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Comment by ealexhudson | Hacker News Reader

China is huge, though, and the UK is not. HS2 is dragging in the UK because it's a massive amount of money to spend in order to shave 45m off a trip to Scotland. The cost/benefit ratio is totally different - and with the Hitachi training they're bringing in, the saving goes further down. HS2 is a large waste of money.

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Rail is typically never profitable unless the increase in land value around stations is captured. In the UK they typically leave those spoils to private land owners.

Japanese rail companies manage this: they run the trains at cost - or even a loss - and make profits back from (for example), building malls around the stations and leasing space to retailers.

The UK could really use high speed rail around the London commuter belt. If land value increases are captured it would probably pay for itself, in fact.

   Rail is typically never profitable 
   unless the increase in land value 
   around stations is captured.

This is really interesting. Have you got a pointer for me where I can read more on the economics of railways along those lines?

I wonder if the same is also true with public transport in cities, in particular rail-based underground system like London's tube.

Road-building is also not profitable unless you capture the increase in land value around roads. Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains.

Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees (i.e. train tickets, tolls etc.), but this is not an often-shared opinion.

>Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains.

Actually the public is strongly in favor of spending public funds on trains, but the British oligarchy (reflected by the media's default opinion - which some people confuse for the public's), is vehemently against it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11867259/What-J...

Note the Telegraph accusing the general public of being communists:

"the majority of the electorate who have no love for bankers and are positively Trotskyist when it comes to trains and utilities"

"A recent YouGov poll showed that the majority of people support the renationalisation of railways, including those who identified themselves as Conservative or UKIP voters."

>Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees

Why are you against capturing the increased land value like Japan does?

"the Telegraph accusing the general public of being communists"

Isn't that a fairly succinct summary of the Telegraph's political stance on pretty much everything?

It's quite rare to see people advocating high-speed rail for such short journeys as typical London commuter belt. Could you elaborate how you see this working? Remember you're accelerating 1000 tonnes of steel to 200mph at each station you need to stop at.

Actually I have a coworker who commutes on HSR1 from Ashford meaning he lives closer to France than he does to the office and he still has a less painful commute than half of my coworkers.

Building high speed rail in London would alleviate a lot of commuter stress and pain and it could be used to regenerate a lot of the more run down areas on the outskirts of London if they suddenly had a ~12-15 minute commute to the center.

Huge, and authoritarian. They move whole cities worth of people when it comes time to build a hydroelectric dam, by force if need be.

The west in comparison gets bogged down in NIMBYism and haggling over land value pr CM of track/road. Never mind multiple rounds in court if one of the would be contractors can find any reason to claim the government was biased...

the USA moved towns to dam rivers too.

And the UK used to do things too. Your past tense is correct.

Whether this is a good or bad thing, well, see debates in other comments.

HS2 is not so much about speed as capacity. It does not replace the existing lines, it adds to them. That's why it's been so controversial - it puts railway where there was none. It turns Coventry and Birmingham into London commuter suburbs.

Capacity is only needed for short periods at peak times, which could be achieved by e.g running more standard-class carriages instead of first class. [0]

Since you mentioned Coventry, it's intercity capacity to London will actually be reduced if HS2 comes to be due to extra trains to Birmingham occupying the track. Same for many other towns and cities in the Midlands. [1]

[0] https://beleben.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/friday-capacity-to-... [1] http://stophs2.org/news/13115-13115

Smaller countries in Asia have also implemented HS railway really well. I visited Taiwan last year and was in awe at how good their rail network was.

We’ve invited them to bid though: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/118bn-hs2-bidding-process...

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