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news
HS2 animation (via YouTube)Plans (but no funding) for cycleway alongside HS2
The government has published a 2016 study which looked at the possibility of building a national cycleway along the route of the HS2 railway. However, at present neither the Department for Transport (DfT) nor HS2 Ltd, the company building the high-speed line, have plans to fund such a thing.
The brief for the study was to establish broad options for possible new and improved cycle routes, how much they might cost, and to assess the feasibility and demand for such a scheme.
In June 2015, then cycling minister Robert Goodwill told road.cc that a cycle network would be built around HS2. He said it wouldn't be the long distance cycle track that had been suggested by Boris Johnson but a network of cycle routes developed from existing bridleways and footpaths.
A covering note published alongside the feasibility study this week states: “Neither the Department for Transport nor HS2 Ltd have any current plans to fund the national cycleway outlined in the study. This study was carried out independently of HS2 Ltd. and this report has no financial impact on the ongoing HS2 rail project.
“If local authorities are interested in progressing the local routes within the study, they are encouraged to incorporate them into their [local cycling and walking infrastructure plans] and explore funding opportunities with their Local Enterprise Partnership, and other potential funders.”
John Grimshaw, an engineer who helped write the study, told the Guardian that not only had the government sat on the report for two years, but it had failed to tell HS2 to make sure new bridges and tunnels crossing the rail line were safe and attractive for cyclists and walkers.
“HS2 hasn’t had instructions from government to include visionary new provision for walkers and cyclists. They are just designing for existing footpaths, even if that footpath is only used by one person a month.”
In July, Cycling UK said that HS2 was offering a “pathetic” commitment to cycle proofing the rail line.
Grimshaw pointed to Yarnfield Lane near Stone in Staffordshire where HS2’s current bridge design would exclude cycling despite there being an established route already in place. The new bridge would make it impossible for secondary school children and other locals to cycle safely between Yarnfield and Stone.
Roger Geffen, of Cycling UK, said: “If they don’t get it right now, communities are going to be cut off from each other by HS2 and we will be stuck with the wrong bridges and tunnels for decades.”
Chris Boardman, Greater Manchester’s cycling and walking commissioner, commented: “It’s disappointing that funding has not been set aside for this as part of the HS2 budget as it would deliver a host of environmental and health benefits. It would also go some way to connecting communities back together in instances where the new rail line will act as a severance.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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21 comments
This is the only country in Europe that would build something as disastrous as this, without any cycling provision.
Are there any figures on how much funding would be required to do the cycleway?
"Visionary" new provision? Doing what a number of other countries have already been doing for some time, and which various groups always suggest whenever major new infrastructure of this sort is proposed* counts as "visionary" now?
(*And which is almost always lacking when the project is completed.)
Unfortunately the problem with HS2 is the public are completely unaware of the facts, there are numerous reports into the cost the HS2/Government refuse to publish which detail the impact and costs with a blank cheque effectively being written.
They already expect to go 25% over (£72bn) the costs before work as even started, not to mention HS2 are evicting people from home & businesses with little or no compensation.
Yet people continue to buy into to HS2 spin that it will only cost £57bn and create thousands of extra jobs, with minimal impacts yet there is zero evidence to support this.
First argument for HS2 was speed, 20 minutes on a journey from Leeds to London, next it was capacity despite the fact there are no capacity issues on the ECML.
The last 2 franchises failed because the number of journeys forecasted to rise did not and will never materialise.
If people took the time to read the recently published documents you would understand how devastating HS2 will be to those along the route, for decades to come.
I live in Woodlesford just outside of Leeds and we will be blighted with not only a tunnel under the village but also a 90ft viaduct, local train station closure, loss of public transport (buses), not to mention road closures for 10+ years, loss of green space, woodlands, homes, jobs and pollution caused by decades of lorries moving materials back and forth.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-phase-2b-working-draft-en...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-phase-2b-working-draft-en...
Feel free to read up on the subject
Cheers - I'll have a proper read when I get chance.
Does any of it make the point that it'll be a step closer to making most of England a suburb of London?
HS2 offers an excellent return for your money?
Pass the crack pipe, son.
Around 10 years ago, "they" added two additional tracks to the West Coast Main line between Rugeley Trent Valley down towards Tamworth. An excellent job they did of it too making many new paths meaning more and faster trains.
When adding the new lines it was important to be able to get staff and machinary etc to the build site so the contractors built temporary roads and bridges along the route. Some of the route is still in place but the bridges were removed. The route would have been most excellent for cycling but now is only used by farmers getting to their fields.
But of course, there is no such thing as joined up thinking in the UK. Such a wasted oppotunity. Just as not building a cycle route along the HS2 will be.
Strange, that Johnson bloke's suggestions are normally so reliable!
Absolute lies, I live just outside of Leeds and HS2 are digging up and closing the existing cycle route along the canal from Woodlesford.
Hundreds of cyclists per week use this as a safe green route into Leeds.
The whole hs2 project is a complete fiasco, current estimates put the project closer to £150bn with thousands of jobs lost, thousands of properties demolished to save a few minutes on a needles journey
Sorry, but is the work you say actually down to HS2? I ask as I thought the work for the northern part of the route was not starting for several years. There is certainly nothing regarding the work on the HS2 site. I am happy to be wrong.
As to the HS2 project being a complete fiasco, in a way you are right. Firstly, it should have been built in the 1990's, secondly, it should join up with HS1, an excellent service into parts of Kent where it used to take at least 90 minutes to travel into London and thirdly, it should link up with Scotland and a new HS3 cross country route.
With regards to the costs, if you think the routes built in the 1830/40's are still there and being used: look at the London to Birmingham route for an example, even if the route costs £150 billion to build (which I very much doubt it will), this is but pennies a day over this time scale. And the money spent doesn't just float off into the air: you get an excellent return for your money not only in additional capacity for trains meaning more can run freeing up capacity on standard lines for additional freight..something all cyclists should want, money paid in wages/to suppliers etc etc grows the economy: something we are seriously going to need over the next 50 years if we are dragged out of the EU.
I really don't get anti HS2 comments. Yes, it will be faster, yes, it will be expensive and yes, there are other railway lines which need money. However, none of them should stop us from building a route which will be used for hundreds of years.
Two things: independent financial analysis shows that the figures don't stand up and there is no economic case for HS2.
And: almost any other transport investment would be better value, cycling for instance. Our government is literally investing our money in the worst value schemes and ignoring the hugely, massively, gigantically better value schemes.
If they were putting the same money into cycling as HS2 you might have a point, but HS2 would still be a vastly expensive, very low return, project.
This.
Railways have never stacked up, economically - they all needed an 'if you build it, they will come' leap of faith, and on that, essexian has a point.
But HS2 is a crazy, evidence-free waste of money. If capacity is the real concern, the entire network could be upgraded and platforms lengthened for that. Shit, for £150bn, a chunk of the Beeching routes could be rebuilt.
Let me guess - the cost of rebuilding tunnels and bridges on the WCML and the ECML, to take double-decker passenger carriages, would be a TINY fraction of the dead-as-a-dodo HS2.
"Dead as a dodo?" It sure as fuck SHOULD be. All the evidence says HS2 will be yet another siphon, sucking the talented and skilled from the North to the bloated and over-priced South East.
Having to travel further to a node station will nullify that gain and put out more pollution/traffic. it's a fucking humongous pile of steaming shit and no-one seems to be stepping in to call the powers that be out and stopping the destruction of vital cycle routes never mind actually building new ones!
Of course, given that they’ve no intention of putting cycling bridges in, you’d have to ride all the way up one side and then back down the other...
That's a bit extreme. Surely you could squeeze through the hedgehog tunnel[1] they're building half way up?
[1] they could have saved on tunneling costs by building a hedgehog catapult, but nobody ever asks me...
Oh well, I knew that one was coming. Those at the top get chauffered around, so why waste time on a cycleway?
Aye there is a chance of this happening-No chance.
Rule one; never trust a politician.
Rule two; never trust a politician
Rule three; etc, etc.
They keep making all these lovely promises of funding and changing the landscape and making things easier and safer and more attractive for cyclists, but to be honest, I've flushed nicer things down the toilet.
And the half-arsed fucking politicians are "designing" a railway ... for which the locomotives and rolling stock are not yet designed? You couldn't make this cr@p up.
The one sure thing? The contractors are "taking over" any number of nature reserves, sites of scientific interest, whatever - convenient "blank spaces" on their maps, to be filled with their construction camps.
The other sure thing is it's cost several billion pounds already. We have no trains or rail yet, and it's already cost 3 x DUP bribes.