France’s solar road was not a success.

[Nickel2]

Despite being a rail enthusiast, I agree with you entirely that HS2 is a total waste of time and money.
Ordinary people will never use it, business people will take a plane if they are 'important' enough.
Smart is the new stupid.
Definitely Not Good.
 

[todthedog]

Totally agree with Biff and Rogeriko.
A total waste of money.

[phoooby]

Bit of thread drift.

I think the HS2 budget would be better spent on electrifying more of the network and maybe increasing speeds marginally with track improvements. I dont know what improvements could be made in terms of speed but even increasing form 125 to 140-150 mph with newer rolling stock would be worth it and undoubtedly cheaper than HS2. I'm sure I heard or read somewhere than HS2 costs would be much less if they just brought the speed down to TGV levels of 180 mph.

Electrifying most of the mainline and commuter network really needs doing anyway to cut FF use, so might as well crack on with it now. Just think of all that steel to keep the steel industry busy for many years making overhead gantry's.

Going by the current time schedule, by the time HS2 is finished in 2030 ish, there will probably be short haul electric flight within sight which will kill the market for high speed rail leaving the UK with another costly white elephant.

[dan_b]

New rail capacity is clearly needed.
HS2 would be a good way of adding new capacity, particularly on long distance inter-city - London to Scotland via a Birmingham and Manchester makes perfect sense.
But it has definitely suffered from mission creep, overcomplex design, doesn't actually deliver London to Scotland and is extremely costly. 
A large amount of the budget is due to the sheer amount of tunneling that has been added in because of environmental/ noise concerns, but then there is also a huge additional cost for the 250mph line speed aim.  If it were built around current TGV 200mph line speed designs, it would be far cheaper, and given the distances between stops, would not really have a significant impact on scheduled journey times.

[Nickel2]

I was discussing HS2 with my sister's hubby the other week concerning the cost of the project. He is a retired materials manager for Balfour-Beatty and has been foundation design authority responsible for many road and rail projects both here and abroad. He explained to me that one of the major costs of any major transport infrastructure project is the soil structure beneath the ground surface.
It's all way over my head/under my feet, but it's something like this: For a 100 mph railway the soil must be stabilised to a minimum depth of 4 metres; for a 200 mph railway the pressure front is active a lot lower, so they would need to stabilise the soil to a typical depth of 20+ metres.
That is a huge cost to be undertaken before any of the sub-base or formation is even begun.
Failure to stabilise results in localized soil liquefaction, (like wot happens with earthquakes, or dabbling your toes on damp sand), causing failure of the formation, mis-alignment of track, etc with subsequent costly delays and repairs.
There was a whole raft of other stuff he told me about, but he is a road/rail soil engineer, I am an electronics engineer, and my brain got clogged in a short space of time.
As for high-speed bridge foundations, that is another kettle of fish!
My idea of foundations is dig hole, pour concrete, build whatever on top, and be glad we don't have earthquakes here.
(My house was built on a flood-plane 115 years ago; the old maps say 'liable to flooding, not suitable for building'. The railway at the bottom of the garden has wobbled the the whole lot into the ground with every passing train; My wshop stands on a 7.25 cubic metres slab that wobbles when a lorry goes past on the bypass 200 M away.
Sorry about the ramble, got carried away.