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High Speed 2 received a peer review by Misplaced Pages editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Link Camden

http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/environment/planning-and-built-environment/two/major-developments/high-speed-two.en;jsessionid=C011DB9228D40511D6F82D419A6DE02A.

I don't know to what this link is referring but the page does not exist — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iesvoagel (talk • contribs) 21:34, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I have replaced it with this . Biscuittin (talk) 09:46, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Updating of compensation section

I have recently added relevant content to the Compensation section, including the addition (sub-)sub-categories. I was looking for authority to remove the Update template banner within the section. However, if it's deemed necessary to add improvements I'm more than happy to listen to everyones opinion. Døddmeïßter47™ (talk) 12:58, January 2013 (UTC)

No mention of Crewe Hub

The head of HS2 Ltd has proposed a hub at Crewe for phase 1 of HS2. High-speed track to enter Crewe from the south and all the classic compatible tracks can have HS2 train run on them. This makes sense. Why no mention? 188.220.97.106 (talk) 17:04, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I have added it to the "Crewe" section. Please feel free to add more information if you have it. Biscuittin (talk) 19:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The Politics of HS2

This article barely seems to mention the politics of HS2. Now I am part of the anti-campaign so I would not touch the article directly in case of partiality, but I feel it needs more balance on the opposition to the scheme.
HS2 is unusual in that there such disparity and anger over it.

• There seems to be almost universal agreement among the three main political parties and among career establishment politicians in favor of HS2. Their reasons are obscure except that they believe it will boost the economy by reducing the amount of time top executives spend travelling - between London and Birmingham.
  
• While among the British people HS2 seems to be pretty much universally loathed and derided. - As a complete and vast waste of money, as an obsolete solution that will take decades to build, as extremely elitist, as fundamentally stupid, as a pork project that lines the pockets of everyone involved in it, as deeply environmentally damaging, as more expensive than flying, and so on.
  

HS2 seems to be one of several policies that is increasing support for UKIP and decreasing support for the Conservatives and the other main UK parties.

I would add my own O.R. opinion as a scientist and engineer. - That from an engineering standpoint HS2 is fundamentally unsafe (because of high KE) and vulnerable to small deviancies or single point failures. Also that any accident or failure at high speeds (because of high KE) has a high chance of leading to large numbers of deaths. And also that HS2 is massively almost overwhelmingly vulnerable to terrorism for the above reasons. (applies to all high speed trains)
I believe that the only way to make HS2 safe is to reduce the speeds to 120 - 100 mph, but this completely removes the whole reason for building a special line in the first place, and removes the whole purpose of the project.
Lucien86 (talk) 10:41, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Addendum : I am trying to get this safety question asked in New Scientist, to try to get some kind of scientific opinion on whether or how much truth there is to a safety issue. It might also lead to a more formal answer that could be added to Misplaced Pages. Lucien86 (talk) 11:09, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change of measurement systems

On 30 August 2015, User:The seeker123 unilaterally changed all metric or metric-first measurements to imperial or imperial-first. Misplaced Pages convention is that if an article already uses a particular system of measurements (e.g., metric/imperial, CE/AD), it should not be changed without prior discussion and consensus. As User:The seeker123 is new and couldn't be expected to know this, I am opening the topic on his/her behalf. Comments please? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

According to MOS:UNIT, articles on British engineering subjects should use the units of measurement that were used in the subject's design. Therefore, metric is appropriate. RGloucester — ☎ 00:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Firstly, I want to apologise for the edit, I have been reading editing policies now so I've learned something. According to MOS:UNIT that RGloucester cited, "In non-scientific articles relating to the United Kingdom, the primary units for most quantities are metric or other internationally used units, except that: the primary units for distance/​length, speed and fuel consumption are miles, miles per hour and miles per imperial gallon". It also states that in "UK engineering-related articles, including those on bridges and tunnels, generally use the system of units that the topic was drawn-up in". It states generally use the system of units that the topic was drawn up in, not solely use that system of units. I would argue that because the tendency in the UK is to lean towards miles, and the use of kilometres is extremely rare, it would make more logical sense to feature miles first with metric as a supplementary figure. Furthermore, in all of the news articles used as references on the page, the distance is always cited in miles. This surely proves that the use of kilometres in the UK is not the preferred method of measurement for long distances.--The seeker123 (talk) 11:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

This very subject was debated at length last year, and I see no reason to depart from the consensus that was reached at that time to follow the metric-first style in accordance with the MoS for UK engineering articles.

You are incorrect to imply that the use of kilometres is extremely rare – speeds and distances on this project (and on the related HS1) are typically measured in kilometres. This was a major reason why the style was changed last year, and why the MoS rule was changed: to allow UK engineering-related articles to reflect the normal practices of modern UK engineering. Different sources will follow their respective manuals of style, which is why we do not simply copy the style from our sources in any circumstances. Misplaced Pages forms its own consensus about what styles are most appropriate in different contexts: a consensus which is detailed by our Manual of Style.

I suggest that in this context, the term "generally" means "in general", i.e. that this is a general rule. Please do not try to use the letter of the MoS in a manner inconsistent with its spirit. The term "general" is not intended to be a weasel-word or "get-out clause"; if you think an article should deviate from the rule, you need to have a strong topic-specific reason. Saying "generally does not mean always" is not enough. I would also warn you that there are currently General Sanctions in place relating to the topic of UK units. This means that it is especially important not to make changes at a whim to unit presentation style on UK-related articles, as the threshold for what is likely to be considered disruptive behaviour is lower than for non-UK articles. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:34, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with seeker123, in England miles are used for such lengths. All road signs and car speedometers are in miles and people think in miles. Kilometres are alien to most of the English. Even the webpages used for links here give miles. There is no need to convert everything to kilometres, just give it straight in miles like the Brits do. B, TWaMoE (talk) 19:43, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The guidelines say to use kilometres for things designed in kilometres, and this railway is designed that way. RGloucester — ☎ 20:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

This article is more a transport article than an engineering article, and covering the politics, environmental concerns, economics, legal issues, planning concerns and community impact of a transport scheme - you only need to look at the section titles to realise that. For that reason it needs to honestly reflect the British use of imperial measures that are typical and evident in the secondary sources that are covering this transport project, as noted by The seeker123 above. To argue that the primary sources related only to the inevitable engineering content of such a transport project give a fair reflection of British units used would be disingenuous and misleading. We all know that, outside of the drawing office, the physical characteristics of this project are discussed almost exclusively in imperial measures. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:28, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The seeker123, Speccy4Eyes, please both read to the extensive prior discussion. If you see something in that discussion or the UKU discussion that was missed, by all means raise it. However, I expect it extremely unlikely that either policy will be re-written or an exception will be made for HS2, nor an exception made for any other project built post-1980 drawn up in metric. What is more likely to occur is gentle, and then progressively strong hints about WP:LAWYERING and being unnecessarily disruptive. —Sladen (talk) 08:53, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Sladen, if you mean the discussion linked to by Archon above and that was closed more than 18 months ago - I have read it. A notable difference is that there new editors involved here now, so a consensus may well develop to stick with imperial. We don't need any policy rewritten: we could decide that within the spirit of the current policy that this article is not engineering-related or we could decide that given the weight of secondary sources using imperial and our knowledge of British usage, that this article should reflect that or we could fail to reach a consensus and thus follow MOSNUM advice for that case and revert to the units fist used. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

The mere fact that the editors are somewhat different this year than last is not an adequate reason for the existing consensus to change, if the underlying arguments are no different than they were in early 2014. A stable consensus was reached last year, so I think you are mistaken to imply that we might need to revert to the status quo which existed before that time. The current style works perfectly well, it is representative of the practices of modern UK construction and engineering, and I see no benefit to Misplaced Pages in changing it. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:25, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

The new contributors may have a different view on whether the spirit of the guidelines are being breached by taking it to insist that any transport project article that has even the briefest mention of the dimensions of the proposed development is automatically an "engineering-related" article.

For those who believe that because this article does have some cover of engineering aspects, it is therefore automatically engineering-related enough to be caught by that clause of the guidelines, I would ask: what amount of British related cover do you think would bring an article within the guideline clause for "articles relating to the United Kingdom"? Would an article such as Jamestown/Usshertown, Accra, which largely discusses Britain's activities and roles be covered? We need to stand back and be objective. Do the guidelines mean "related" more loosely for some articles and contexts than for others? We should not allow our judgement on this be swayed by our personal preference for one unit system over another. If this article is considered to be related to engineering then why isn't the Usshertown article considered an article relating to the UK? Speccy4Eyes (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

In relation to your point about Accra, the principle of WP:STRONGNAT is pretty clear on this. "Strong national ties to the UK" (which is what "UK-related" refers to on MOSNUM, for example) is quite a strict criterion. Obviously there will be a lot of articles which have some tangential or historical relevance to the UK, but unless the article is primarily about a British place or person, or something that happened in the UK, it is unlikely to be considered to have strong national ties to the UK. Even something like the Battle of Waterloo, which was important in British history, but didn't happen on British soil and did not primarily involve British soldiers, would not satisfy that criterion. Saying that the topic relates more to the UK than the USA would also not be relevant, for example. Likewise you could not argue that an article about pre-revolutionary America would have ties to the UK on the basis that it would be an article about a British colony. Any article dealing with stuff that happened on American soil is going to be considered US-related.

So by that criterion, the country that any article relating to Ghana would be considered to relate to, primarily, would be Ghana. Any other position on that subject would be a violation of WP:NPOV. And in this case, an article is engineering-related when local consensus (such as was reached last year) says it is. Archon 2488 (talk) 09:44, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I also agree with the reasons given by Speccy4Eyes for why this article should use imperial measures and especially miles not kilometres. B, TWaMoE (talk) 20:19, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

TWaMoE, then please take "the reasons given by Speccy4Eyes" and apply to get the relevant policy altered. —Sladen (talk) 00:13, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

TWaMoE, no policy change is required to restore imperial unit precedence in this article as per MOSNUM. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I have read the article and noted the mixture of technical and non-technical information that it provides. I believe that the article is better served by putting the metric measures first rather than having a mish-mash of units, or putting the imperial equivalents first. I therefore support the status quo. Michael Glass (talk) 02:34, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I wish also to record my support for the status quo, in accordance with the wp MOS and real world engineering practice. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:46, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I too have read the article and I noted too that this is not a purely engineering-related article. For that reason, I support restoring the imperial unit precedence per MOSNUM, in spirit and in letter, per the proposal that is the subject of this section and was inspired by the edits of The seeker123. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 06:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I support using miles first not kilometres in this article because it is a UK transport project article which includes a bit of engineering detail and not an engineering only article. B, TWaMoE (talk) 21:13, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I support User:The seeker123's changes as it is clear that this article is more a transport-related article than an engineering one. In fact it's hard to find much engineering content at all amongst the politics and economics! Timpace (talk) 06:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

For me the crux here is whether this article can be rightly categorised as essentially an engineering article. Because I am sure that the intent of the sloppy term "engineering-related" in WP:UNITS was not as a huge net to catch every single article with any engineering content with.

Reading through the article, it is clear that although there is some engineering content in it, it is by no means a mainly engineering article. This view is reinforced by the fact that the article is sponsored, not by an engineering project, but by Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Trains, a project that concentrates on the full breadth of railway transport matters. Also, none of the categories given to the article are of an engineering nature.

My conclusion therefore is that the article does not fall into the narrow "engineering-realated" classification, so should have the imperial-first presentation style restored. Chief archivist (talk) 21:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The wording of the MOS rule makes it clear that it is intended to apply to infrastructure including bridges and tunnels, so railways are hardly too great an extrapolation from that. The rule was originally created in 2013 in response to a discussion surrounding the Edinburgh Trams article, so I would dispute that public transportation infrastructure does not count as "engineering-related" in MOS terms.

In any case, the broad thrust of the MOS section on UK units is to allow WP usage to follow the muddle of units used in the UK at present – neither leading nor lagging, per WP:NPOV on UK metrication – and it is therefore difficult to see why a project designed and constructed entirely in the metric system should not be described primarily in those same units. This is the underlying reason why the Edinburgh Trams article was changed, why the MOS rule was changed, and why this article was changed. Archon 2488 (talk) 21:45, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

If we're reaching a point where there is WP:GAMING/WP:LAWYERING over the meaning of the word "engineering" on an article covering a civil engineering mega-project, then the solution may well be to refine the wording in the policy to make it absolutely and unambiguously clear. I was not expecting that to have to be necessary. —Sladen (talk) 21:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

As the drafter of the "engineering" clause, I can assure you that this article is "engineering-related", as the intent was to include civil engineering. The clause originated with Edinburgh Trams, another civil engineering article. RGloucester — ☎ 21:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to participate further than this comment, but I suggest the following: Where a reference is in km, use that first. Where a reference is in miles, use that first. In all instances, use both km and miles. I think we can get away with not using chains for HS2. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

That's unacceptable. Source-based units have been explicitly rejected at WP:MOSNUM many times. RGloucester — ☎ 22:10, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

As RGloucester says, this proposal has been made and rejected several times in various guises; I think I once proposed something of the kind myself. It might seem at first like an easy way to solve the problem, but it's a Trojan horse. For one thing, the point of having a Manual of Style is that WP (like any publication) wants to have its own "house style", which represents editorial consensus on how its content should be formatted. To copy styles from our sources in a piecemeal fashion would produce stylistically inconsistent, unprofessional-looking and potentially confusing articles. As it was once put to me, copying styles in this way is appropriate for a ransom note, not an encyclopedia. The second consideration is that such a proposal would amount to a gamer's charter – the mere fact that someone can dig up sources that use their preferred style is not a strong reason for a Misplaced Pages article to use that style. Archon 2488 (talk) 10:17, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

One of the things drilled into students when they get to GCSE level and beyond is not to create false precision when multiplying and rounding. Take, for example, the design top speed of HS1: 300km/h. If we convert that to Imperial and round down, we get 186mph. Converted back we get 299km/h. HS2 is as much a civil engineering project as it is a railway project, but both of those will be designed in metric and will give measurements in metric. For reasons of accuracy, we should be giving those measurements in metric too. Sceptre 23:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

There is |order=flip for that. —Sladen (talk) 02:04, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

With the caveat that |order=flip isn't meant to be used with nominal values (such as a design speed or a speed limit). But Sceptre's underlying argument that it is more accurate to reflect real-world use (I mean, for example, that it's misleading to talk about speeds and distances in imperial when the project actually uses metric), is the reason why MOSNUM prescribes using the original units in these cases. Archon 2488 (talk) 10:21, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

• A search through the article code reveals that 40 of the 60 measurements are sourced in imperial units and flipped. Of the 20 given in metric, several are unsourced. If this article were primarily engineering-related, then most of the sources would surely be technical publications and journals which would contain primarily metric units. As it is, this is clearly more of a generalist transport article, drawing on generalist UK secondary sources - as evidenced by their propensity to use primarily imperial units. As several contributors have said, this article is clearly not engineering-related enough to be covered by that MOSNUM exception. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 21:20, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Please don't act like a fool. I'm telling you, as the DRAFTER of that very clause, that the intent of the clause was cover all transport-related articles, as such articles are civil engineering-related. That is to say, they revolve around plans drawn-up in metric. The dispute that led to the introduction of that clause was Edinburgh Trams, another civil engineering article. In that case, I had instituted imperial measurements when working on the article. A few other users disputed this, resulting in a long discussion that created a compromise: the "engineering" clause. That clause was intended to allow projects that were drawn-up in metric to use metric, for the sake of accuracy. Source based units, on the other hand, have been repeatedly rejected by all parties. RGloucester — ☎ 02:49, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Just because the editors of another article agree that it is engineering related does not mean that all transport articles are to be treated the same. This one should obey the sources which prove what units are used in the UK to write about this subject. Put imperial first. B, TWaMoE (talk) 06:17, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Practical considerations

The general sanctions on UK articles states:

Any editor who systematically changes values from one system of measurement to another without clear consensus, who edit-wars over such a change, who disrupts talk page discussions or normal Misplaced Pages processes pertaining to units in UK-related articles, who engages in forum-shopping, or who otherwise disruptively edits may be sanctioned by an uninvolved administrator.

Clearly, this change cannot be made without a clear consensus to change the units in the way that is proposed. I see no sign of such a consensus emerging. More people have spoken in favour of the status quo than have called for change, and I don't see that this is likely to change.

But let's say that it was decided to change. MOSNUM says:

UK engineering-related articles, including those on bridges and tunnels, generally use the system of units that the topic was drawn-up in (but road distances are given in imperial units, with a metric conversion)

To conform with MOSNUM, all the tunnels should be given in metric measures.

• I counted 12 references to the length of tunnels in the article, interspersed in three of the sections.
• Bridges are also supposed to be in the units that they were drawn up in. Presumably, that covers viaducts. That means two more more inconsistencies if we switch to miles first.

Those proposing the switch to miles should ponder the fact that they don't have the numbers, and even if they did, their proposal would introduce unnecessary inconsistencies into the article. Any further discussion of this proposal is therefore a waste of everyone's time. Michael Glass (talk) 01:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

We should comply with MOSNUM, but accepting that this is a transport-related article, and not fool ourselves that it is an engineering one. Timpace (talk) 06:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I have expanded the footnote on the WP:MOSNUM to read "Including those on civil-engineering, transport, bridges and tunnels.". This hopefully makes the origin intent unambiguously clear. —Sladen (talk) 06:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

And I changed it back again. You can't just go amending guidelines like that with no consensus. Just accept the will here is to restore the natural UK habit of using imperial first, especially for mile-scale measurements. Speccy4Eyes (talk) 17:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

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