HS2 - the case for a review

[Haydn1971]

At 1000 seats for a classic compatible lashup and ~1350 for a double deck formation you could expect something like 22,200 seats per hour. [12 captive, six classic]. Which is something like 37 11-car Pendos per hour. It truly is a lot.

And, importantly, you still have all the paths on the WCML, CL, MML & ECML as well !

 

[Envy123]

I am sympathetic to your personal situation. That said, I am sick of hearing Londoners who could move whinge about living costs and house prices, they want to have their cake and eat it. Your situation is a clear example of being tied London but there are few other sectors that is actually the case. What most people actually mean is it would damage their career a little bit. I lived in London for a few months and was astounded by how ignorant many Londoners were about the rest of the UK. I had very well paid collegues refer to Birmingham as being in the North and one even seriously asked me if I needed a passport to go to Wales.

I think Crewe/Stoke-Stockport-Manchester will become much more commuter focused but I dont think many people will commute to Manchester from further south.

This is why British citizens must know a lot about the UK, including its history.

Was on PrimeLocation the other day and the difference of house sizes are just staggering. In a London commuter town, I'd be lucky to get a small terraced house but up in the Midlands, I can get a huge detached house for the same price. Wouldn't mind a long commute if I had a nice big house instead of a shoebox.

I think some people will reverse commute to Manchester for the BBC but you're right, more people will go the other way.

 

[Chester1]

This is why British citizens must know a lot about the UK, including its history.

Was on PrimeLocation the other day and the difference of house sizes are just staggering. In a London commuter town, I'd be lucky to get a small terraced house but up in the Midlands, I can get a huge detached house for the same price. Wouldn't mind a long commute if I had a nice big house instead of a shoebox.

I think some people will reverse commute to Manchester for the BBC but you're right, more people will go the other way.

There is more reasons for people to commute to Manchester than Media City! Alongside Birmingham its the main alternative to London for basing HQs. A £10bn development called Airport City is in the process of being built and should attract multinationals. HSBC is moving its UK retail banking division to Birmingham saying that they are struggling to attract staff for the wages they want to pay because of London living costs. The investment banking division and the Global HQ will remain in Canary Wharf but the majority will be rented. The main change for commuters will be much more commuter services on the existing lines. Virgin West Coast runs 10 services an hour during peak times South of Rugby. I doubt more than 2 or 3 of those paths will be retained for long distances services. If replaced with Class 350 services with 12 coaches that is about 4000-4500 extra seats into London and Birmingham per hour.

 

[Envy123]

There is more reasons for people to commute to Manchester than Media City! Alongside Birmingham its the main alternative to London for basing HQs. A £10bn development called Airport City is in the process of being built and should attract multinationals. HSBC is moving its UK retail banking division to Birmingham saying that they are struggling to attract staff for the wages they want to pay because of London living costs. The investment banking division and the Global HQ will remain in Canary Wharf but the majority will be rented. The main change for commuters will be much more commuter services on the existing lines. Virgin West Coast runs 10 services an hour during peak times South of Rugby. I doubt more than 2 or 3 of those paths will be retained for long distances services. If replaced with Class 350 services with 12 coaches that is about 4000-4500 extra seats into London and Birmingham per hour.

This all seems great - it does put away some of my fears regarding my career.

But regarding luxury retail, it does seem that it will stay in London for the considerable future. Unless Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter plans to expand as well?

 

[The Planner]

Brum does alright for luxury retail, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and the rest of the designer labels in the Mailbox.

 

[Phil.]

That depends on how you lay the trains out and what capacity you set for.
If you set for maximum capacity and only allowed 400m formations south of Birmingham International, and made all captive services formed of a single 400m long double deck unit then the capacities get huge.
At 1000 seats for a classic compatible lashup and ~1350 for a double deck formation you could expect something like 22,200 seats per hour. [12 captive, six classic]

Which is something like 37 11-car Pendos per hour.
It truly is a lot.

And just where are you going to get all those people from to fill these trains? Eurostar still doesn't shift the number of passengers that they predicted were going to use the trains in 1994. Ebbsfleet and Ashford are still like ghost stations.
I have grave doubts about this mega-expensive piece of work.

 

[Hadders]

And just where are you going to get all those people from to fill these trains? Eurostar still doesn't shift the number of passengers that they predicted were going to use the trains in 1994. Ebbsfleet and Ashford are still like ghost stations.
I have grave doubts about this mega-expensive piece of work.

There doesn't seem to be a problem filling the domestic services on HS1 though...

 

[HSTEd]

And just where are you going to get all those people from to fill these trains? Eurostar still doesn't shift the number of passengers that they predicted were going to use the trains in 1994. Ebbsfleet and Ashford are still like ghost stations.
I have grave doubts about this mega-expensive piece of work.

Drop the price until it fills up.
There is far more potential demand that is suppressed by the cost of travel for domestic journeys than there is for international ones.

 

[NotATrainspott]

And just where are you going to get all those people from to fill these trains? Eurostar still doesn't shift the number of passengers that they predicted were going to use the trains in 1994. Ebbsfleet and Ashford are still like ghost stations.
I have grave doubts about this mega-expensive piece of work.

Eurostar was an entirely new service, with passengers who were either entirely new or had switched from flying. Due to the various ways in which London and Paris have been separated throughout history (language, culture, currency, borders, the Channel, time zone etc) there wasn't an enormous number of people making that journey every day, and it appears that the initial Eurostar passenger projections were incorrect. Over time that is changing, but there is an argument to be had that the construction of the tunnel should have waited until after the market existed.

Conversely, the passenger flows for HS2 have been developing ever since the first inter-city railways were built back in the 19th century. People have had reasons to travel between the major cities of Britain for quite a while now, and aside from some of the business traffic moving to air, rail is still a very strong contender. HS2 picks up these existing flows and helps to develop more of them. It would be possible for a major UK company to have its international trading department and executive headquarters located in the Old Oak Common development area while putting its secondary operations up in Birmingham around the Eastside development. With a 3tph ~45 minute long reliable train journey between them, it would not act as much of a barrier to business for anyone who may only need to visit the other department more than once a day. It would be entirely possible for folk from one department to have a meeting in the other and then be back again within a morning or afternoon. That isn't possible today, so businesses have little choice but to put more of their operations together in one city, with all the resulting costs.

 

[najaB]

And just where are you going to get all those people from to fill these trains?

Have you missed the fact that the current classic network is bursting at the seams?

 

[miami]

Have you missed the fact that the current classic network is bursting at the seams?

Except peak time virgin trains - certainly the Manchester ones. And the Crewe ones in my experience.

 

[MarkRedon]

Except peak time virgin trains - certainly the Manchester ones. And the Crewe ones in my experience.

As I suspect you know very well, the figures that interest Virgin are not the number of bums on seats in the peak, but the product of numbers of passengers and revenue per seat. You can be certain that Virgin's yield management experts have a very good idea of how many empty seats they can tolerate provided that the filled ones are paying a sufficiently high fare… And provided that they can fill the seats in the shoulder hours at whatever differentiated fares they can get away with. Which, to judge from the number of flights that no longer operate between London and Manchester, is a balancing act which they are doing fairly well. The clever thing about franchised railways is the way in which they concentrate the efforts of the franchisees on building the traffic and squeezing the revenues. The un-clever thing – or rather, the more debatable thing – is the extent to which the success of franchising is building expensive-to-fulfil demand for new infrastructure.

 

[The Ham]

Except peak time virgin trains - certainly the Manchester ones. And the Crewe ones in my experience.

And how long will that last for? Even if we assume growth at 2.5% (that which HS2 is based upon) for the next 15 years (so just before phase 2 is due to open) then a train which is 60% full will be about 85% full (assuming that only growth associated with that train is attracted to that train and no one moves from another service to it because of overcrowding on the other services). Yet if growth is 4% (which is closer to the growth that we've be seeing) then those trains would be running at over 105% full.

Even if the trains were running at 40% full, then with 4% growth they would be just over 70% full. That means that even fairly quite services would start to be getting a bit busy.

However, in reality as the busy services get busier then people will switch to the quieter services, in which case the quiet services will see growth above the average for the line.

Remember that Birmingham London was assumed to have 1% growth as part of the HS2 model, yet West Midlands to London travel had gone up by significantly more than that.

Those opposed to HS2 used to crow about what will happen if passenger numbers don't reach those predicted, yet they have generally gone quiet on this since we have seen consistently higher growth factors that that predicted.

For those who don't know HS2 was justified on a year on year growth of 2.5%, yet in the 6 years since HS2 was put forward rail growth has continued at about 4% to 5% year on year. It's not going to take many more years of that level of growth before the WCML will be carrying the number of passengers expected upon opening of HS2 phase one yet it could be about 5 years from opening.

 

[PR1Berske]

Have you missed the fact that the current classic network is bursting at the seams?

It's not. Services on the WCML are in the other side of peak passenger numbers. More targeted investment where it really matters would provide far better returns than giving London yet another railway.

Yes, growth has been about 2.5%. But this won't last. As we begin to see continued reductions on so called busy lines, the already weak case for HS2 crumbles .

This is why a review is needed. Re-examining the case anew could open up far more innovative solutions in the regions than the "London only" thinking we're currently lumbered with.

 

[The Planner]

Why wont the growth last? Is their evidence to say otherwise?

 

[WatcherZero]

It's not. Services on the WCML are in the other side of peak passenger numbers. More targeted investment where it really matters would provide far better returns than giving London yet another railway.

Yes, growth has been about 2.5%. But this won't last. As we begin to see continued reductions on so called busy lines, the already weak case for HS2 crumbles .

This is why a review is needed. Re-examining the case anew could open up far more innovative solutions in the regions than the "London only" thinking we're currently lumbered with.

People like Wolmar have been saying we are at peak rail for more than a decade. The reality is that it is all still growing, and with ridership per capita about 3 times higher in London and the South East than the rest of the UK there is still a huge potential untapped market for network growth.

 

[HSTEd]

Targetted investment works when only one or a few things are holding back the railway.

The entire WCML is coming to pieces under the strain - there is no one chord or station or junction or whatever that can fix it. And it would only fix it for a few years regardless, until someone else stops working properly.
We can build a proper modern railway now and have reduced maintenance budgets on it for a century or more.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Yes, growth has been about 2.5%. But this won't last. As we begin to see continued reductions on so called busy lines, the already weak case for HS2 crumbles .

Rail growth has been doing that since before privatisation.
It shows no real signs of slowing down any time soon.
We are already a decade ahead in terms of the HS2 growth estimates, so even if growth rates collapse to something like 1% per annum we would likely still make the estimates used for justifying the project.

 

[The Ham]

National passenger numbers have gone up by about 36% since 2008/09 reporting year to the 20014/15 reporting year.* If since the 2008/09 reporting year we had seen 2.5% growth we wouldn't have reached that point until the 2021/22 reporting year (or only a few years short of when HS2 phase 1 is due to open.

 

[miami]

Load averages in standard on peak man departures from 1740 and later is in the 25-30%

If growth has been going for 4% over the last 5 years that would mean it was under 20% in 2008.

Growth may be there but it's not uniform, because of the price virgin extract from the trips.

Why will HS2 be any different? Tickets for £250 each way will ensure empty trains, while the slower services with cheaper tickets continue to be crammed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would expect HS2 to be all reservation, and to use a more airline like pricing scheme to balance loadings more effectively than the blunt instrument of Off Peak and Anytime. The trial by First East Coast or whatever it calls itself will be most educational in this regard.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[HSTEd]

Why will HS2 be any different? Tickets for £250 each way will ensure empty trains, while the slower services with cheaper tickets continue to be crammed.

Because empty trains are not how you maximise income. Even Virgin has very few completely dead trains.
Off peak will completely crush everyone else due to a lower cost base and a requirement that the service look succesful.

Pile it high, sell it cheap.

And really, I really hope that the service is not all reservation - the whole objective is total integration. I don't want people to even realise there is something different about the trains they are boarding, beyond them being double decks.

 

[6Gman]

Why wont the growth last? Is their evidence to say otherwise?

Yes. Our friend in Preston says so!



There was a chap from Preston (maybe the same person) on another forum who insisted that with "intelligent timetabling" on the WCML HS2 wouldn't be needed. He never explained what "intelligent timetabling" actually meant, nor why the professionals (as far as I can understand he had no background in train planning) insisted on "unintelligent timetabling".

 

[najaB]

Tickets for £250 each way will ensure empty trains, while the slower services with cheaper tickets continue to be crammed.

Why do you presume tickets will be £250 each way? The operating cost per-seat will be a lot lower (if only by virtue of there being so many more in each train), so even at a lower ticket price per-seat, the operators will be making more per-train.

 

[All Line Rover]

Load averages in standard on peak man departures from 1740 and later is in the 25-30%

If growth has been going for 4% over the last 5 years that would mean it was under 20% in 2008.

Growth may be there but it's not uniform, because of the price virgin extract from the trips.

Why will HS2 be any different? Tickets for £250 each way will ensure empty trains, while the slower services with cheaper tickets continue to be crammed.

There are no peak departures from Manchester other than in the morning, although this is not reflected in first class Advance fares between 15:00 and 18:30 (£205 single, for tomorrow - Monday).

Where standard class peak fares apply, and standard class Advance fares are a minimum of £110 (even if booked 12 weeks in advance), it is interesting how a number of trains between London and Manchester (in both directions) have a roughly equal balance of passengers between first and standard class. In other words, first class is very busy, while standard class is very empty. Either "standard class only" travel policies are not as widespread as people think, or business passengers are being forced to wait at Manchester until 09:35 and at Euston until 09:40 or 19:00 (and then running the risk of not getting a seat).

 

[The Ham]

Load averages in standard on peak man departures from 1740 and later is in the 25-30%

If growth has been going for 4% over the last 5 years that would mean it was under 20% in 2008.

Growth may be there but it's not uniform, because of the price virgin extract from the trips.

Why will HS2 be any different? Tickets for £250 each way will ensure empty trains, while the slower services with cheaper tickets continue to be crammed.

Yes, growth isn't uniform. However, between 2008 and now the 390's were lengthened meaning that loadings may have been comparable to now as the longer trains added 25% more capacity.

 

[Ianno87]

Yes. Our friend in Preston says so!



There was a chap from Preston (maybe the same person) on another forum who insisted that with "intelligent timetabling" on the WCML HS2 wouldn't be needed. He never explained what "intelligent timetabling" actually meant, nor why the professionals (as far as I can understand he had no background in train planning) insisted on "unintelligent timetabling".

The current WCML timetable is arguably the most intelligently designed timetable structure in the world.

If he can come up with something better *without anybody losing out* and giving an end train service comparable in frequency and connectivity to HS2 (including the capacity release this enables on the WCML) I'd be very interested to see it...

 

[HSTEd]

Well the obvious solution is one stopping pattern per pair of tracks.
That would have bucketloads of capacity.

But it would not be very popular.
Although after HS2 it might be a reasonable thing to do, all shacks and a semi fast service.

 

[Chester1]

Well the obvious solution is one stopping pattern per pair of tracks.
That would have bucketloads of capacity.

But it would not be very popular.
Although after HS2 it might be a reasonable thing to do, all shacks and a semi fast service.

It could work very well on the WCML, with one alteration. Using 12 coach 110mph EMUs on the fast tracks with a semi fast stopping pattern. Stoppers would need a more varied timetable because they would be sharing the slow tracks with freight. Potentially it could be popular with regular users. Manchester-Stockport- Wilmslow-Crewe-Wolverhampton-New Street- International-Coventry-Rugby-Northampton-Milton Keynes-Watford-Euston would allow allot of interchanges with HS2 + other services and would be relatively fast for commuters to London, Birmingham.

The arguement that HS2 isn't neccessary because existing peak time services and a quarter full is a anti HS2 classic, delibrately ignoring that peak services on long distances are rarely actually the busiest for revenue reasons. Its a waste of time for you to argue it again. I think the introduction of Grand Central Blackpool to Euston services in 2018 will shake up WCML ticketing substantially. All of their services will be off peak, which gives Virgin a huge incentive to completely fill their peak time trains. I am presuming that GCs ORCATs revanue would be limited to off peak tickets. They would need to do it through Virgin only anytime tickets to prevent London Midland taking revanue.

 

[Voglitz]

Targetted investment works when only one or a few things are holding back the railway.

The entire WCML is coming to pieces under the strain - there is no one chord or station or junction or whatever that can fix it.

Apart from opinion, is there any actual evidence for this? According to Railway Technology's article about the West Coast modernisation,

"The quality of the upgraded track is claimed by engineers to be to continental high-speed line standards."

And it would only fix it for a few years regardless, until someone else stops working properly.

As railways are complex mechanical systems, constant maintenance is always going to be part of the deal.

We can build a proper modern railway now and have reduced maintenance budgets on it for a century or more.

Does HS1 have a "reduced maintenance budget", compared to other main lines?

The indications are that it is more expensive to maintain. Which partly explained why Eurostar UK had to be bailed out to the tune of £5.1 billion.

 

[HSTEd]

Apart from opinion, is there any actual evidence for this? According to Railway Technology's article about the West Coast modernisation,

"The quality of the upgraded track is claimed by engineers to be to continental high-speed line standards."

Ah yes, the West Coast Modernisation which ran three times its projected budget and still achieved a tiny fraction of what it was supposed to, at enormous cost in terms of disruption?

That is a model of an efficient railway scheme?? The damn thing cost more in inflation adjusted pounds than HS2-1 will, including the optimism bias and contingency.
If anything is demonstrates that modifying an existing railway is a terrible idea and should be avoided as much as is possible.

As railways are complex mechanical systems, constant maintenance is always going to be part of the deal.

Constant maintenance is always required, but the quantity of man hours per train-km can be optimised by constructing a new railway on modern infrastructure built to modern standards.
We can eliminate most of the crossovers and such by running uniform services that would be impractical on an existing system, and we can build the railway for a single speed/acceleration profile, without worrying about how any changes we make effect a dozen other systems that many people working on the railway aren't even aware exist.

The indications are that it is more expensive to maintain. Which partly explained why Eurostar UK had to be bailed out to the tune of £5.1 billion.

That was because the Eurotunnel project itself haemorrhaged money to a ludicrous degree.
Eurostar was dragged down by the rise of low cost airlines, that is about all that matters.