Ha ha ha.... the disgrace that is HS2 just gets worse.
Now, to save money the Govt. has decided to reduce the top speed of trains on the new lines (thereby reducing the specifications of the system & making it cheaper to construct).
Whatever might think of the original conception of High Speed Rail, this project has demonstrated the difficulty the UK in actually delivering infrastructure projects (and specifically railways).
Just ludicrous
@robertklaschka @ChrisMayLA6 But the WAY HS2 provides extra capacity is by taking high speed traffic off the rest of the network, thereby freeing up lots more slots for commuter/freight trains! High speed trains require greater spacing because their acceleration/braking distance scales as the square of the speed.
This is idiocy.
That may be so, but that was not what it was originally sold, its only as the project has become bogged down in difficulties that the claimed emphasis has shifted to capacity - which says more about shifting the goalposts in desperation than about good project management
@ChrisMayLA6 I don't know, I have been hearing the capacity argument for much longer, including when the last administration cut the Northern part of the route.
To me it feels like a similar thing to the way the British military seem to work, with projects failing or going far overbudget because they started with too high an expectation. HS2 may be similar because it was meant to be one of the very fastest high speed lines globally. It would be interesting to know how much slower it would get.
@robertklaschka @ChrisMayLA6 So HS2 is just another railway line - which is how it should have been specified and sold to the Great British Public in the first place!
(I hear echos of how the Great Central 19th century route was proposed as a high speed line from Manchester & Sheffield to London but was ultimately a financial failure)
Capacity on the West Coast Mainline is a major issue and this should have been the selling point all along, let alone at the planning stages.
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