[gnfargbl]

York is a good example of how building high-ish speed railways that actually take people somewhere they want to go, leads to people using those railways.

Look at the way the plots taper off to the north and south of York; this isn't just people shuttling to and from London, this is ordinary commuters and rail travellers using the railway as a decent mode of transportation.

I wish the government had the gumption to recognize this and respond appropriately.

[DrBazza]

Rob Holden, who lead HS1, and delivered it under budget said HS2 has been such a disaster, paraphrasing, because HS2 publicly declared its budget for each section, so the Cotswold tunnels, for example had a budget of, say, $10bn. So the contractors bidding to do it, bid... $9.9bn. Whereas HS1 invited bids from contractors who had no idea how much the government was prepared to spend.

Absolute idiocy.

More details in this and the links in the story: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...

[AlecSchueler]

I remember they started doing it this was because there was concerns about companies with insider information being unfairly advantaged in the bidding stages.

[DrBazza]

Interesting. I'd assumed it was something to do with the Office for Budget Responsibility and "transparency" of Government spending. I guess not.

It's still absurd that the Government would announce how much they're prepared to pay in advance, and act surprised when bids come in at or above that amount.

[fennecbutt]

Not unlike the Tories to be focused on getting money into their mates' pockets rather than getting the job done.

Construction in the UK seems ridiculously expensive now, as a foreigner the whole country seems frozen in place when it comes to any new major infrastructure...

[dspillett]

> York is a good example of how building high-ish speed railways that actually take people somewhere they want to go, leads to people using those railways.

Not just directly from York: there are many trains stopping both here and Leeds, giving us, for example, indirect-but-easy access to some of the north further west (smaller lines to/through Shipley/Keighley/Skipton, Ilkley/Settle/Carlisle) which I find handy when I want to go run around the Dales, and that people from those areas presumably find handy for access to the east coast main line North & South.

York's rail connectivity is one of the (many) advantages of living here (despite the key disadvantage of housing costs & such) for me, as I don't drive.