Talk:UK Ultraspeed

Bias
Can anyone find some citations for the myriad of benefits claimed in the article? It seems a little like an advert at the moment Spoofer25 12:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This link might be of help for this article, I believe its a summary that was requested by the Scottish Parliment for considering UK Ultraspeed for the Glasgow - Edinburgh link. Scottish Parliment Submission Summary Fraserf (talk) 15:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This article is very biased indeed, it is clearly wrote purely by ultraspeed fans. Even the limitations section quickly veers off the downsides of ultraspeed and goes into pro ultraspeed stuff about how its cheaper- not only bias there but nonsense.--202.174.58.161 (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Weird Style
This article doesn't seem to be encyclopedic. It reads more like promotional literature. I find it odd. Who wrote this? This is not wikipedic. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sandrog (talk • contribs) 16:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Environmental benefits?
Can someone cite this fact stated in the article, i have previously read that trains give out more greenhouse gases per person then cars —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.50.233 (talk) 14:28, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Not generally true, although emissions per passenger km do of course depend on such factors as occupancy, speed and energy source (so that UK Ultraspeed's carbon emissions per passenger km would decrease as the UK moves to renewable energy sources). Perhaps the biggest enviromental objection to building increased high-speed rail capacity (local effects of the railway's presence on habitats and ecosystems aside) is that it doesn't simply prompt people to switch from car to train and make the same journeys - instead some idiots decide they're going to commute from e.g. northern France into London every day on the Eurostar, creating additional journeys. The priority must be to reduce travel by all polluting means before attempting to mitigate it by creating new public transport capacity that has as one of its consequences increased overall travel. The western world has invested a shocking amount in building suburban commuterlands, however, and it's harder to rearrange things so that people live and work in the same communities than it is to find new ways of transporting them vast distances from home to work. 79.68.150.126 (talk) 19:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Costing
The cost data is ludicrous. It needs to be challenged. If you take the cost data from Shanghai (1.33billion USD for 30.5 km of track), and calculating track length of 77,500km from journey times, the UK project should cost about £28billion. That's assuming that the Chinese and Siemens haven't lied about costs (unlikely) and neglecting increased UK land purchase, labour costs and being-rubbish-at-everything costs. I'd assume a price of somewhere in the region of £100billion to be more likely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.23.245 (talk) 15:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The comparison with the Shanghai line has no practical sense; the loose soil conditions (read: swamp) in China significantly boosted construction costs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.70.57.4 (talk) 00:04, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Significance
Exciting though this project sounds, and much as many readers would dearly love to see it come to fruition, I have to question its significance. People are always making obscure proposals that go far beyond what planners are realisically considering, and I wonder how seriously this has been taken outside of enthusiast circles. The article says that the 2007 white paper rejected the proposal, but a Railway Magazine article is cited and not the paper itself. Could it be that it just wasn't mentioned at all? This is followed by: "Ultraspeed claims that many allegations in this document are misleading or false, and successfully auditioned at the authors after the release." This is unsourced, and doesn't appear to make much sense either. 79.68.150.126 (talk) 19:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree - simply drawing a line linking major UK cities and proposing an existing elsewhere technology to link them does not constitute a significant proposal. --88.107.235.76 (talk) 22:46, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Notability is still very much an issue, this whole article should mostly be deleted and used as the base of a section in the Transrapid article. This article should then redirect there. I have tried to delete a lot of marktingspeak, but the notability issue still calls into question the very existence of this article. AadaamS (talk) 12:16, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposing possible deletion
This article, as noted above some time ago, still reads like an advertisement. The fact that much content has been added by non-validated editors (ie IP-only) suggests that this is too promotional too. As noted above there are lots of 'flights of fancy' where possible transport and major projects are concerned, but which doesn't make them actually 'notable'. I would suggest that there is effectively nothing of 'note' here, in that the 'evidence' is basically produced by the promoter of the scheme with little independent verification of details or likelihood of anything ever happening. I'm not going to 'prod' this immediately, but I would like to see any comments *from registered editors* as regards the veracity and worthwhileness of maintaining this article. --AlisonW (talk) 17:59, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree this does read like an advertisment and contains some definite inaccuracies. However it would be a shame to remove it from wikipedia as this is how I found out about the project and it looks like an interesting proposed system for the UK. For it to be a valid wikipedia article could it be cleaned up and sourced more acurately? What does an independent source of information need to be for a proposed system like this? I can only find the study by UK Ultraspeed quoting the Transrapid feasibility study carried out by Siemens AG and ThyssenKrupp AG. I'm reasonably new to wikipedia, so not really sure if thats valid enough a reason or not? Fraserf (talk) 10:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This article states theories that are simply wrong. The energy consumption of Maglev is definitely not lower than that of HSR - this argument has long since been proven wrong. The Munich Transrapid would have consumed twice ore three times the energy of conventional rail, according to different sources. Same problem with the argument, Maglev was cheaper. The costs of the Munich Transrapid were finally calculated at about 3.8 billion EUR for 37 Kilometers! If you take these figures for Ultraspped, it means costs of £40-70 billion!
 * I´m not member of the english Wikipedia, but if I were you, I would delete the paragraph "Discussion of Benefits", which does not contain any approved facts. -- nozomi07 19:22, 15 January 2009  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.173.180.21 (talk)

Ok - there are some points in this article that are open to question. There is a problem that the only real source of information on this project is the company backing the proposal. However I'd be strongly against deleting this article. This is a technology being used commercially in Shanghai, albeit on a small scale, but the Chinese government has concrete plans to extend their maglev network. It is not 'pie in the sky' but a technology that has been shown to be commercially viable and is under serious consideration in the UK. It is in fact particularly attractive for the UK since the UK has not to date invested in alternative high-speed rail technology and as such is able to consider radical new technologies such as this. Perhaps the people who insist the facts in the article are wrong could invest a little time themselves amending and correcting the article or provide pointers to allow someone else to do this. Tim Boothby (talk) 23:43, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Let us just stop for a while and give the thoughts above a little consideration. This discussion page, while often labelling the article as promotional material, looks exactly like a conventional rail promotional material against UK Ultraspeed. Unsourced and clearly false claims like Transrapid would consume more energy than a HSR "equivalent" or cited cost figures without the slightest knowledge of their constituents prove this. Repeating false claims with more increased frequency won't make the claims true. Go and look up technical sources; no authentic source claims that maglev consumes more energy than HSR - and that's because it's the other way around. The Munich project was called to a halt for political reasons as Deutsche Bahn forced the "proposed" route into an extensively long tunnel under the city to undermine Transrapid as the competitor for its very own HSR trains. The boosted costs of the Munich line are entirely a consequence of tunneling; no other technology could come out cheaper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.70.57.4 (talk) 00:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've un-adverted it - - I think that is not a problem now. However references supporting the statements are a problem - ie missing. So I've added another tag requesting citations.


 * I vaguely agree with some of the points made by AlisonW above - ie it is a bit 'pie in the sky', however I wouldn't delete based on "never going to happen" - I;ve seen a fair bit of coverage in media over the years. eg.
 * If a deletion proposal is taken forward please note that a small amount of information (historical) ie that it existed is relavent to High-speed rail in the United Kingdom
 * Personally I think it could be covered in a single paragraph in that main article. Sf5xeplus (talk) 15:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge/Deletion discussion
I'm waking up this discussion again. I think this article should be deleted and small parts of it inserted into the main UK HSR article. Hence, my merge proposal at the top of the article. Please respond or I will simply go ahead and redirect this article to an Ultraspeed section in the UK HSR article. A rejected proposal isn't notable enough to warrant an article of this size which violates WP:UNDUE AadaamS (talk) 12:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Given that there is now a proposal for a high speed maglev between Washington, Baltimore and New York I would think that the Ultraspeed UK proposal and the reasons it was rejected become more significant and better explained in a separate article.  Ultraspeed's proposal was in part to replace some of the air-traffic within Britain (This is not explained in the article and I think should be added but I need to research this further.  I think this is why 500kph is proposed rather than 400kph in Germany.)  Including it in the UK HSR might would miss this point.  I agree with the suggestions that it is too promotional and needs a clean up.  I have made some additions today and fixed an anomaly whereby the low levels of radiation were under the "Limitations" heading rather than "Benefits".  Tjej (talk) 06:09, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I see this the other way around, given that no maglev exists in the UK, I see little reason for the article's existence either. I still think that a section in the general UK HSR or general maglev article would suffice. A maglev line in the United States is irrelevant to the subject of this article. This is not a general maglev article, it is a specialised article and including general things like maglev systems elsewhere will only lead to duplication of information and more effort to maintain and keep it up to date. AadaamS (talk) 09:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess the place for that would be List_of_maglev_train_proposals which has one short & out of date paragraph on the subject (I will fix shortly). If High Speed 2 is overturned then there will be renewed interest in the alternatives. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia so I'll defer to others judgement but I think it should at least be allowed to stay until the HS2 bill passes parliament.  (I think the article wasn't helped by poorly explaining the subject.  I have done some work on all sections now after reading some of the original material.)Tjej (talk) 12:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello Tjej. The reason to keep an article is if its subject is notable as per the WP:GNG. Notability of the HS2 doesn't automatically transfer to its unbuilt alternatives. Wikipedia is WP:NOT (read this) not an advertising platform. Note that everything you write into an article must be supported by WP:RS. Notable subjects of articles usually come with many sources, yet this article is almost entirely based on the contents of the UK Ultraspeed website which is a primary source. WP guidelines prefer secondary sources. Look here for WP:PRIMARY. Happy friday! AadaamS (talk) 13:58, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't disagree with that Tjej (talk) 07:46, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I still don't really see how a subsidiary company of Transrapid deserves a whole article of its own, imho it should be a section in Transrapid and I doubt we will agree on that. If Transrapid hadn't created the "ultraspeed" nickname, I bet this article would never have been created in the first place. AadaamS (talk) 09:35, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have a good reason this article shouldn't be summarised in a section of Transrapid. AadaamS (talk) 20:13, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

It strikes me as an obviously wrong merge, and the supporting arguments strike me as specious... GE Aviation is a subsidiary company of GE, are you saying that means we shouldn't have an article on it? How about SELNEX Galileo? More to the point, many railways have operating companies that are subsidiaries with the same name, it was very common throughout railway history - consider the Georgian Bay and Seaboard Railway which was a wholely-owned subsidiary of CPR and existed solely as a single run of rail. Are you saying we shouldn't have that article and it should be merged into CPR? How is this different? Given the lengthy discussion it garnered, and all the supporting pro and con, we clearly have the basis for an article that spans pages. After a year, this proposal has obviously not gained anything like consensus. Time to end it. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:04, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Maury Markowitz, thanks for your input. This article is about neither a company nor a rail route, it's about a proposed rail route unlikely to ever be built. Comparison with Corridor (Via Rail) or Georgian Bay and Seaboard Railway is irrelevant as they have both actually been built at some point. I still say that this article is much too big for a rejected rail line proposal, violating WP:UNDUE. The only reason that no decision on the merge has been reached yet is because feedback has been slow. That in itself is indication that this subject generally lacks importance, not that the article should be kept as a standalone. As I said above, if there is ever a maglev line in the UK I will be happy to create a standalone article for it. AadaamS (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I see, so it's about it being proposed? Ok, so I guess we have to delete the Pacific Northwest Corridor (actually read it), Northern New England Corridor, Ouse Valley Railway, North Holderness Light Railway, XpressWest, California High-Speed Rail, Texas Central Railway, Florida High Speed Rail, Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor... should I continue? There are a couple of hundred of articles on the topic of proposed railways. There are also a large number of articles on cancelled railway replacements. And cancelled trains, aircraft, expressways, buildings, bridges, and practically anything else you can think of. So your argument about this being unimportant because it is only proposed is specious, as there are thousands of counterexamples. Which leaves you with the claims of UNDUE. It means the article attempts to present a imbalanced view. I look at this article and I see an entire section on problems, including several that are downright damning. I also see a "current status" section that adds many more concerns. I can't imagine a more balanced approach to this topic, can you? I'm sorry, but I stand by my original statement, this merge-to is dead. Any concerns you have with the content or balance should be addressed as they should always be, by editing the article! And this is precisely what Sf5 did some time ago. Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:36, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You're not reading what I wrote, my concern was not with the balance of the article, it is the size of the article and its notability. Since you now are all of two editors (you and Tjej) in favour of keep the consensus is keep as standalone. I still say there is little evidence this article satisfies the WP:GNG (which is the keep criterion for any standalone article) because almost all of the references refer to the promoter's website (which is a self-published source and thus not a WP:RS), the other two are government documents. Anyway I'll abide by the consensus. Also, using exclamation marks when writing to me does not make the subject of this article more notable. Good luck. AadaamS (talk) 06:30, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not reading what you wrote? I can still see your post about UNDUE to me at the top of this editor window. You keep changing your argument: first you said its bad because it's an article on a subsidiary company, then you said its bad because it's only proposed, and now you say it's bad because of its size? If you really believe that there is a GNG argument here, and there isn't, take it to AfD where it belongs. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:35, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

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Cancellation?
Having a section called cancellation is misleading as this never got beyond being a proposal. I suggest Government rejection of proposal would be more accurate.--FDent (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2018 (UTC)