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From The BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50995116)

Interview with Lord Berkeley will be on Sky news at 08:30am on Sunday morning.

Darn - missed it. Never mind.

Confirmed what most people suspect....out of control.

https://news.sky.com/story/hs2-costs-are-out-of-control-and-could-spiral-to-107bn-lord-warns-11901105

Or to put it another way: repeated what he always says.

Do most people suspect this project is out of control?

Most people (outside of the railway bubble) who are used to having to observe the discipline of on time/within budget are utterly incredulous about the spiralling cost of this project, and I think it's reasonable to say that to go from £55bn to £88bn to well over £100bn suggests that it's out of control - these are colossal amounts of money.

I appreciate that massive overruns/overspends are par for the course in the rail industry (I give you Crossrail as just one other example amongst many), however we don't all have the luxury of shrugging our shoulders over such issues, and/or shooting inconvenient messengers by default.

Well that's tightened the definition of 'most people' to exclude... er, well, in fact that's probably excluded most people.



Tony Berkeley is long-standing critic of HS2. If he'd suddenly changed his mind and backed HS2, that would be news. This isn't.

Well that's selective quoting for you.

I fully appreciate and respect that you regard HS2 as a sacred cow, irrespective of cost, and that anyone expressing an opinion which challenges this is by default regarded as a heretic.

It's entirely possible of course that you are better informed than the likes of Tony Berkeley, and if so, and the project comes in on budget and on time, I will be the first to acknowledge it - I'm sure you will be gracious enough to do the same should the alternative scenario materialise?

I'd be interested in your rebuttal of the findings of Lord Berkeley's report - it's been widely publicised today.

Indeed.


There are a number of aspects of this project which appear problematic, not least of which being that (according to some) possibly 30% of the cost is accounted for by over-engineering to reduce risk.


It'll be astonishing if this project comes in on time or on budget. Big infrastructure projects don't tend to, leastwise not when the British Government have any involvement in the spec.


Publicised, but not published as far as I can see.

Interesting that even Tony Berkeley acknowledges a BCR of 0.6 for the project (source: Stop HS2 (http://stophs2.org/news/18973-berkeley-report-leaves-hs2-irrevocably-damaged)). BCR calculations have a habit of being rather conservative.

So you're dismissing Lord Berkeley's report as "what he always says" without having read it.

He discussed much of it in the Telegraph today with a lot of analysis. Interesting that you cite a BCR of 0.6:1, which represents "poor value for money" by the Treasury definition.

Somewhat different to the figure of 2.3:1 quoted by the DfT in seeking approval for the project.

£33bn to £107bn in 10 years, completion drifted by 7 years already. Yep, all under control.  🙄

Today's Sunday Times has an article quoting Lord Berkeley as claiming that the report has exaggerated HS2's benefits by assuming 18 trains an hour will run, "a feat not managed by any high-speed service in the world".

Apparently the report has revised down the financial benefits, once claimed to be £2.30 for every pound spent, to between £1.30 and £1.50.

I was a bit surprised that the review chairman, Douglas Oakervee, was once chairman of HS2. Perhaps a less-impartial chair would have been preferable, though I suppose it could be said that Berkeley provided a counterbalance.

I recall David Cameron, when launching HS2, being asked about the risk of the scheme going over-budget and his poo-pooing the notion - which prompted me to laugh derisively.

Marlburian

I posted a similar link a while ago that demonstrated the railway industry is no different to other industries in terms of big infrastructure projects and the chances of cost and delay implications to them.  Nine out of ten do worldwide.  But this article makes interesting reading:

http://cdn.roxhillmedia.com/production/email/attachment/730001_740000/ICE%20Report%20-%20Reducing%20the%20gap%20between%20cost%20estimates%20and%20outturns%20for%20major%20infrastructure%20projects%20and%20programmes.pdf

To quote the report II refers to:


The initial cost estimate for the Olympics was £2.37 billion.

Here is Tony Berkeley's report:

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A8e9c8f87-2650-4aa0-8e0f-0eaf6e709640

The initial cost didn't envelope the general regeneration of the Lee Valley and infrastructure elements, and didn't include the tax (mainly VAT) that the Olympic Delivery Authority would need to pay which would come back to the government anyway. What had been really undercooked in the original estimate were the security costs.

What was also included was a sizeable £2.7Bn of contingency which in the end wasn't quite all used up but not that far off.

Appendix 3.1 of Berkeley's report is interesting. It lists what he describes as 'Recovery or Replacement works'; things he'd do instead of progressing the current HS2 scheme. Among other things, he advocates:

• Reinstatement of the railway along the former Great Central Railway route from Banbury to Rugby;
• Reinstatement of Whitacre Junction to Hampton in Arden;
• Reinstatement of Sutton Park Line;
• Reinstatement of Walsall  to Lichfield  via Rycroft Junction and extension of CrossCity services to Burton-on-Trent;
• Metro extension from Birmingham City Centre to South West Birmingham via A38
• Re-open Matlock to Buxton
• A new line from Berwick to Dunbar, avoiding the cliffs
• A new line 'through Fife'

This is not the full list. Some of these are freight lines, but quite a lot are complete reinstatements. There's also a lot of junction improvements, electrification, re-quadding and other capacity enhancements.

However, perhaps even more interesting is this table (on p.47) comparing the cost of HS2 with the alternative option:

Comparing the two options:	complete HS2 LTD As planned	Upgrade of NR lines As planned and cancel most of HS2
Completion	2035 to 2040	phased to 2034
Capacity on HS2 or parallel lines to/from London - additional weekday seats	170,500	144,500
Connectivity to local and regional services	limited	better
Weekend possessions on NR lines (total)	223	2,700
Journey times London – Leeds mins	82	96 to 99
Journey times London – Manchester mins	82	122
HS2 element of cost	£106bn	£50bn
Plus, net cost of cancelling HS2	-	£7bn
Armitt connections to cities – see above	£43bn	£22.5bn
To both of these options must be added the costs of upgrading local and regional services to complement those included above:
	£39bn	£39bn
Totals	£187bn	£128.5bn

Lord Berkeley says in his report (and I quote selectively):


so he has dismissed the main report without reading it, or so it would seem.

Let's get back to basics. Some years ago, someone in government spotted that there was a need for more rail services between London and the north, and decided that the best way was to upgrade the West Coast mainline at an estimated cost of £2 billion. The project was scaled back when the estimate looked to have increased to around £13 billion, to keep it to £6 billion. In the end, about £9-£10 billion was finally shelled out. As soon as it was finished, work began of many of the bits that had been cut to save money, which then cost a lot more because they were separate new projects. The project was completed either 3 years late or on time, depending on where you measure the start date from, in 2008. By then it was becoming obvious that there was still a need for more rail services.

That upgrade caused years of disruption because it was done on a live railway, and a very busy one at that. The East Coast Mainline has had  lots of money thrown at it too, but would - will - be complex to upgrade further. So the government decided on a new railway, and as we're building it, why not make it high speed to compete with air transport for the environmental benefits, and free up space for the increasing amount of freight we want to take of the equally burdened roads. Scrap it now, with over £7 billion already spent, use the money to beef up the WCML and ECML, and the government will still see a need for more rail services between London and the north. Add to that the fact that the northern cities have been told it is coming and have made plans and spent money accordingly, and that we now have a Prime Minister who wants to save the north, and decimals of BCR become like angels on pinheads. Interesting matter for intellectual debate if there's nothing much on telly, but not very meaningful.

Like the third runway at Heathrow, speculation and argument will only cease when it is built. I wouldn't say the cost is irrelevant because it isn't, but as an annual spend over the whole construction period, it is a lot less frightening. BCR figures are usually calculated by working backwards from the answer you want, or, if they are done properly, the final figure is halved for rail projects and doubled for bus, but that won't be the deciding factor. Boris has the north to impress.


It would seem that the gap between doing HS2 or the noble Lord's substitute is not much more than the original estimate for HS2. One should bear in mind that in every similar exercise to date, the practice has been to keep your own costs down and the competitor's up.

I should have checked the primary source! Actually, Berkeley said:


There is quite a difference between '0.6' and 'possibly as low as 0.6'.

But the detail that really stood out for me was in the comparison table: HS2 will require 223 weekend possessions on NR lines. The alternative will require 2700. Anyone know how many possessions the GWML electrification needed?

That figure of 2,700 possessions is equivalent to 17 years of continuous weekend possessions on WCML, MML and ECML.  Presumably there would be multiple possessions on the same line.  It would make the disruption during the last WCML upgrade look like a tea party.

It would make the disruption caused by WWII look manageable. That is an awful lot of bustitutions, just as we were beginning to win on the railways. Well, started playing at least.

In New Civil Engineer (https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/ex-hs2-technical-director-hits-out-at-factually-wrong-berkeley-report-10-01-2020/) (Sorry paywall) there is a report of a statement from Andrew McNaughton hitting out at the Berkeley report as being factually wrong.

He quotes Berkeley's statement about 18 trains per hour being unachievable - based on the fact that no other high speed line achieves this - and points to the fact that other lines have capacity restrains at stations and junctions and HS2 has designed these out.

He also points out that “The truth is, it is impossible to four-track most of the existing network as houses are built right up to the tracks in a lot of urban and suburban areas.”

It would indeed be hideously disruptive, not to mention very expensive, to add tracks to many existing railways.

Indeed - be that to the left, to the right, above, or below.

As it's been explained to me, what's needed is extra capacity. You may be able to get a quart into a litre pot or not notice the spillage, but try and go much further and you have a mess.  And if you try and run different various types of trains with differing stopping patterns on the same lines, you gobble up paths and end up with reliability issues in that it's far harder to recover things if some overtaking manoeuvre goes wrong.

So - logic suggests new tracks.   Knock down houses to get to the centre of places you want to serve, and up goes the bill - the original railway engineers found that, which is why the London termini are in a ring at the edge of what was the urban area in around 1840.   So - new tracks avoiding the populated areas - but how can you do that if you want to solve the transport issues of those very populations?

Logical answer is to build a new long distance line through the countryside (but, yes, that will upset the tweed-wearing, 4WD-driving, fox-hunting types) then look to see what traffic logically would run on it - and it turns out to be the long distance passenger traffic from London (expensive exception needed to bring the new tracks in) to the more distant places - moving off the new line onto older infrastructure once you're clear of the congested area where you were trying to shove a gallon into a litre pot.

Segragating the long distance passenger traffic (none stop for the first 100 miles) means that new line can be efficiently used, and capacity is recovered rather more than in proportion to the number of trains removed on the "old lines" because the number of different types of traffic is reduced too.

Has anyone yet suggested another HS2 leg from around Aylesbury, passing near Bicester and Stow-on-the-Wold, to Cheltenham Spa to relieve the lines out of Paddington of express trains to Cheltenham Spa,  Gloucester, South Wales and Bristol?  60 miles, say £18 billion.

……………..of course, because only "tweed-wearing, 4WD-driving, fox-hunting types" care about the countryside.

 ::)

I think it's probably a good idea to focus on grahame's stereotyping. With luck, it might even distract people's attention from the fact that Tony Berkeley's own 'dissenting report' has blown the anti-HS2 case so far out of the water that it's in danger of going into orbit.

And of course popping the word "only" in front of what I write changes the whole sense of what I said. I did not limit my comment to that profile, and if I had done then I would have written a serious untruth.

If that was genuinely your intention, why stereotype so lazily at all?

I think it's probably a good idea to focus on grahame's stereotyping. With luck, it might even distract people's attention from the fact that Tony Berkeley's own 'dissenting report' has blown the anti-HS2 case so far out of the water that it's in danger of going into orbit.

To be fair to TG, it's far from only being the huntin' shootin' fishin' set who are against HS2 - there's all kinds of "greens", townies turned country folk (eg the actor Geoffrey Palmer) and others.

What really concerns me is that almost no-one mentions that one of the huge benefits is to take people out of cars planes etc for internal medium and long distance travel. That surely is one of the biggest benefits of the scheme, whatever the overall cost!

Tongue, Cheek, therein.

And there is an element (who, yes, I lazily stereotyped) who seem to have an influence far out of proportion to their numbers.  I live in a county where around 66% of the population lives in urban settings, just 34% rural.  And a coupe of years back I looked the the composition of the (unitary) county's cabinet, noting that 18 out of 19 represented rural wards.  In Melksham, five out of six wards are urban in character, yet three out of six of the public "area board" meetings are held away form the centre - explained to me to "make sure we include the villages".

But the "country squires" if you call them that are, indeed, far from the only ones who care for the countryside. Which comment aligns with my original comment.


Doing my best to stoke that fire, Red Squirrel!

Here's some fuel for your woodburner.

(Fewer places for foxes to hide from those ghastly country folk too Graham!)  ;)

Expect plenty more of this...………….

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/hs2-destroyed-trees-in-way-of-train-line-without-permission

(As a member of the BBOWT I guess I should declare an interest).

It's absolutely right that HS2 Ltd and/or its contractors should be held to account if, as appears to be the case, they have broken the law.

I fear that TG is right, and that there will be more incidents like this. In at massive project like HS2, there are sure to be mistakes and perhaps worse. This in no way weakens the case for HS2, though; it just makes a strong case for better management.

Calvert Jubliee Nature Reserve, where this incident occurred, is the site of an old landfill and brickworks adjacent to Calvert Junction. East-West Rail's route runs along the northern boundary of the site, whilst HS2's route is on the eastern edge of the reserve along the old Great Central trackbed (http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-maps-20120110/hs2arp00drrw05013issue3.pdf).

HS2 Ltd plan to plant 75,000 trees in mitigation.

A little detail I missed:

Source: The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/hs2-destroyed-trees-in-way-of-train-line-without-permission), my highlighting

It's that word 'ancient'... Surely the trackbed of the Great Central as it runs past an old council tip cannot, by any stretch of anyone's imagination, be considered to be ancient woodland?

You would be surprised how quickly a section of ex-railway becomes a stronghold of nature, if not "ancient".  Not the only example - look to the issues that the Kent and East Sussex Railway has had getting the trackbed from Robertsbridge to Junction Road (about 4km out)

But "ancient woodland" is a technical term (though perhaps not a protected one). According to the Woodland Trust:

As a long-time walker and cycler (if that's a word!) of old railway lines, I wouldn't. It's astonishing how quickly nature can recover if we just give it half a chance. Even a council tip can become an important wildlife haven in a relatively short time.

Knepp (https://knepp.co.uk/home) is an interesting case in point. In just 20 years it has gone from failing farm to internationally-important wildlife resource - and is now profitable. One might hope that some of HS2's mitigation follows this kind of lead.

On a personal note, so am I, and I do voluntary work on several of its sites in West Berkshire. Another site (not a BBOWT one) is Furze Hill, Hermitage, which includes a short stretch of the old Didcot, Newbury and Southampton line. Furze Hill is the site of a former brickworks close to where Pinewood Halt was and which was served by a siding, with a narrow-gauge railway inside the works.

At Furze Hill now are a housing development, large new village hall and playing fields, with some land being returned to nature. Every now and then we go along the former trackbed almost to the M4 cutting back growth. A couple of us, supported by contractors, have just extended the path along the bed the other side of the motorway bridge to Hampstead Norreys.

Nothing much of the old railway is to be seen, apart from a few fence posts, though there a couple of bridges to the south - and I think that the former Ministry of Supply cold store, once served by two sidings, still stands.

Marlburian

That makes at least three of us then...!

Indeed. And "habitat where bats could roost" is by no means the same as "habitat where bats are roosting", any more than the muddy puddle in the road is a "habitat where newts could live", although they probably will. If anything, it makes sense to so the work now. Not only are the bats away, but birds are not nesting. Both will go somewhere else.

You are getting old when ancient woodland starts to look young. The Beeching forest is not ancient.

Here is another dissenting suggestion from the Mail Online (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7877371/Top-adviser-Boris-Johnson-urges-axe-HS2-South.html)

Removing the politics from the equation, and by way of an attempt to forestall the frothing at the mouth that citing the Mail inevitably provokes, he isn't alone in that view.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/poll-reducing-cost-hs2/

(from before the election)

Trouble is, like it on not, politics is a fundamental part of the equation. 

So is ‘frothing at the mouth’.  From both sides of the argument.

Public opinion is a fundamental part of the equation, and it tends to drive political considerations, (as Mr Corbyn has recently discovered), and I'd suggest that an article written prior to the election, in a specialist engineering publication with little or no political profile, is considerably more objective than that in the Mail, or the Rail/pro HS2 lobby?

Citing articles in the Mail is often used deliberately to invite scorn to be poured upon them by default - when the view is backed up in the way the article in the Engineer supports (albeit arguably with different motivations), it should give pause for thought.

I quite agree - public opinion at the ballot box (though with HS2 as a very minor part of most people's thinking) gave the Tory party a large majority, and as a result the ability to pretty much do what they want.  So, it now shifts in that 'public opinion' of HS2 in itself matters very little, rightly or wrongly, and it is now much more about politics and keeping all Boris's new MPs happy.  With a lot of those in the Midlands and north of England, it might actually mean projects specifically for that area get priority over HS2, or HS2 magically gets started in the north and scaled back further south - we'll just have to wait and see.  Either way, it looks like scrapping entirely it like you, and a few others on this forum, would wish, is the least likely option.


There should be no surprise that a poll of public opinion in any journal gives a high percentage of people saying it 'should be scrapped' - after all, most people just keep hearing about massive cost increases and the fact all it does is save 20 minutes on a journey from London to Birmingham.  It remains an unpopular project amongst the general public, but that doesn't mean it's not a sensible idea. 

Readers of The Engineer are likely to be better informed than most, but still not particularly well informed (the quote from a John Hartley in the link you quoted demonstrates that perfectly) about exactly what HS2 is being built for - mostly to add capacity on a creaking old network.  Now it is becoming clearer just what the alternative upgrades to that creaking old network will cost if HS2 doesn't go ahead, perhaps some will change their minds?

The costs could be brought under control by changing the rather stupid procurement model that forces the contractors to heavily over-engineer, for example, the earthworks so that they are not subject to even minor settlement.  Routine maintenance of the structures would be a much cheaper way of dealing with that, but if you want to avoid it you are essentially asking for a viaduct rather than an embankment. 

Quite. This is a fundamental point that isn't as well known as it should be.  It seems to be driven by the Treasury misconception that it makes sense for all risks relating to future coststo be transferred to the private sector, as demonstrated by the ludicrous cost of so many PFI schemes.

On the subject of politics, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street was interviewed recently on Radio 4. His views on HS2 were asked, at which point I began to think he had read my previous posts on the subject. He sees is absolutely crucial to the development of the area, with the uncertainty of the present mood being harmful. Scrapping HS2 would be a disaster for the West Midlands, and also for the northern regions. The other significant Mayor up in those frozen wastes, Andy Burnham, sees it in the same way, saying that in effect the idea of the northern powerhouse completely depends on HS2 happening. It isn't just the fast journey to London but the freeing up of space on the WCML for more local passenger services and, crucially, for freight. It would also surely bring about improvements from Manchester to Liverpool and Leeds. Manchester Piccadilly to Leeds takes over an hour on most trains, despite the distance between the two cities being less than the length of the Central Line.

Public opinion isn't just what makes the most noise. Part of the tragedy of HS2 is that it goes through some of the nicest, and therefore most expensive, bits of countryside around. If it was going only through industrial wastelands, there would be no word said against it. In Blackpool, Bristol, and Bognor Regis, it matters not one jot. Along the route, it matters a lot for bad reasons, but in the places it will join up, it is keenly awaited.

...or, to a significant degree, under! And for fear or repeating the point ad nauseam, HS2 may not serve these places with high speed trains but it'll certainly free paths on their local lines.

Seeing engineering (and other) projects solely through the lens of accounting is a big problem. It reduces everything to what can be counted in financial terms, and can be counted now. The future and all qualities without financial numbers are ignored.

This isn't an argument for or against HS2 but for thinking of what we actually want from projects.

If HS2 works it could lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions*, by transferring air and road passengers to rail and by allowing the capacity freed up on the classic lines to be used to transfer freight from road to rail.   

* Assuming decarbonisation of the electricity grid

That sounds like a good thing. But it's difficult to put a monetary value on; any value we do ascribe to it is arbitrary; and it's still good regardless of that figure.

It does not seem to have been discussed but removing the premium business traffic from the existing IC network would also remove the income stream that provides for the upkeep of that system. A rump of stopping and semi-fast services would soon lead to economies and shrinkage.

While I appreciate the capacity issue (assuming the inflating bubble doesn't burst) and the value of TGV's, I don't think that the option of extra LGV lines alongside but not interfering with existing lines, tunnelled or with deviations to ease curves or avoid settlements has been properly considered alongside the over specified, risk averse HS2. As an example, AIUI, a mere two high speed tracks need a band of about 200' of land acquisition, extensive tunnelling and viaducts etc etc.

HS2 probably means no high speed trains.

Unfortunately Berkeley seems correct.

OTC

Here in Bristol it seems very clear that running high(ish) speed trains along existing lines seriously limits the scope for local services. Since the December 2019 timetable change, we have fewer cross-city trains in Bristol and no direct daytime trains from Lawrence Hill or Stapleton Road to Bristol Parkway because 'premium business traffic' (in the form of London-bound IETs) has been prioritised over all else.

Campaigns to open new stations at Wootton Bassett, Coalpit Heath, St Anne's Park, Saltford and Corsham, or to provide a meaningful service at Pilning, or to reopen the Thornbury branch to passengers, are all to a greater or lesser extent held back by pathing issues. If it wasn't for all these trains, we could have a train service.

I have moved subsequent posts about the Bristol area to a new topic at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=22749.msg280194#msg280194

And therein lies the rub - newly-planted woodland can very quickly become 'established' woodland which quite quickly can become 'ancient' in characteristics. So if HS2 does plant replacement trees (at least one-for-one) in new woodland, it will quite quickly replace ancient woodland and go on to be as environmentally friendly as the removed anncient woodland. The antis need to realise & accept progress.

Also, in this case, the total number of hectares affected are pretty miniscule in the full scene of ancient woodland.

If people are content to built new roads, then new railways are more environmentally friendy!

Skimming through, I thought that was demanding unprecedented global awareness from our six-legged friends. Then realised I'd missed a letter.  ::)

'Ancient' in this context is a defined term:

Source: Woodland Trust (https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/ancient-woodland/)

...which rather rules out the Beeching Forest.

The Woodland Trust go on to say:


...so that's a very good reason to think long and hard before destroying it. The Lower Thames Crossing (https://www.roads.org.uk/road-schemes/lower-thames-crossing) road scheme, for example, will destroy almost as much (real) ancient woodland in its 23km route as HS2.

hmmm - definitions supplied by those with an inherant interest in the same.

So every ancient woodland is different? And why an arbitary date of 1600? So trees planted in 1601, 1610 & 1650 don't count? And if not now, why not in 20 years time when they are possibly as old then as 1600 tress are now? Doesn't make sense.

The original idea of "ancient woodland" was that it had never been felled by man (or nature, come to that) so would date back to the post-ice-age reforestation. You can look at a bit of woodland and try to work out how old it is, but that would lead to a circular definition. There are no historical records going that far back, and 1600 is an arbitrary cut-off based on when records become available for most of the country.

Being arbitrary is just what happens if you are asked to define things, especially if it's partly for the benefit of officialdom. Otherwise you can only be woolly, and they don't like (or, more importantly, respect) that.

Yup. So by the Woodland Trust's own definition, Calvert Junction Jubilee is not ancient. You could call it 'pretty' or 'biodiverse' or 'in the way', but you can't call it 'ancient'.

Given the speed at which HS2 is progressing, it's likely that every tree/sapling in the country will be ancient woodland by the time it reaches Birmingham! (Hopefully a few will turn out to be magic money trees to help pay for it!)  :)