HS2 Budget: £40bn

grizzly1911

It is academic as it will not be delivered for 40bn.

It will probably be closer to 100bn.

That cost doesn't cover anything to reinforce the infrastructure in the northern half to make those hubs more efficient and delivering/collecting passengers.

The benefits are questionable. If the economy was booming and growing and we were running budget surpluses with debt under control it might be nice to have.

Travel tunnel cost 80% more than budget and financing costs were 140% higher than forecast (wiki). IAIUI the government did end up bailing out the consortium.


I read, on an information board beside the A41, which was part of the London /Holyehead route that it was only improved (Thomas Telford) when Ireland joined the Union in 180? and 100 Irish MPs needed to be able to get to Westminster more quickly. Not sure how true this is.

Generali

woodbine wrote: »

total and utter waste of money,it might be estimated at £40 b now but what £ by the time its finished,i saw one estimate that it wont be finished for 20 years and the cost will have increased by 30% to over £50 b
this govt is idiotic,whats needed is infrastructure spending NOW and mainly on social housing

Social housing isn't infrastructure. Infrastructure is roads, utilities provision, airports etc.

Have you looked at the cost benefit analysis for this project? (link)

The benefits to the country are estimated at about £130,000,000,000 and the revenues from running the service at about £100,000,000,000 with the costs of building, maintaining and running the service put at £190,000,000,000.

This also needs to be put into a strategic context in that the Government wants to upgrade more rail to run at higher speeds. Connecting more high speed rail to this would create network benefits which means future projects get even more benefits.

The obvious point to be made is that the project is meant to deliver a financial loss. I guess for believers like yourself in big Government the whole point of Government sponsored infrastructure is that you can build something taking the wider economic benefits into account.

zagubov

Better than leaving Britain to rot as a squalid medieval theme park. As I'm frequently heard to rant, how come we find standard northern European infrastructure efficiencies so difficult to duplicate compared with Benelux/Gemrany who have comparable housing densities.

!!!!!!, tiny Taiwan's not much bigger than Belgium, half of it's forested and unusable, but in its total land area it feeds, provides jobs and recreation and low-rise housing for, well over twice the population density England has, and still has room for six nuclear power plants (soon to be eight) plus a bullet-train network.;)

grizzly1911

Generali wrote: »

Social housing isn't infrastructure. Infrastructure is roads, utilities provision, airports etc.

Have you looked at the cost benefit analysis for this project? (link)

The benefits to the country are estimated at about £130,000,000,000 and the revenues from running the service at about £100,000,000,000 with the costs of building, maintaining and running the service put at £190,000,000,000.

This also needs to be put into a strategic context in that the Government wants to upgrade more rail to run at higher speeds. Connecting more high speed rail to this would create network benefits which means future projects get even more benefits.

The obvious point to be made is that the project is meant to deliver a financial loss. I guess for believers like yourself in big Government the whole point of Government sponsored infrastructure is that you can build something taking the wider economic benefits into account.

Interesting it is dft link hardly going to say it a crock of dubious sh*t are they? There are other websites (haven't got the time to find off on holiday).

Benefits were put at best 1:2 when it was budgeted at£32bn. That budget will hit the best part of £100bn by the time it finishes (if it starts).

There is no costing for hub and local link infrastructure at the northern ends.

In a flatling country which it has in reality been for decades it will be interesting where the revenue comes from for running/maintaining the service come from. Is this really going to drive massive inward investment?

Not sure that getting to Manchester 30minutes faster is a great achievement. flying across the Atlantic in 5/6 hours against 6 days in a boat was advantage.

EDIT:- Forgot to say we are running out of power generation capacity so not sure where the juice will come from to feed it. Probably the old and infirm that won't be able to pay for it when their power goes off.

MacMickster

By the time that this is completed it may be a white elephant, with travel around the country far less important to the economy than has been the case.

I fear that we are investing in yesterday's technology tomorrow, and will find that it is rendered redundant by tomorrow's technology. We are likely to see far more working from home, virtual meetings etc. Committing that £40billion+ to providing good quality housing would do far more to make the UK economy competetive in the future.

wotsthat

I'm still not sure why the HS2 debate is being framed in terms of hip replacements or social housing. These choices aren't being offered - not going ahead with HS2 won't lead to a single extra house being built or extra hip operations carried out.

The point of government is to effectively manage all of these things. If more housing is needed the government should be using policy to facilitate this, the same with the NHS and the same with HS2.

I've travelled on bullet trains in China and the rail network in Northern Europe. By comparison our network is smelly, overcrowded and decrepit - there are still trains that flush sewage straight onto the tracks - it's 2013!

Apart of the effect on the economy of the initial build the benefits will be long term yes, we all know it'll be delivered late and over budget but the journey time savings are significant and there will be less reliance on the South-East to generate economic wealth.

At the very least there should be investment in the rail network. Thank heavens for the Victorians because it looks like we'll be reliant on their foresight for decades to come.

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

OK, I should have said resource budget. I was just trying to add something to compare against.

You were trying to make a cheap political point; fortunately the inaccuracy of comparing the wrong figure for a single years expenditure with the budget for a project of over 15 years is so painfully clear that it won't have done anything to help your case.

You've shown time and again that you're perfectly happy to form an opinion on this without any reading on, let alone understanding of, the case for it. A £40 billion infrastructure project isn't based on a couple of blokes tossing about ideas and putting them down on the back of a fag packet

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

I'm still not sure why the HS2 debate is being framed in terms of hip replacements or social housing. These choices aren't being offered - not going ahead with HS2 won't lead to a single extra house being built or extra hip operations carried out.

But it does mean we have less money to spend in these areas, which will possibly (and has) lead to cuts in other services.

We can't magic up £10bn. Therefore it stands to reason that we have to cut expenditure in other areas (NHS, police, house building just being examples) to channel the money towards HS2.

Mr._Pricklepants

N1AK wrote: »

You were trying to make a cheap political point; fortunately the inaccuracy of comparing the wrong figure for a single years expenditure with the budget for a project of over 15 years is so painfully clear that it won't have done anything to help your case.

You've shown time and again that you're perfectly happy to form an opinion on this without any reading on, let alone understanding of, the case for it. A £40 billion infrastructure project isn't based on a couple of blokes tossing about ideas and putting them down on the back of a fag packet

Graham made a comparison of the total estimated HS2 budget to a single year's spend by the NHS or the MoD. What's wrong with that? It was prefectly clear to me.
Maybe you felt the need to prove you're the alpha male of the forum with a post like this?

Mr._Pricklepants

About HS2...I think there are more urgent infrastructure projects to be found. A perfect example would be increasing airport capacity in the South East. Whether it's Boris island or adding runways to Heathrow or Gatwick...just get on with it, ASAP...