Was literally discussing this last night. China built a whole high speed rail network across its country for £300 billion and we’re £100 billion in and don’t even have a single train available. It’s actually insane.
The land cost alone for hs2 runs into the billions, it’s just very expensive to do.
Do you believe the land costs in France, Spain, Germany, China and Japan weren’t expensive?
China is not. The CCP can just seize the land and force you to accept a pittance in compensation.
You only mentioned china, where they don’t report on land costs because all land is state owned but yes I do believe land compensation is much less in china, not least because HS2 land compensation is significantly above market rate. Also; an authoritarian regime with only superficial regard for the health and well-being of their workers, that are paid almost nothing is certain to be cheaper. Suggesting otherwise is banal.
Edit to add Troll alert.
That’s not really comparable. China bulldozes through land with little regard for the societal or environmental impact. The UK is a place of natural beauty and has laws against doing that. It’s right that we have proper surveys and planning permissions needed for this sort of thing, in my opinion!
Even the chaotic Spanish have managed to build a decent high speed rail network. While they don’t have the population density of the south east of England, they seem to be much more organised. Perhaps it’s really Britain that’s chaotic, certainly when it comes to infrastructure projects that aren’t for cars?
Spain is basically empty outside of the larger cities, and property prices are often very low, so it is different.
The Netherlands is perhaps a better example. Very high population density, technical challenges due to a lot of reclaimed land, high property prices.
If they can manage it…
I don’t even know what to say to this. You have inherent biases and that’s fair, but you should try and address them internally rather than just posting them. To suggest that China doesn’t do proper surveys and just bulldozes through land without regard for societal or environmental impact sounds racist AF.
France has 3000 kilometres of high speed rail compared to our 100.
I’ve worked as a civil engineering consultant in china, comparing how the deliver a major rail project to here in the uk is frankly moronic. It isn’t bias, it’s fact
@Noit @sabreW4K3
Most of the spend goes on parasitic consultants
