HS2

HS2

I am caught in a quandary

I have been a vocal supporter of the high speed line since it was first mooted back in 2006. I am starting to waver however. 

My problem is that I don't want to discourage government fr om investing large sums of money in our rail network but as the cost has now appeared to double I am being drawn towards another point of view. 

One of the reason's we are having to spend so much is that we have waited so long to start building high speed rail. The French have been doing it since the 1970's and the German's since the 1980's never mind the Spanish and the Italians.

TGV

It could have been different. In the 1970's we tried to develop an Advanced Passenger Train (APT). It failed to live up to expectations and was cancelled. The entire cost of development was seen as too big at £37 million pounds. At the same time the French were embarking on their TGV lines. The comparison at the time was that each train (when track building costs were included) cost £200 million each. But the entire ENTIRE APT program was less than a quarter of that. Admittedly the British Government wer under the cosh financially due to an IMF bail out and subsequent spending limitations. But just think what we could of had if we had just doubled the project funding? Had APT gone into regular service we may not be having this debate. 

APT

You see the second part of the HS2 project is to increase capacity. Which it will. But for the same money a lot of signal improvements could be carried out, carriages bought and line improvements made. An article I read in the journal Modern Railways at about the time the "Pendolino" services started claimed many minutes could have been shaved off the pre Pendolino services just by investing in relatively simple track adjustments for instance straightening curves inside stations to allow faster acceleration from certain stations. 

Double Decker

Pendolino

More capacity could be added if the loading gauge
of British railways could be raised. Britain cannot accommodate double-decker trains for instance, because they won't pass under all the bridges. £42 billion pounds would go a long way to rectify this and could double passenger capacity.

A previous attempt

As a result I am falling between 2 stools at the moment. Build a railway the country deserves or build a railway it needs.