HS2

[Rodcx500z]

One word no 2 greed and corruption

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Scrap it.!!!!!!
The government ( Any Government.) could not run a p£$s up in a brewery.

Many people in this country rely on food banks to get bye and choose between food and heat in winter, kids go to school hungry because their parents cannot afford to feed them is it therefore not obscene to spend £106 billion on anything that will only benfits a minority of the population?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Welcome to Tory Britain

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to Tory Britain

Labour should have had the balls to say they would scrap HS2 along with car parking charging at hospitals, they might not have lost so badly had they done so

 

[dad_of_jon]

Any fixed price contract will have the mechanism to add changes brought about by the customer, in its simplest form say by a schedule of rates. If the customer wants to change something post contract award the change is cost and schedule assessed (against the contract) by the contractor and the customer agrees to the change in term of cost and any schedule impact, 'hopefully' before it is incorporated into the scope. So on any major contract change control is extremely important both for the customer and the contractor i.e. the customers project team should always be resisting any changes requested by their own organisation, and the contractor should be vigilant so that changes to the original specification as requested by the customer are not taken on without them being paid for or it will ultimately come out of their bottom line. One significant problem with any major project is that the ultimate client often keeps changing his mind on what he wants especially if the project is undertaken over a long timespan, typically because the original customer contract specification was not thought through properly, although sometimes things have to change because of external technical standards being updated like ISOs etc. However on a fixed price contract if the contractor has failed to allow for something in the original contract spec and then discovers that post award it is to his cost, and comes out of his contingency or if that has been used up the bottom line.
And if the custmer has chunks of scope that are not properly defined at award estimated sums can be incorporated into the contract which are then properly cost and schedule assessed and agreed by the two parties when the detail is sufficiently defined to allow this to happen. And the mechanism for the agreement should be within the scope of the original contract.
Finally there are many model forms of contract available both in the UK and internationally and it is down to the customer to define what he wants at the outset and for the contractors to decide whether they are willing to accept the contract terms and with that any risk they will have to accept, and that decision making process is usually made before the contractor decides to put together and submit their bid. In other words the contratcor can decline and this often happens.

terrym for PM (project manager). :hat:

I as an IT manager in my previous role often had to manage large scale projects. Accuratly capturing my customers requirements was key. Otherwise the customer will change their mind leading to increased costs and delays. It's a matter of explaining to the stakeholders the consequences of changing their minds later on which generally gets them to focus on what they want the project to achieve. If you let the project morph into a list of nice to haves you haven't really done you job as PM i'd humbly submit.

 

[Rodcx500z]

would it not be easy to say to said people who ordered the project here is what you want are you happy if not say so now, because once you sign on the dotted line that's what your getting

 

[Hanglow]

Queensferry crossing was in the region of over £100M under budget. I wonder if the lack of the usual Tory snouts in the trough had anything to do with that...

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I don't travel by train so wouldn't know where to start to suggesting how to improve the rail network, I do however read the news and listen to other rail users as I have today and it seems having read your replies they are all wrong in that they want the existing network bringing up to date and that the only answer is HS2, as i said earlier not one of those that phoned 5 live today mentioned shorter travel times what they want is trains that are nice to travel in and which are on time.

It sounds like we're talking about two completely different things. If people are complaining about trains that are nice to travel in then they're almost certainly passengers on Northern, which are the "commuter" routes. Northern has all sorts of problems, but things should get a lot better for those people once the new trains are fully in use - they're nicer on the inside and being brand new should break down far less. But they are still affected by some of the congestion problems on the West Coast mainline, particularly south of Manchester. The West Coast mainline express trains between London and Glasgow have perfectly nice trains, but are badly affected by lack of capacity, which leads to sky-high fares at peak times, standing, and "fragile" schedules as there's no slack to cope with problems which leads to delays. Those are the kind of problems that HS2 will make a big difference to - but it takes time to do these things. Heck, it took government over 15 years to order trains to replace the 125s.

I rarely see anything other than those things that look like busses on train wheels so its obviously taking time, will all the old trains be replaced with these new ones or will they replace a few and say they cannot afford to replace them all?

You mean Pacers - a quarter of them have already been withdrawn. They were all meant to have gone by the end of last year, but problems with the new trains means that they're going to be around for a few months yet, the last should be gone by the end of the year. But the first of the new trains have been running from Cumbria down to Manchester since the summer, and the rest are all bought and paid for, it's just a question of getting them delivered and tested over the coming months. So cancelling HS2 is going to make no difference to whether the Pacers get replaced, that's already happening. The passengers on those routes are right to be angry, and it's no surprise they call in to shows about railways - but linking that to HS2 is like asking Carling drinkers to comment on the future of cask ale.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Queensferry crossing was in the region of over £100M under budget. I wonder if the lack of the usual Tory snouts in the trough had anything to do with that...

Queensferry crossing had the same designer (Arup) as the Holyrood Parliament and was partly built by Morrison, who also were one of the main contractors on the Aberdeen bypass which has been hopelessly over budget. Some projects go under, some go over - it's not a matter of politics.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Thanks for explaining NB I still think spending £106 billion (the latest guestimate) on rail which will benefit a minute percent of the population is obscene.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Thanks for explaining NB I still think spending £106 billion (the latest guestimate) on rail which will benefit a minute percent of the population is obscene.

Thing is chippy there's an agenda to to get us out of cars due to the co2 debate and less flying too, so you'd think they would be spending even more money on rail
and whilst most transport today generates co2 the elephant in the room is gas central heating.

 

[johncrobinson]

I dont mind investments but" white elephants" are another matter.!!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

DoJ I wonder how much CO2 buses/coaches, wagons, diesel trains and planes create compared to cars, a lot of modern cars are far more efficient and cleaner than the aforementioned vehicles and as most cars are only used to get to work and back they so are not running seven hours every day, public transport doesn't work where I live and there isn't a bus stop or station anywhere near where I work.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Just as a comparison the rail system in Japan is government run. They issue passengers with a certificate if your train runs more than 10 minutes late because some employers don't believe them as it is such a rare occurrence.

Any private company is there to make money off it's customers. It does work in a marketplace but not as a monopoly. The only way to have an efficient cost effective transport system is to have one nationalised rail system - and no shareholders. Look at how other countries manage it.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I still think spending £106 billion (the latest guestimate) on rail which will benefit a minute percent of the population is obscene.

All the numbers for government spending are mindboggling. But remember that a)the current forecast is ~£80-ish billion but _could_ go to £108bn and b) it's over 20 years, so it works out as £4-5bn per year. That's £1 of every £200 the government spends - and compares with eg £35bn/year raised in petrol taxes, and about the same spent in interest payments on the national debt.

Also worth remembering that this is sorting a route between our 5 biggest urban areas, currently carrying 40 million passengers per year (and forecast to grow to 50 million by 2026 when the first phase of HS2 is meant to open). And without being too snobby about it, the kind of people who can justify £100 long-distance train trips are the kind of movers and shakers who make the "big" things happen in the economy. Then there's lots of knock-on effects in terms of allowing better local trains and more freight to go by rail rather than by truck on the M6. There's also the slightly intangible benefits of having a train service that is reliable enough that eg a GP can go on a training course and know that she'll be back home with enough certainty that she can do an evening surgery, or a dad can get home from a trade show in time to see his kids before bed rather than staying over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a "HS2 at any price" fanboy, but at the current prices it seems to be worth it, even if it would be nice if it was cheaper. And more generally it's just good to see government being prepared to take on complicated, long-term projects when it's easy to give in to the people who are calling for short-term quick fixes, historically we've not had enough of that and we're now suffering as a result.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Just as a comparison the rail system in Japan is government run.

British Rail was government-run - your point is? Crossrail is government run and is years late and way over budget. It was a government procurement that took >15 years to buy the 125 replacements. Most of the UK system is government run - Network Rail.

Government control is not a magic bullet, quite the opposite in fact - and when the system is as tightly controlled by government as in the UK then who actually owns the companies is a bit of a red herring. See this from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, having run the east coast line :
https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/nationalisation-a-dead-end-argument

 

[Richie_asg1]

I'm just saying that if private contractors are used to supply or run parts of a national system the price of your ticket goes up. That is why it now costs me nearly a pound to send a letter because Royal Mail now has shareholders, but the system is no better than before, in fact it is worse as postmen are paid less.
If a company tenders for a rail contract what is their objective? - To make it efficient or to milk it for as much as they can?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm just saying that if private contractors are used to supply or run parts of a national system the price of your ticket goes up. That is why it now costs me nearly a pound to send a letter because Royal Mail now has shareholders, but the system is no better than before, in fact it is worse as postmen are paid less.

The reason letters cost more is because people are sending far fewer of them thanks to email, Facebook etc (and more importantly, companies are sending far less commercial mailings through the post), so a much smaller volume of letters is having to support a big infrastructure. In fact the big price rise happened before privatisation when Ofcom (ie the government) stopped fixing prices in April 2012 and stamp prices went up 30-40% overnight.

But by your logic Parcelforce pre-privatisation would have been so good that UPS, Fedex would not have been able to compete with the efficiency of a state-run parcel delivery service. We all know that wasn't true.

Anyway - read that article by someone who's actually run a train company. The real problem with government ownership is all the stuff that comes with it, like Treasury restrictions on borrowing and capital investment which means eg trains get run into the ground and not maintained properly because they can't borrow money to invest in preventative maintenance.

If a company tenders for a rail contract what is their objective? - To make it efficient or to milk it for as much as they can?

They want to make as much money as possible. But in general the franchises are structured so that the best way to do that is to invest money upfront in new trains and refurbishing trains, so that a)more people want to use them and b) the trains are more reliable so they don't pay so much in penalties for late trains. Virgin is a great example of that whereas British Rail had no real incentive to get more people using the trains, and so had no real need to make them nicer and more reliable. Plus Treasury rules meant they couldn't make some of the investments that the likes of Virgin can.

 

[MyQul]

@Northern_Brewer how do you know so much about trains? I dont mean this as an insult, are you a train spotter (im sure train spotter call themselves something else)? Work in the industry?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

All the numbers for government spending are mindboggling. But remember that a)the current forecast is ~£80-ish billion but _could_ go to £108bn and b) it's over 20 years, so it works out as £4-5bn per year. That's £1 of every £200 the government spends - and compares with eg £35bn/year raised in petrol taxes, and about the same spent in interest payments on the national debt.

Also worth remembering that this is sorting a route between our 5 biggest urban areas, currently carrying 40 million passengers per year (and forecast to grow to 50 million by 2026 when the first phase of HS2 is meant to open). And without being too snobby about it, the kind of people who can justify £100 long-distance train trips are the kind of movers and shakers who make the "big" things happen in the economy. Then there's lots of knock-on effects in terms of allowing better local trains and more freight to go by rail rather than by truck on the M6. There's also the slightly intangible benefits of having a train service that is reliable enough that eg a GP can go on a training course and know that she'll be back home with enough certainty that she can do an evening surgery, or a dad can get home from a trade show in time to see his kids before bed rather than staying over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a "HS2 at any price" fanboy, but at the current prices it seems to be worth it, even if it would be nice if it was cheaper. And more generally it's just good to see government being prepared to take on complicated, long-term projects when it's easy to give in to the people who are calling for short-term quick fixes, historically we've not had enough of that and we're now suffering as a result.

I still think it's an obscene amount of money that will only benefit a small percent of the population and may not now benefit anyone North of Birmingham, I guess we will have to agree to disagree.