London To Birmingham 49 mins

[zwilnik]

So, useful infrastructure boost or white elephant?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14231420

Despite rather liking trains in general, I'm in the total waste of money camp on this one. 49 mins from London to Birmingham but an hour across London to get to the station. vs blowing the same £32 billion on nationalising and upgrading our phone network so our businesses can join the 21st century.

[Newportnobby]

I'd much rather the money was spent on New Street station because, with all due respect to any Brummies, it's a s**thole of a rabbit warren

[EtchedPixels]

So, useful infrastructure boost or white elephant?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14231420

Despite rather liking trains in general, I'm in the total waste of money camp on this one. 49 mins from London to Birmingham but an hour across London to get to the station. vs blowing the same £32 billion on nationalising and upgrading our phone network so our businesses can join the 21st century.

IMHO the phone network will sort itself out except in rural areas - not that it's really a "phone" network any more, those days are gone. Phone is a sideline.

I'm not entirely convinced that the first part of HS2 is actually any use of itself, but if you look at the Javelin services it does seem backed up in the real world. I'm rather less convinced about it helping balance up the UK as opposed to simply making the stops on the way including Brum parts of the London commuter belt.

Beyond that though - Manchester and if it goes to Glasgow/Edinburgh it starts to make much more sense. Again that is born out by evidence across Europe. What it is going to do is make certain locations very desirable because of their proximity to HS2 stations and locations. Hopefully the powers that be will think *VERY* hard where they put the station just before the junction of the Birmingham spur and the main route, because it will have a huge opportunity to create some major renewal and growth.

Likewise I think some HS2 services ought to continue to Wolverhampton because it could do with some help.

[poliss]

There isn't a £32 billion pot where the decision hasn't yet been made on what to spend it on. Either the government decides it worth investing on HS2 or it won't be spent. If it is decided against building HS2 and money does become available it almost certainly won't be spent on improving the present rail network or high speed broadband. (I'm not sure competition rules would allow it to be spent on broadband anyway.)
It would be much more likely that any money would be spent on widening the motorways.
Not only would I like to see HS2 being built, but also a HS3 to the west country.
You may read that high speed lines are only useful in large countries. Well even tiny Taiwan (242 miles long) has built one.

[m1racleman]

I'm gonna keep out of this one !!
I'll be long gone by the time they make a decision let  alone finish building it!!

[Newportnobby]

You may read that high speed lines are only useful in large countries. Well even tiny Taiwan (242 miles long) has built one.

In........ ?

[bluedepot]

they are short of capacity on the west coast mainline.... so why are they running such short trains??

i'm not against building new high speed lines at all, but do they really make good use of the existing network? and what about electrification of some more of the network? (midland mainline for example...)

any new high speed line will just be for the business traveller and the prices will be out of reach for normal people... and they'll still be on national express coaches or chiltern trains or whatever...


tim

[Newportnobby]

they are short of capacity on the west coast mainline.... so why are they running such short trains??

tim

Good point Tim. I had to travel from Preston to Euston on business and had to stand up the entire journey on a 6 car Trendolino.

[m1racleman]

A yearly season ticket from Southend Central to Fenchurch street (less than 40 miles) is currently £2,844 ( so you need to earn an extra £3,555 to cover it )  so who knows what it will be on that new line. I certainly don't see Mr Average getting any benefit from it.

[MJKERR]

I had to travel from Preston to Euston on business and had to stand up the entire journey on a 6 car Trendolino

Not aware of any such trains with West Coast Trains, they operate 5 coach Voyagers and 9 coach Pendolinos

[zwilnik]

So, useful infrastructure boost or white elephant?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14231420

Despite rather liking trains in general, I'm in the total waste of money camp on this one. 49 mins from London to Birmingham but an hour across London to get to the station. vs blowing the same £32 billion on nationalising and upgrading our phone network so our businesses can join the 21st century.

IMHO the phone network will sort itself out except in rural areas - not that it's really a "phone" network any more, those days are gone. Phone is a sideline.

Broadband's a bit of a bugbear of mine, being in a business that relies on it and not wanting to live/work in London
Basically we're stuffed in the UK until BT Wholesale gets nationalised and funded to put 100mbit minimum to every box in the country with enforced rules on unlimited bandwidth etc.
The sort of stuff that's currently do-able on the average UK broadband connection is way below what's expected nowadays. Yes, some homes can get 10-20mbit and above but that's restricted to a small percentage of the country that lives next to an enabled telephone exchange (not many) or is on Virgin cable (also not many) and almost every UK ISP imposes "fair use" policies that cripple those half decent lines.
What we do have is mostly antique systems that we're stuck with for at least a decade outside of London that are 1/50th the capability of our competitors abroad who can quite happily download the latest multi-gigabyte SDKs without it being an overnight download that risks going over a bandwidth limit.
(our mobile limits are even worse btw. I had to point out to our publishers that if we did an online only version of our game that downloaded the whole thing each time you played, the average UK player could only play it 10 times a month without hitting their limit).
grr etc.
If money's being spent on the railways though, I agree with various posts above in that a proper upgrade of the general network in terms of electrification, track updating, bridge clearance fixing and Megawatt Lasers to stop over height lorries taking out the overheads.

[poliss]

I have no idea what the ticket prices will be and neither does anyone else. Cameron and Milliband won't be around when it's finished, so the ticket pricing policy of the government could be totally different. No one knows what the price of oil will be either. I have noticed that economsts haven't predicted anything correctly since economists were first invented.

I'm with Virgin btw and get 10mbps download speeds, but everyone seems to forget the pathetic upload speeds of all ISPs.

[poliss]

Where do the service providers get their money from?

[poliss]

He said every time they built a railway, the country changed for the better. He didn't say every time they closed a railway the country changed for the better. So your comment baffles me.

The service providers get their money from their customers who are all tax payers.

[longbridge]

Never mind London to Birmingham in 49 minutes I wish someone could get me from Brisbane Australia back to my home town of Birmingham in 49 minutes.