not growing, your receding.
UK like other Western nations is trying to figure its place out in the world, now and for the next 25-50 years, for sure we have to be much more savy with every big project like this. I still don't know enough about HS2 to be for or against it, but can see the forces at work on a big project.
From up here in the wastelands of the north, its seen as SE/London centric, but have a few mates who work in the railways, and all say the same thing, UK has no slots available. Many goods/cargo trains are not able to clear a line in the time before the next scheduled passenger service is due through due to their size/speed/safety factor required to clear the sector. Our railhead connections with Europe are all down south east and south coast, they are all affected by this.
Personally I'd rather see more railway built than road, its a better long term choice for everyone and everything, there are going to be loosers, always is, and it looks like the local environment around hs2 is taking another one for the team.
Could be worse, been to China a few times over past 10 years, every time its not like theres one new motorway, why build one, when you can build two giant ones immediately parallel with each other, flying from one city to another you just notice the scale of their infrastructure expansion makes anything we do in the UK look like a toy box.
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Should HS2 carry adjacent cycle track?
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@Vesalius
From what I've heard, there have continually been land occupations (for various causes, including roads) all over the country going back decades. Unfortunately, after the mid-90s, they kind of lost their news value. It's easy to forget that they weren't really covered in national media until John Vidal of the Guardian went along to the No M11 Link Road protests. Since Major abandoned Thatcher's road-building programme, this whole area has been much quieter, no idea if news media have been ignoring it deliberately. What police et al/ often used to say was that protests should not be given 'the oxygen of publicity', and maybe that's been happening again.
Also worth remembering is that most protests were only 'successful' (the roads got built, anyway, albeit at much higher cost) if the locals sided with the protesters (and/or joined them), e.g. at Newbury. That's not always the case with road-building projects.
Another factor is that two of the main legs that protest used to stand on, the dole and squatting, have been cut off. Then there's the surveillance aspect--if you protest today, you will very likely be identified. Many people who would have joined protests 20 years ago now can't.
For all these reasons, people have to pick fewer things, and evidently they thought this one was worth doing.