Will HS2 actually be an interesting journey from a passenger perspective?

[robbeech]

Given the amount of tunnel/cutting running I hope they’re building some form of trackside data uplink to the trains, otherwise it’s going to be worse than the WCML/390s for phone signal and incredibly dull.

I’m sure they’ve considered that. Surely they wouldn’t overlook something this important. . . .

 

[irish_rail]

And don't forget the automated driver, so every run will feel identical, no differing driving styles at all. I try to enjoy long distance rail journeys and especially the view. But there will be no view, just endless tunnels and cuttings. For an enthusiast I think the novelty will wear out after about one trip.

 

[6Gman]

Depending on the ticketing arrangements I can quite envisage going up to London (from Crewe) via the WCML to enjoy the views but using HS2 for the return to get home quicker (especially after dark).

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

And don't forget the automated driver, so every run will feel identical, no differing driving styles at all. I try to enjoy long distance rail journeys and especially the view. But there will be no view, just endless tunnels and cuttings. For an enthusiast I think the novelty will wear out after about one trip.

Isn’t ATO still to be confirmed for HS2 or have I missed a piece of news? It certainly isn’t needed until the full 17tph frequency is planned and it would not surprise me if it’s being targeted as a cost saving by Shapps/ HM Treasury.

 

[Bald Rick]

I’ve seen somewhere a report that says how much time of the run from London to Birmingham will afford a view - and it’s really not very much at all. Less than 10 minutes IIRC.

Isn’t ATO still to be confirmed for HS2 or have I missed a piece of news? It certainly isn’t needed until the full 17tph frequency is planned and it would not surprise me if it’s being targeted as a cost saving by Shapps/ HM Treasury.

The extra cost of ATO over ETCS for a railway with consistent operation like this is essentially negligible. The benefit for timekeeping, particularly at terminal stations and other slower speed sections, is considerable.

 

[Trainer2]

To answer original question, yes!

 

[Pigeon]

A large part of HS2 is going to be in cuttings and tunnels isn't it? It's going to be ghastly, with plastic, surgery-lit trains as well no doubt.

Precisely my anticipation. "Ghastly" sums it up very well.

When it's not in tunnel, it'll be in cutting or behind sound reduction barriers or something

Aaaaaarrrrrgghh..... way to make it even worse even on the bits that didn't have to be.

I think the vast majority of travellers won't especially care though. While a nice view is a bonus, especially on leisure trips, ultimately for most people the view is pretty far down the list of priorities.

Well I suppose these days there are plenty of people who have never had a train journey that gives them a decent view so maybe they don't know what they're missing. Hard to defend that proposition though when the same people almost certainly will have had plenty of car journeys where having a good view pretty much goes without saying and it's much more boring doing the journey at night. Providing a good view should be right at the top of the list of priorities, at the same kind of level as providing a comfortable seat, since it is advantageous enough to compensate for a great deal of crappiness in other aspects - as a lot of people seem to have pointed out on here recently, having the kind of view that was progressively being denied to travellers by alternative stock was the one aspect of Pacers that saved them from being completely intolerable.

If I want a really boring time with nothing to look at out of the window I can always go and shuttle back and forth on the Victoria line until the paramedics carry me off the train. If someone tries to impose the same degree of tedium on a long distance surface journey then I'll find some other way of doing it.

I mean come on, they even discontinued the "padded cell" carriage design on the C&SLR because even having just black tunnel walls to look at was better than having nothing. Being able to see where you're going is a pretty fundamental desire of all locomotory animals, not just humans - it's what you've got eyes for, after all. I cannot accept the idea that some characteristic of all passengers which is more fundamental than their distinguishing human characteristics can simply be dismissed as "unimportant". People these days may have become conditioned into expecting that all trains will give you a more or less crappy view, but that isn't an argument for continuing to do it or considering it acceptable.

(Not that such dismissals aren't rather too common in other things. Even an amoeba will avoid discomfort, yet some people argue that comfortable seats don't matter. The need to excrete is part of the definition of a life form, yet some people argue that toilets don't matter if they get in the way of packing 'em in...)

 

[backontrack]

For an indication of what it'll be like, watch Doctor Who (Series 4 Episode 10) Midnight.

 

[Facing Back]

Well I suppose these days there are plenty of people who have never had a train journey that gives them a decent view so maybe they don't know what they're missing. Hard to defend that proposition though when the same people almost certainly will have had plenty of car journeys where having a good view pretty much goes without saying and it's much more boring doing the journey at night. Providing a good view should be right at the top of the list of priorities, at the same kind of level as providing a comfortable seat,

When I leave London at the end of the week and the train starts to move, I can actually feel myself relaxing as the scenery turns from the conurbation into countryside so I get the value of a view.

However I think its more important to mitigate the impact of the new line to the people who live or work near it, so I accept the compromise for the reliability, frequency and capacity of the service - and the speed - an hour off my journey home would have been a game changer to me.

Having a comfortable seat, space and a convivial and appealing passenger environment would be an order of magnitude more important to me.

Everyone is different though and has different priorities which I guess is one reason why the project is remains controversial - there are a bunch of things I don't think are perfect and I assume everyone else feels the same way - It runs a few miles from my house, surely a parkway station for me shouldn't be ruled out? And if it connected to HS1 and I could sleep in my cabin all the way to Frankfurt or Berlin then it would be perfect - is that too much to ask?

 

[philosopher]

I’ve seen somewhere a report that says how much time of the run from London to Birmingham will afford a view - and it’s really not very much at all. Less than 10 minutes IIRC.

They had better have good wifi on the trains then!

 

[irish_rail]

The extra cost of ATO over ETCS for a railway with consistent operation like this is essentially negligible. The benefit for timekeeping, particularly at terminal stations and other slower speed sections, is considerable.

Hmmmm crossrail issues with ATO may point to the fact it really isn't all its cracked up to be. I reckon it'll add a couple of years to the opening date. One hopes that they opt for traditional driver operation , especially until the line is at max capacity, but time will tell.

 

[jfowkes]

Hmmmm crossrail issues with ATO may point to the fact it really isn't all its cracked up to be. I reckon it'll add a couple of years to the opening date. One hopes that they opt for traditional driver operation , especially until the line is at max capacity, but time will tell.

AIUI the vast majority of Crossrail's signalling issues stem from the interfaces with the classic network.

HS2 will have these as well of course, but not to the same levels of complexity. And ATO works just fine on Thameslink.

 

[Bald Rick]

Hmmmm crossrail issues with ATO may point to the fact it really isn't all its cracked up to be. I reckon it'll add a couple of years to the opening date. One hopes that they opt for traditional driver operation , especially until the line is at max capacity, but time will tell.

Crossrail doesn’t use ATO via ETCS, which is what HS2 will have. Thameslink does and it works fine.

 

[Austriantrain]

Generally speaking the faster the journey the more boring in terms of making sense of what you see out of the window, but that's offset by the shorter time to get bored in. Big landscape features (like mountains) help because they stay in sight for longer even when travelling fast and give some idea of progress. HS2 is going to be in tunnel pretty much continuously until it gets onto the Midland Plain, after which it's pretty flat all the way. The fact that it is a bit faster than TGV or Eurostar won't be detectable from inside the train. So quick - yes. Boring, pretty definitely!

Boring is a fact on most high-speed lines except though easy and unpopulated terrain, because so much of it will be in tunnels. As a rule, passengers don’t care and enjoy the shorter journey times (especially if they travel often and don’t look out the window anyway - much as the Semmering line in Austria is beautiful, I can’t wait for the tunnel to open, having trundled along it at 50-60 kph so often in my lifetime that I can’t see it anymore); those that want to see the scenery generally have options on classic lines - some are even marketed specifically (see the Gotthard).

 

[dk1]

I expect many passengers will be glued to their phones etc, as is already the case nowadays. I'm often the only old fuddyduddy looking at other things.

Which is why I don’t understand when people moan about a window seat beside a pillar. It’s not as if they use it lol

 

[fishwomp]

Which is why I don’t understand when people moan about a window seat beside a pillar. It’s not as if they use it lol

That may be a moan that is only found in the railway press or enthusiasts world? Hard seats, standing room only, late trains, expensive fares, curled sandwiches (actually that one is likely a tabloid fiction), strikes are about as far as people really care..

If HS2 has no view, why have windows at all??

 

[nw1]

Generally speaking the faster the journey the more boring in terms of making sense of what you see out of the window, but that's offset by the shorter time to get bored in. Big landscape features (like mountains) help because they stay in sight for longer even when travelling fast and give some idea of progress. HS2 is going to be in tunnel pretty much continuously until it gets onto the Midland Plain, after which it's pretty flat all the way. The fact that it is a bit faster than TGV or Eurostar won't be detectable from inside the train. So quick - yes. Boring, pretty definitely!

My experience of high-speed journeys and their 'boringness' or otherwise depends on whether you can actually see anything at all. There are some high speed (at least I think they are high speed) lines in Germany where you spend a lot of time in tunnels and can hardly see anything at all (Stuttgart to Karlsruhe is one - also sections of the Cologne-Frankfurt HSL though thankfully a good part of that is out in the open, and the Westerwald scenery is nice to look at).

On the other hand the TGV out of Gare de Lyon is interesting. Most of the scenery between there and the Mediterranean is interesting or at least pleasant: you go through rolling hills for much of the way between Paris and Lyon and then the Rhone Valley has hills and mountains either side. Because the rolling hills go on for a long way (perhaps 200km?) the fact that you're zipping through them means you don't miss them.

I do find that HS1 doesn't give you the full experience of travelling through Kent, compared to when Eurostar used the classic lines: it goes at such a speed that the hills of Kent seem smaller than they actually are and it was fun in the old days being on Eurostar and sharing track with CEPs and VEPs. But if you're using HS1 the international experience and the excitement of the final destination, and perhaps, the later stages of the journey, makes up for that!

 

[dk1]

That may be a moan that is only found in the railway press or enthusiasts world?

No, it’s certainly something the general public pester the poor TOC Twitter guys with over & over again.

 

[rf_ioliver]

I like to go to the South of France for holidays. I gave up flying several years ago when I discovered the pleasure of the TGV
I love the experience of an upstairs seat rushing through northern France looking at the little villages and the farms,
I never read or play with the phone just look out of the window, Miss it with Covid restrictions

I loved taking the TGV from Charles de Gaulle to Marseille/Nice - amazing how the scenery changes from northern France's fields to the more drier and mountainous south, and then there's the (admittedly classic slow lines) from Marseille to Nice along the coast.

Last time I was there a few years ago I did Paris-Brittany a week before LGV Bretagne was opened

 

[MattRat]

Imagine the trains as the big brother to the class 800s, yet with very little views....

 

[Bald Rick]

If HS2 has no view, why have windows at all??

partly because some services will spend more time off HS2 than on it.

 

[D365]

If HS2 has no view, why have windows at all??

Didn’t the City & South London Railway try this?

 

[Pete_uk]

They should put UHD screens where the windows would be which shows the view you would be having if you were not in a tunnel or a ditch.

 

[fishwomp]

They should put UHD screens where the windows would be which shows the view you would be having if you were not in a tunnel or a ditch.

I would definitely want to change the channel for most of the dense urban areas. Can we have the Maasai Mara, or (perhaps for the tunnel sections) the Great Barrier Reef?

 

[HSTEd]

On UHD screens it would be interesting to get a CGI flyover as if you were flying nap of the earth at the relevant speed.

But ultimately, the purpose of this railway is to move bulk people around, not provide people with an interesting view out of the window!

 

[WideRanger]

On UHD screens it would be interesting to get a CGI flyover as if you were flying nap of the earth at the relevant speed.

But ultimately, the purpose of this railway is to move bulk people around, not provide people with an interesting view out of the window!

That could produce some interesting nausea in a train with different physical movements to those shown on screen.

 

[SamYeager]

They should put UHD screens where the windows would be which shows the view you would be having if you were not in a tunnel or a ditch.

So they can break down after the first few trips and be left blank due to the cost of repair subsequently? Apart from anything else you can be sure the estimate for such a thing would be vastly extortionate.

 

[Irascible]

No it probably won’t be that interesting. But outside of enthusiasts, I would say the importance of this comes fairly low down the ranking of passenger priorities.

Enthusiasts for what? travel? it's not like rail enthusiasts are going to have anything to look at anyway. Having something pleasant to look at out the window is one of the main reasons for me travelling by train, vs staring at half a motorway.

If it's more like commuting on the tube, it's going to be pretty exhausting... even then if you're on any long trip on most tube lines you end up above ground with things to look at eventually.

 

[bramling]

Enthusiasts for what? travel? it's not like rail enthusiasts are going to have anything to look at anyway. Having something pleasant to look at out the window is one of the main reasons for me travelling by train, vs staring at half a motorway.

If it's more like commuting on the tube, it's going to be pretty exhausting... even then if you're on any long trip on most tube lines you end up above ground with things to look at eventually.

I travelled London to Ashford on HS1 a couple of years back, with a relative who isn’t into railways in any way. After getting off at Ashford he remarked “what a horrible boring journey that was”. Yet he was perfectly happy later the same day to be on an Electrostar from Hastings to Charing Cross which called virtually everywhere and took four or five times as long.

A lot of people do like to window-gaze. Likewise a drive up the A1 is so much less tedious than a run along something like the M4 which, from the M25 to Bristol at least, is pretty featureless.

Will it be a major issue for HS2? Probably not, as people will appreciate the speed. It will quite probably be something some people pass comment on, though.

 

[Horizon22]

Enthusiasts for what? travel? it's not like rail enthusiasts are going to have anything to look at anyway. Having something pleasant to look at out the window is one of the main reasons for me travelling by train, vs staring at half a motorway.

If it's more like commuting on the tube, it's going to be pretty exhausting... even then if you're on any long trip on most tube lines you end up above ground with things to look at eventually.

I've never found travel "exhausting" beyond the amount of time it takes, although the tube does feel slightly longer because its slower. To me, generally 60 minutes feels like 60 minutes but then I'm normally listening to music / on my phone; even though I might look out occasionally it forms a fairly insignificant part of my journey (with travel time, cost, comfort, space, facilities all scoring much higher), but I appreciate everyone is different.