{"id":115,"date":"2014-06-23T16:58:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T15:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darrenumney.com\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2014-08-03T08:53:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-03T07:53:27","slug":"easy-algebra-when-does-hs2-hs1-hs3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Easy algebra: When does HS2 – HS1 = HS3?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0his recent review of the HS2 project<\/a>\u00a0Sir David Higgins advocated the removal of the proposed North London Rail link\u00a0between HS2 and HS1 on the grounds that it would provide\u00a0a relatively poor return (removing the need for a one stop tube journey) on an apparently unreasonably large proportion (\u00a3700m) of the total budget\u00a0(\u00a342.6bn) .
\n(Therefore\u00a0HS2 – HS1 = \u00a341.9bn)<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, according to the HM Treasury website in the kind of\u00a0pre-emptive news strike<\/a> that has now become the norm, George Osborne will propose a third high speed railway\u00a0for Britain.\u00a0Depending on who you ask this “keynote speech” or “pre-election waffle” is either a reflection on the success of his\u00a0government’s long term economic planning or an attempt to deflect attention from a reported\u00a0six point deficit in the latest polls<\/a>. The new line, already being referred to as HS3 would link Manchester and Leeds across the Pennines.<\/p>\n

I’m not wanting to speculate on the intention of the speech and without knowing who the audience was (apart from all of us) it’s also difficult to speculate on which particular lock his keynotes were meant to open.\u00a0But the event of the speech is interesting in its own right.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Firstly it allows me to think about the overall news context. Not in\u00a0any radical way but just to\u00a0observe how the news game is played.\u00a0The official press release of this “vision for a northern powerhouse” is published overnight in anticipation of the\u00a0Chancellor’s\u00a0and Prime Minister’s “Northern infrastructure tour day”.\u00a0The speech is backed up by interviews with the traditional media. In one television interview, when pressed to provide a costing of his HS3, Osborne offers a rule of thumb estimate (based on the HS2 cost per mile) of \u00a37bn for his\u00a0trans-pennine upgrade.
\n(So HS2 + HS3 = \u00a348.9bn\u00a0if we were to\u00a0trust in the Chancellor’s heuristic)<\/em><\/p>\n

HM Treasury also set about a social media campaign to support their northern tour. Their official\u00a0storify\u00a0is\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and on\u00a0twitter\u00a0their hashtag #northernpowerhouse <\/a>has already collected some 10,000 tweets and retweets. That’s a lot of words already from\u00a0Sunday night\u00a0to\u00a0Monday morning. Backwards and forwards. Tweets and retweets. The relationship between tweet and retweet is quite similar to the one between press release and news story. But that’s another story.<\/p>\n

Back to the speech itself and the way that the HS2 route has been represented. The HS2 route is commonly referred to as\u00a0a “Y network” . It is proposed to run north\u00a0from London to Birmingham (as phase 1) where it bifurcates east and west in order to reach Manchester and Leeds without having to negotiate the Peak District.\u00a0This “Y” network\u00a0was originally described\u00a0in a 2009 report from HS2 Ltd<\/a>\u00a0as an “inverse A” which included as its bar a high speed link between Manchester and Leeds. So,\u00a0the answer to my question “when\u00a0does HS2 – HS1 = HS3<\/em>?” would appear to be “if\u00a0Y = 1\/A<\/em>“.\u00a0The bar was dropped from the initial plan due to the additional cost\u00a0but it shows that this east-west link across the pennines has been in the government’s back pocket\u00a0for a while.\u00a0It’s not the main point of this ramble but the 5 years in between then and now makes my pre-emptive news strike look more like\u00a0a time bomb.
\n(and my formula now has a fourth dimension: HS2 – HS1 = HS3 when Y = (1\/A x 5))<\/em><\/p>\n

Shifting slightly from faux algebra to anagrams, and to move towards the point of writing this, it’s also interesting to consider\u00a0what other letters are in the mix. Alongside the “inverse A” that became a “Y” there were two other options considered.\u00a0Both of these\u00a0alternatives were reasoned out of the frame by\u00a0arguments built around optimal\u00a0journey times\u00a0and benefit cost ratios that supported “Y=1\/A”.\u00a0The “reverse S” and the “reverse E” would have provided a single route around the Peak District\u00a0one way or the other.<\/p>\n

Collectively the options for the routes look like this:\"Easy\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

And this poses two further questions. Firstly, why and how are these letters being used to signify and explain the alternative routes? Secondly, did they think it was going to be easy?<\/p>\n

The first of these questions\u00a0can be clearly\u00a0approached from\u00a0design studies\u00a0around the\u00a0use of image and artefact in the design process. I will be thinking about this point\u00a0as\u00a0I pursue my\u00a0current\/pending<\/a> reading of Goldschmidt and the related literature. It’s\u00a0the second question that’s\u00a0the real challenge and asking it\u00a0opens up the design analysis to the wider contexts in which I am\u00a0looking to apply it. But if I keep asking questions instead of answering them it might turn out to be harder than it should be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0his recent review of the HS2 project\u00a0Sir David Higgins advocated the removal of the proposed North London Rail link\u00a0between HS2 and HS1 on the grounds that it would provide\u00a0a relatively poor return (removing the need for a one stop tube journey) on an apparently unreasonably large proportion (\u00a3700m) of the total budget\u00a0(\u00a342.6bn) . (Therefore\u00a0HS2 – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}