I used to be a software developer and I know how deeply hidden software bugs can be and their propensity to bite you on the bum just when you're not expecting it. Not a problem if all it does is cause a few minutes delay on a production line but in a driverless vehicle it might be fatal.
It is yes, but actually there are quite a few more off the shimmer estate, plus a few businesses to come down. Hs2 are now the largest owner of homes in the town, and are renting them out at a price that undercuts normal supply and demand rent charges...which may sound fair...except that they pressured owners individually to accept offers ...portraying it as 'your last chance'...they then forced non disclosure orders on people so neighbours did not know what their next door neighbour had accepted, the prices were almost all under market value and often 10-11k difference between identical builds. One of my friends on there got 11k less than he'd paid for the house new 2 years before...he ended up moving to an estate in Goldthorpe with one less bedroom and over 10k less in his bank. There is virtually no-one left who was there in 2016.
If public transport isn't available, what else can you do. So to back you up with the above.... I live 4 miles from my work place, and can't even bus it. A route doesn't exist, without me taking an hour and a half detour and change each way for the pleasure. Walk it I hear? Yes, I'll walk over muddy fields in pitch black, or along a major road (with no lighting) in the winter. Not likely. And we are talking major employment sites in the local area where transport just is non existent from the village. Until local and national groups can provide joined up thinking, and a government in charge (as local councillors as well) with some knowledge of local issues, then it's going to be a while before I can ditch a car.
Ok. I've been dead set against HS2 but I'm neither an engineer, nor a transport logistics expert. Those who are could perhaps tell me where i'm wrong. I don't buy the speed case. Unless you can easily and quickly get to Leeds or Sheffield from where you live, surely the benefits are eaten up by time to get to a point where you can board. My understanding is that the stations are in central locations, where access by car at peak times is difficult and provincial rail services are rubbish. I don't buy the economic case. Everything I'm told about this does seem to revolve around increasing capacity into London. I can't fathom how this will bring investment in jobs, the arts or anything other than house building to the north, as people will be expected to travel to the capital for these things, before returning to their northern dormitory towns to sleep. If anything, I see this as further centralising investment to London. I do get the capacity case but even still the numbers mooted on the HS2 roadshow in Hemsworth seemed fairly wild - we were told a quarter of a million passengers each way between Leeds and London each day from a 14-carriage train every 9 minutes 6am to midnight. Really? Also, if capacity rather than speed is the issue, would slowing it down not mitigate noise, energy consumption, whilst also preventing forced relocation and ecological impact by allowing more curvature to the track to skirt some of the sites of importance or dense population? As an aside, i'm interested as to what will happen in the south if the northern leg is shelved. Someone asked at the roadshow why much of the southern leg was in tunnels, yet most of the Yorkshire section was on raised embankments. He told us (for real) that the spoil from the tunnels would have to go somewhere, so it would be ferried up north to build embankments. The reason for this, he gave as being that people who lived in the former industrial north are more accustomed to living amongst spoil heaps! So the south get tunnels, we get the rubbish dumped on us and east/west connectivity between northern cities remains hopeless unless you get on HS2 and change at Birmingham! Levelling up, my arse.
Absolutely disgusting. I guess that now the line is going to be cancelled, they'll put them on the market at their true price - b@rstards.
I can't see any faults in your argument mate. The bloke that said that about spoil heaps wanted a slap. If I'd heard that I'd have been ready and willing to give him one.
As soon as you get outside of big cities (and even in some of those!) the transport infrastructure breaks down completely. For quite a few years I pretty much had two bases. I had clients and contacts in Yorkshire and I had clients and contacts in London. To service the clients in Yorkshire it was impossible to do through public transport. I mean it sort of could be done if you just happened to drop on a bus within half an hour of a meeting ending and maybe a taxi ride or 10, and if you were pretty much only willing to have a meeting in the morning and one in the afternoon and have lots of dead time in the day. But then if you put infrastructure in place, what are the costs of doing that? Environmentally and in terms of cost. And would they still be used or are people too addicted to the convenience of their car? My next door neighbour (though not as bad now since the pandemic) would use her car to go everywhere. I once walked to the supermarket (only a few minutes away). I'd said hello to her just as I was leaving my front door. As i crossed the road in front of the supermarket, she was waiting at the junction in her car, ready to turn into the car park to go to the gym next door! And I can understand nimbyism too. The last thing you want to do in a rural idyll is plough concrete and iron through it We all want these things joined up and to be better and more effective and value for money, but that doesn't always reconcile with what we have to give up to get what we think and hope is better.
That's possible if it is actually formally cancelled, but currently the area is covered by the fluffy, friendly term 'Safeguarded'...that means that you're stuffed and can't sell your house as no Estate agent will bother valuing it and no lender will give a prospective buyer a mortgage. Only Hs2 will buy...at their price. Unless Safeguarding is removed everyone is stuck. This is the kind of prices they paid....2 bed end townhouse with own parking and rear garden... 83K.... new at 90k four years prior.
On the capacity issue is it just me who thinks it's rather coincidental that since HS2 was first mooted the capacity of commuter trains has been reduced? Commuter trains that used to have 5 carriages now have two. Why? The track hasn't got any smaller so why? Then there's the speed issue. They pushed the increased in speed between the north and the south and people didn't buy into it. Suddenly the M1 had sections of it rescued from 70 to 60mph. What a coincidence, that suddenly makes the speed increase more significant
I wouldn't think the motorway issue is related, but Hs2 hit a rather embarrassing problem in 2016...after hammering the benefits of their quoted speeds and handing out shedloads of impressive timetables they found they'd miscalculated the effects pf a phenomenon known as the Rayleigh wave...it's essentially the softer soils moving under the track when the train is at maximum speed. Basically their ground survey people had underestimated the length of the 'soft' stretches.... it can be solved by extra engineering or by cutting speed which is a cheaper option...they cut the speed to save money. I threw away most of the info collected when it was given Royal Assent, but the new timetables ( if they have ever revised them) would make an interesting comparison.
Reminds me of the junction between the A38 and the M6-Toll near Sutton Coldfield, they put roundabouts with traffic lights actually on the A38 so that traffic is stopped on the busy A38 for the 1 car an hour that comes off the M6 Toll.
Actually I came up with an idea that could have saved them a helluva lot of money. Spend a bit to spruce up the existing network, and here's the clever bit, suggest to people that if time is a factor they travel the previous day or set off earlier!
Here's another revolutionary idea. Instead of spending billions finding ways to get more people into the capital for work why not invest in jobs in the north enabling people to live AND work up up here rather than working in London but driving property prices in the north up. Makes absolutely no sense in today's world of climate change and carbon emissions to be focusing on ways to have people travel the length of the country for work rather than trying to create work where people live.
Then if they could invent a way for people to have meetings remotely that would be even better, they could call it tinterweb or some such thing
Much of the long-distance train travel is people that live and normally work in one area of the country (although less bound by remote working now) traveling to internal meetings or clients in another part of the country. My office is in London - but next week will be only my 4th visit in 2+ years - but I might need to visit whichever client I'm working on (not done that for 18 months now). In future, I expect a similar pattern which may involve being on site at project initialization to meet people, then mostly work remotely.
Could be a blessing in disguise. I say good because the promise of the northern powerhouse was probably an empty one. Nevertheless, the big problem has been and still is East West Trans Pennine connections. IF some of the money 'saved' is instead usef tyo improve existing Trans Pennine routes and open new ones (Woodhead?) Then subsequent fast regular Leeds/Sheffield - Manchester links could do as much, if not more, for the North (both East and West) as the 'white elephant' that was phase 2 East leg HS2. That is just an opinion , I will defer to anyone who is more knowledgeable on the HS2. From a selfish point of view, my daughter/son in Law's large detached house on the outskirts of Mexborough would have had an HS2 viaduct (over a flood plain) passing quite close. IF the project IS cancelled , long term their house value, and saleability will improve considerably. My wife has argued since the original route was announced that "It will never happen!" I hope she is right. Total utter waste of money better spent improving regional public transport links, especially post pandemic, and improving IT comms software and infrastructure work habits mean fewer business related journeys are now made.
