Will HS2 be unfit for purpose and should Euston be a through station?

[Ianno87]

I think realistically your reply should read more like "some people don't like the airline experience, [and] climate change [means] there is some demand for greener travel".

And in response, as @Ianno87 has already noted, there's absolutely nothing stopping those people from using current conventional and future HS2 services to travel to London and connecting there to current Eurostar services. Improving that experience is a hell of a lot cheaper than building a London bypass for what is really no more than a handful of people a day.

I'm waiting for the "but my granny with luggage doesn't like changing trains" argument.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because some people do not like the airline experience and with climate change there is more demand for greener travel and Eurostar and trains plus the North of London plan can do that

So can changing at Euston-St Pancras. The walk is shorter than you'll walk from the distant gates at Gatwick to pick your bags up. At night it does feel a bit intimidating, but that can be resolved (or you could use the Tube or a bus).

 

[HSTEd]

We might eventually need a London bypass line, but it would be for domestic services, not international ones.

 

[Bletchleyite]

We might eventually need a London bypass line, but it would be for domestic services, not international ones.

There already is one, via Kensington Olympia, and it's very well used. But more for local passengers than long-distance ones.

 

[JonathanH]

We might eventually need a London bypass line, but it would be for domestic services, not international ones.

There already is one, via Kensington Olympia, and it's very well used. But more for local passengers than long-distance ones.

There is another from Reading to Redhill and one is being built from Oxford to Milton Keynes, Bedford and maybe one day Cambridge. One uses 3-car trains and the other is expected to use 3-car trains.

Thameslink and Crossrail provide 'London Underground bypass' even if they don't bypass London itself.

None of these bypass routes suggest that long-distance 'intercity' trains should run through or round London because they don't do what railways do best which is to concentrate high levels of demand along a single route.

 

[HSTEd]

There is another from Reading to Redhill and one is being built from Oxford to Milton Keynes, Bedford and maybe one day Cambridge. One uses 3-car trains and the other is expected to use 3-car trains.

Thameslink and Crossrail provide 'London Underground bypass' even if they don't bypass London itself.

None of these bypass routes suggest that long-distance 'intercity' trains should run through or round London because they don't do what railways do best which is to concentrate high levels of demand along a single route.

At the moment these routes are far too slow to generate much demand.

If a proper high speed system develops the traffic patterns will change and we will end up with more incidental demand going in all sorts of strange (at first look) directions

Ultimately the area north of Paris only has a population of 7m or so, and it justifies a High Speed bypass of Paris.
The South East is fairly comparable!

 

[mr_jrt]

The value in the HS1-HS2 link, (aside for future-proofing for when this country eventually grows up), is that land in the centre is expensive and land outside relatively less so, so it made sense to have as small a through station as you could get away with in the centre, and have any terminal platforms tucked out of the way somewhere cheaper, like Ebbsfleet. As OOC has shown, odds are you would end up needing to have 6 tunnelled platforms anyway, but at least this way you would be able to far more easily switch to through services when the demand arose by altering arrangements at Ebbsfleet rather than deep under central London.

As it was though, the proposed HS2-HS1 link was a bodge job, so I wasn't sad to lose it. There was zero need for it to feature in the proposed form on the surface, other than to minimise temporary disruption to HS1, which whilst a noble aim, is very short-termist given the likely lifetime of this new infrastructure.

The biggest failure was probably the lack of forward planning when designing and building Stratford International to passively provide for a third tunnel mouth on the western side of the station box that would have then been able to connect to a corresponding portal at OOC. Obviously HS2 wasn't a thing back then, but the mere notion that there might be further high speed rail development in the capital isn't exactly blue-sky thinking.

 

[Hey 3]

We might eventually need a London bypass line, but it would be for domestic services, not international ones.

There is another one, the North London Line via Willesden Junction and Hackney Wick with connections to the WCML,MML( London St Pancras International bound only), ECML, GEML
There is also the South London Line via Clapham High Street and Peckham Rye with connections to the BML,SWML,SEML etc
Also as @Bletchleyite said the West London Line via Kensington(Olympia) and Imperial Wharf with connections to the BML, SWML, GWML(at Acton Wells Jn) and the WCML
There is also the East London Line via New Cross and Whitechapel with connections to SEML, NNL(for the connections mentioned above), the BML and the Beckenham Jn branch

 

[JonathanH]

If a proper high speed system develops the traffic patterns will change and we will end up with more incidental demand going in all sorts of strange (at first look) directions

Yes, but that is well outside of most peoples' lifetimes. HS2 isn't scheduled to be finished until 2040. There is work to be done in the North and maybe a northern extension of HS2. I can't see a high speed line west or south from London until well past 2060.

 

[Hey 3]

There is another one, the North London Line via Willesden Junction and Hackney Wick with connections to the WCML,MML( London St Pancras International bound only), ECML, GEML
There is also the South London Line via Clapham High Street and Peckham Rye with connections to the BML,SWML,SEML etc
Also as @Bletchleyite said the West London Line via Kensington(Olympia) and Imperial Wharf with connections to the BML, SWML, GWML(at Acton Wells Jn) and the WCML
There is also the East London Line via New Cross and Whitechapel with connections to SEML, NNL(for the connections mentioned above), the BML and the Beckenham Jn branch

The East London line might be too small to accomodate bigger trains though

 

[JonathanH]

The East London line might be too small to accomodate bigger trains though

No one is suggesting that the East London Line is going to be used for anything other than 5-car local trains as limited by the platform length at Canada Water. It certainly isn't the basis for diversion of long distance trains away from London Termini.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

HS2 is fit for purpose. To get it built required it get done without all the "nice to haves". It will be a magnificent and much needed piece of infrastructure.

 

[Hey 3]

No one is suggesting that the East London Line is going to be used for anything other than 5-car local trains as limited by the platform length at Canada Water. It certainly isn't the basis for diversion of long distance trains away from London Termini.

Yes, that is why I did say the East London Line isn't that great for other than "Metro" London Overground trains

 

[tbtc]

HS2 looks rubbish... until someone suggests an alternative and then HS2 actually looks rather good in fact!

Easy to find criticisms of the current scheme (yes, it doesn't serve every single village in the UK) but when you try to come up with something different you realise just how good/simple HS2 actually is.

Where are you going to get the passengers from eighteen 400m long trains to board/alight if you aren't building a proper terminus? Given the end doors, it's not going to be as simple as a London Underground/ Thameslink service (even if you forget that the passengers are going to be split between several destinations north of London, so not all boarding the first service that turns up

Why are we even bringing up the HS1 link now? It was poor value for money pre-Brexit, demand is going to be significantly lower now (and that's assuming that travel generally goes back to pre-Covid levels)

How do you negotiate the various different tunnels underneath London, if you intend to go south/east of Euston? You've probably got at least half a dozen Underground lines to negotiate between Euston and the Thames, at different heights, without worrying about all of the other tunnels/ pipes and things underneath central London

 

[MarkyT]

And you could spend a fraction of the money and create a high quality surface interchange route/boulevard between Euston and St Pancras, benefitting every single passenger interchanging between Euston, and St. Pancras/King's Cross (not just between HS1 and HS2 services).

Most importantly, connecting Euston with Thameslink for the south, for Gatwick and Luton airports, with Kent domestic HS services, and with the burgeoning cultural, scientific, education and business hub now surrounding St Pancras and Kings Cross, all within a five to ten-minute walk. These all deserve a high-quality, visibly obvious and safe, traffic-free, at least partly covered if possible pedestrian route, possibly mechanically assisted as an option for those who want or need it.

 

[LesF]

Thanks for your comments and apologies to any ladies - I didn't know there were any on this thread as most of you conceal your gender behind noms-de-plume.

Through station to where?

The answer is no. You would still need multiple platforms to allow for dwell times and the whole point of a terminus station for long distance travel is the time available for people to take time to get off the train, have the train serviced and reloaded.

Is there even a suitable route way for a rail line under London that HS2 could use between the existing tunnels?

Next stop: Waterloo new 420m island plat under Station Approach and W'loo East. Then Heathrow, Cardiff, Plymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton and anywhere else as long as it's a long way from London. Yes, those 400m trains can't stop beyond W'loo but they'll split so the max 12tph at W'loo and Euston new plats become up to 24 trains to various destinations, replacing some existing services. The connectivity is fantastic and will reduce congestion on the u/g lines. We have put up with the London terminii being terminii for over 100 years but that's only because we hadn't got anything better. That's no reason to make Euston even more of a bottleneck with its already inadequate means of dispersing passengers and no plan to rectify it.
2 mins dwell time is enough for through trains. Cleaning and replenishing stock is best done at remote terminii.

OK, I'll bite...
If Euston were to be built as a through station, where would the lines go to, and how?
Bear in mind that much of Central London is riddled with deep building foundations and subterranean basements, so finding a cross-London tunnel route is notoriously difficult. Just ask the Crossrail planners how long it took them to come up with a route.

The route Euston-W'loo avoids tall buildings that are likely to have deep piles. Where would Crossrail 2 have run, or are you saying it couldn't be built?

No, I think the general consensus on here (from ladies, gentlemen and everyone in between) (obviously there are those who disagree) is that HS2 is very fit for purpose, serves far more of the country than implied by the limited initial network (due to trains running onwards to other destinations, and due to released capacity), could probably use some minor tweaks to be ideal, and in particular that there is no possibility at all of, or indeed any real advantage to Euston being a through station.

There is nowhere to build said two underground tracks, the idea that a single island platform could take the foot traffic of a 400m train arriving and departing in each direction every 3 minutes (OOC has 6 platform faces to achieve just that, but for a planned 50% of the foot traffic capacity) is laughable, and where do you send long distance and long length trains south of London that urgently needs 18tph x 400m trains that are designed for long distance work?

A 420m island plat would need multiple lifts, stairs and escalators up into the existing station, so no-one has to walk the whole 420m (unlike Curzon St if you get off the back of the train and want to go to the city centre).
At 12tph, the spacing is 5mins, though some trains would likely terminate at existing (lengthened) plats in Euston.
Will reply to other comments when I find them.

 

[Bald Rick]

Ultimately the area north of Paris only has a population of 7m or so, and it justifies a High Speed bypass of Paris.

Strictly speaking, the Paris Bypass is there to serve the 30m+ people who live north of Paris but within approx 3hours (most of whom are not in France) and may want to catch a train to one of Disneyland Paris, CDG airport, or somewhere south of Paris without having to cross Paris by the Metro / RER.

It doesn’t apply in reverse. Not that many people in northern France / Belgium / Netherlands want to get to Birmingham / Manchester.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most importantly, connecting Euston with Thameslink for the south, for Gatwick and Luton airports, with Kent domestic HS services, and with the burgeoning cultural, scientific, education and business hub now surrounding St Pancras and Kings Cross, all within a five to ten-minute walk. These all deserve a high-quality, visibly obvious and safe, traffic-free, at least partly covered if possible pedestrian route, possibly mechanically assisted as an option for those who want or need it.

Yes, agreed. I do actually wonder if it might be worth flattening some of the scabby blocks of flats you presently walk through (they're social housing so people could be relocated, and they are in a right state) to create something like a wide, open, well-lit tree-lined boulevard with obvious CCTV and the likes, and maybe even some sort of sheltered walkway, or even a travelator. It could even help regenerate Somers Town a bit.

With regard to through services it's not at all obvious which route would be the one to go for. Yes, the Southern is useful for sneaking round to Clapham Junction to change for some Southern/SWR destinations, but not everyone wants to go that way, I'd think cross-London demand is likely to be very much split between destinations such that it'd be difficult to pick one. We're not talking 1tph of 8-car EMUs here, we're talking 18tph of 400m high speed trains, that's a quite different proposition, much as I like the Southern WCML service and find it very useful.

Probably also worth adding that Old Oak offers decent connections to a few of the lines anyway.

And boarding at a terminus, even with the Euston scrum (which wouldn't apply to a fully reserved train), is just orders of magnitude more civilised than having to board/alight quickly at an intermediate station. That's one reason I don't want WCML slows onto Crossrail.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Feb 2021 ==

Next stop: Waterloo new 420m island plat under Station Approach and W'loo East. Then Heathrow, Cardiff, Plymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton and anywhere else as long as it's a long way from London. Yes, those 400m trains can't stop beyond W'loo but they'll split so the max 12tph at W'loo and Euston new plats become up to 24 trains to various destinations, replacing some existing services.

Way to make the punctuality appalling, with problems on HS2 knocking onto the entire South East rail network, and someone breathing on the SWML knackering HS2. It needs to be kept simple. Your argument is basically the Northern "hourly service from everywhere to everywhere" model, and you only have to look at Northern to see that that just doesn't work.

 

[Bald Rick]

Next stop: Waterloo new 420m island plat under Station Approach and W'loo East

Under all the other tube lines, presumably? Where would all the surface entrances be?

The route Euston-W'loo avoids tall buildings that are likely to have deep piles. Where would Crossrail 2 have run, or are you saying it couldn't be built?

Have you seen all the new development around Waterloo / Tottenham Court Road? At the latter, the development has specifically avoided where Crossrail 2 is planned to go (very, very precisely) - and as the Crossrail guys found out, the ground under there is a little congested.

 

[LesF]

Both of those brought significant costs with relatively few additional benefits, so rightly were taken out of scope.

How so? Please explain.

Agreed the proposed tunnel all the way from OOC to St P was a duff idea and an afterthought, so it was rightly ditched. But the brief required the HS1 connection, and HS2 effectively ignored it. In saying that Euston work I'm responding to comments on the original thread and widespread reports that construction has started without Euston being resolved. Someone else's problem, but no-one else has solved it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed the proposed tunnel all the way from OOC to St P was a duff idea and an afterthought, so it was rightly ditched. But the brief required the HS1 connection, and HS2 effectively ignored it. In saying that Euston work I'm responding to comments on the original thread and widespread reports that construction has started without Euston being resolved. Someone else's problem, but no-one else has solved it.

The HS1 connection as proposed will do nothing whatsoever to solve the Tube overcrowding problem, though. It wasn't proposed to be set up to have HS2 serve the City, it was proposed to offer through European services. The number of people connecting from Euston to Eurostar is relatively small compared to the number of people wanting central London destinations.

In any case some Tube work is being done, e.g. the eastern entrance to Euston Square (which is, oh, only a hundred years or so overdue). That will improve things, and with the capacity offered by the S-stock perhaps pushing people somehow to go to the City using the Metropolitan Line to Liverpool Street, Moorgate or Aldgate might be worthy of consideration rather than trying to pack everyone onto the Northern Line to Bank.

Having said that, the people going from Euston to those destinations are primarily commuters. People arriving at Euston from long-distance services are going to be much more spread out in where they're headed, e.g. to hotels etc.

 

[Bald Rick]

Yes, agreed. I do actually wonder if it might be worth flattening some of the scabby blocks of flats you presently walk through (they're social housing so people could be relocated, and they are in a right state)

The ‘blocks’ (Levita House) is listed, and is being refurbed now.

 

[LesF]

What rolling stock could be built that is suitable for both high speed running and a high capacity city railway? How would you manage revenue?

Long distance in both directions from London so never a local service, bi-mode or multimode to suit the power available.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The ‘blocks’ (Levita House) is listed, and is being refurbed now.

Ah.

I forget now, is there anything else that could be taken down to create a way through that isn't down the busy Euston Road? Been nearly a year... Perhaps (launches Google Maps) the nasty-looking 1960s block next to it?

 

[LesF]

The HS1 connection as proposed will do nothing whatsoever to solve the Tube overcrowding problem, though. It wasn't proposed to be set up to have HS2 serve the City, it was proposed to offer through European services. The number of people connecting from Euston to Eurostar is relatively small compared to the number of people wanting central London destinations.

In any case some Tube work is being done, e.g. the eastern entrance to Euston Square (which is, oh, only a hundred years or so overdue). That will improve things, and with the capacity offered by the S-stock perhaps pushing people somehow to go to the City using the Metropolitan Line to Liverpool Street, Moorgate or Aldgate might be worthy of consideration rather than trying to pack everyone onto the Northern Line to Bank.

Having said that, the people going from Euston to those destinations are primarily commuters. People arriving at Euston from long-distance services are going to be much more spread out in where they're headed, e.g. to hotels etc.

It's Euston-W'loo that's the big prize, plus the dozens of direct services given by through services that don't exist now, causing excess demand on the tube.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's Euston-W'loo that's the big prize

Why?

Waterloo isn't in the City, there's a clue in it having a Tube line for that exact purpose!

I'm unconvinced that there's enough demand for WCML to Portsmouth, Weymouth etc to justify through running onto the SWML at 18tph.

 

[LesF]

An error in the first premise there. It's not segregated and serving a fraction of the country. It's serving all destinations (bar North Wales) the WCML presently does.

Oh really? Please look at a map. HS2 did proclaim it "will be fully integrated into the network" forgetting that their original plan published in 2010 said "HS2 will be a largely segregated railway". Numerous communities will get worse services with HS2 than without it. Remember the £11bn they plan to save by CUTTING services?

 

[camflyer]

I think realistically your reply should read more like "some people don't like the airline experience, [and] climate change [means] there is some demand for greener travel".

And in response, as @Ianno87 has already noted, there's absolutely nothing stopping those people from using current conventional and future HS2 services to travel to London and connecting there to current Eurostar services. Improving that experience is a hell of a lot cheaper than building a London bypass for what is really no more than a handful of people a day.

It would be cheaper to provide a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce transfer for all connections between HS1 and HS2.

 

[LesF]

Through station to where exactly?

It would be a horrendous amount of work to find a place to send 18 400m formations every hour.

Don't worry there will never be 18tph. And I only propose 12tph max.

 

[Bald Rick]

Ah.

I forget now, is there anything else that could be taken down to create a way through that isn't down the busy Euston Road? Been nearly a year... Perhaps (launches Google Maps) the nasty-looking 1960s block next to it?

It’s all rather tricky round there. No easy answers.

It's Euston-W'loo that's the big prize, plus the dozens of direct services given by through services that don't exist now, causing excess demand on the tube.

I’d be surprised if more than 0.1% of passengers boarding the Northern Line at Waterloo have arrived by National Rail train and are heading to Euston to depart on a National Rail train.

I'm unconvinced that there's enough demand for WCML to Portsmouth, Weymouth etc to justify through running onto the SWML at 18tph.

There’s not demand to run 1 train an hour, let alone 18!