Scrapping HS2 for those further north

kittylester

Nottingham university's SuttonBonington Campus is largely vetinary and fairly inaccessible.

Leicester and Loughborough are obviously not the centre of the universe but have very well regarded,innovative universities.

So what exactly is the point of the EMP hub? It's in the middle of a backwater and inaccessible.

Railways are needed for freight, but also for commuters. Commuter traffic causes much of the congestion on our roads. Hardly anybody lives or works near EMP station, so people will have to use their cars to get there.

Unless capacity is increased, local trains are slowed down by freight trains and mainline fast trains. What is needed is for towns/cities with work to be linked with the places where people live by fast, efficient transport.

How much disruption to travel is going to be caused by upgrading existing track? And how can more freight be moved from lorries onto trains now?

It does seem silly to scrap that brand new cross Pennines route, and surely the present routes all need upgrading which would be a lot easier to do after the new rail was built. But I wonder, since it apparently wasn't going to happen for another twenty years, if the latest COP has something to do with it. The point is being pushed that the upgrades will all be done within the next few years - before 2030. The cross-Pennine line would cause a lot of destruction and be very polluting while actually being built which would have apparently been after 2030.

The plans are there now and can be resurrected at a future date when the country's bank balance and, hopefully, pollution levels are better. Or of course when Labour get back in!

Question Time dealt with this matter last night. There was a general agreement, except for the Tory spokeswoman, that those living north of Watford come behind those further south for infrastructure improvements. However much this railway network would benefit the North it was felt that the cost, at present predicted to be around £93 billion, is crazy money and a portion of that would be better spent on improving the rolling stock and rail lines we already have.

I think the problem here is that so many people don't understand how government debt works.

We think of it as being the same as our own personal debt which we owe to someone, or company, bank, or institution - which we have to pay back by a certain date at a defined level of interest. But it isn't and this fact makes it difficult to understand that a government can decide how, on what, and when to spend money, according to its political ideology.

The real problem is inflation.

Mr Starmer has just said he'll build it. Not sure where he'll get the money but that's not something politicians in opposition worry about!

Just as long as we can get the long promised money for that last five mile stretch of our link road built around Norwich. That was first mooted in 1935! (Although they hadn't thought of dual carriageways then!)

I’m from ‘Oop North’ and I’m glad the link is being scrapped. All to shave, what! 10 minutes off travel time from here in Manchester to Leeds where our Yorkshire Lass lives? Eye watering costs. Let’s upgrade what we have. Open some of the local stations and tracks that Beeching shut down. Zoom meetings have come on in leaps and bounds since the pandemic anyway. It’s greener - what’s not to like?

I used to travel from Leeds to Manchester. It was horrendous. The trains were always overly packed. One journey I spent jammed against the doors as I could go no further in.
Spending one and a half hours like that felt inhumane.
I hope the promises made this morning about cutting the time on that route to 33 minutes goes ahead but we have had promised before.

Can you explain that further please*Dickens*? If money isn't a problem, its just more debt, and its all down to keeping inflation under control, how does that work? (Please keep it simple - I'm not very bright.)

Open some of the local stations and tracks.
Exactly what I feel. Our Dartmoor line, Exeter to Okehampton, was re opened after 50 years closure just this week. No cost to the beautiful environment.

NfkDumpling

Can you explain that further please*Dickens*? If money isn't a problem, its just more debt, and its all down to keeping inflation under control, how does that work? (Please keep it simple - I'm not very bright.)

Me too. Surely the money has to come from somewhere on the books?

HS2, remember John Craven demonstrating this monstrosity in the beautiful village of Wendover where the line would destroy woodland and peoples homes, all for the sake of a twenty minute reduction in travel time. Certainly, even if the line continued, it would have brought no benefits to my part of the East Coast, a thriving hub of green engineering and maintenance, where we cannot even get to London direct, and now a straight through line to Manchester Airport has been deemed to busy, so passengers with luggage and children have to disembark, walk quite a way, to get another train for the 16 minute journey to the airport. Thanks Manchester. As long as the big cities are served, no one gives a damn about those who live well away from them. Our Local MP has been fighting for years to get us a direct train to London, used to be one, yeh once a day, but even that is proving hopeless.

I’ve travelled Manchester to Leeds and back many times. Perhaps one answer might be more trains or more carriages on the existing timetable?

It appears only Andy Burnham still wants this white elephant. A small price for us all to pay for his Labour Party leadership / Prime Minister aspirations.

Anyway Boris didn't promise. Mrs. May promised HS2 (and lost whatever majority she had). Boris said he would review this, and I think many hoped he would overturn her decision.

Urmstongran

I’ve travelled Manchester to Leeds and back many times. Perhaps one answer might be more trains or more carriages on the existing timetable?

It appears only Andy Burnham still wants this white elephant. A small price for us all to pay for his Labour Party leadership / Prime Minister aspirations.

Well he’ll never persuade me, fighting for HS whatever. Leeds to London, 48 trains a day, Leeds to Manchester average 61 trains per day. Can’t say you’re not well provided for on that side of the country.

We are admittedly very well served on this side of the Pennines.

2 points

Himself thinks again, typically London centric. They should have worked down from the North first.

Secondly he UK is not France. Which is what - 3 times bigger? Our centres of population are too close together. By the time a UK train has reached it's maximum speed it will be time to slow down for it's next stop.

It isn’t about just cutting travelling times but getting freight off the roads and onto the railways. I wonder if the road transport lobby that pulled Thatchers strings are behind some of this. And no one has answered my question about the disruption that’s going to be caused by upgrading existing rail networks. I used to travel round Europe by train quite a lot and was always embarrassed by how archaic the rail network was once I returned to this country.

I’m in favour of upgrading the existing rail networks regardless of any decision about HS2, as they need it.
I’m surprised about this decision being made public now though, as it’s another nail in Boris’ coffin for the red wall voters in the North East judging by the public reaction.

I wondered that about the timing of the announcement Casdon. As I see it, maybe Boris is hoping to get all the bad news out of the way now, taking the flak and blame for everything, then in two years' time when things have moved on and are forgotten, he can say he was justified in such decisions.

Josianne

I wondered that about the timing of the announcement Casdon. As I see it, maybe Boris is hoping to get all the bad news out of the way now, taking the flak and blame for everything, then in two years' time when things have moved on and are forgotten, he can say he was justified in such decisions.

That's if he lasts another 2 years...

And that is a very big IF at the moment!

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202111/medium-141895-dawlish1.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202111/medium-392399-dawlish2.jpg

The south west desperately needs another railway line. The only route to Devon and Cornwall is through Dawlish, which runs far too close to the sea. A beautiful scenic journey in good weather, but very vulnerable in the winter. I hope the money can be found to build a second line through Okehampton to Plymouth, then the scenic route won't need to run in bad weather.

NfkDumpling

Can you explain that further please*Dickens*? If money isn't a problem, its just more debt, and its all down to keeping inflation under control, how does that work? (Please keep it simple - I'm not very bright.)

... I'm sure you're just as "bright" as anyone else... I'm not that clever either, but have made a point of trying to understand how the economy works. And I also like it plain and simple.

The money spent on easing the struggles of people and businesses due to the Pandemic came from the Bank of England as a loan.

We used to borrow money from pension funds, wealthy individuals and foreign countries, but this new debt is being borrowed from the Bank of England which is, itself, a government institution, and is able and legally allowed to create its own money.

In simple terms, the government is borrowing money from itself, and doesn't have to worry about paying it back.

Technically, these loans have end dates - but these loans have
been happening since 2009. However, so far, when they reach maturity, the BoE has extended the loan, and not only extended it but have increased the loan amounts, and decreased the interest rates. It is, apparently, a known 'secret' by traders and economists that these loans will be extended indefinitely.

And because the government owns the BoE, it returns any profit made on interest back to the government.

The important thing is that the financial markets recognise that this debt will never be paid back, and will never have to be... it's new money, lent permanently to the government.

This doesn't mean there are no problems caused by this strategy... inflation, etc. But that's for another day.

This is really a very simplified explanation.

I agree, Chestnut. We desperately better rail services here in the south west. The Exeter to Okehampton route being re-opened is a start, so let's hope they now extend it to Tavistock and then Plymouth which would be an alternative to the Dawlish route without carving up too much of the countryside.