Andrew Gabriel wrote:
It's a policians' vanity project.

There probably isn't an option to do nothing, but extending capacity
of existing line would do, and knocking minutes off the times is not
required.

That's exactly what HS2 is.

It's way too expensive and disruptive to upgrade existing lines - recently
put as 'like open heart surgery on a marathon runner'. The 2002 West Coast
Main Line upgrade was ~6-10 billion over budget and didn't achieve the
intended goals due to being so over budget that they had to scale it down.
Basically all the easy stuff has already been done.

So build a greenfield line to increase capacity. That way you have a
construction site entirely to yourself, rather than trying to demolish and
rebuild the house with the family still living inside.

Once you're going to build a greenfield line, it's ~10% extra to make it a
high speed line. Why build a wiggly line when a straight line would give
more scope for future improvements? Some of our current 125mph trains run
on lines built in the 1840s, when trains only went at 50mph, because the
builders of the line had the foresight to plan beyond the current
technology.

At this point, you don't have to run TGVs on it, you can run normal trains.
The route is open to running TGVs if you wish to do so at some future point.
They're just the icing on the cake. The main thing is 2 new tracks at say
140mph gives you a lot more capacity than the existing WCML with fast,
stopping and freight trains all mixed up together.

Economically, HS3 is more important - the east/west links up north,
and internationl travel by air combined with retaining a European
hub airport - that's really important.

Indeed. Though HS3 isn't a High Speed line, it's essentially a collection
of schemes to smooth out bottlenecks, with some new build in between.
(There's lots more low hanging fruit on that route than on the WCML)

HS2 is being promoted wrongly. It should be sold as London to Edinburgh
(or Glasgow) in 3 hours or less; it would then be quicker than a plane,
since it would need 3 hours check in. I've travelled from Spain to
Paris in the French Version.

One thing at a time. That's a 20-30 year project. Also the economics get
somewhat sketchier further north. However London to Edinburgh will still
benefit by using it as a trunk route - just like the M1 can be used to make
a quicker journey than the A1 all the way (less of an issue since the A1 has
lost all the roundabouts and single sections it used to have).

I agree that 'HS2 to Birmingham' is a silly thing to promote - it's not as
if it's just about people moving between Birmingham and London, it's like a
motorway that will feed in lots of services from further afield. Like the
M25 was not built for people who want to do circuits around London.

The problem is the cost, much more expensive than France with the land
costs etc.

Even just the track construction costs - their high speed costs are
1/10th of ours per unit length.

Yes, we need costs to come down. Though the population density of the UK
doesn't help - central France where many TGVs run is very very empty (one
car spotted between 8am and 9am kind of empty). Any time you want to serve
a centre of population it gets expensive, and they're much harder to avoid
in the UK.

Theo