Campaign grows to switch the building of HS2 station to Sheffield city

[Baron99 797]

Let's face it.  When it comes to organising transport infrastructure in Sheffield, SCC don't have a great track record. 

 

You can go back years to the Jan Wilson era when she was trumpeting her SCC partnership with the transport operators in the Sheffield region to bring a better, integrated transport network that would see improved services & a better transport experience.  Yeah, right.  As we know from comments on other threads, that's not happened has it. 

 

Then we had Sheffield Airport being sold off for, what was it, £1 to Peel Holdings.  Another triumph. 

 

So all this fuss & bluster about Sheffield missing out because of the Govt pairing back the project is a load of nonsense & all to save 20 mins between here & London.   Of course feel free to moan about the cost of the project that's escalated from £35 billion in 2014 to £100 billion in 2020.  God knows what the final cost will be to the taxpayer?

 

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Baron99

[Annie Bynnol 612]

4 hours ago, sadbrewer said:

It may be disappointing to you to know that people are aware of SCC being largely culpable, but culpable is fact...SCC's commissioned report rubbished the Meadowhall option, even as far as childishly  using an inadequately qualified 'expert' to try and undermine the geological strata of the area...HS2 engineers were clear that they could build anywhere.

   The report was a  £90k fantasy that SCC thought, naively, would bolster their case, but as the largest partner in the Sheffield City region they had a responsibility to their partner Boroughs...the ones who had effectively sacrificed their own interests through SYPTE, to building Supertram in Sheffield alone.

  It's lame to suggest that Sheffield Councillors overall had these altruistic thoughts...of massive job gains, wealth, prosperity and transport links ( Meadowhall was the undoubted site for that option) this seems to be an executive decision of a few Labour party members out of step with the whole of the region, particularly after Higgins told them clearly that trains at High Speed were never coming into the city...only Julie Dore and her immediate cabal did not seem to understand that when Higgins said 'we are building a spine to connect to'... rather than a train that goes into every city...he meant it.

 

Your assertions...

''The Government wanted big savings and ignored the Victoria option and opted for Meadowhall. 

The Government wanted even bigger savings and moved introduced the HS2 route away from Sheffield.

The Government want even bigger savings and cancel all of the eastern  HS2 route.''

...do not hold water, HS2 never seriously considered Victoria, in 2014 the  region's Labour politicians thought they were united around Meadowhall, it came as a shock to them to find that Julie Dore was secretly lobbying against it and putting Victoria as a preference, if I remember rightly Julie Dore wrote to Higgins on an SYPTE letterhead pushing  the Victoria  case without the knowledge of, or signatures of,  the other SYPTE partners.

  I do agree that as the budget spiralled uncontrollably they came under pressure to save money, had all four South Yorkshire partners  supported Meadowhall it would have gone ahead, but once SCC broke ranks in perceived self interest and deliberately undermined the proposal it gave Higgins the opportunity to change the plan.

In attempting to push a political agenda you seem blind to the fact that the Government took absolutely no notice of  Local Authorities.

The infighting, the skulduggery, jockeying etc. of local politics played no part. 

The importance and ability of PTEs  and other transport authorities in regional and involvement in national decision making had long ago evaporated.

Elevating the importance of local political leaders to the point where their views were even considered by Government flies in the face of the (then?)attitude of London to provincial cities.

Only HS2 Ltd were required to "listen" and did they, the Higgins Review never even mentions Sheffield or South Yorkshire in his report HS2+? The published documentation firmly places the views and responses of our Local Authorities in their annexes.

 

Leicester failed to get any consideration at all and eventually lobbied against HS2 -perfectly reasonably.

Derby and Nottingham both objected to a new station miles from their centres -perfectly reasonably.

Sheffield supported one of the two shortlisted stations against the other -perfectly reasonably.

Other South Yorkshire Councils supported the other shortlisted station -perfectly reasonably.

They all spent money on pushing their own cases -perfectly reasonably.

If they had not responded they  would have been rightly criticized  for not representing the interests of their own people and loosing out to the one place that would get a city centre station -Leeds.

 

The Government decided that Toton would be a joint station for Derby and Nottingham because of cost.

The Government decided on Meadowhall over Victoria on cost.

The Government then dumped the Meadowhall route on costs.

Now the Government is dumping the eastern leg all together on cost.

 

Confirmation that Government had no intention of moving ahead to complete the eastern leg is more difficult but continually finding faults, asking for reports, asking for cost savings, more  reports, more cost savings, reports deflect responsibility etc, etc, would have been the way to do it.

[geared 317]

Whoever comes up with the figures used to plan these projects just needs sacking.  Any idiot could see from the very beginning that the costs were far, far too low.

It was always going to be a £100bn+ project from the very get go.  To try and pretend otherwise was simply fantasy.

 

Perhaps if they had started with more realistic figures there would not have been this total mess over the route and what station goes where.

 

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by geared

[BigAl1 143]

6 minutes ago, geared said:

Whoever comes up with the figures used to plan these projects just needs sacking.  Any idiot could see from the very beginning that the costs were far, far too low.

It was always going to be a £100bn+ project from the very get go.  To try and pretend otherwise was simply fantasy.

 

Perhaps if they had started with more realistic figures there would not have been this total mess over the route and what station goes where.

 

 

Unfortunately this is the way government works. promote a project with a low price and then once it is approved you put the price up. Somehow the risk of prices going up is borne by the tax payer not the supplier. Perhaps one of the best examples of this was the two aircraft carriers and you may remember the new government wanted to cancel them but found that cancelling them would cost more than actually going ahead and building them - get your head around that if you can

[AndrewC 307]

It's tempting to assume so - with Sheffield council's reputation and all the other noise and bluster there was around which station should go where - but it is pretty unlikely that the arguing in South Yorkshire and indeed other local authorities up and down the HS2 route (SY was no special case) really had much to do with it's ultimate cancellation.

[HeHasRisen 3,405]

7 hours ago, Baron99 said:

Let's face it.  When it comes to organising transport infrastructure in Sheffield, SCC don't have a great track record. 

 

You can go back years to the Jan Wilson era when she was trumpeting her SCC partnership with the transport operators in the Sheffield region to bring a better, integrated transport network that would see improved services & a better transport experience.  Yeah, right.  As we know from comments on other threads, that's not happened has it. 

 

Then we had Sheffield Airport being sold off for, what was it, £1 to Peel Holdings.  Another triumph. 

 

So all this fuss & bluster about Sheffield missing out because of the Govt pairing back the project is a load of nonsense & all to save 20 mins between here & London.   Of course feel free to moan about the cost of the project that's escalated from £35 billion in 2014 to £100 billion in 2020.  God knows what the final cost will be to the taxpayer?

 

 

 

 

The airport was crap anyway, far too short a runway to be of any actual use, surely people dont actually miss it?

[Baron99 797]

44 minutes ago, HeHasRisen said:

The airport was crap anyway, far too short a runway to be of any actual use, surely people dont actually miss it?

It never had a chance as a regional airport.  It could get you down to London & on to the likes of Schiphol for further, worldwide destinations, within the hour. 

 

The only saving grace is that the land is now going to be used for industry again.  

[HeHasRisen 3,405]

Most people dont want one change just to get to Schiphol, tbf.

[Bargepole23 337]

54 minutes ago, HeHasRisen said:

The airport was crap anyway, far too short a runway to be of any actual use, surely people dont actually miss it?

It was limited, but the regular flights to Amsterdam meant you could get anywhere in the world. Don't miss it now, but I was a very regular user of that service to Amsterdam and beyond back in the day, and when it stopped I missed it. 

[BigAl1 143]

3 minutes ago, Bargepole23 said:

It was limited, but the regular flights to Amsterdam meant you could get anywhere in the world. Don't miss it now, but I was a very regular user of that service to Amsterdam and beyond back in the day, and when it stopped I missed it. 

True but personally happy to go to Manchester 

[Bargepole23 337]

21 minutes ago, BigAl1 said:

True but personally happy to go to Manchester 

Manchester is easy enough for me too, living in SW Sheff, but I could arrive at Sheffield Apt, park next to the terminal, check in, go through security in about 5 minutes. A completely different experience to Manchester, which can take an hour at times.

[BigAl1 143]

2 hours ago, Bargepole23 said:

Manchester is easy enough for me too, living in SW Sheff, but I could arrive at Sheffield Apt, park next to the terminal, check in, go through security in about 5 minutes. A completely different experience to Manchester, which can take an hour at times.

I like small airports but Manchester has Emirates, Qatar, Cathay and Singapore all great airlines