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Jason Ford
Jason Ford
News Editor
Rail life story
The government is this week expected to announce its preferred route for the 250mph HS2 rail link between London and the West Midlands, which it hopes to have up and running by 2025.
Existing plans will see a link built between London and Birmingham with travel times between the cities cut to 49 minutes.
A further Y-shaped line is proposed north of Birmingham, whose branches would serve Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh; and the other calling at Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle.
Initiated by the former Labour government, the proposed route to Birmingham cuts through 16 Conservative constituencies which are home to cabinet and junior ministers and, according to the Daily Telegraph, the premises of some of the party’s biggest financial backers.
With reports that certain funds to the Conservatives could be cut off, it comes as no surprise to hear that Labour have stepped into the fray, claiming that HS2 is not an ‘untouchable’ project.
In The Guardian on Friday the shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle said HS2 would be included in a policy review ordered by Ed Miliband.
With a possible U-turn on the horizon, Briefing isn’t sure whether this is a politically motivated decision or one born out of a genuine desire to keep public spending in check by putting large infrastructure projects on ice.
Disdain followed the decision earlier in the year that saw an £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters cancelled following the election of the coalition government.
The loan, approved by the former Labour government, was described by the coalition as unaffordable and accused Labour of ’writing a cheque it knew would bounce’.
Deputy PM Nick Clegg is MP for Sheffield Hallam and parliamentary colleague Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge has published documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act revealing his support for the loan prior to the general election.
A report is due tomorrow from a department of business, innovation and skills committee about the affair.
Finally, Saturday sees the launch of the UK’s first hydrogen buses in London.
As reported by The Engineer on Friday December 10, the first of a planned fleet of eight buses will use fuel-cell technology that produces energy from hydrogen and oxygen, emitting only water vapour.
The scheme will see eight buses phased into operation by the middle of next year, adding to the 100 hybrid buses already run by Transport for London (TfL).
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Readers' comments (13)
Stephen Ainsworth | 13 Dec 2010 2:43 pm
With respect to HS2:
Why do they not arrange a route that goes where people will use it?
The benefits of HS2 are not optimised unless the route includes Heathrow, Luton and Birmingham Airports, as well as Key Business Locations in the Midlands and Home Counties (Milton keynes, for example).
In addition, why do they not plan to use existing railway lines, building new lines alongside existing tracks, as this would surely be much cheaper and less environmentally destructive?
I am currently torn about HS2 - I can see some of the benefits (providing they optimise the route and include places people will want to travel to and from), but at least one of the routes goes straight through my Mother's Cottage, as well as a number of my friends Farms, so a re-route or cancellation would definitely be welcome!
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Anonymous | 13 Dec 2010 3:04 pm
Does the DofT believe it is getting value for money from the private subcontractors.
New projects and maintainance costs must be huge due to the huge paypackets the manual workers get
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John Coxon | 13 Dec 2010 3:09 pm
I agreed with Stephen Ainsworth. If the line goes to somewhere that people might want to go - like Heathrow, then the project might seem to be worthy of the upheaval it will obviously bring . But to go straight from Birmingham to London will only encourage daily commuting between the two cities and benefit few.
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Pete | 13 Dec 2010 3:27 pm
The point of a high speed line is that it goes centre-to-centre in the most direct fashion, not winding around to collect airports on the way. One can already link to central London quickly from Heathrow so little point in adding miles of track going west when one really wants to go north.
Adding a connection to Birmingham airport - maybe, but that will just encourage the expansion of yet another smaller airport when the point is to enhance inter-city public transport.
Widening an existing route would result in more or less the same amount of destruction, wouldn't it, as well as the disruption to existing services? In addition many routes have bottlenecks from the early days of rail that can be avoided in the design of a new track. Having recently travelled on the new Dutch high speed line, complete with its sound reducing barriers and very quiet track that avoided town centres I can vouch for the efficiency of having a separate track. It did stop at Schipol though....
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Mick Yarker | 13 Dec 2010 4:27 pm
There is much to be said for a brand new high speed link between Birmingham and London, but I cannot help but think that money could be better spent in inproving the existing network and opening new links as well as reopening certain closed lines. We all know that the railway system just grew in Victorian times and as such it was poorly planned if planned at all, however the Beeching 'plan' was also no plan at all either. No thought was put into future needs and expansion and little money was invested in improving what remained of the network. As a result we have unpleasant stations built at the time (such as Birmingham New Street), and numerous bottlenecks around the system that were created as a result of closures of alternative routes, or were already there plain to see and should have been tackled long ago.
Also, often forgotten is that every station had its own freight distribution yard with an integrated door to door lorry service. This was completely wiped out in favour of road transport - so isn't a total review of freight distribution by rail long overdue?
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Anonymous | 13 Dec 2010 6:15 pm
This is absolutely ridiculous. Politicians are supposed to represent the people, yet they are better then the people. A personal transit system is a huge slap to the face of the common taxpayer.
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Anonymous | 13 Dec 2010 7:40 pm
I did hear about use of the old Great Central track bed.
I wonder if the Great Central line had been invested in when it needed it, whether it would have today served a high speed link? Not to Birmingham though, but Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester.
It was built with great visions, was built to a increased loading gauge, and was proposed to link with a channel tunnel. Was also built with low gradients and with as many straight sections for high speed.
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JG | 14 Dec 2010 9:31 am
Some good points above, esp by M Yarker re- other underused connecting routes NOT to London. It is nothing more than a commuter route for more of the wealthy to shave a few minutes off between London and Brum.. To be squeezed into the last bit if green/productive agricultural land, in an area already infested with similar routes (road & rail).
They didn't get it right before, so let's start again??
Ignoring that the real waste of time is at the ends, the connections. Most illustrated by the absence if a direct link with HS1, idiocy. All the way from the North to France without changing trains in London would make more sense.
Jason Ford does not mention the cost to the taxpayer, computed at £1600 per household. There used to be a policy (1960' I think) of dissuading people from homing in on London, time to resurrect it.
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Harold M. George | 14 Dec 2010 9:44 am
I strongly agree with Mick Yarker.
When I first started works, many centuries it seems ago, we had a rail spur bringing in dangerous chemical tankers amongst which was Oleum 65, a super concentrated sulhuric acid ( in fact 65% sulphur trioxide dissolve in concentrated suphuric acd).
I know that a few years ago road tankers of both Oleum 65 and Liquid Phenol were brought into the former Yorkshire Chemicals site in almost the centre of Selby, and may well be still used by the new owners of this site.
There is a rail line that passes by the rear of these works that could have had a spur line into the works.
Consider what just these two chemicals could do it the tankers split open as a reult of an accident.
Without immediate correct medical attention both could lead to a very painful and quite quick death.
Hence I endose Mick's call for rail freight terminals and rail spur lines into factories using dangerous products.
Too many chemical tankers are on the roads, but how many people know what they are carrying. Hazchem plates mean nothing unless you are in the know about the UN numbers on the Hazchem plates carried.
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Peter Field | 14 Dec 2010 9:59 am
HS2 is definitely not a direct route to the northern cities. It will be a very wasteful zig-zag route; first heading north-west to Birmingham, which is a long way west; then turning north and north-east to Manchester and Leeds requiring TWO separate lines. The Romans had a better idea.
Birmingham is already due to get a second upgraded line; that from Marylebone.
The main flaw is that HS2 will not terminate in Birmingham's main railway station allowing passengers to easily change to local transport to reach their destination. Very few people want to go from the centre of London to the centre of Birmingham only.
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