Government to order review of costly project no-one wants.....

[Mordac]

You say no one wants it - construction companies are happy for it

Course they are. They can spin it out as long as they want, because everybody expects govt infrastructure projects to be very late and well over budget, and nobody asks any awkward questions. They'll all blame Grayling anyway (in fact they'll probably blame Grayling for anything that goes wrong in the next twenty years)...

[Mordac]

HS2 is bonkers. If they're so incompetent they can't even estimate the costs to the nearest £20 billion then they'll probably deliver something that is not fit for purpose and needs additional 'improvements' once finished.

On face value it feels like a project supported by those that are looking to trough a few billion here and there so it needs to be sufficiently ambitious and costly to allow that to happen. If so then why is Boris now looking at it when he will no doubt have the same old boys network as Cameron and those before whispering in his ear? Maybe to find a way to fund all the other projects he wants to propose as a way of winning any upcoming General Election.

Personally, I would prefer they spend a fraction of the money on improving the whole rail network, re-opening lines where it makes sense. They need to do this anyway if they want to hit any ambitious CO2 targets by reducing the reliance on cars to get between towns and cities.

An anecdote of how ridiculous the current state of the railway system is: My parents live in Cornwall in a village with a station that allows easy access to Newquay or Plymouth and beyond (and all the local places in between), but the local trains barely operate during the tourist season as they run the intercity trains through instead. So there is a station that can't be used for several months each year so they have to drive instead.

Then there is the yearly debacle of the Dawlish line being affected by waves or cliff erosion, cutting off trains to Cornwall from Exeter and beyond. They'll spend loads trying to improve it when there is already a decent proposal to re-open the line via Okehampton.

That is the sort of capacity issue they are attempting to solve with HS2 that applies to a lot of other areas of the country.

This, pretty much. Having an HS2 that doesn't connect to HS1 seems pretty daft. When I was at Railtrack (that shows how long ago it was) they were in the middle of spending c.£25bn upgrading the WCML. HS2 should have been (logically) along the route of the Midland Mainline (towards Derby, Sheffield etc) to improve areas which have a crap service, not areas which do have a half decent service already.

[original PM]

It's necessary to take the pressure of the rest of the rail network.

The money will have to be spent and when someone gets around to how best to do it, they'll end up with the same conclusion. Japan's rail network is the best in the world. One of the reasons is the dedicated intercity network and the bullet trains.

Britain has an outdated network where local and intercity trains share the same tracks, and those tracks are where the bulk of the local travel is.

Yeah - gimme more o that japanese train service

[BrilloPad]

Yeah - gimme more o that japanese train service

MF needs that even if the carriage is already empty....

[WTFH]

Having been to Japan, not just looked at videos on the internet, they have a very efficient train service. The video shared above is about a commuter train, not the Shinkansen.

The “guys in white gloves” are the platform conductors.
The trains run on time, are clean and efficient.
They are part public/part private sector

...but hey, best reject any foreign ideas that work based on not wanting to understand them, and try to do it all ourselves.

[tazdevil]

HS2 is expensive and if we are to spend that sort of money we should at least do something innovative. Rather than ripping up communities and farmland to get London commuters to their work slightly more quickly we should put an overhead train down the centre of the M1, M6 and M62 motorways using new technology such as Tubular Rail. Then scrap the plans to extend Heathrow and build the Thames Estuary Airport. Let's make Britain great again

[BrilloPad]

Having been to Japan, not just looked at videos on the internet, they have a very efficient train service. The video shared above is about a commuter train, not the Shinkansen.

The “guys in white gloves” are the platform conductors.
The trains run on time, are clean and efficient.
They are part public/part private sector

...but hey, best reject any foreign ideas that work based on not wanting to understand them, and try to do it all ourselves.

Do we also have to have vending machines that sell used schoolgirl panties?

[BlasterBates]

Yeah - gimme more o that japanese train service

You have obviously never been on the London Underground during rush hour, because not only would the trains be as jam-packed as the Japanese trains, but more importantly the platform wouldn't be empty when train leaves the station.

[BlasterBates]

Having been to Japan, not just looked at videos on the internet, they have a very efficient train service. The video shared above is about a commuter train, not the Shinkansen.

The “guys in white gloves” are the platform conductors.
The trains run on time, are clean and efficient.
They are part public/part private sector

...but hey, best reject any foreign ideas that work based on not wanting to understand them, and try to do it all ourselves.

Indeed you always have a seat, and the point is the bullet trains are never delayed.

[BrilloPad]

I went on a bullet train recently. Sat there for ages and nothing happened.

I expected far more from the national rail museum....