
Why the HS2 rail route is so expensive - AndrewDucker
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590
======
genmon
For an more in-depth look at some of the capacity benefits of HS2, this
article on the London end of HS2 by ianvisits.co.uk is definitely worth a
read:

[https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/08/20/taking-a-look-
at...](https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/08/20/taking-a-look-at-hs2s-huge-
old-oak-common-station/)

On the redevelopment of Euston station:

> Building not just more platforms for HS2, but critically, the extra tunnels
> for those trains to use shifts intercity services to the HS2 line, releasing
> lots of capacity in the old tunnels for suburban services. If that doesn’t
> sound too important, then where’s the UK’s most congested train... it’s the
> 17:46 out of Euston which carries more than twice the number of passengers
> that it’s designed for. When completed, HS2 is expected to more than double
> the number of seats out of Euston station during peak hours.

It seems building HS2 is only part of the cost. A lot of it is also paying
down "infrastructure debt" that hasn't been touched for decades.

------
benoliver999
At the risk of sounding like a contrarian, I think HS2 should go ahead now. I
was against it years ago, but times have changed since the idea was floated.

The amount of track has gone down as rail travel has gone up. Passenger
numbers are even higher than predicted when HS2 was proposed. We are at
capacity.

Double decker trains like abroad are too wide for the tracks. Longer trains
would also require major works at stations.

I don't think saving 20 minutes off the journey matters either, but I also
don't think that is the main benefit of the project.

~~~
deif
I don't really get why it's such a high priority to expand the London commuter
belt. Train lines may be at capacity but if more money was devolved into the
northern regions so everyone doesn't have to commute to London maybe we could
solve the problem in a cleaner and less costly way.

But then the contractors won't get their back pockets filled.

~~~
dan-robertson
I thought that as internet speed and quality increased, we would see more
office work being dispersed across the country. More people would be able to
work remotely or in small satellite offices using the internet to effectively
coordinate. The role of the (London) headquarters of larger companies would be
diminished.

Instead it feels to me like companies have become more centralised. Regional
offices are gutted (much of their work can be done over the internet from
headquarters), more firms are crammed into London, all competing for the same
people and this competition drives up wages (and house prices) and this
encourages more people to want to work there which makes it one of the few
places for companies to find talent and so on.

Maybe my impression of the state and change of things is just wrong. But my
theory of the change in office work due to the internet is that it let things
become more centralised and that this change is the reason for various other
political changes (eg rising house prices -> weird policies to help people buy
houses without decreasing the sale price; pushes towards better transport
infrastructure in and to London; weakening of the rural and regional economy;
trains in high demand which everyone hates; ...)

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Yes. The work of Ronald Coase on why businesses exist at all is more relevant
than ever. Coase asked the question: "why is there such a thing as a business
and why are they the size they are? Why isn't everyone an independent
contractor? Conversely, why isn't the whole economy one big conglomerate".

His answer is essentially transaction cost and co-ordination overhead. So
logically as technology changes those, the natural size and configuration of
businesses and other organisations changes.

What has ended up happening is that modern communications has made it much
easier to do business to business transactions over larger distances than
before, which has led to centralising to a smaller number of specialist firms
rather than a larger number of geographically spread firms. This has been very
noticeable in areas like law as well. There was a time when a manufacturing
business in the Midlands had a local accountant, local law firm, etc. Now that
is all centralised in a small number of cities. This has led to a more hub-
centric global economy than ever before.

Now you might expect that this same effect would also encourage more remote
working which would have the opposite effect on firm concentration
geographically. It seems to have turned out that the effect of the same
technology within firms has been less drastic. In other words, while it has
led to more remote working and more part time working from home, it has not
had the drastic effect of completely blowing up the nature of the team.

I suspect this has something to do with human nature and with transaction
cost. Basically making a b2b relationship more geographically distant has
turned out to be easier than physically dispersing a team within the low
transaction cost company boundary.

Google does search for everyone... but Google employees are usually expected
to spend at least a few days a week physically co-located with their teams.

All the world's widebody aircraft engines are made by only two
manufacturers... who choose to concentrate their own design operations
geographically.

As a result, paradoxically it seems that modern technology has led to more
geographical concentration rather than less.

If we want to counteract that in the UK, we need to create counterweights to
London. To a certain extent that already exists for things like aerospace and
high end automotive - if you were starting a new business there you'd be crazy
not to do around Derby. The challenge is that in most other areas London is so
dominant that its dominance becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. No idea how to
do that though.

The effect of transport links on all this is quite hard to predict as well. Do
you end up making well connected cities and towns economic extensions of
London in terms of creating employment there? (Might as well start a tech
company in Birmingham if it's so close to London). Or do you just turn them
into commuter communities?

~~~
thu2111
So this leads to the question of why firms don't like remote work (on average)
and whether that might change.

My guess is it's a combination of:

• Corporate videoconf systems being unbelievably atrocious and unreliable
compared to consumer tech.

• Ditto for standard communication tools like Outlook.

• The current generation of non-tech CEOs mostly being older people who either
don't actually use electronic comms much, or don't like using it. E.g. my CEO
doesn't use Slack at all, even though everyone else does, and most of his
email is handled by his assistant. When he does write emails they're usually
just one or two lines long.

• Remote work places far greater weight on reading and writing ability, areas
where many people are surprisingly weak but reluctant to admit it. Physical
meetings are much easier on people, both in terms of requiring less mental
effort and allowing people to just zone out rather than work.

The latter two have no obvious fixes. On the other hand, corporate videoconf
infrastructure that doesn't suck seems like it should be easier to fix. The
perennial problem of "I'm five minutes late because {the dialin was missing,
didn't work, my microphone was muted, etc}" is entirely solvable with better
software. Unfortunately the industry's best people all focus on consumer
workloads where scaling to massive success is comparatively easy and sales-
free.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
I think we first have to answer a more fundamental question: Are there
advantages to physical co-location that cannot be replicated using better
computer collaboration tools? If so, then it may be that improving tools will
never get us there. This is especially true for genuinely remote working, I
think the tools to allow part of the team to work from home part of the time
are there and in many industries are ubiquitous.

~~~
bobthepanda
For remote workers: is there a good alternative to "water-cooler" talk, or
side conversations right outside after a meeting?

It seems to me like remote work lacks low-impact ways to grab someone's
attention effectively for a short period of time, but correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
thu2111
I do watercooler type discussions on Slack sometimes. I don't feel left out. I
get office gossip fed to me via back channels.

------
KaiserPro
From what I understand the reason why the price tag is so high is that _all_
the contractors are liable for _everything_ up to 20 years after construction.

This is unusual, and the price reflect this.

~~~
thomasedwards
Yes that was correct, but that has now been resolved.

------
hyko
“Now contractors do not carry the risk. That should help keep prices down.”
Perhaps, but the costs will remain the same because someone (the public) is
still going to have to insure that risk. Worse still, the accounting for risk
is being removed from those who are best placed to do it.

This is nothing more than a desperate bid to reduce the sticker “price”,
fooling precisely nobody.

~~~
hkt
Just as an aside, it's worth noting that there's case law in the UK suggesting
that if you aren't insured you aren't a proper specialist. The insurance
companies don't do nominal insurance for this purpose, so the costs are there
either way. I may have a flawed understanding of this but it seems like an
oddity in how we consider what constitutes professional or specialist
tradesperson that would inevitably inflate costs.

------
pjc50
Just for reference I dug up a schematic and non-schematic map of the UK rail
network: [https://www.mytrainticket.co.uk/project/uploaded-
media/great...](https://www.mytrainticket.co.uk/project/uploaded-media/great-
britain-national-rail-railmap24.pdf) /
[https://www.thetrainline.com/cms/media/2922/tocs-v52tl-
decem...](https://www.thetrainline.com/cms/media/2922/tocs-v52tl-
december-2019.jpg)

They'd probably need to be combined with a map of population density and
nature reserves to produce a "rail planners map". You can already see where
the "empty" areas of the UK are already, like the Scottish borders.

------
helsinkiandrew
I didn't realise how ambitious HS2 is:

If you stood by the track, a train could pass you at 360km/h (224mph) every 3
1/2 minutes - the kind of safety and control systems to make that possible
must be astounding.

~~~
pjc50
> the kind of safety and control systems to make that possible must be
> astounding.

I wondered about this, and hit gold on Google: the requirements specification!
[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/794108/HS2-HS2-RR-
SPE-000-000007_P11_TTS_Main_Body__External_.pdf)

HS2 will, unlike the rest of the UK legacy network, use ETCS:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System)
(at level 2 with the possibility of level 3). Conceptually it's the same as
the ancient tokening system - a train requires a token to enter a particular
section of rail. Except these are digital tokens granted over a cryptographic
protocol over the GSM network or trackside radios. When a train has cleared a
particular point, a calculation is made based on the speed and braking
distance of the train behind, which is then granted an authority to move
further along the track. As long as the train receives a continuous series of
valid "movement authority" tokens for the correct sections, it will proceed.
If not, it applies the brakes.

(That's a really nicely written requirements document - concise, but including
rationales for every point. More reading on the crypto:
[https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/TRAKS.pdf](https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/TRAKS.pdf)
)

~~~
Scoundreller
> GSM is no longer being developed outside of GSM-R, the manufacturers have
> committed to supplying GSM-R till at least 2030. The ERA is considering what
> action is needed to smoothly transition to a successor system such as GPRS
> or Edge.

While I’m always happy to keep using something that works, « upgrading to EDGE
by 2030 » still gives me a laugh.

------
guy_c
I enjoy Rory Sutherland's take on HS2
[https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/11/the-wiki-man-how-to-
redu...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/11/the-wiki-man-how-to-reduce-
journey-times-without-hs2/) [https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/02/why-
hs2-doesnt-stand-up-...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/02/why-hs2-doesnt-
stand-up-to-the-test-of-time/)

~~~
AndrewDucker
"So why not make HS2 more like HS1, by allowing it to perform shorter journeys
for frequent travellers"

Because the whole point of HS2 is to increase capacity by taking the high-
speed long-distance trains off of the existing lines, where they get in the
way of running local stopping services (because everyone has to get out of the
way of the high speed trains).

------
andy_ppp
I find these huge government projects completely insane. Could they not build
short distances of track and get trains running on them to derisk this whole
thing? Then each piece can be managed at a reasonable, human understandable
cost.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That's not how rail works - never mind high speed rail.

The rails are the easy part. There's also signalling and monitoring, power
gen/distribution, train stabling and maintenance, and all kinds of other
infrastructure.

You can't build it piecemeal without incurring huge extra costs.

The insane part with HS2 is the relatively small economic benefit, and the
fact that the price is going to spiral out of control even more than it has
already.

The UK badly needs an integrated transport policy, making connections between
all modes - trains, busses, airports, ferries, roads, and so on. Currently all
the modes compete with each other. And that's a huge problem.

Instead we get a project that might have been progressive in the 19th century
but makes no economic sense at all in the 21st.

For the same price as HS2 the UK could have hugely improved broadband
everywhere, improved rail - especially electrification - and seed funding for
new businesses everywhere, especially the North.

~~~
onion2k
_For the same price as HS2 the UK could have hugely improved broadband
everywhere, improved rail - especially electrification - and seed funding for
new businesses everywhere, especially the North._

The cost of bus travel in the UK is currently £3bn/year. For the same price as
HS2 we could have about 20 years of completely free bus travel nation-wide.

There are a lot of things we could do with £100bn that would be better than
reducing the time it takes to get to Birmingham by 20 minutes.

~~~
dazc
I've experienced free bus travel twice. Once in Dublin where instead of going
on strike the drivers decided just not collect fares for one day.

Another time in Spain where they had a free public transport day based on some
kind of green agenda.

In both cases the result was the same - absolute chaos.

~~~
dmurray
Did that really happen in Dublin? I've lived in Dublin for years and taken the
bus regularly, and every time there's been a strike the bus drivers just don't
show up for work or join a picket line, rather than refusing to take fares.
And I tell people how they do things differently in Sydney, where they
actually have farebox strikes. [0]

[0] [https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/free-buses-in-
sydn...](https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/free-buses-in-sydney-as-
drivers-turn-off-opal-card-machines/8579032)

~~~
dazc
'Did that really happen in Dublin?'

Yes. It was over ten years ago though.

