High Speed Rail confirmed at Meadowhall

[Clown Shoes 10]

Planes are cheaper than trains.

 

We need more regional airports.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396557/How-sky-high-railway-fares-mean-times-expensive-train-fly-Britain.html

[taxman 12]

I agree.....those Chinese dont mess about.

 

The reason for this is that its a Communist country and they do what they thinks best. No one putting in objections and taking people to the high court for CPO's.

 

Its all the moaning little England'ers that will double the cost of this project.

 

And they have cheap labour.

[Pidgeon 10]

Going by government estimates of other projects in the past I would expect 3-4 times the initial cost.

[Vague_Boy 10]

I seriously think they need to invest in Hyperloop

 

While I would go with the idea of getting the newest technology, I think we should limit ourselves to stuff that actually exists.

 

Hyperloop itself exists in the form of a 57 page PDF outline by Elon Musk (founder of PayPal). There are no protypes, no R&D labs and an awful lot of questions based upon his assumption that the system would cost $6 billion.

 

the cost for viaducts on California's conventional rail plan (costs which aren't presented in an "open source transportation concept", but in a far more detailed actionable plan) are around ten times what Musk plans for the Hyperloop.

 

If Musk really found a way to build viaducts for $5 million per kilometer, this is a huge thing for civil engineering in general and he should announce this in the most general context of urban transportation, rather than the niche of intercity transportation.

 

LINK

 

 

Likewise, there's the comfort factor:

 

the horizontal forces are around twice that of a conventional HSR, and [Alon] Levy estimates the vertical forces as between seven to ten times as high.

 

If Musk has experiments showing that it’s possible to have sharper turns or faster deceleration than claimed by Transrapid, then he’s made a major discovery in aviation and should announce it as such. That he thinks it just applies to his project suggests he doesn’t really have any real improvement.

 

LINK

 

There's also the logistics of it. Hyperloop is envisaged as a link between just 2 cities, Los Angles and San Fransisco.

 

Assuming an average departure time of 2 minutes between capsules, a minimum of 28 passengers per capsule are required to meet 840 passengers per hour.

 

In contrast, a single Eurostar train carries 750 people, and five of them depart Kings Cross St Pancras in rush hour carrying about 4,000 people. And that's just one of the services running during that hour.

 

Now in Britain, these capsules won't be stopping at Derby, Leicester and Luton etc. At 28 passengers per capsule they'll be full up straight away. And a system like this doesn't really seem to invite frequent stops anyway. The breaking system at 500+ MPH won't be something you'll want to keep experiencing.

 

So will each city have it's own loop? Or will it feed in to several big loops (equivalent to our current East Coast, West Coast lines etc.)?

 

And if so, how will it handle all the passengers?

 

In rush hour, the departures would be sped up, allowing slightly over 1,000 passengers to be carried in an hour, and the theoretical maximum of the system is around 3,360, assuming departures every 30 seconds, and no delays ever.

 

...the 30 second headway required to fit the maximum capacity in the tubes would necessitate emergency braking twice as forceful as the US government currently allows for passengers with seat belts.

 

LINK

 

I'd love to travel on something like the Hyperloop. Being able to get to London in around 30 minutes would be awesome. It might even extend the economic wealth of the capital outwards since it would be quicker to commute to London from Sheffield than it currently is from outlying parts of London.

 

Actually y'know, this is not entirely a new idea.

 

Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic Tubes Company

 

Not bad. For 1895.

[ANGELFIRE1 10]

Complete waste of brass.

 

Angel.

[LeMaquis 10]

Planes are cheaper than trains.

 

We need more regional airports.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396557/How-sky-high-railway-fares-mean-times-expensive-train-fly-Britain.html

 

Except that the article says "Only exception is London to Manchester - £26 by train and £111 plane" and we are discussing HS2 which links London to Manchester and Leeds. The problems with airports, especially London ones, is that you have a lot of time and expense getting from the airport into the city itself whereas HS2 will go right in to Euston.

[dosxuk 10]

The whole of the UK is going to start suffering soon as a result of years of poor government leading to a complete lack of medium / long term infrastructure plans.

 

We will need HS2. We will need a large hub airport, at Heathrow or elsewhere. We will need more power stations. We will need fibre networking to every building in the UK. All of these things have been agreed, but when it actually comes to planning it, nobody seems to want to put their name to it.

 

Part of the problem is caused by selling off the nations' infrastructure and letting companies who are mostly concerned at getting a good annual return than what the country will need in 25 years.

[Resident 1,193]

How much of the extra costing will be due to delays because of NIMBYs like the Falconer Lane lot complaining because of the upgrades needed to be completed for HS2.

[taxman 12]

How much of the extra costing will be due to delays because of NIMBYs like the Falconer Lane lot complaining because of the upgrades needed to be completed for HS2.

 

Dunno, how much of the extra costing will be due to private companies bumping up their prices every week?

 

"Ooh' don't like the look of those fields, it'll cost you 5 times more to run a track through there mate"

[poppet2 13]

It's all a Huge waste of time and money. So What if you reach your destination just 20 minutes earlier! You will lose that time on road traffic to reach your final destination, so what's the point.

Far better to spend the money on social house building, creating homes AND jobs, but that idea is to simplistic for the government.

[dosxuk 10]

So What if you reach your destination just 20 minutes earlier! You will lose that time on road traffic to reach your final destination, so what's the point.

 

The main point of it isn't to speed up journeys, but to add capacity to the rail network. The speeding up is just a bonus of using more modern technology and being able to abandon the Victorian infrastructure of the current routes, one which is easier to sell to the public.

[poppet2 13]

The main point of it isn't to speed up journeys, but to add capacity to the rail network. The speeding up is just a bonus of using more modern technology and being able to abandon the Victorian infrastructure of the current routes, one which is easier to sell to the public.

 

It will also cost far more in fares for the privilege. It took a freedom of information request to show that capacity wise, there was no demand for this route whatsoever.