Forums Forums National News HS2

Should China construct it ?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51512831

Why not they might have it done in five years, as Labour's plan will be thirty to forty years most of us will be dead and buried by then, never mind the line over to Ireland!

It would be more to the point if Elon Musk did it, it would be cheaper, quicker to make and a faster journey.

HS2 is probably getting downgraded to a much lower speed than originally planned, most documents refer to the outdated 2012 specification.

I'm not really sure what HS2 is about. Is it all about cutting travelling time by half hour/hour for travellers between London and various cities north of London.
Will it also be used by freight trains.
I wonder how it will run in adverse weather conditions we have now and in the future.
How many of the millions of us will never travel on it.
Dread to think what it would be like if something went wrong with it or the track when travelling at high speeds.
How is it going to bring prosperity to us all and who will eventually own it (private or public)

Doesn't make much sense to me either Derek. I am still convinced it is purely for the benefit of Londoners. we know the capitol is heaving and not much room left for anything.
Southerners would not wish to live in the rotten, disease riddled, cobbled streets of the North , so if they can travel faster and commute from the smoke, to Manchester where businesses and media city thrive with a huge building programme progressing at a massive speed ( I was in awe of the building going on in Salford last year) it suits them better.

Those are my thoughts on it, but somehow I feel the branching off to benefit Leeds, Liverpool, etc, is not going to happen so quickly.

That's fine, because all it means is if they get too close, our property prices will boom and our local young people will once again be left struggling to find a roof .

Commuting to the Southerners is part of everyday life. I knew one guy who travelled daily to the City, leaving at home at 6 am every morning to arrive by 9am. Rail from Ipswich (Suffolk) to London is 1 hr 10 mins.. that's not a problem for any of them, and many go onto Norfolk on a daily basis which is 1.30 hrs or more. They can work on their computers, have phone calls and drink coffee whilst annoying everyone else who like to snooze.

One thing HS2 will do is free up the exiting lines to become local lines again which could trigger the start of the re-building of our National and Local railway network, there is already talk of opening up some closed sections.

There are many towns, valliages and cities are completely under-served by the existing main-line because it is so committed to high-speed commuting, the trains pass many more stations than they stop at.

However I can never see HS2 being profitable, bail-outs will be the order of the day.

When I lived down in Reading, many years ago, I remember a regional news article about a guy who spent longer on his commute (from the Isle of Wight!) into London each day than he did at work, and that was on the trains of 30+ years ago. He was a programmer with a boss who allowed him to count a certain percentage of his travelling time towards his working hours.

It seems they always have done early starts and long travel times. I suppose that living so close to a city has always been advantageous for us in this part of the world.
My daughter drives to work each day from rural Kent, takes about an hour and has to be in at 8am, and her daughter is also in nursery at 8am. Long days, I couldn't have done it. (I don't think)

Once the expensive new electric cars come into play , I don't know what they'll do because in most of these rural places there aren't any trains or buses and few can afford new cars.

Getting back to the Chinese, if they can do it more cheaply and faster then why not ? Just so long as they don't invade.