On 8 Feb 2021 11:19:46 GMT
Marland wrote:
wrote:
I can only guess cost. Still, once/if HS2 is complete it'll provide a first
class example of the sunken cost fallacy for business students for decades
to come.



Isn’t that how a lot our infrastructure also got built in the first place?
Many railways were never profitable enough to justify the upheaval they
caused or the financial ruin
both to investors who lost their money or people displaced from businesses
and homes with little or no compensation.
The early London tubes never really made much money but we benefit from the
losses of those who paid for them now. Brunels steam ship ventures ruined
many but 150 years later he is feted as a hero
and the misery forgotten as are the people cleared away to build the large
projects of the Victorian and Edwardian periods which we now we often
admire on various TV programmes.

There are parallels, but I think the difference between HS2 and the examples
you gave is that for most of the latter the benefit to society as a whole
were fairly obvious even if investors lost their shirt. The benefits of HS2
and equivocal at best thought to be frank its hard to point to any that are
realistic. Even the freeing up paths for freight on the WCML won't happen
if pax services on the WCML remain the same after HS2 is open, plus it would
have been simpler and cheaper to just add extra running lines for freight to
the WCML where possible or even build shoert diversion routes.