Thread by @po8crg

Having said that HS2 won't be expensive to travel on ("which isn't true, because it will have thousands of seats that will need filling"), I should explain why.

You might think that it will need to pay back its costs and therefore will need high ticket prices.
You'd be wrong.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1355047510746787840

Welcome, folks, to
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
(sing that to the tune of "Adams Administration").

The amount it cost to build HS2 has nothing to do with how much you will pay for a ticket.

If they charge more than you will pay, then you won't pay, you'll travel another way or stay at home.

So, if they want to maximise revenue, they have to lower the prices to ones people will pay.

And HS2 will have a lot more seats than the existing trains. So, if anything, they will need to charge less per ticket to fill up their trains, not more.

The cost of construction determines their profit, not their prices.

Sure, if they can't get enough money in, then they lose money. But they can't get in more by raising prices if it costs them too many customers. You don't think Virgin sold those £10 tickets out of the goodness of Richard Branson's heart, do you?

I'm betting that there will be lots of cheap HS2 tickets. Especially on Manchester-Birmingham and Leeds-Birmingham and Newcastle-Birmingham routes where there will be 4-6 times as many seats per hour as at present.

Maybe Liverpool-London won't drop by as much, because the number of seats only goes up by about 40%. About 60% on Manchester-London and Birmingham-London. About 100% on Leeds-London.