HS2

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

So this is going ahead according to Boris. Why is there so much opposition? Is it just the 100bn cost tag?

Yeah cost would be the big one, it started at £30bn in 2012 and now a leaked report is saying £130bn, thats with contingency built in but everyone realsies that the Birmingham to Manchester section wont be completed until 2040 at the earliest so you're looking at 20 odd years of construction inflation which would push it up towards £200bn. The costs really are astronomical even for a large nation like the UK.

Aside from that northerners are skeptical that phase 2 of Birmingham to Manchester will ever get built at all. They feel London to Birmingham will go ahead and then between government changes, potential recession and just a general sense of the Tories and London always shortchanging the north that it will get called off. Counter balancing this is the fact that the Tories have just won a lot of seats in the Labour 'Red Wall' areas for the north so want to be seen to be investing in the regions to prevent Labour taking those seats back, their strategy is to solidify these traditional Labour seats so majorities come easy to them in future elections.

Then you've the Manchester mayor Andy Burham who has floated the idea of proceeding with London to Birmingham but at the same time building the Northern Powerhorse Railway (NPR) which is a project to connect Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds. He claims this railway running east to west would be far more beneficial to northerners than one to London.

From what Ive read there is a good case for HS2 in terms of capacity in that it is a brand new route and will free up huge capacity on the current overstretched network. Its being sold as a railway revolution for all of the UK, better connecting major cities will bring about increased economic activity, etc.. The grand vision is to eventually connect it to Scotland and remove the need for domestic flights, this being in line with their 2050 carbon emissions targets.

Boris has just announced today that phase 1 to Birmingham is going ahead. He is appointing a Minister for HS2 also. On top of that he has pledged £5bn for new buses and cycle routes to placate other interest groups.

Further detail here
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/11/what-boris-johnson-hs2-announcement-mean-country-lonon-birmingham

Boris certainly full square behind the project in the House of Commons yesterday

Instead the PM grasped the moment with the enthusiasm of a terrier who’s just been bunged his bedtime Bonio. Standing before the House, Boris announced a national ‘transport revolution’ which, on top of HS2, would include a £5billion investment in buses and bike lanes.

The language as ever was as ornate as Pugin wallpaper. He promised we would see ‘mini-Hollands blooming like so many tulips in towns’ where children would ‘bicycle safely and happily to school and work in tree-dappled sunlight’.

He spoke of the need to fix the ‘musculoskeletal problem’ of UK transport: ‘Yes, we must fix the joint between the knee bone and the thigh bone and the shin bone and the ankle bone. Yes, we must fix the arthritis in the fingers and the toes, but we also have to fix the spine.’

HS2 is no easy sell but the PM was pushing it harder than a market tradesman flogging suspect bottles of Chanel No 5.

‘This is not just about getting from London to Birmingham and back,’ he bellowed, delivering a meaty backhander to the dispatch box.

‘This is about finally making a rapid connection from the West Midlands to Liverpool’ – smack! ‘To Manchester’ – smack! ‘And Leeds’ – smack!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7993299/HENRY-DEEDES-watches-Boris-Johnson-talks-HS2.html

Its typical bombastic Boris but his leadership on such a large infrastructure project is impressive. I could never imagine a Taoiseach or Minister for Transport here coming out with such enthusiasm for Metrolink and driving the project forward.

yeah he's always been known as being big on ideas but not so good on follow through and delivery, he is pure salesman. At least this project has already effectively started anyway with lots of preparatory CPO work already done. He'll be long out of office by the time the first train runs on HS2 in 2030 and if things go wrong in the meantime he will have a Minister for HS2 to shift the blame upon.

Theres still ongoing battles against the actual route. In one place called Cubbington the route requires the felling of ancient forest which is more than 400 years old. After extensive consultations with the local community the HS2 planners still declined to divert the route past it They did however divert the route just 6 miles up the track to avoid a golf course that the initial route was going to run through. The British love their ancient forests and protect them with zeal so I can see Extinction Rebellion all over this soon, it is also not the only ancient forest the HS2 route will be splitting in half, theres several along the route.

This article has a good map showing the forest and the golf course
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/woods-and-irons-winners-and-losers-in-the-path-of-hs2

Interesting development. The Chinese Railway Development Corporation has built over 15,000 miles of high speed track over the last couple of decades and are promising to built HS2 much cheaper than current estimates though they are low on detail.

Theres also geo politics at play, Trump was reported have screamed and shouted at Boris on the phone the other day over the UK going ahead with Huawei for 5G. Boris has now cancelled a trip to the White House where they were supposed to talk about a US-UK free trade deal. UK wont want to be seen getting into bed much further with China as the US trade deal has to be a priority post Brexit.

In any case the vast majority of the contracts for the railway from London to Birmingham have already been signed. If there was to be Chinese involvement it would be on phase two Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. Phase 2 is the bulk of the project as the line splits in two north of Birmingham. It is also the part that is the entire reason behind this project- to better connect the north of England with London and the south. The planned finish date for phase 2 is currently 2040 and Boris wants this slashed to 2035. If the Chinese can guarantee him that date or even earlier you'd imagine the Dept of Transport would have to view it seriously given Chinese expertise in high speed rail.

Phase 2 in red below