Why hasn't Crossrail led to more support for HS2?

[michael8]

For a shorter route, the time savings on ever-higher speeds become negligible (as far as I understand it?)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

For a shorter route, the time savings on ever-higher speeds become negligible (as far as I understand it?)

That is correct. However, remember the original intention was for HS2 to eventually run all the way from London to Glasgow/Edinburgh. That is not a shorter route! (It's a distance as the crow flies of 330 miles, though in practice likely to be more than that allowing for that HS2 won't be dead straight.)

I agree that for London-Birmingham, the time savings for >300kph speeds would be tiny.

 

[JamesT]

The estimate from HS2 was a 125mph setup would only save 10% compared to the proposed scheme. Which implies a 300kph alignment would save even less. And then constrains us forever more to those lower speeds.

 

[growse]

High speed yes, but not the even higher speeds than anywhere else HS2 was aiming for. The new Ulm -> Stuggart line is max speed only 250km/h for example. This, or 300km/h would seem to have been a more sensible max speed for HS2

Sensible on what basis?

To put a hard-to-remove-constraint (e.g. alignment choice) on something that'll have a 100+ year lifespan when there's no significant economic benefit to doing so doesn't sound sensible to me. Future-proofing is a thing many people wished the Victorian railway engineers had thought about - let's not make that mistake again.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Crossrail always had a clearly defined purpose: to speed up cross-London journeys and to relieve the chronically overcrowded Central Line.

I still couldn't actually tell you what the purpose of HS2 is. Faster journeys to Birmingham? A couple of extra freight paths on the WCML? Greater commuter capacity on the WCML? You never get the same answer twice when you ask why we are bothering with HS2. Part of the original business plan was that law firms would relocate to Liverpool when HS2 was built; if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

And you never get a sensible answer as to why the existing infrastructure isn't sufficient and why the existing infrastructure isn't being used more efficiently.

LNR/WMT now only have a couple of 12-car trains in the peak periods despite the railway having the infrastructure capacity for most of the services to be 12-car. Plenty of LNR/WMT trains are still only 4-car out of Euston. Both LNR/WMT and Avanti have just bought a load of new trains with only 5 carriages. But apparently we need to spend over £100bn to increase capacity when the existing capacity isn't being fully utilised. Hmm.

I've always thought that HS2 was a solution looking for a problem, an overpriced and over-specified white elephant designed to do nothing other than make the construction companies a lot of money. I was saying this when HS2 was a twinkle in Lord Adonis' eye. And as we move through the construction process, losing more and more of the original plan because the construction companies are ripping everyone off and because the useless HS2 management are so weak that they just sign off the cheques without question, the more convinced I am that I was right all along.

 

[growse]

I still couldn't actually tell you what the purpose of HS2 is. Faster journeys to Birmingham? A couple of extra freight paths on the WCML? Greater commuter capacity on the WCML? You never get the same answer twice when you ask why we are bothering with HS2.

The Strategic Case for HS2 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c6bb8ed915d6969f44bdd/strategic-case.pdf). Page 1:

The case for the new line rests on the capacity and connectivity it will provide. We need this
capacity because in the future, as our economy and our population grows, we will travel more.
We need the connectivity because bringing people together drives economic growth. Our current
transport system is already under strain and a constraint on growth.

Took me 30s to look up. The whole thing's got quite a lot of detail that I'm sure will help you with your questions.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The whole thing's got quite a lot of detail that I'm sure will help you with your questions.

It's got a lot of words. It's a truly fantastic example of corporate consultant bull**** bingo. The bit you quoted was a particularly egregious example of it.

HS2 was sold as being all things to all men because, quite frankly, the case for wasting £100bn of taxpayer money on it would never have stacked up with a more tightly defined objective.

 

[Bletchleyite]

LNR/WMT now only have a couple of 12-car trains in the peak periods despite the railway having the infrastructure capacity for most of the services to be 12-car.

I believe platforms 9 and 10 at Euston are a major constraint and one reason why they run 8-car peak extras rather than 12-car services. Though I'd agree there is scope to up capacity a bit.

Plenty of LNR/WMT trains are still only 4-car out of Euston.

In the current timetable hardly any are diagrammed 4; pretty much all you'll see are short forms and likely heavily overcrowded. The basis of the simplified timetable was pretty much that everything just runs as 8-car pairs (or 6-car pairs of 730/0s) and they stay like that all day - you get a 4 if one of the two fails as they don't seem to bother replacing it if that does happen. The pre-COVID timetable had a lot of splitting and joining so you'd have 12s into Euston in the peak and 4s back out, for example.

Both LNR/WMT and Avanti have just bought a load of new trains with only 5 carriages.

To be run, in some cases, doubled up. The reason for 5-car 805s is obvious - 10 car to Chester, 5 beyond. Yes, the Tring semifasts might be OK at 5 car for most or all of the day due to their limited calling points and duplicating the stoppers, though.

 

[growse]

It's got a lot of words. It's a truly fantastic example of corporate consultant bull**** bingo. The bit you quoted was a particularly egregious example of it.

Well, I suppose if you come into reading it with a prior conclusion formed when the idea was "just a twinkle in Adonis' eye" then you're going to read whatever you want to confirm that.

I've seen both good comms and corporate nonsense throughout my career, and don't recognise the linked pdf as "corporate consultant bull*** bingo" an all. But I have read the whole thing though.

HS2 was sold as being all things to all men because, quite frankly, the case for wasting £100bn of taxpayer money on it would never have stacked up with a more tightly defined objective.

The massive irony here is that some of the loudest voices against HS2 come from people complaining that it does nothing for Cornwall/South Wales/Colchester/Madagascar. Is the problem with HS2 that it's trying to be all things to all men, or specifically only there to benefit the London Metropolitan Elite (or construction firms etc.)?

 

[The Planner]

I still couldn't actually tell you what the purpose of HS2 is. Faster journeys to Birmingham? A couple of extra freight paths on the WCML? Greater commuter capacity on the WCML? You never get the same answer twice when you ask why we are bothering with HS2. Part of the original business plan was that law firms would relocate to Liverpool when HS2 was built; if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

And you never get a sensible answer as to why the existing infrastructure isn't sufficient and why the existing infrastructure isn't being used more efficiently.

Find a robust way of getting more passenger and freight paths on the existing WCML and then we can all go away and say you were right.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I believe platforms 9 and 10 at Euston are a major constraint

Yeah, both of the two 'short' bays will only fit an 8-car in. Though as one of those bays is mostly taken by by London Overground it shouldn't have a huge impact. Not everything in the peak needs to be a 12 either, if we're being honest.

I have to smile that the train I used to take to work every morning from Apsley was a 12-car and is now a 6-car. I know the timetable has changed quite a bit in the last ten years, but still. I'd agree about the Tring terminators too; when they were all shacks they made sense but now the all shacks goes through to MK it's a bit more complicated. I'd hate to see Hemel's frequency into London be halved though.

The massive irony here is that some of the loudest voices against HS2 come from people complaining that it does nothing for Cornwall/South Wales/Colchester/Madagascar.

And that comes back to HS2 promising to be all things to all men, so obviously the regions that were left out were questioning why that was.

A tightly defined objective negates all that. People were upset that Crossrail was funded in the late 2000s ahead of, say, new trains for the T&W Metro, but at least you could see why.

 

[growse]

A tightly defined objective negates all that. People were upset that Crossrail was funded in the late 2000s ahead of, say, new trains for the T&W Metro, but at least you could see why.

Crossrail did not have a tightly defined objective, rather a multitude of complex intersecting objectives around speed, capacity, connectivity (through Essex, Berkshire, Canary Wharf and Heathrow). And yet I don't remember the residents of Putney complaining it did "nothing for them"?

One of the main problems it was trying to solve was that we'd run out of capacity on the existing infrastructure. The solution was an expensive, higher speed, new two-track railway that links to the rest of the existing network. The parallels to HS2 to here are obvious.

 

[FMerrymon]

Yeah, both of the two 'short' bays will only fit an 8-car in. Though as one of those bays is mostly taken by by London Overground it shouldn't have a huge impact. Not everything in the peak needs to be a 12 either, if we're being honest.

I have to smile that the train I used to take to work every morning from Apsley was a 12-car and is now a 6-car. I know the timetable has changed quite a bit in the last ten years, but still. I'd agree about the Tring terminators too; when they were all shacks they made sense but now the all shacks goes through to MK it's a bit more complicated. I'd hate to see Hemel's frequency into London be halved though.


And that comes back to HS2 promising to be all things to all men, so obviously the regions that were left out were questioning why that was.

A tightly defined objective negates all that. People were upset that Crossrail was funded in the late 2000s ahead of, say, new trains for the T&W Metro, but at least you could see why.

From the very start, the principle reason has been capacity. That was why a new line was considered - everything else stems from that decision. Even the speed contributes toward capacity.

That that was misreported and there was considerable misinformation, such as being "just for 20minutes to Birmingham" or "getting to London 10 minutes quicker" (one of my favourite Lord Berkeley quotes), has been a big issue. Understanding how capacity helps is difficult because different places benefit in different ways and requires some knowledge of the geography and rail routes in this country.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I have to smile that the train I used to take to work every morning from Apsley was a 12-car and is now a 6-car. I know the timetable has changed quite a bit in the last ten years, but still. I'd agree about the Tring terminators too; when they were all shacks they made sense but now the all shacks goes through to MK it's a bit more complicated. I'd hate to see Hemel's frequency into London be halved though.

On the assumption that that's the one that forms from the 0656 off Bletchley (which I use quite a lot), I think the reason it's now much quieter is that there's a Tring semifast that also comes off Bletchley about 10 minutes before it and nominally starts at Tring. I don't think there was in the previous timetable. The 730/0s are also VERY good at crowds, so it feels much less rammed at Watford than a 3+2 seated 319 did, and the vehicles are longer so the capacity is basically the same as 8.350 (only 4m or so difference in length once you take out the two pairs of doors that aren't there compared to 8.350).

I've been on that one short-formed to 3 and it coped - the layout of those is really very well designed. 4.350 would be leaving people behind by about Hemel.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Understanding how capacity helps is difficult because different places benefit in different ways and requires some knowledge of the geography and rail routes in this country.

There's a reason why HS2's public selling point was always about increasing speed of journeys- not just to Birmingham but to Manchester and Liverpool also. And that's because the arguments about capacity don't really stack up to any close scrutiny.

Avanti's most consistently chronically overcrowded service is the hourly Glasgow 'fast'. HS2 will do precisely nothing to alleviate this because the capacity constraints on the WCML that affect it are all north of Crewe.

I understand the rationale that moving the expresses to HS2 will allow more semi-fast trains to run on the classic WCML fast lines which will, in turn, free up capacity for freight on the classic WCML slow lines. But that additional capacity will basically run out at Weedon.

But the fact that the additional capacity this will generate does not and will not ever justify the cost of HS2. £100bn to run a few more commuter trains to Northampton? There's a reason why the authors of HS2's business case had to chuck everything in. And that's because without chucking everything in to it, no matter how nebulous, the financials would never ever ever have stacked up. As we are now seeing.

And that's the real fundamental issue with HS2: the staggeringly obscene cost of it. Crossrail cost £20bn, give or take a few quid. A lot of money, and the source of a lot of TfL's current financial woes, but 600,000 people use it every day. HS2 will cost well north of £100bn and won't see anywhere near those passenger numbers. Perhaps not a complete white elephant but not far short.

 

[SynthD]

The assumption is that HS2 will be expensive, and, if you want any degree of flexibility, it will become unaffordable. I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption. The industry seems hell bent on removing affordable, flexible options.

I agree it's a reasonable assumption, and that's a key answer to the question. But the government (both parties) have stated it won't be, and given reasoning that feels inevitable. The lower support among the public is because they are going on assumptions, not assertions by those in control.

There's a reason why HS2's public selling point was always about increasing speed of journeys- not just to Birmingham but to Manchester and Liverpool also. And that's because the arguments about capacity don't really stack up to any close scrutiny.

That was the media reporting on the easiest to understand (or complain about) benefit. Not the one HS2 put forward as the primary reason.

But the fact that the additional capacity this will generate does not and will not ever justify the cost of HS2. £100bn to run a few more commuter trains to Northampton? There's a reason why the authors of HS2's business case had to chuck everything in.

That's because you chose one of many. There would be (under the full plans) a few more commuter trains to Princes Risborough, Luton and Hitchin. Same again for commuting outside the Home Counties.

 

[A S Leib]

Avanti's most consistently chronically overcrowded service is the hourly Glasgow 'fast'. HS2 will do precisely nothing to alleviate this because the capacity constraints on the WCML that affect it are all north of Crewe.

A previously planned service pattern would have had three hourly 400 m services (one ex-Curzon Street, two ex-Euston HS2) between Wigan and Carlisle (and splitting there) in addition to any remaining classic line services, which would help a lot. That would be with Golborne though, and I'm not sure if Scotland – Manchester Piccadilly / Airport services would benefit as much despite also being very busy.

Apart from everything else, I think "cutting journey times between Leeds and Manchester and Birmingham in half" would have been a reasonably well-understood point, although the fact that construction started on London – Birmingham first to relieve the southern WCML, MML etc. meant there'd still probably be people seeing it as too SE-centric.

 

[growse]

And that's the real fundamental issue with HS2: the staggeringly obscene cost of it. Crossrail cost £20bn, give or take a few quid. A lot of money, and the source of a lot of TfL's current financial woes, but 600,000 people use it every day. HS2 will cost well north of £100bn and won't see anywhere near those passenger numbers. Perhaps not a complete white elephant but not far short.

You're confusing strategy and execution. It's too expensive due to lack of execution competence - no argument from me on that. Although I do notice how everyone has forgotten the criticism of Crossrail as "overpriced" (Osborne nearly cancelled it on cost grounds!) given the runaway success it's been. The fact that we're screwing up building the thing doesn't mean it's a bad idea - it didn't necessarily have to be this expensive.

Which leads to the other point. Anyone who's tried to estimate future passenger numbers on new lines over the last 20-30 years has looked a bit silly as actual usage has blown past expectations. This is true for Crossrail, Borders, Thameslink etc. I'd be vary wary of making any predictions about future passenger numbers on HS2 and using it as the basis of any argument.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A previously planned service pattern would have had three hourly 400 m services (one ex-Curzon Street, two ex-Euston HS2) between Wigan and Carlisle (and splitting there) in addition to any remaining classic line services, which would help a lot. That would be with Golborne though, and I'm not sure if Scotland – Manchester Piccadilly / Airport services would benefit as much despite also being very busy.

Those are busy because they ridiculously operate with 5-car units. Lengthen them to the maximum length of Manchester Airport's platforms (which would fit at least 7.80x) and that would largely be solved. Indeed they might be a good use of spare 200m HS2 sets.

 

[Tetchytyke]

commuter trains to Princes Risborough

I didn't realise they were planning on using slip coaches on HS2?

A previously planned service pattern would have had three hourly 400 m services (one ex-Curzon Street, two ex-Euston HS2) between Wigan and Carlisle (and splitting there) in addition to any remaining classic line services

I don't think they would have been in addition to the classic line services, they would have been instead of the classic line services. The biggest capacity constraints are over Shap and Beattock and these constraints are still going to be there once HS2 is open.

That was the media reporting on the easiest to understand (or complain about) benefit. Not the one HS2 put forward as the primary reason.

No, it was front and centre of all HS2's promotional material. Still is, no matter how much they try to reverse-ferret and de-scope now that HS2 have spent double the original budget and delivered nothing.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jan 2025 ==

Those are busy because they ridiculously operate with 5-car units. Lengthen them to the maximum length of Manchester Airport's platforms (which would fit at least 7.80x) and that would largely be solved.

The 8-car 350s they ran previously were perfect. Refurbish the 350/2s with an intercity interior, upgrade them to 110mph (same as the 350/1s) and you've probably solved that issue straight away.

 

[fishwomp]

View attachment 172451
1.7% to 0.8% just within Greater Manchester, combined with 1.9% to 3.2% just within South Yorkshire, 1.6% just within West Yorkshire, and very little elsewhere, doesn't give anywhere near 3.2% across the whole of "The North".

The way I see it, the biggest productivity gains predicted for any region are in London, at between £2.8bn and £2.5bn, which benefits far more than any other regional centre.

The sad part is that this analysis was never applied to the benefits of providing better transport links within "The North" where greater agglomeration effects and increased productivty could have been achieved at far less cost than HS2.

Ah, the KPMG report from 2013, funded by HS2 Ltd, here's what Robert Peston thought of that then: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24047047

Or to put it another way, KPMG's calculations of the economic benefits of HS2 will be seen by many as spuriously precise, because they rest on the idea that the overwhelmingly most important impediment to narrowing the economic divide between north and south is poor transport.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The 8-car 350s they ran previously were perfect. Refurbish the 350/2s with an intercity interior, upgrade them to 110mph (same as the 350/1s) and you've probably solved that issue straight away.

It was certainly stupid to reduce capacity on them with this bizarre obsession with 5 car intercity sets despite no intention to ever work them in pairs. Being longer vehicles, those should have been 7s from day one.

By the way the /2s were already Project 110-ised, because LM found it just too hard to keep one from ending up on the Crewes (and the faster speed was useful for catching up delay on the Birminghams). They ride as smooth as silk at 110 on the south WCML fasts - you can barely tell it's moving without looking out of the window - true German quality!

 

[Krokodil]

Avanti's most consistently chronically overcrowded service is the hourly Glasgow 'fast'. HS2 will do precisely nothing to alleviate this because the capacity constraints on the WCML that affect it are all north of Crewe.

So you're saying that we need to not only build the Golborne Spur, but also continue north at least as far as Preston? Well I won't argue with you there, except to ask of you've seen the peak pricing out of Manchester? There's a lot of priced-off demand there.

I don't think they would have been in addition to the classic line services, they would have been instead of the classic line services. The biggest capacity constraints are over Shap and Beattock and these constraints are still going to be there once HS2 is open.

2x400m fast services instead of the current single Pendolino. The sets would probably be more space-efficient than older stock too, along the lines of the 805/807 fleets

 

[The Planner]

But that additional capacity will basically run out at Weedon.

Why?

 

[Horizon22]

Crossrail did not have a tightly defined objective, rather a multitude of complex intersecting objectives around speed, capacity, connectivity (through Essex, Berkshire, Canary Wharf and Heathrow). And yet I don't remember the residents of Putney complaining it did "nothing for them"?

I mean it has benefits for pretty much any journey East-West through Outer or Central London, so most Londoners who use public transport (which is the majority of residents) will see some benefit at least. Even if it was relieving busy surrounding lines like the Central and Jubilee and to a lesser extent H&C/Circle, Piccadilly and District.

 

[eldomtom2]

The estimate from HS2 was a 125mph setup would only save 10% compared to the proposed scheme. Which implies a 300kph alignment would save even less. And then constrains us forever more to those lower speeds.

Was that analysis based on a 125mph HS2 using the same alignment as the actual HS2, or it did it take advantage of the lower speeds to take a cheaper route?

Future-proofing is a thing many people wished the Victorian railway engineers had thought about - let's not make that mistake again.

The dark side of future-proofing, of course, is gold-plating. Finding the right balance is difficult.

And that's the real fundamental issue with HS2: the staggeringly obscene cost of it.

Yes, this is something people quite often ignore - HS2 is far more expensive per kilometre than any other high-speed rail project worldwide. That's a serious problem, though in fairness it seems to extend to other megaprojects in the UK.

 

[growse]

The dark side of future-proofing, of course, is gold-plating. Finding the right balance is difficult.

Maybe. But on a 100-year timescale I'd rather over-engineer than under-engineer.

 

[michael8]

That is correct. However, remember the original intention was for HS2 to eventually run all the way from London to Glasgow/Edinburgh. That is not a shorter route! (It's a distance as the crow flies of 330 miles, though in practice likely to be more than that allowing for that HS2 won't be dead straight.)

I agree that for London-Birmingham, the time savings for >300kph speeds would be tiny.

It's a shame that HS2 didn't have a clear primary objective: a new west coast high speed rail link between London and Glasgow. This is something the whole UK could have got behind regardless if they would have benefited directly or not : new links and connections are undeniably a good thing, especially when they unite two potentially "fractious" cities and countries. Eg. London to Paris - great ! London to Ebbsfleet, then possibly on to Ashford, with potential to link further to Paris if time and money allows - terrible idea. Much the same that London - Birmingham, with possible future links to the North, is much harder to get behind, IMO. Of course, Birmingham could have been linked in as part of this longer scheme - but it feels that it was always the objective to link it to Brum first, then onwards.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jan 2025 ==

New high-speed rail link between London and Plymouth - great ! Will bring new economic opportunities to Plymouth. Birmingham, on the other hand, just doesn't seem to "need" it in the public imagination, especially as it is already "booming" and has two quick rail links already.

 

[FMerrymon]

There's a reason why HS2's public selling point was always about increasing speed of journeys- not just to Birmingham but to Manchester and Liverpool also. And that's because the arguments about capacity don't really stack up to any close scrutiny.

If you're saying the capacity arguments don't stack up any close scrutiny then I don't believe you are aware to the extent of the capacity release. What you say about Northampton in the next quote confirms that. Capacity is a little more difficult to explain as its effects are different depending on the line or area. The capacity release of the original plan was game changing.

But the fact that the additional capacity this will generate does not and will not ever justify the cost of HS2. £100bn to run a few more commuter trains to Northampton? There's a reason why the authors of HS2's business case had to chuck everything in. And that's because without chucking everything in to it, no matter how nebulous, the financials would never ever ever have stacked up. As we are now seeing.

No, they didnt chuck everything in. Its missing considerable benefits from the calculation, such as the benefits of the released capacity, its effects on housing, the benefits of the redevelopments in OOC, Euston, Birmingham to name but a few.

Avanti's most consistently chronically overcrowded service is the hourly Glasgow 'fast'. HS2 will do precisely nothing to alleviate this because the capacity constraints on the WCML that affect it are all north of Crewe.

Well, it was originally intended to. Would have doubled seats to Scotland, doubled the fast frequency to both Edinburgh and Glasgow, whilst allowing more services to reach Preston.

And that's the real fundamental issue with HS2: the staggeringly obscene cost of it. Crossrail cost £20bn, give or take a few quid. A lot of money, and the source of a lot of TfL's current financial woes, but 600,000 people use it every day. HS2 will cost well north of £100bn and won't see anywhere near those passenger numbers. Perhaps not a complete white elephant but not far short.

Crossrail 2 is estimated at 45bn. A 70 mile upgrade in the north is 11.5bn. We need to get these prices down, but infrastructure is expensive in this country.

Crossrail 1 is not the source of a lot of TfL's current financial woes and its breaking even this year.

The passenger numbers won't just be on HS2 and I find it hard to believe that journeys between our biggest city and second and third biggest cities, and their associated regions, won't attract passengers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Jan 2025 ==

No, it was front and centre of all HS2's promotional material. Still is, no matter how much they try to reverse-ferret and de-scope now that HS2 have spent double the original budget and delivered nothing.

Capacity is the primary reason stated in the all the whitepapers released and business cases. A quick look at the HS2 website also confirms capacity is the first benefit mentioned.

They have not spent double the original budget and there is very visibly infrastructure in the course of being delivered.

I didn't realise they were planning on using slip coaches on HS2?

Chiltern line would benefit from passive provision being built by HS2 at OOC. That would come from a separate budget and has not been confirmed to go ahead, but the sites are being prepared.

 

[uglymonkey]

Perhaps they should decide not to electrify it and just use diesels, that would keep the cost down ( sarcasm).