HS2, whats the current status ?

HS2, whats the current status ?

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Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Thursday 13th December 2018
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I think the differentiation was "moral corruption" vs "financial corruption". Two different things.

Digga

40,206 posts

282 months

Friday 14th December 2018
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rs1952 said:
So no first-hand personal evidence then? Thought not... smile
Nothing that I'd want to share on a public forum, less still to take to an overworked and disinterested police force and, in any case, it was a while back now and the firm's long since gone bust anyway.

I get what you say about the specific, criminal interpretation of the word corruption, but on the other hand, you have to accept that it has broader meaning and that people rightly feel the revolving door and conflicts of interest between government (small 'g') create compromises all of the time.

rover 623gsi

5,230 posts

160 months

Friday 14th December 2018
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PROJECT REPORTS
HS2's Old Oak Common station: How to build a mega-project
12 DECEMBER, 2018 BY LUCY ALDERSON

https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/projects/projec...

...
Old Oak Common station is located just 7 km away from Euston station, which will also be redeveloped to include 11 new high-speed platforms.

It’s relatively unusual to have two stations located so close to each other on a high-speed route, Mr Botelle says. But the reason for the two close-proximity platforms is because of the opportunities for interchange.

Great Western services will pass through Old Oak station when it is completed, and Network Rail has plans to connect the Chiltern mainline to Old Oak Common.

Most critically, according to Mr Botelle, is the additional Crossrail interchange located within the station, which will provide passengers with a quick and ready link to Heathrow.
...

rs1952

5,247 posts

258 months

Friday 14th December 2018
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rover 623gsi said:
...and Network Rail has plans to connect the Chiltern mainline to Old Oak Common.
confused

The Chiltern network is already connected to Old Oak Common. It was part of the former GWR main line from Paddington to Brum and joins what is normally considered to be Chiltern's "patch" at Ruislip. Chiltern run one train a day from Paddington, basically to maintain driver's route knowledge. It is a publicly-advertised service that anybody can use although you might (as I did on the one occasion I used it smile ) need to convince the ticket clerk at Paddington that you don't need to go to Marylebone on this occasion smile

GWR trains also use the route from time to time when engineering work closes it anywhere between Didcot and Old Oak

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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PositronicRay said:
Talksteer said:
An eVTOL will mass around 1000kg, seat 4 people, be made of CF, have around 500bhp of electric motors and 80kwh of batteries. It will be produced at volumes of around 4-5000 per year.
You do realise that 1 bhp is about 0.7 KW. You are Diane Abbott, aren't you.
746w, there is a rhyme to help you remember, and unless Diane Abbott moonlights in the research and technology function at one of the UK's largest engineering companies no I'm not Diane Abbott, I'm Michael Portillo.

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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Max_Torque said:
Talksteer said:
There is no inherent reason why flying things need to cost enormous amounts of money,
I'm afraid there is, and it's called GRAVITY!

(Hint, should something go wrong on your car, for the most part, you will just coast to a halt. As the recent LC Helicopter crash proved, after the failure of a bearing costing just a few ££, the "coasting to a halt" did not end well for those in the helicopter, and only by the grace of god was no one on the ground killed. Try getting insurance for a Helicopter flying over london and report back to me how "cheap" that is.

(and, if we have flying cars, then we need flying police. Given that the police are current horrendously underfunded and over stretched, can you see the time when piloting a flying vehicle becomes a free for all? No, me neither. )
Max I know that you are a gifted engineer, why then do you think that so many credible organisations are investing in this technology, do you think you have spotted something obvious that they haven't?

Helicopters suck, that is why none of the eVTOL's are helicopters. A helicopter has multiple single point of failures and as a result needs lots of maintenance and components of very high integrity.

An eVTOL will have multiple redundancies in terms of battery, motors, control surfaces, flight controls and sensors. All of these items have high reliability and are commodities, the expensive stuff will be the systems engineering and the software. Fortunately both of those things have zero marginal cost so when you produce a volume their costs are negligible, they also transfer between vehicles very easily.

THIS IS NOT A FLYING CAR!

It is a public transport resource, eVTOLs will be flying between licenced vertiports along corridors. Every flight will be planned and deconflicted, the systems operators on early flights will only be able to take control in a emergency, later on they won't even be flying.

Each flight will not only be planned but given that these things are controlled by software and capable of landing in very tight spaces I suspect that along each corridor thousands of emergency landing zones will be mapped out. Depending on the severity of the failure it will divert to another vertiport, field, multi-story carpark, accessible roof, sports pitch, clear bit of road and land there. eVTOL's will seldom operate at over 1000m so will be able to land very rapidly. There will also be a parachute fitted on most designs.





Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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PositronicRay said:
Sheepshanks said:
PositronicRay said:
Talksteer said:
An eVTOL will mass around 1000kg, seat 4 people, be made of CF, have around 500bhp of electric motors and 80kwh of batteries. It will be produced at volumes of around 4-5000 per year.
You do realise that 1 bhp is about 0.7 KW. You are Diane Abbott, aren't you.
15 minute flights could be quite interesting!
Range anxiety could be thing, not just for the passengers but those on the ground too!
As I just said:

IT IS NOT A FLYING CAR!

You do not take to the air without sufficient energy on board for the flight plus margins. This will be operated only by competent organisations.

In eVTOL as the plane can take off and land (in emergencies) from any flat piece of land the size of a tennis court those margins can actually be reasonably tight compared to current aircraft which are very limited in locations to land.

CoolHands

18,496 posts

194 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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Not sure what talksteers game is with promoting evtols (what the hell is that); they will clearly never happen as a form of general transport. Poppycock, to coin a phrase.

J4CKO

Original Poster:

41,287 posts

199 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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Talksteer said:
PositronicRay said:
Sheepshanks said:
PositronicRay said:
Talksteer said:
An eVTOL will mass around 1000kg, seat 4 people, be made of CF, have around 500bhp of electric motors and 80kwh of batteries. It will be produced at volumes of around 4-5000 per year.
You do realise that 1 bhp is about 0.7 KW. You are Diane Abbott, aren't you.
15 minute flights could be quite interesting!
Range anxiety could be thing, not just for the passengers but those on the ground too!
As I just said:

IT IS NOT A FLYING CAR!

You do not take to the air without sufficient energy on board for the flight plus margins. This will be operated only by competent organisations.

In eVTOL as the plane can take off and land (in emergencies) from any flat piece of land the size of a tennis court those margins can actually be reasonably tight compared to current aircraft which are very limited in locations to land.
Doesnt a Jet Pack require 1000 bhp, or whatever that equates to in thrust to lift one average sized person ?

Stuff like a Cesna 172 makes do with 160 bhp but relies on forward motion and lift from the wings rather than pure thrust, would 500 bhp do the job ?

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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Vaud said:
Talksteer said:
eVTOL will be tested in cities in the next 2-3 years, people will get used to them flying. Within two years of that trials of passenger flights will occur, once that happens expect very rapid growth as public policy makers will be able to see it in action.
So why aren't helicopters more widespread in, say, London (for the rich)? They are confined to very narrow air corridors (and London is on the Heathrow flight path).

Why will eVTOL be any different? The physical constraints are the same.

Flying lots (1000s or 10,000s) of vehicles over crowded cities will not get mass acceptance in my view. With volume comes increased complexity and it is then a probability game for increased accidents.

Uptake? Yes. But not mass uptake.
The reasons are cost, noise impact and unfamiliarity/envy.

Helicopters burn a lot of fuel and have single point failures, this means that they are expensive to run and maintain. This means that less than 1000 civilian helicopters are built worldwide every year, this puts the cost up even more.

The result of the costs of the helicopter means that most people have never flown in one and a tiny number of people have regularly flown in one.

The lack of familiarity means that we also ascribe very little value to someone else's flight, people will complain about helicopters which they can't even hear but are far less likely to complain about road noise and hardly ever complain about the noise of trains.

Finally helicopters are actually pretty noising if you are near to one landing or taking off.

eVTOL gets around this by:

1: As I've described before they should be initially cheaper than helicopters, then when scaled be an order of magnitude cheaper than helicopters.

2: This means that you will be able to afford to fly on an eVTOL, initially they will be £10's of pounds per flight within 10 years of entry into service they will be around the marginal cost of driving.

3. Because people can fly on the eVTOL themselves they will become ordinary and something that regular people do.

4. They will be much quieter than a helicopter, most of a helicopters noise is from interference between the rotors and the body most eVTOL designs won't have this. The take off and landing phase will only take 20 seconds, once they transition to wingborne flight they will be like a light aircraft, only one that is exceptionally aerodynamic and has no engine.

5. I doubt there will be enormous numbers of accidents, they will be regulated and the flight paths will be computer controlled.

In terms of public acceptance I think Uber have a good strategy, they are going to try the whole concept out in places with lots of helicopters and good weather.

Once services are running there and they are intrusive or dangerous I suspect public pressure will move very rapidly to "why don't we have flying cars, they have them in LA?".

There are parallels with most new transport solutions, there are initially concerns and resistance see the red flag act or similar early anti car legislation. However once a new form of transport demonstrates widespread utility the economic pressures will force everyone to adapt.

I'm sure many municipalities will initially ban them or drag their feet, when they when they see a significant portion of their business go to a more distant but now much better connected city I expect them to reverse themselves.

Uber estimated that the average trip in LA would be around 25 miles, in the UK context that is actually an inter urban journey. I expect that in the UK only London is really a large enough city that people would make journeys within it.

Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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We are partly agreeing. I see use cases and uptake (the LA or SF>San Jose is a good example).

I just don't see them replacing the ECML (So you replace 8 * 75 seats with 20-50 * x VTOLs?) or being allowed en mass to London. To your point, there aren’t that many emergency spaces in London given you would also have to account for mass landings due to freak weather, etc

How will this work in London? How many buildings are rated for aircraft landing on (an adapted roof)? Why do you think helicopters are so tightly restricted today?

Back to my challenge (and if I find the time I'll happily help) - if you extend your hypothesis, what is the constraint for London given the volume of train traffic? Scale up and try the calculations on replacing even 30% of the rail traffic to London?

At a societal level, what happens to the trains? Ripped up like trolleybuses of old? What happens to those that are disenfranchised by this new model as train lines become untenable?

I am playing devils advocate, I think this is an interesting discussion. I am pro Uber/Tesla, and all things autonomous etc but also pragmatic.

Unusually in NP&E it is a good debate.

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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rs1952 said:
I was rather hoping that some one with a little more knowledge of the subject would come along and add to that element of the debate, and indeed they now have. The only thing I thought of is what the CAA and Air Traffic control would have to say about literally thousands of these glorified hang gliders cluttering up airspace, and I see that has now been addressed.

By the way, Air Traffic Control is a form of signalling - you know - the sort of thing you won't need with these things...
NASA and Uber are currently working on this, however to simplify this down current aerospace air traffic control has been built on heritage dating back from the days when all sensors were MK 1 eyeballs e.g. VFR.

To make this work the answer will be that the system is not backward compatible with general aviation, manually planned and flown journeys will not be taking place in this airspace. I think as a society we will be perfectly happy limiting this current marginal pass time to allow everyone to fly.

The basic hierarchy will be, 1: Air Corridors, 2: A central database with algorithmic flight planning deconflicting routes, 3: Sense and avoid on the craft.

There will be no controllers or voice radios involved.

As I said in my previous answer, the upfront systems engineering will be expensive but the marginal cost of each installation is nearly zero and the market is huge and global, so pretty much the opposite of railway signalling.

rs1952 said:
As regards 155mph electric buses, where the fk are these supposed to operate? They wouldn't be allowed to mix with ordinary road traffic at that speed, so they would need their own dedicated road network, and/or run at far reduced speeds on the ordinary road network at the start and end of their journeys, and over other sections en route where a dedicated road was not available.

Immediately you begin to see that once you look behind the headline of 155mph, the overall average speed between any two points in the UK less that 200 miles apart is unlikely to be more than 70mph, and that is a bloody sight less than trains are doing today, even before HS2.
It's more of a thought experiment, but I'd argue that even if you just had electric buses on a dedicated grade separated dual carriageway that went precisely where HS2 goes and stopped at the same stations it would be a cheaper solution as the dual carriageway needs a fraction of the engineering work of a super straight railway line.

The ability to enter the high speed road network from regular bits of road network is a nice to have.

I don't think your claim that you would need loads of space to stop vehicles leaving the motorway at high speeds is credible, it doesn't happen in Germany and most motorways are in the countryside or buried in canyons in urban areas.

I should have further elaborated, a high speed road network would have 3 rules:

1: Your vehicle shall travel at 155mph, no more no less, the inner land will be the acceleration and emergency lane only.

2: Your vehicle will be self driving to an agreed standard (including accident scenarios), no super drivers required, an agreed standard of inter vehicle communication and roadside communication will be adopted.

3: Your vehicle shall emit no tailpipe emissions.

This approach is way more flexible than the top down centralised model of railways, build it and see what the private sector puts on it (there would be a toll).

The net effect would be that plenty of innovators would set up shop in the UK to take advantage of the new high speed roads. Eventually you convert most of the existing motorways to high speed autonomous only spaces.

I thought of this a few years ago as an alternative to HS2, it looks like it is about to happen when somebody realises that Elon Musk's Boring Company pods (125mph) don't need to run in a tunnel!

Uncool

486 posts

280 months

Sunday 16th December 2018
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The problem with electric 'anything that flies' is battery technology. You see, at the moment petrol has an energy density of over 45 MJ/Kg ( source)

An 85Kw Tesla battery weighs 540kg, so has an energy density of approximately 1/12th of petrol. You can keep talking about battery development till you're blue in the face, but battery technology is decades away from being as energy dense as petrol or even jet fuel. And that makes it impractical for flight of anything more than drones or RC planes.

So _right now_ there is a need for more rail capacity. Yes, there is an argument for 'Skype' calls and the like, but believe me as someone who travels up and down the country on a regular basis on technology deals, sometimes you need to see 'the whites of their eyes' in real life when you're dealing with someone, not just on a laptop screen. You need to take them for lunch. You need to meet their boss. You need to get a feel for the office. Bottom line, there will always be a need for travel.

edh

3,498 posts

268 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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Uncool said:
So _right now_ there is a need for more rail capacity. Yes, there is an argument for 'Skype' calls and the like, but believe me as someone who travels up and down the country on a regular basis on technology deals, sometimes you need to see 'the whites of their eyes' in real life when you're dealing with someone, not just on a laptop screen. You need to take them for lunch. You need to meet their boss. You need to get a feel for the office. Bottom line, there will always be a need for travel.
"sometimes"

I'm saving huge amounts of time (and travel) with VC these days - most of my clients have access to the technology. I agree you have to meet face to face occasionally, which is why I'm abroad for 4 days with a client at the moment. Then it'll be 6 months of VC and email comms, followed by another face to face visit to close the project.

Skype isn't the best IMO, but there are loads of competing apps arriving & no doubt it will improve. (Think I will switch my webex subscription to Zoom) People are getting comfortable with the tech.

Bottom line, hundreds of thousands of people are wasting huge amounts of time & money on unnecessary business travel, not to mention all the commuters we funnel into London every day (a much bigger issue in my view)

robinessex

11,046 posts

180 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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HS2: MPs had 'enormously wrong' cost estimate, says whistleblower

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46586603

An early cost estimate MPs had when they were approving the HS2 high-speed rail project was "enormously wrong", a former HS2 boss has told BBC Panorama.
Doug Thornton said the costing underestimated the value of many properties HS2 needed to purchase along the proposed route and thousands more had not been budgeted for.
Mr Thornton said the figure MPs saw was hundreds of millions of pounds too low. He was later dismissed.
HS2 rejects claims MPs were misled.
It says it followed the correct process to keep Parliament updated on budgetary changes.
Another former senior HS2 insider agreed that the company had had estimates that were higher than the early costing that MPs had at the time.......

Why aren't we surprised about this? The Cost will go on increasing. Just like Cross Rail !!!

Jonesy23

4,650 posts

135 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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It's not exactly a new trick - underquote, wait till everyone is committed beyond the point of cancellation then pull the real cost out of the hat.

Talksteer

4,843 posts

232 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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Uncool said:
The problem with electric 'anything that flies' is battery technology. You see, at the moment petrol has an energy density of over 45 MJ/Kg ( source)

An 85Kw Tesla battery weighs 540kg, so has an energy density of approximately 1/12th of petrol. You can keep talking about battery development till you're blue in the face, but battery technology is decades away from being as energy dense as petrol or even jet fuel. And that makes it impractical for flight of anything more than drones or RC planes.
As I keep banging on do you think that many of the best engineers in aerospace are thick?

Nobody wants to use electric aircraft for their fabulous range.

What they offer is the possibility to dramatically (5-10x) reduce the cost of aviation by allowing you to construct the plane out of commodity items which then need far less inspection and maintenance.

This is transformational, electric aircraft will be the only aircraft in any application that they can serve and will open up many new applications see eVTOL.

In fact if you look at the total number of flying machines produced the majority are electric as the number of drones produced in the last two years exceeds the total number of aircraft built in 115 years of powered flight.

Electric aircraft will also arrive much sooner than you think, fundamentally the energy (not power) requirements to fly a given passenger mass are not much different to road travel, electric aircraft with ranges of hundreds of miles are possible and under serious development.

Battery density will improve and given the economic advantages it will not be a direct substitution of kerosene for batteries.

1: It is possible to near double lift to drag ratios for electric aircraft.

2: The fuel fractions of aircraft can be substantially increased if your "fuel" is structural.

3: You don't actually need the massive range of modern airliners, connecting flights and battery swapping are a decent solution particularly as the electric aircraft will beat the kerosene fuelled one economically.


PositronicRay

26,957 posts

182 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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Talksteer said:
As I keep banging on do you think that many of the best engineers in aerospace are thick?

Nobody wants to use electric aircraft for their fabulous range.

What they offer is the possibility to dramatically (5-10x) reduce the cost of aviation by allowing you to construct the plane out of commodity items which then need far less inspection and maintenance.

This is transformational, electric aircraft will be the only aircraft in any application that they can serve and will open up many new applications see eVTOL.

In fact if you look at the total number of flying machines produced the majority are electric as the number of drones produced in the last two years exceeds the total number of aircraft built in 115 years of powered flight.

Electric aircraft will also arrive much sooner than you think, fundamentally the energy (not power) requirements to fly a given passenger mass are not much different to road travel, electric aircraft with ranges of hundreds of miles are possible and under serious development.

Battery density will improve and given the economic advantages it will not be a direct substitution of kerosene for batteries.

1: It is possible to near double lift to drag ratios for electric aircraft.

2: The fuel fractions of aircraft can be substantially increased if your "fuel" is structural.

3: You don't actually need the massive range of modern airliners, connecting flights and battery swapping are a decent solution particularly as the electric aircraft will beat the kerosene fuelled one economically.
To replace HS2 they'll need quite a decent range, + some contingency. Compared to surface transport use of energy must be pretty poor. Any prototypes yet?

jamoor

14,506 posts

214 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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They should have just asked the Chinese for a quote and let them supply the construction + labour.
Forget the trickle down effects on the economy, just get the job done and out the way so the public can benefit from the project.

Look at what is happening with Crossrail.

Weather it will stand the test of time is another question, but how bad can it be.

petop

2,135 posts

165 months

Monday 17th December 2018
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Watching the BBC1 program on HS2 now. The spokesperson for HS2 comes across as typical PR person employed to deflect from the truth!