HS2 cost

Chippo1 · Post by **Chippo1** » Sat May 02, 2020 6:01 pm

Having been a director of a small lift company and more recently a flipping parasite consulting engineer I occasionally have a look at what’s going on in the industry. I read a Twatter feed from one of the lift consultants fairly regularly, and this week I nearly blew a fuse !

Apparently the budget for the close to 300 lifts and escalators has been announced £426 million , which roughly equates to in excess of £1.42 million per unit.

Now as far as I can see most of the lifts will serve two or three floors , the escalators a similar vertical travel , (I don’t have a lot of experience of escalators ) so even a really up market, bomb proof spec for the lifts should be no more that £300k per lift and I would have thought no more for a skater , so now the budget has been made known the prospective suppliers and of course the consultants will have their noses in the trough big time.

If this is the case throughout the contract no wonder the budget keeps escalating ( whoops ) is it time for the government to get the Chinese company in who have already said they can build the system to spec , under time , for or less than the original budget ?

There said it now !

Rorschach · Post by **Rorschach** » Sat May 02, 2020 6:13 pm

I'd rather they scrap the whole project and invest in self driving electric cars for public hire.

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Sat May 02, 2020 7:19 pm

Somehow I don't think we'll be doing business with the Chinese for a while mate.

Also have you seen the corruption within Chinese companies? There's numerous reports of them using insufficient steelworks in their buildings and they collapse and kill a lot of people. I know there's corruption here but not to the extent of the Chinese.

Chippo1 · Post by **Chippo1** » Sun May 03, 2020 8:28 am

I am not saying here weather it should go ahead or not , that is entirely a different argument, and I personally struggle to make my mind up either way.

We will keep trading with the Chinese , because they will continue to make and steel products with very attractive pricing, and many if the products are top quality , for instance where are apple products made etc, virtually all TVs are made their , other than a few seriously high end stuff from Loewe , Bang and Olson and Toshiba , but even then I bet the screens come from China , so are u happy to pay 5k for a tv that is currently costing you 1k

The whole world makes cock ups when making things with buildings collapsing ect , we do to , look at the bridge across the THAMES where the structural engineers had to have a rethink and the problems with the Cheese grater building in London that fried cars and people passing by on sunny days.

My point I suppose is we need to avoid a feeding frenzy at this pig trough and ensure we the UK get a value for money project. To my mind these costs are simply ridiculous, the early costs per mile of this project were already far above similar rail projects in Europe albeit HS2 will have some more difficult terrain to traverse in terms of population density

ayjay · Post by **ayjay** » Sun May 03, 2020 9:53 am

All government projects cost far too much, someone somewhere will be raking off millions for doing sweet FA.

I don't understand the need to get everywhere ten or fifteen minutes quicker. We're led to believe that all the high fliers are working on their laptops when travelling, so where's the saving?

i read a long article a few months back about the Manchester to Leeds rail service, HS3, the aim is to save 15 minutes on the journey time. I'd bet money that most travellers will say:- "Oh look, we're 15 minutes early,let's grab a quick coffee!"

Chippo1 · Post by **Chippo1** » Sun May 03, 2020 10:22 am

The other thing is following the crisis how many will say , sorry your not going to x for a meeting , get on line. That will cut the cost of travel , time and all the coffee and beer consumed in the name of meetings.

I know I would look very carefully at any proposal to travel to far flung places and ask if there was a tangible benefit.

There will be changes, David O Leary , mr Ryanair has recently made similar comments as have some other senior management.

Tom d'Angler · Post by **Tom d'Angler** » Fri May 22, 2020 7:05 pm

ayjay wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 9:53 am I don't understand the need to get everywhere ten or fifteen minutes quicker.

Hear, hear. After this Kung Flu is all over (if it ever is), rail travel will drop significantly compared to pre-pandemic levels as more and more companies discover how much money they saved, and how much more productive their employees have been, since most of them have been working from home. A big white elephant, like most government projects.

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Fri May 22, 2020 7:10 pm

Tom d'Angler wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 7:05 pm
ayjay wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 9:53 am I don't understand the need to get everywhere ten or fifteen minutes quicker.
Hear, hear. After this Kung Flu is all over (if it ever is), rail travel will drop significantly compared to pre-pandemic levels as more and more companies discover how much money they saved, and how much more productive their employees have been, since most of them have been working from home. A big white elephant, like most government projects.

My work told me a couple of years ago WFH wasn't viable. Then came along the pandemic and I've been working form home ever since. I actually get more done as there are fewer distractions.