HS2 will never reach Euston, mark my words. All the money so far has just been the design phase of the station rebuild AIUI plus some preparatory work. They’re going to spend £200m just to pause the work. If it were completed at the current budget it would be the most expensive station in the world by some margin. Hence they’ll go for the presumably cheaper option of terminating at Old Oak Common
What an enormous waste of money on the existing work
Edit: I double it’ll ever reach Manchester. It’ll just be Birmingham to turn it in to a commuter hub and for companies to get cheaper office space. I said this from the very beginning. Leeds was a total joke, Manchester somewhat believable if you are the kind of person to trust and believe London would ever fund such a project in the north lol. And here we are
I have not found a coherent explanation why HS2 does not link to HS1.
The unreasonable cost of rail tickets makes the current scheme a toy for rich people. Connecting the last few metres to HS1 at St Pancras would allow trains to compete with air travel to Europe. Taking an eco-guilt-free trip from northern England to Paris is something a normal person might do, even if the rail tickets cost 3x the flights. But not when you have book multiple tickets and drag your stuff between stations in London.
double-O says it's not going to reach Birmingham.
Word is it will be scrapped.
I would have Kim Johngson, Goodun Broon, Warmonger Bliar et al replant every tree they dug up along the route; all whilst singing that old favourite: "all the world's a stage, for ...'
Isn't this an unavoidable curse of all maturing democratic/capitalistic countries and economies? As the society matures, and people's incomes and standard of living rises, and the apparatus for doing such projects grows, it gets more costly to build the infrastructure that powered the very same improvements to get there?
Factors:
People's labor is no longer so cheap to build stuff, they have more qualifications and alternatives to their labor and they want to be paid more.
Government contracting becomes influenced by political / additional considerations.
The projects get more and more complex and are no longer decided by just a few responsible people but dispersed among multiple agencies each with requirements.
Regulations and standards increase.
There are more people to insert their hands into the revenue streams and extract some value.
Property now is worth something and has to be bought off.
It goes on and on. I don't know if there are any good examples of where an advanced economy was able to avoid this increasing cost of basic infrastructure building, although of course, some countries manage to do it without the same levels of cost as the USA for example.
> Isn't this an unavoidable curse of all maturing democratic/capitalistic countries and economies?
It seems to be, which is really ruining many aspects of society.
One hears all the stories back from the 40s and 50s where a group of neighbors or interested people just got together, bought some materials and built up a club house or community center or pool or any number of things in a few weeks. So towns had all these amenities because they were cheap and easy to build comunally.
Today to build even a small club house for the kids in the community for instance, you'll need to raise millions of dollars to pay off permits and inspections and lawyers and insurance and professional builders (since they won't let you build it yourself). So hardly anything can be done, nobody can afford it.
Arguably sure, the quality of the club house today, if it could be built, is better. But does it matter? How much do we lose by not being able to build hardly anything? That clubhouse from the 50s might be a bit rough around the edges but in most cases it is still standing 70+ years later and has brought joy to counless people.
No, it's a consequence of British rent-seeking culture, where all policy at the end of the day is evaluated by the question: does it make property prices go up or down, and if down we don't do it.
> Isn't this an unavoidable curse of all maturing democratic/capitalistic countries and economies? As the society matures, and people's incomes and standard of living rises, and the apparatus for doing such projects grows, it gets more costly to build the infrastructure that powered the very same improvements to get there?
Not really. Numerous examples world over of first world countries/ expensive cities managing to get infra done (Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore)
What's really happening in many western capitalist societies, both the rich landowning class as well as the unions dominate and capture the regulatory authorities and use the "system" to increase friction and costs for things that could reduce their own wealth extraction (land being taken away, more efficient construction) even if it's in the broader interest of the nation. Indeed this awesome flex of power of individual or small group wealth extraction over total system efficiency is seen as a highly positive ideology and is not all that far from third world countries where wealth extraction from corruption is seen as just a way of life.
As usual the key is how a society strikes a balance. The Western democracies of the 20th century did know how strike a balance pretty well - perhaps because of the existential threat of first the Great Depression, then the Nazi and then the Russian threat. Perhaps removal of existential threats that necessarily require a society to come together encourages private profiteering.
I wonder how "project cost expressed in terms of hours of labour at national median wage, per mile of track" compares to the Victorian times. That is, hours per mile.
I bet, even digging by hand, the Victorians did it cheaper.
It’s funny though, how productivity massively goes up per capita yet pay doesn’t really change much and despite each person today being the equivalent of many multiple people from yesterday, capitalists complain about how they can’t find enough affordable labor in a system known for its profit gouging and corruption. Something’s not right here…
I don't intuitively see why trains would be massively cheaper than a circle nowhere interesting (underground).
HS2 is too expensive, sure, but the LHC is built next to ~a century of research institutions and took a very long time, whereas trains can actually be on somewhat tight schedules in the places where it actually matters and requiring bulldozing a fuckload of expensive land, houses, and history etc.
Everybody knows HS2 will never happen and looking at trains in general maybe it's better that it doesn't. I pay £45 for a return from Biggleswade to London. It's a 45min journey one way, trains rarely come on time and are often slowed down once you pass Stevenage or we have to randomly stop at a red signal. Going back they are often cancelled, almost as a rule they are 10min late when they come and a lot of times they come in 8 carriages instead of 12, so that means standing like a sardine for 45min not being able to breathe normally and when you do you're breathing in someone else's bad breath or afternoon farts. Sometimes going to London if we get stopped at Finsbury Park (because "that's as far as we go sorry") then I have to buy a new ticket to get to Moorgate for example which wouldn't be a problem normally if Moorgate had QR scanners, so instead I have to queue 20min to leave the station, go outside and buy a paper ticket and then go back into the station to get onto the platform. Imagine a train station in central London not having the high-tech that's capable of scanning e-tickets. That's why I can never go to work "on time" but instead have to go an hour early because I never know what's going to happen and leaving work I have to monitor both thetrainline.com and TfL in case a train is cancelled or the Tube is part suspended or heavily delayed. Worst part is I have to pay a small fortune for the privilege.
I would like to mention something else. I recently sold my car and moved to a place close to the train station because "public transport is great, why should I need a car" and it was working great until a few days ago when I was looking to go somewhere for the long weekend. A simple trip from Stevenage which has great train links to a place like Norwich proved impossible. Best trains I could get were one stop and 2h 30min and most had two stops 2h 30min. But those were expensive, between £90 and £130 for a return is a bit much and I got a warning saying due to strikes trains may be cancelled. National Express had no coaches in that direction, taxi was more expensive than trains and there's not a single BigName car hire company that is available in Stevenage and one that I found was not open on Sunday and Bank Holiday so I wouldn't be able to return the car. Had I rented it, it would be £120 for two days with £700 security deposit. With train strikes and ticket prices I didn't want to risk booking a hotel, so I stayed at home because what else am I going to do. Uneless I go to a local supermarket across the road or live in central London, I need a car.
NHS is also public infrastructure but I'd rather not even get into that. I'll just say that I'm convinced the Gov is letting NHS collapse on purpose so that they can pick it apart and privatise it. It's simply impossible that people are actually that incompetent.
> NHS is also public infrastructure but I'd rather not even get into that. I'll just say that I'm convinced the Gov is letting NHS collapse on purpose so that they can pick it apart and privatise it. It's simply impossible that people are actually that incompetent.
I think you're vastly underestimating just how incompetent the large majority of people are (not just NHS/UK, the world, the dumber you are the more you breed etc) - we're being overrun
Should people in the West start calling things their names? Public sector corruption, not unlike at all what once plagued Eastern European countries. I see the problem as very similar in nature, despite dramatically different origins.
The difference I see though, is that much of Eastern Europe hardcore criminalized things which would not amount to a crime at all in Western legal systems, and not pass the extreme standards of proof.
1. Look for nepotism in appointments
2. Illogical high profile job competitions
3. Oversized, omnibus projects
4. Strange demands in procurement tenders, or one intentionally made noncompetitive
5. Income beyond known means of supervising officials
6. Strange project structuring, and legal acrobatics
7. Illogical financing arrangements
8. Long periods of doing nothing to extract more fees
9. Unreasonable fees of intermediaries and third parties
nope, not even close. it's just lots and lots of rules and regulations. just the environmental stuff takes years and years of work, documentation and planning. and that's just 1 out of 100s of subject that need to be ticked off.
Hs2 is going through the most densely populated part of the Uk, and in tunnels.
And in addition to queuing, we also seem to enjoy bureaucracy. There will have been a decade of planning employing dozens if not hundreds of people before a shovel is in the ground.
Then of course every new station has to be ‘special’ in some way. So we pay some architects firm absurd amounts to use Tibetan Yak hair insulated, Alaskan larch clad stations for some weird Green box ticking exercise.
You need to prove that the construction of the train is not going to affect negatively the area environmentally.
This translates as, you need to dry boreholes along the place, take samples, send the samples to a laboratory, get the data, save the data, store the data, build a system that deals with the data (because different laboratories have different methods) standardise everything, and present the data. You need to do that every month or so.
You need to make sure that the watercourses are suitable for fishes and other animals. 40 years ago, you had a watercourse, you threw a 200mm pvc pipe, call it a culvert and carry on. Now if you really want to preserve the watercourse you need a super oversized culvert that can contain the whole watercourse. But such a culvert is dangerous (people can go inside), so you need to install a grill. Now you need to study the flood risk of the culvert with a blocked grill.
That is in addition to the multiple flood risk assessment that need to be done for a linear project, basically one for each watershed that it crosses. An what if the design changes for whatever reason, like not being compliant with the flood risk assessment? Oh you need to start again, and repeat everything.
Plus in engineering, every time you change something in any of the steps, you need at least 4 pair of eyes to check the change.
So the reason is bureaucracy. These rules are important, but in linear engineering projects, they do impose a high toll on the project price, because you need to make sure they comply on every mile of the project.
That is from my point of view, I am pretty sure there are other stuff that increases the price.
I feel like the pound is strong against other currencies because of the city of London and arms sales (and what’s behind those). But it’s spending power inside the UK is shit. People just don’t make much money compared to how much things cost. I moved to the USA when the pound was worth two dollars, but I earned far more dollars and those dollars bought more.
Britain is a tiny overpopulated island with legacy law and property problems that effectively has serfdom. It got powerful because it had the right ingredients for the Industrial Revolution but all the reasons that made the revolution happen are all reasons that weigh on it now.
I earn poor money relative to a comparative US citizen, but I wouldn't swap places if given the chance.
I walk my kids to school, and local schools are pretty good.
I cycle them a couple miles down the canal to the local sports centre for cheap swimming and recreation. I have many free high quality playgrounds nearby within walking and cycling distance, and streams and woods to play in. As a result my family can get away with a single medium sized car and use it infrequently.
I don't think there are many places in the - especially affluent areas - where this would be the case in the US, but I may be wrong.
I paid little for university and get free healthcare, which has been excellent quality whenever I've needed it (including for the birth of my two kids).
My employer gives me 30 days leave a year, with the option to buy more (and I do). There's no implicit pressure not to. I was able to take 6 months of after the birth of each of my kids on shared parental leave, which my employer had a legal duty to allow me if asked.
There are many beautiful historical places to visit for little money. The coast in any direction is within a day's drive and a varied holidays can be had without flying.
My country has in the pipeline 100GW of wind power, meaning that in a couple of decades energy is likely to be abundant and cheap if on a smart plan.
We do lots wrong as a country, and I haven't listed the negatives, but Britain is far from a failed state.
We're not doing great at the moment but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that we're becoming a failed state. Also it looks very likely that we'll have the right wing government that caused a lot of these issues in the last 10 years out at the next election.
"was estimated to cost about £56.7bn in 2023 prices. But this proved to be a massive underestimate. The 134 miles of track between London and Birmingham alone is now forecast to cost £53bn,"
How is -£3.7bn a massive underestimate. Usually coming in under estimate is a good thing (outside of govt and consulting, of course)
The original £56.7bn estimate was from London all the way to Leeds. Whereas the £53bn figure they quoted is just for London to Birmingham which is only about half way to Leeds.
[+] [-] switch007|2 years ago|reply
What an enormous waste of money on the existing work
Edit: I double it’ll ever reach Manchester. It’ll just be Birmingham to turn it in to a commuter hub and for companies to get cheaper office space. I said this from the very beginning. Leeds was a total joke, Manchester somewhat believable if you are the kind of person to trust and believe London would ever fund such a project in the north lol. And here we are
[+] [-] akadruid1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasec57322|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernova87a|2 years ago|reply
Factors:
People's labor is no longer so cheap to build stuff, they have more qualifications and alternatives to their labor and they want to be paid more.
Government contracting becomes influenced by political / additional considerations.
The projects get more and more complex and are no longer decided by just a few responsible people but dispersed among multiple agencies each with requirements.
Regulations and standards increase.
There are more people to insert their hands into the revenue streams and extract some value.
Property now is worth something and has to be bought off.
It goes on and on. I don't know if there are any good examples of where an advanced economy was able to avoid this increasing cost of basic infrastructure building, although of course, some countries manage to do it without the same levels of cost as the USA for example.
[+] [-] c54|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjav|2 years ago|reply
It seems to be, which is really ruining many aspects of society.
One hears all the stories back from the 40s and 50s where a group of neighbors or interested people just got together, bought some materials and built up a club house or community center or pool or any number of things in a few weeks. So towns had all these amenities because they were cheap and easy to build comunally.
Today to build even a small club house for the kids in the community for instance, you'll need to raise millions of dollars to pay off permits and inspections and lawyers and insurance and professional builders (since they won't let you build it yourself). So hardly anything can be done, nobody can afford it.
Arguably sure, the quality of the club house today, if it could be built, is better. But does it matter? How much do we lose by not being able to build hardly anything? That clubhouse from the 50s might be a bit rough around the edges but in most cases it is still standing 70+ years later and has brought joy to counless people.
[+] [-] hsjqllzlfkf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfifs|2 years ago|reply
Not really. Numerous examples world over of first world countries/ expensive cities managing to get infra done (Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore)
What's really happening in many western capitalist societies, both the rich landowning class as well as the unions dominate and capture the regulatory authorities and use the "system" to increase friction and costs for things that could reduce their own wealth extraction (land being taken away, more efficient construction) even if it's in the broader interest of the nation. Indeed this awesome flex of power of individual or small group wealth extraction over total system efficiency is seen as a highly positive ideology and is not all that far from third world countries where wealth extraction from corruption is seen as just a way of life.
As usual the key is how a society strikes a balance. The Western democracies of the 20th century did know how strike a balance pretty well - perhaps because of the existential threat of first the Great Depression, then the Nazi and then the Russian threat. Perhaps removal of existential threats that necessarily require a society to come together encourages private profiteering.
[+] [-] HPsquared|2 years ago|reply
I bet, even digging by hand, the Victorians did it cheaper.
[+] [-] gurumeditations|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjh29|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesaintlives|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neovialogistics|2 years ago|reply
I reckon a couple economists could get a bestselling book out of this.
[+] [-] mhh__|2 years ago|reply
HS2 is too expensive, sure, but the LHC is built next to ~a century of research institutions and took a very long time, whereas trains can actually be on somewhat tight schedules in the places where it actually matters and requiring bulldozing a fuckload of expensive land, houses, and history etc.
[+] [-] whatshisface|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikhailfranco|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markjonsona989|2 years ago|reply
I would like to mention something else. I recently sold my car and moved to a place close to the train station because "public transport is great, why should I need a car" and it was working great until a few days ago when I was looking to go somewhere for the long weekend. A simple trip from Stevenage which has great train links to a place like Norwich proved impossible. Best trains I could get were one stop and 2h 30min and most had two stops 2h 30min. But those were expensive, between £90 and £130 for a return is a bit much and I got a warning saying due to strikes trains may be cancelled. National Express had no coaches in that direction, taxi was more expensive than trains and there's not a single BigName car hire company that is available in Stevenage and one that I found was not open on Sunday and Bank Holiday so I wouldn't be able to return the car. Had I rented it, it would be £120 for two days with £700 security deposit. With train strikes and ticket prices I didn't want to risk booking a hotel, so I stayed at home because what else am I going to do. Uneless I go to a local supermarket across the road or live in central London, I need a car.
NHS is also public infrastructure but I'd rather not even get into that. I'll just say that I'm convinced the Gov is letting NHS collapse on purpose so that they can pick it apart and privatise it. It's simply impossible that people are actually that incompetent.
[+] [-] throwaway67743|2 years ago|reply
I think you're vastly underestimating just how incompetent the large majority of people are (not just NHS/UK, the world, the dumber you are the more you breed etc) - we're being overrun
[+] [-] baybal2|2 years ago|reply
The difference I see though, is that much of Eastern Europe hardcore criminalized things which would not amount to a crime at all in Western legal systems, and not pass the extreme standards of proof.
1. Look for nepotism in appointments
2. Illogical high profile job competitions
3. Oversized, omnibus projects
4. Strange demands in procurement tenders, or one intentionally made noncompetitive
5. Income beyond known means of supervising officials
6. Strange project structuring, and legal acrobatics
7. Illogical financing arrangements
8. Long periods of doing nothing to extract more fees
9. Unreasonable fees of intermediaries and third parties
[+] [-] kmlx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrBazza|2 years ago|reply
And in addition to queuing, we also seem to enjoy bureaucracy. There will have been a decade of planning employing dozens if not hundreds of people before a shovel is in the ground.
Then of course every new station has to be ‘special’ in some way. So we pay some architects firm absurd amounts to use Tibetan Yak hair insulated, Alaskan larch clad stations for some weird Green box ticking exercise.
[+] [-] erremerre|2 years ago|reply
This translates as, you need to dry boreholes along the place, take samples, send the samples to a laboratory, get the data, save the data, store the data, build a system that deals with the data (because different laboratories have different methods) standardise everything, and present the data. You need to do that every month or so.
You need to make sure that the watercourses are suitable for fishes and other animals. 40 years ago, you had a watercourse, you threw a 200mm pvc pipe, call it a culvert and carry on. Now if you really want to preserve the watercourse you need a super oversized culvert that can contain the whole watercourse. But such a culvert is dangerous (people can go inside), so you need to install a grill. Now you need to study the flood risk of the culvert with a blocked grill.
That is in addition to the multiple flood risk assessment that need to be done for a linear project, basically one for each watershed that it crosses. An what if the design changes for whatever reason, like not being compliant with the flood risk assessment? Oh you need to start again, and repeat everything.
Plus in engineering, every time you change something in any of the steps, you need at least 4 pair of eyes to check the change.
So the reason is bureaucracy. These rules are important, but in linear engineering projects, they do impose a high toll on the project price, because you need to make sure they comply on every mile of the project.
That is from my point of view, I am pretty sure there are other stuff that increases the price.
[+] [-] LightBug1|2 years ago|reply
De rigueur for the UK ... even when peoples lives depend on the subject of those contracts.
We're a rotten/ing country.
[+] [-] bluescrn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doublerabbit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|2 years ago|reply
Britain is a tiny overpopulated island with legacy law and property problems that effectively has serfdom. It got powerful because it had the right ingredients for the Industrial Revolution but all the reasons that made the revolution happen are all reasons that weigh on it now.
It is already a failed state.
[+] [-] RobinL|2 years ago|reply
I earn poor money relative to a comparative US citizen, but I wouldn't swap places if given the chance.
I walk my kids to school, and local schools are pretty good.
I cycle them a couple miles down the canal to the local sports centre for cheap swimming and recreation. I have many free high quality playgrounds nearby within walking and cycling distance, and streams and woods to play in. As a result my family can get away with a single medium sized car and use it infrequently.
I don't think there are many places in the - especially affluent areas - where this would be the case in the US, but I may be wrong.
I paid little for university and get free healthcare, which has been excellent quality whenever I've needed it (including for the birth of my two kids).
My employer gives me 30 days leave a year, with the option to buy more (and I do). There's no implicit pressure not to. I was able to take 6 months of after the birth of each of my kids on shared parental leave, which my employer had a legal duty to allow me if asked.
There are many beautiful historical places to visit for little money. The coast in any direction is within a day's drive and a varied holidays can be had without flying.
My country has in the pipeline 100GW of wind power, meaning that in a couple of decades energy is likely to be abundant and cheap if on a smart plan.
We do lots wrong as a country, and I haven't listed the negatives, but Britain is far from a failed state.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Simon_O_Rourke|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CalRobert|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jojojaf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zadler|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gadders|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] loxs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skywhopper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guvante|2 years ago|reply
It can be cheaper of course but never cheap.
[+] [-] readthenotes1|2 years ago|reply
How is -£3.7bn a massive underestimate. Usually coming in under estimate is a good thing (outside of govt and consulting, of course)
[+] [-] Dfiesl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielVZ|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AS37|2 years ago|reply