Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

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The old HS1 boss, said the main problem with HS2 goes was the government publicly announced the budget for each contract and the bidders bid... you guessed it right at the maximum of each contract.

HS1 never announced any budget for any contract, so lots of bids came in way under what the government was prepared to spend, hence came in well under budget.

I seem to recall that was also due to infrastructure 'transparency' and government 'openness' from the 00s.

It got off to a bad start under Andrew Adonis in the dying days of the Blair/Brown administration, but people forget that.

"Adonis himself is openly regretful. “HS2 should stop at Old Oak Common,” he told me, “interchanging with Crossrail there. We should leave open the question of going further into London.” As head of the Cameron’s national infrastructure commission, Adonis makes many speeches on these subjects. He nowadays lauds HS3, and lauds Old Oak Common as London’s greatest development opportunity. I have yet to hear him laud Euston. That station, he says, “is the poison at the heart of HS2. I bitterly regret not stopping it before I left office”."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/hs2-the-zomb...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...

> Mr Holden also said HS1 was successful because the true budget was known to just “a handful of people”, while HS2 contractors inflated their prices once they saw the latter project’s true budget.

The problem with stopping at Old Oak Common is that it would likely worsen end-end journey times for the many passengers travelling to destinations not well served by Crossrail.

Euston/Kings Cross/St Pancras are all next door to each other and collectively busier than any other rail station in the country. They are not connected to Crossrail so anyone connecting on from there (Eurostar, east coast mainline, west coast mainline) would be required to make two additional changes, a pain with luggage. And anyone going to Norh or South London on Thameslink, Northern or Victoria lines would have to make an additional change.

Why would a hs2 user be connecting on from Euston? Or indeed from St Pancras (other than maybe Kent and Europe)

But walking with a suitcase from Euston to KGSP isn’t exactly easy anyway.

Only benefits to Euston are easy to get to the Victoria and northern lines. Whether that outweighs crossrail is a septye wuruain, maybe for north-south journeys, but probably not for “to London”.

> Why would a hs2 user be connecting on from Euston? Or indeed from St Pancras (other than maybe Kent and Europe)

With the exception of Paddington (where presumably most services will stop at OOC), it's going to be easier to connect to any of the other London terminals from Euston than from Old Oak Common. Liverpool St about the same. Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge direct tube from Euston vs two from OOC. Kings Cross / St Pancras walkable from Euston vs two changes.

East/West connections in the UK are often pretty dire, so often the fastest way to get anywhere in the South East from the North West will be to travel via London. Flexible off peak returns are often only £1 more than an off peak single so after I moved abroad, when visiting family and friends around England I would usually find returns from London the cheapest somewhat flexible option to visit everyone.

> But walking with a suitcase from Euston to KGSP isn’t exactly easy anyway.

I've done this and found that 10 minute walk on the flat much easier than taking a suitcase up three lifts to Liverpool Street mainline station from the Crossrail platform...

> Only benefits to Euston are easy to get to the Victoria and northern lines. Whether that outweighs crossrail is a septye wuruain, maybe for north-south journeys, but probably not for “to London”.

When I lived in Manchester I used to take the train down to London quite often. Being able to change at Old Oak Common to Crossrail would probably have made about 1/3rd of my trips easier (great for going west, Heathrow or Canary Wharf), but would have made more than half more difficult (most of central, north or south London, South East England outside of London), with the remainder much the same (the City, possibly Clapham.)

So I definitely don't think being able to change to Crossrail at OOC would be useless, just less useful than changing at Euston.

> Why would a hs2 user be connecting on from Euston? Or indeed from St Pancras (other than maybe Kent and Europe)

They might want somewhere on the line towards Watford. Or the Northern line. Or the Victoria line. Or the Circle line. Or Thameslink. Or one of the Great Northern lines. Or they might be travelling to one of the tech offices or hedge funds around that Warren Street area (where e.g. Facebook and Twitter are), or UCL and their big hospital, or the British Library, or that whole King's Cross biomedical campus area, or that big new development around Central St Martins, or the hotels on Russel Square, or the whole Camen Town area, or...

It's hard to imagine Old Oak Common will be quite as much of a destination as that central area, at least for several decades. The redevelopment Stratford has been a huge success, probably the best you could hope for, and Stratford has a huge amount of transport interchange options. But it would still be a massive blunder for HS1 to have terminated there rather than continuing into St Pancras.

It would make more sense for Euston to be a deep level station and for HS2 to continue onto the mainline to Portsmouth/Bournemouth which have a similar population to Birmingham. I don’t think there will be the stomach to build a new high speed line but they could electrify the current line with overhead wires and replace the current fast trains with HS2 services. If Euston were a through station it would only need 4 platforms rather then 11. Stick another deep station under Victoria while you’re at it.

I think the difficulty of this approach is the huge imbalance in population north and south of London. While the Portsmouth/Southampton/Bournemouth area is around 2M, the Birmingham area is about 5M and HS2 will likely also end up serving trains from Manchester and Liverpool (combined 7M) and Glasgow (2M). There just aren't enough places south of London for all those trains to go.

Yes, you would probably run some trains empty to a carriage sidings south of London to be cleaned and restocked.

Even if you count Euston+KX+SP as a single station, it's not that much busier in trips HS2 users from Birmingham might want to make since most trains have that as a terminus going north.

Realistically, you would only be adding access to the Thameslink and to the Northern and Victoria lines.

Old Oak Common has access to the Elizabeth Line, the two branches of the North London Line Overground, and a branch of the Lionesses Line Overground. IMO increasing Overground speed and throughput might be a better use of money than the branch line to Euston.

> Realistically, you would only be adding access to the Thameslink and to the Northern and Victoria lines.

And HS1 and the Eurostar.

And the Circle and other cut-and-cover lines.

Nevermind, I wrote that comment before my morning coffee hit.

In fairness though, the best destination for an HS2 would clearly be St Pancras, not Easton - connections you can make with a suitcase are what make rail palatable vs flying or driving. There is a special place in hell for whoever put stairs at the entrance to the Circle line in St Pancras!

HS2 isn't meant to connect you with any north going services in London like ECML and WCML - it's too niche to be justifiable.

You're meant to benefit on those journeys from reduced pressure on the WCML and other north-bound services.

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