You need 14 trainsets on the high speed line to match or exceed the capacity of the current classic service. You also need to retain classic trainsets on the WCML (Centro wanted to keep all 3 Coventry / Birmingham trains).
An 11-car Pendolino has 589 seats in total over 265m total length. A 200m set taking 550 people therefore isn't as much of a reduction in capacity as you make it out to be.
If Centro want to keep all three Coventry services then they have every right to lobby for them. However, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will get them.
Once you apply the same mathematics to other high speed services (e.g. East Coast) you find the total number of trains has to go up.
Yet ICEC will go down to 1tph Leeds, 1tph Newcastle, 1pth Lincoln and 1tph Edinburgh so it won't need anywhere near as many trains at the moment.
What proportion of the HS2 fleet is scheduled to be made up of captive stock? And are those going to be TSI compatible?
Captive stock === TSI compatible. The classic-compatible stock would have to meet the same specifications but the idea is that any TSI compatible stock from any manufacturer could act as a captive train.
The overall number of trains needed to provide the same coverage, is increased, not reduced.
No it is not. The numbers I put up apply to any sort of longer journey times on any sort of tracks. The relevant question here is what the alternatives to HS2 would mean, as the status quo isn't going to work. The end result of HS2 is that there will be more trains in service than there are at the moment. However, the number of extra trains needed to deliver the extra capacity it brings will be less than an alternative of a slower line or extra pair of tracks. If you built HS2 to run at 200km/h, you would still need to run the same number of non-HS2 services for the WCML with the same number of trains needed, yet you would need more to run the HS2 services.
Or you could just just make the classic platforms longer.
And now you reach the limitations of the existing rail network. The law of diminishing returns means that every extra metre of platform length will cost more and more and more to deliver. At somewhere like Coventry, for example, there are junctions at either end of the platforms which cannot be moved. The only way to increase train lengths here would be to relocate the station or the platforms or both, necessitating an extremely expense reconstruction which would cause huge disruption to the people of Coventry and to the WCML in general. No amount of selective door operation will change this, as either end of the train would end up hanging over the junctions and blocking them. With a 3tph service in both directions, this means the junctions would be blocked more-or-less continuously.
Hotel power is not a very large proportion of train energy, so the offset on the much higher traction energy would be minimal.
It is not an insignificant part. When you've got 550 people in only 200m of train length, with no opening windows, you need quite a bit of air conditioning to keep everyone comfortable in all outside conditions.
If operating costs > farebox revenue (the norm in north America and western Europe) it's not obvious what the benefit is.
Your logic is that there's no point investing to make something make less of a loss because it's still not going to make a profit.
So does making the classic platforms longer.
Yes, if that were at all a feasible option. Network Rail are of the opinion that it is not, and so they heavily advocate building HS2 instead. If we were still running around with 8-car Pendolinos we wouldn't be thinking of spending £42.8bn on a new high speed railway.
Equally, building a bridge to the Scilly Isles would makes journeys from the mainland significantly more attractive than it is at the moment due to increased reliability, comfort and reduced journey times. But those benefits aren't worth the costs.
And that bridge would never have an economic case behind it. Yes, it would indeed help to make the islands more attractive, but it could never generate enough economic return to justify its own construction. HS2 connects cities with a total population of well more than half of the entire UK - London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds plus Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and its services can and will be filled by passengers. We know this because the existing ones on the classic network already are.
Manchester - London classic trains (shorter journey than Glasgow to London HS2) have onboard catering. Not being able to eat breakfast on the HS2 train would severely reduce or wipe out the journey time saving.
They have onboard catering because the Pendolinos had to be delivered with a kitchen so they could be used on London-Scotland runs. The closest comparison here is the Midland Main Line, where the longest run is London-Sheffield with a similar 2-and-a-bit hour time as HS2 to Scotland could deliver. The Class 222s don't have kitchens and they really don't need them as a result of this maximum journey time.
HS2 is planned to be run for an operational profit. This is a tough objective - as far as I am aware there are only two HS lines which are profitable in the world: Paris - Lyon and Tōkaidō Shinkansen.
I can't see it being difficult for HS2 to make a profit on captive services when so little track and infrastructure is needed to serve so many people. The French LGVs have the disadvantage that they all radiate from Paris and each expensive line out of Paris and the Ile-de-France can only serve a population of a few million or so. The expensive line out of Euston will serve all of the West Midlands, East Midlands, Cheshire, Lancashire, Merseyside, Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland at once.
I would be amazed if HS2 fares weren't charged a premium.
The point of HS2 is capacity relief on the existing mainline. It is effectively no different to a plan which would build another pair of tracks up along the WCML from Euston to Crewe, with almost all existing Virgin services having no choice but to move over. While there would be some competition in the West and East Midlands between the HS2 operator and whoever runs the various classic main lines, that competitive ability will disappear the further up the country you go. HS2 to Scotland would compete more against the airlines than it would against trains or buses, and since tilt and non-stop running would no longer be necessary on any remainder WCML/ECML services, the gulf in journey times between the two would only increase further.
I agree that catering and first class can be axed to reduced costs. DOO may be an option although considering the lack of enthusiasm by TOCs since privatisation I suspect the cost savings are minimal.
On a long distance train with long periods of time between station calls the incremental advantage of DOO over driver+guard is far less than it is on local and commuter services.
However, IC trains cost more to operate when compared to LSE and Regional trains partly because on average they are longer. The rolling stock costs per train km account for a greater proportion than staff costs. In my opinion it would be more effective cutting train lengths but then you are cutting capacity!
Train lengths would be whatever was most economic to run at that time. It is very unlikely that 400m fixed-length sets would be procured as there will be times throughout the day when a 200m set is more than sufficient on most captive flows.
I believe you are wrong as you have failed to take into account annual mileage.
An ICE3 set does on average 420,000 km a year.
An AGV is designed to do 500,000 km a year.
The ORR data portal is currently down but using some old figures I have on hand on average an East Coast set does about 470,000 km a year.
So you need the same amount of units regardless.
I don't know what analysis has been done of how many kilometres an HS2 train would do per day but I can't see it being that low, especially with the Government's likely insistence upon them using assets to their fullest. What are the numbers for Ouigo?
Platform lengthening is a tried and trusted means of increasing capacity on the British railway network. Another option is to build new long platforms, and connect them to the existing track (as at Waterloo, when it was the Eurostar terminus).
The costs, and overall disruption impacts, of new / longer platforms at existing intercity calling points, are a small percentage of those of building a completely new line.
You could not be more wrong. Could you please explain to us how you would extend platforms at Euston or Birmingham New Street? You might be able to squeeze in an extra carriage or two but we're talking here about the extra capacity needed for the next decades, seeing as how predicted passenger numbers keep getting exceeded every year. The 51m ideas about 17-car Pendolinos were laughably naive. Even if you did extend them, you would only get the advantage of the extra length, instead of also getting the advantages of being able to run more services at the same time and the reduction in journey times. You then have to consider the effect upon the classic railway during the time you plan to reconstruct it, seeing as how we now try and use it to its absolute maximum capacity. If Euston would take decades and billions of pounds to rebuild as the only major interface between HS2 and the WCML, what on earth is going to happen when you want to rebuild every single capacity constraint on all three north-south mainlines at once?
