HS2 Stations north of Birmingham

[RobShipway]

Surely any 'Gateway station that HS2 goes too, should be on an existing classic line so that passengers can then transfer to services to Nottingham, Leeds etc.... This is why within the details provided I don't really fancy using Curzon Street in Birmingham, unless they is going to be a service from Curzon street that links into services from New Street station. Details that I saw in I think Rail Magazine a while ago had the correct idea which is yes to have Curzon Street be the main stop for the 'Fast HS2 services', but have the slower HS2 Classic compatible services that link into New Street station to link into the local services such as the Cross City service otherwise what is the point of building HS2? The line should be built that people can link into the line to travel on to Europe with HS2 linking into HS1, but for this to happen people are not going to be wanting to walk 14 minutes between New Street and Curzon street station in Birmingham with their suitcases etc...... Please somebody planning this out, use your brains to better help the environment.

 

[The Planner]

Why will it be 14 minutes ?? from what I can gather its going to be more or less next to Moor St, Curzon St is a bit of a red herring really. There would be nothing to stop a link down from the viaduct on the appoach to Landor St if they really wanted to link to the old line.

 

[RobShipway]

The 14 minutes is from the site by YesToHS2, so I am hoping that the Midland Metro extension is complete that will go by Moor Street/Curzon Street area to take people to New Street if required.

 

[Nym]

Surely any 'Gateway station that HS2 goes too, should be on an existing classic line so that passengers can then transfer to services to Nottingham, Leeds etc.... This is why within the details provided I don't really fancy using Curzon Street in Birmingham, unless they is going to be a service from Curzon street that links into services from New Street station. Details that I saw in I think Rail Magazine a while ago had the correct idea which is yes to have Curzon Street be the main stop for the 'Fast HS2 services', but have the slower HS2 Classic compatible services that link into New Street station to link into the local services such as the Cross City service otherwise what is the point of building HS2? The line should be built that people can link into the line to travel on to Europe with HS2 linking into HS1, but for this to happen people are not going to be wanting to walk 14 minutes between New Street and Curzon street station in Birmingham with their suitcases etc...... Please somebody planning this out, use your brains to better help the environment.

The curzon st station is going to have moving walkways to new st. on the plans shown on the D(a)fT's website.

 

[bangor-toad]

HS2 is supposed to close the north/south gap, I don't see that happening if someone wishing to go to Nottingham gets told by the station staff that this train will take you to a field in Stapleford where you can make your own forward by whatever means you may find. Anyone living in Nottingham will find by the time they get to the station they could have been thundering through Kettering with an EMT service unless they travel to the station by car. So much for encouraging for people away from their cars.

Really, the ideal place for an East Midlands HS2 station is Nottingham Victoria, since it's plumb in the centre of Nottingham, easy to access and would offer the possibilities of a link to the ECML at Grantham. Trouble is, some idiot decided to close it and build a massive great shopping centre on top. Actually, that's not too much of a problem, you can always rebuild it, and nobody lives there after all (apart from the odd tramp perhaps). It's the multi-storey car park that presents the problem, because where else would people park their cars? I suppose it would also annoy the people of Derby, who would miss out altogether.

Why would the ideal place be in the city centre?
If you consider Nottingham Victoria then it really is central to Nottingham. Anybody wishing to use the service would need to get into the centre and then catch thier train. Anybody coming to Nottingham would arrive in the center.

But Nottingham is really quite small and the city itself wouldn't provide the demand for a dedicated HS link. To get the numbers you need to look to it providing a service for a whole region.
How long would it take to get to Nottingham city centre from Derby? From Leicester? From the airport? From Mansfield/Chesterfield, etc, etc... How would people do this? By public transport?
It is most likely that people will choose to drive short to moderate distance to the rail station and then take the train. HS stations need to be in the middle of BIG cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh) but elsewhere will need great access for cars.

If a HS station is built at Toton it will be a reasonable taxi trip from Nottingham AND Derby as well as East Midlands Airport. If it were in the city centre then it would be longer to travel to anywhere other than Nottingham city centre.

This seems to be the method already employed by planners. Ebsfleet doesn't serve a massive city - it does though have a massive car park which is easy(ish) to get to from a large area.

Cheers,
Jason

 

[RobShipway]

Why would the ideal place be in the city centre?
If you consider Nottingham Victoria then it really is central to Nottingham. Anybody wishing to use the service would need to get into the centre and then catch thier train. Anybody coming to Nottingham would arrive in the center.

But Nottingham is really quite small and the city itself wouldn't provide the demand for a dedicated HS link. To get the numbers you need to look to it providing a service for a whole region.
How long would it take to get to Nottingham city centre from Derby? From Leicester? From the airport? From Mansfield/Chesterfield, etc, etc... How would people do this? By public transport?
It is most likely that people will choose to drive short to moderate distance to the rail station and then take the train. HS stations need to be in the middle of BIG cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh) but elsewhere will need great access for cars.

If a HS station is built at Toton it will be a reasonable taxi trip from Nottingham AND Derby as well as East Midlands Airport. If it were in the city centre then it would be longer to travel to anywhere other than Nottingham city centre.

This seems to be the method already employed by planners. Ebsfleet doesn't serve a massive city - it does though have a massive car park which is easy(ish) to get to from a large area.

Cheers,
Jason

True, but I think the best example is Ashford International lying alongside the Classic lines within Kent and that is what HS2 should do so that, yes have somewhere people can drive too as well but also somehwere that has an existing classic line feeding into all ready such as East Midlands Parkway which should serve both Nottingham, Derby and East Midlands Airport witb HS2 linking to it.

Thank you Nym for letting us know about the the moving escalator between Curzon Street and New Street.

 

[Nym]

Also, it's not going to be that much further from Curzon St as it is from the front of the concourse at piccadilly to platform 14/13b

 

[dfishw]

hi presumably hs2 should go through city centres as that is where people choose to go to.........otherwise the time made up from hs2 can be more then removed by having to get into the city centre in the first place! In my opinion each region should have at least one stop and in my opinion city centres are really the only places...it is how cross country services presently serve regions. I doubt XC or many other train firms would make much if the stops were all located in parkway stations which is why the service bypasses a city (such as newcastle-reading bypassing leeds and nottingham being bypassed by all of them) or they stop in the city centre. Stations which are parkways (such as bristol parkway) are only included IN ADDITION to the tradtional city centre stop (Bristol TM) (though i note tiverton parkway is an exception!)........
Although it is obviously the case that if you a stop in one city other cities nearby may miss out as they wont be on the direct line but if you put a stop between cities this often doesnt work as any extra revenue made from being "between cities" is lost by not being in a city at all!
As to the east midlands i would also suggest nottingham be the stop as its the capital of the "region" although leicester ranks a close second. Derby is already on a key cross country route and leicester is direct on the mml whereas nottingham isnt really on any line. As to where it would be built i havent the foggiest idea...on top of nottingham station?? David

 

[LE Greys]

Why would the ideal place be in the city centre?
If you consider Nottingham Victoria then it really is central to Nottingham. Anybody wishing to use the service would need to get into the centre and then catch thier train. Anybody coming to Nottingham would arrive in the center.

But Nottingham is really quite small and the city itself wouldn't provide the demand for a dedicated HS link. To get the numbers you need to look to it providing a service for a whole region.
How long would it take to get to Nottingham city centre from Derby? From Leicester? From the airport? From Mansfield/Chesterfield, etc, etc... How would people do this? By public transport?
It is most likely that people will choose to drive short to moderate distance to the rail station and then take the train. HS stations need to be in the middle of BIG cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh) but elsewhere will need great access for cars.

If a HS station is built at Toton it will be a reasonable taxi trip from Nottingham AND Derby as well as East Midlands Airport. If it were in the city centre then it would be longer to travel to anywhere other than Nottingham city centre.

This seems to be the method already employed by planners. Ebsfleet doesn't serve a massive city - it does though have a massive car park which is easy(ish) to get to from a large area.

Cheers,
Jason

Well, what I was assuming was the classic station model. People arrive by public transport (bus and tram in Nottingham - taxi for some) then catch their train onwards. This happens anyway. To get to an out-of-town station, you would need to add an extra stage to this, the connecting train/tram(/underground) trip to the station. It would also encourage car use as an alternative, or very long taxi rides.

We have several examples of this in airports. The journey to the airport is a significant factor in time and money. It might be less of a problem for departing passengers, but arriving passengers, who don't have a car available, tend to find the extra trip into the city centre a major problem. Think about where you want to go rather than where you want to start from, and then imagine arriving at LGV Interconnexion Est rather than Gare do Nord.

Of course, you have to add in the journeys from Derby, Leicester, Loughborough, Ruddington, etc. These people would have to make a connecting journey anyway, if they did not travel by MML in the first place. In terms of accessing Victoria, they have the added problem of an inter-station transfer (you could divert the former Great Northern lines into Victoria [which would help people from Grantham etc.] but not the Midland lines). It's possible to get round, since the distance is not that far, and trams could carry the majority of passengers.

HS2 slow lines could feed in passengers from the north as well. The Norwich-Liverpool route could run via both Victorias (Nottingham and Sheffield) then over the Woodhead to Manchester (or the old line if they don't rebuild it). Then, some Cross-Country services could feed in via the other side of the Great Central from Leicester. However, Burton-on-Trent, Derby and Chesterfield would lose out. Still, the benefits of plugging HS2 into the rest of the network would probably outweigh the losses.

The real message is that you can't please all of the people all of the time.

 

[tbtc]

The real message is that you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Exactly

I don't imagine HS2 will serve a lot of towns/cities that have excellent rail services at the moment like Crewe/ Wakefield/ York.

If it's going to go at 150mph+ then existing alignments and existing stations may not be the best way

Remember that towns not on the HS2 route may still benefit - e.g. Nottingham might not be on the route, but may benefit from "saved" paths on the ECML/ MML allowing additional London - Nottingham services

 

[Philip Elliott]

If it's going to go at 150mph+ then existing alignments and existing stations may not be the best way

Remember that towns not on the HS2 route may still benefit - e.g. Nottingham might not be on the route, but may benefit from "saved" paths on the ECML/ MML allowing additional London - Nottingham services

Simple answer - don't run at 150 mph+ Our urban infrastructure is too dense for high speed running.

What freed paths? The likes of Stevenage, Peterborough, Reford etc. have direct links to Leeds, York, Newcastle etc. and will need to be retained. If rail travel is to increase by 200% (as if) then these links need to be increased too not stalled or reduced. Nottingham fast services are dismally empty whereas the semi-fasts are rammed - long distance intercity services make up such a tiny share of passenger numbers yet attract such a huge proportion of funding.

Currently there 9-12 intercity services an hour out of Euston, 5 out of St. Pancras, 4-6 out of Kings Cross - that's upto 23 per hour which the Dft seems to think can largely transferred to a 14 paths per hour twin track railway. HS2 - the railway built with capacity already run out:roll:

Get a map, and put dots at Euston, Coleshill, Toton, Meadowhall, Leeds, York, Newcastle & Edinburgh then join the dots. Using a ruler draw a direct line from London to Edinburgh, compare the two lines.....HS2 will be one twisty long route.

 

[tbtc]

Simple answer - don't run at 150 mph+ Our urban infrastructure is too dense for high speed running

This is my argument about "High Speed".

Either we have a separate *fast* railway (which doesn't worry about connecting at every local route, doesn't necessarily interchange in every city), or we make do with what we have. We can't run faster trains on existing routes/ existing alignments.

Either accept that 100-125 mph is the ceiling, and work around this, or build a whole new railway. Compromise won't work.

 

[Philip Elliott]

Either accept that 100-125 mph is the ceiling, and work around this, or build a whole new railway. Compromise won't work

125 is enough. We need "new" railways for CAPACITY not speed. Pathing constraints are largely in the former NSE area. Therefore we should look at building 4 "short" lines eminating from one super terminus. Line 1 to Milton onto the WCML, line 2 to Bedford onto the MML, line 3 to Hitchin/Huntingdon onto the ECML and line 4 to Bicester via Aylesbury. The only stations to lose out would be Watford, Luton & Stevenage which have plenty of trains to connect.

 

[The Planner]

But speed plays a part of capacity, the majority of issues we have are the mixed traffic railway. Unless you have trains doing similar/same speeds with low headways you are never going to utilise the capacity effectively. Take Watford out of the equation on the WCML and you can have trains every 3 minutes to MK now if you wanted. Same goes for the MML to an extent and ECML, you don't need new lines to do that.

 

[tbtc]

But speed plays a part of capacity, the majority of issues we have are the mixed traffic railway. Unless you have trains doing similar/same speeds with low headways you are never going to utilise the capacity effectively. Take Watford out of the equation on the WCML and you can have trains every 3 minutes to MK now if you wanted. Same goes for the MML to an extent and ECML, you don't need new lines to do that.

Imagine how much more efficient the railway would be if we didn't have those troublesome trucks...

 

[Philip Elliott]

Imagine how much more efficient the railway would be if we didn't have those troublesome trucks...

And we nearly had a Liverpool - Lille freight line....:cry:

 

[tbtc]

And we nearly had a Liverpool - Lille freight line....:cry:

That'd be a good thing.

To improve efficiency either

1. Slow down the fast trains
2. Speed up the slow trains
3. Have a separate "fast" line
4. Have a separate "slow" line

We have lots of places where freight means passenger services can't meet passenger demand (Hope Valley being an example local to me, but there are many). A dedicated freight line would be a way of freeing up a lot of capacity

 

[Nym]

Woodhead Route anyone?

 

[Invincibles]

The only problem with that would be the Hadfield/Glossop trains which would have no line to run on.

I went into Victoria last night and looking at the viaduct between Salford Central and Victoria it should be possible to fit a new HS station there with easy connections to the classic network. In that case two of the Victoria platforms (3 and 4 - i think) would be removed to become through lines for HS2 and a 4 platform high speed station started on the site of Manchester Exchange and running down towards Salford Central.

This would give an outlet to the Woodhead route through Ashburys and there is room for 4 track through to guide bridge (some work needed to redesign local stations but not a major amount). From there it is harder to squeeze HS alongside the classic lines and to be honest it might be necessary to close the Hadfield/Glossop line (they really do not justify javelin type trains being threaded amongst the HS ones)

In terms of the gateway station, that is the model that the Chinese use, so maybe we are not being as open to the possibility of success that it does offer. However I would think Manchester, Birmingham, London and maybe Glasgow would justify city centre locations if it were feasible to construct them. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou etc all do not have city centre locations for their high speed services so...

 

[Nym]

We don't need 'high speed' transpennine though, if the transpennine route was cleared for 110mph running that would be fast enough

 

[Mojo]

Curzon Street is a bit of a red herring really, the platforms will use up most of the site of Curzon Street but will carry on, going over a derelict piece of land which has been grassed over, then going over some tiny little green spaces, then going over the city council run car park next to Moor Street station, with the entrances being almost in the same location as Moor Street.

 

[LE Greys]

We don't need 'high speed' transpennine though, if the transpennine route was cleared for 110mph running that would be fast enough

I'd be looking at 125 mph for the Woodhead, to make it possible to divert south Trans-Pennine and Norwich-Liverpool that way (plus my proposed Norwich-Glasgow linkup). All of these would be operated by a merged inter-regional franchise, basically XC, TPX and a few bits of EMT. The idea is to increase capacity while still leaving room for freight. HS2 slow lines would be important for connecting services, although that would mean missing out Chesterfield. However, there would be more room for services sticking to the old Midland lines, and a possible increase in freight on the Midland. Since HS2 slows/Woodhead would be 100% electric, two fill-ins (Nottingham-Grantham and Peterborough-Norwich) would allow through electric operations, whether that be new Pendys, Electro-Voyagers or something completely new.

I'm also thinking of diverting services from Retford, York, Doncaster and Wakefield Westgate into the rebuilt Sheffield Victoria (my proposed South Yorkshire HS2 station) and sending anything else running through Rotherham via Masborough rather than Central. This would separate the former LNER lines (Northern franchise) from the former LMS lines (Midland franchise) and give two competing operators in the West Riding. The point there is that you effectively have two networks shoe-horned into one, a mistake made when the regional boundaries were changed in 1958. This would split them into two again. That would also be a good time to electrify the lines out of Victoria, since they would integrate with both HS2 and the ECML (both electric) rather than the MML (diesel). If the MML gets electrified, do the lot.