Restarting HS2 East

[Shrop]

That's a huge unfounded assertion.

If you make an assertion it's up to you to 'show your working' and explain how it might work, not to demand others do the work for you.

Let me reiterate ... "How about giving just a bit of thought to whether it might work, rather than assuming instant dismissal and then finding reasons to justify that dismissal? After all, we're all here to promote rail travel are we not? We can surely leave the knee jerk instant negatives to our politicians?"

 

[TheGuy77]

I was perhaps thinking of using things from HSUK's book, something like running HS2 to East Midlands Hub, and then running on the same routes HSUK would take to the Northern cities, like Sheffield, Leeds, York and Newcastle.

 

[Bald Rick]

Let's suppose you were to spend perhaps 10% of the cost of Crossrail, to upgrade Thameslink, in other words a bargain.

What are you thinking?

Bear in mind the Thameslink programme was around a third of the cost of Crossrail, and that didn’t include the Thameslink fleet (but Crossrail’s price did)

 

[SynthD]

I now think it would be better to upgrade/improve the ECML

When NR wanted to improve the WCML, they made plans like yours and found it was low rewards for high cost. They chose HS2.

why not provide a new route starting somewhere else north of London?

Use a route approximating to the M1 corridor

Going from zone 1 to the edge of London is the difficult part. We point at France and say we don’t want to do it that way. This is a wish to use the path that HS2 found was worst. If it stops before East Midlands Parkway it might be too soon, if that station is first then it duplicates HS2. It shows the question of the thread is best answered: do what the experts planned and the short termist politicians chickened out of. To overcome that and make a new line is a lot of work to benefit only Leicester.

 

[NCT]

Let me reiterate ... "How about giving just a bit of thought to whether it might work, rather than assuming instant dismissal and then finding reasons to justify that dismissal? After all, we're all here to promote rail travel are we not? We can surely leave the knee jerk instant negatives to our politicians?"

If it's that important to you, then please do the first bit of the work yourself, so others can then critique from an informed position.

I can't speak for others, but if I were to promote something, I'd want a good idea of whether something has been thought through, or if it came from crayonista land.

 

[BrianW]

Obviously very unlikely and expensive, but how could we build the Eastern section of HS2, to Sheffield, Leeds, York and Newcastle, in the cheapest way possible?

Why?

What rail service changes (improvements?) do the people of (or seeking to reach) Sheffield, Leeds, York and Newcastle need, esp to (or from, or via) Birmingham, Old Oak or Euston via HS2?

I appreciate the value of a 'rolling programme' for design, staff, delivery, but at what cost- looks like a kind of 'make-work'/ YTS scheme. 'Good' people will 'get on their bikes', take jobs in Dubai or wherever the next 'North Sea Oil' is (windfarms, data centres, EVs?), retrain in AI or whatever.

What is this railway for? What are Sheffield etc for?

 

[TheGuy77]

Why?

What rail service changes (improvements?) do the people of (or seeking to reach) Sheffield, Leeds, York and Newcastle need, esp to (or from, or via) Birmingham, Old Oak or Euston via HS2?

I appreciate the value of a 'rolling programme' for design, staff, delivery, but at what cost- looks like a kind of 'make-work'/ YTS scheme. 'Good' people will 'get on their bikes', take jobs in Dubai or wherever the next 'North Sea Oil' is (windfarms, data centres, EVs?), retrain in AI or whatever.

What is this railway for? What are Sheffield etc for?

Services like CrossCountry are very overcrowded and expensive, and existing services like EMR are run by old rolling stock to the point where using HS2 is quicker.

 

[NCT]

Why?

What rail service changes (improvements?) do the people of (or seeking to reach) Sheffield, Leeds, York and Newcastle need, esp to (or from, or via) Birmingham, Old Oak or Euston via HS2?

I appreciate the value of a 'rolling programme' for design, staff, delivery, but at what cost- looks like a kind of 'make-work'/ YTS scheme. 'Good' people will 'get on their bikes', take jobs in Dubai or wherever the next 'North Sea Oil' is (windfarms, data centres, EVs?), retrain in AI or whatever.

What is this railway for? What are Sheffield etc for?

I don't really want to go into restating things like agglomeration, business-to-business connectivity, existing capacity, existing slow routes etc, but suspect we'll get progressively sucked into it anyway ...

Looking across developed Europe, fast, frequent, and capacious rail connectivity between multiple populous metropolitan regions (West Midlands, East Midlands, South Yorks, West Yorks) over a distance of 130km or so is a consistent feature. I'd have thought such requirements would be well understood and accepted as 'hygiene' by now.

 

[Shrop]

Lets do Charing Cross then:

OOC - Northern to Tottenham Court Road (every 2-3 mins), takes 3 mins. Change time 4 mins to Elizabeth Line, (will be every 2-3 minutes to OOC, allow 2 mins wait time) journey time 10 minutes. Total 19 mins.

Radlett - walk to Embankment (5mins), District / Circle to Blackfriars (every 2-3 mins), takes 3 mins. Change time 4 mins to Thameslink, (Trains to Radlett are at 5/10/15 intervals, allow 5 mins wait time), journey time 37 mins.
Total 54 minutes

Charing Cross was just a quick example of somewhere that couldn’t be reached in the 4 minutes you stated to reach Zone 1. Your 19 minutes is very different and a lot less headline-grabbing. Radlett was only a quick thought in the spirit of this thread, it’s certainly not something I ever considered seriously.

It does nevertheless seem a little disappointing when there are so many knee-jerk negative reactions to ideas which might actually have a little merit for a scheme in the future. When you think about the sorry way that HS2 has gone, would it really be such a bad thing for the UK to have a new railway that provides links both to and across the northern (Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield/Leeds) corridor, when HS2 has so spectacularly failed these areas?

HS2 has taken 16 years so far, from its inception in 2009 (plus several years before that when some of us were tyring to offer alternatives), to get to today’s position of having been decimated and still many years from its truncated version being completed. Without research I don’t know how long it took for some of the HSR in France, Spain, China, Japan and other countries to be designed and completed, but I suspect their stories are somewhat less embarrassing. If this was all in one of those countries and someone there had suggested a new scheme starting at Radlett (I reiterate, a very first thought with no research), I suspect that at least some of those reading about it might think “Hmm, let’s give this a bit of thought and see how it might stack up”, rather than their immediate reactions being “No, we don’t like that, now let’s find reasons why we don’t like it”. And they might get something built in a less embarrassing timeframe too.

Suggesting new ideas on this forum sometimes feels a bit like going to a Trump rally and trying to tell his supporters that he might actually have got something wrong, ie his supporters are fully primed and desperate to shout you down before you even say anything. Which is a bit of a shame for a forum which I thought was pro-rail.

 

[HSTEd]

If you want to restore the reputation of high speed rail in this country, I suggest you'd have to find a project that can be built in the Chinese style (almost entirely on a viaduct) with the minimum of mass demolitions or anything of that nature.

A new scheme into London does not sound advisable on that basis.

 

[InTheEastMids]

At this point the most I could concieve is a section of high speed line between Manchester and Leeds, and a short connection onto the Birmingham-Derby line if some way of doing it without requiring electrification can be worked out.

More or less agree with this at least against the "in most of our lifetimes" level of speculation. Only point where I think we differ is whether it might be near-continuous electrification from the HS2 interface to Sheffield.

Services like CrossCountry are very overcrowded and expensive,

If you have a connection to the XC line near Tamworth, then instead of having Nottingham XC meander around Bordesley (and expensive new chord) to access Moor Street, bring them into Curzon Street. Obviously the arthritic 170s get replaced by something like a battery-electric 395. Connecting passengers having to transit between New Street/Moor Street/Curzon Street is already going to become common due to HS2 and MRH West so we can't get too hung up on further direct connectivity loss)

Doing these things has a clear strategic purpose of improving connectivity between Shef/Derb/Notts to the West Midlands and London (and by extension releases capacity on the MML)

A non-high speed upgrade to the Castle Donington Line might support this, providing Nottingham-Brum and Nottingham-London directs as well as via Derby (noting that Trent junctions and the 2 lines into Nottingham are big problems to solve. And also that Nottingham-London via this route may not be much improvement on today's timings.
I reckon in this world, Leicester-Brum via Derby might also be as quick as direct.

However if HS2 trains are serving Derby towards Sheffield, I can't see how either the original HS2 East or IRP alignments (M1 corridor and Erewash Line) make sense.

Sheffield remains a mess. I think there are now 3 dilemmas where I see no clarity
1. Whether to serve Midland and spend £££ on capacity upgrades, or spend £££ on a brand new line that only serves Meadowhall remains unresolved
2. Is London even the priority, or should it be Manchester or Leeds first?
3. Does the North want genuine high-speed rail, or does it really want these new super-trains to serve all sorts of medium to large towns like Rotherham, Barnsley, Wakefield etc.
The point of the crayons here is really to highlight these choices to clients and stakeholders.

I suggest you'd have to find a project that can be built in the Chinese style (almost entirely on a viaduct) with the minimum of mass demolitions or anything of that nature.

A new scheme into London does not sound advisable on that basis.

This is a very important point that politicians and others keen to descope Euston HS2 could not or would not grasp. We won't get another shot at building a new railway into London. So it's silly to kill off options that we might wish we had by not future proofing Euston. Manchester Victoria is a decent example of this error. We have long been changing making use of redundant infrastructure buildings like Manchester Central, Bankside Power Station or the Point Depot in Dublin for other purposes. Could do that for a period of where parts of Euston that won't be needed for 10, 20 or 30 years

 

[HSTEd]

This is a very important point that politicians and others keen to descope Euston HS2 could not or would not grasp. We won't get another shot at building a new railway into London. So it's silly to kill off options that we might wish we had by not future proofing Euston. Manchester Victoria is a decent example of this error. We have long been changing making use of redundant infrastructure buildings like Manchester Central, Bankside Power Station or the Point Depot in Dublin for other purposes. Could do that for a period of where parts of Euston that won't be needed for 10, 20 or 30 years

The problem is we aren't going to get a giant super Euston, HS2 has failed too totally for that.

Multiple billions on a mega station that will be empty for decades is not a workable solution.

The constant rescoping at Euston has largely been caused by the various developed designs turning out to be unbuildable, at least at anything close to the advertised cost.

 

[Shrop]

If you want to restore the reputation of high speed rail in this country, I suggest you'd have to find a project that can be built in the Chinese style (almost entirely on a viaduct) with the minimum of mass demolitions or anything of that nature.

A new scheme into London does not sound advisable on that basis.

Into London? Like HS2 isn't??? And viaducts offer a considerably greater opportunity to appreciate your journey than the seemingly endless tunnels of HS2 will.

 

[eldomtom2]

If you want to restore the reputation of high speed rail in this country, I suggest you'd have to find a project that can be built in the Chinese style (almost entirely on a viaduct) with the minimum of mass demolitions or anything of that nature.

Viaducts are expensive and will have plenty of trouble with the planning system. I don't think the "everything on viaducts or in tunnels" model is a good one to follow - Japan does it (indeed they invented it) and pays for it by having the highest per-mile costs outside the UK.

 

[The Planner]

And viaducts offer a considerably greater opportunity to appreciate your journey than the seemingly endless tunnels of HS2 will.

Ask why that is the case though, and consider the chances of any Chinese solution even getting past the drawing board in this country.

 

[InTheEastMids]

Into London? Like HS2 isn't??? And viaducts offer a considerably greater opportunity to appreciate your journey than the seemingly endless tunnels of HS2 will.

Doesn't the Colne Valley Viaduct have 4m acoustic screens on it? I doubt there will be much to see

Multiple billions on a mega station that will be empty for decades is not a workable solution.

And doing a giant version of Man Vic will be even more limiting. For ever. Articulating this and making the case for a future proof solution is the difference between strategic leadership and looking at lines on a spreadsheet (so naturally I share your pessimism!)

And a big part of the Euston fiasco are questions of scope around the existing rail and tube station, both of which need £££ spending on them to properly deal with passengers they already have.

 

[Shrop]

Ask why that is the case though, and consider the chances of any Chinese solution even getting past the drawing board in this country.

I've asked, directly from affected people whilst in China. The Chinese approach is widely misunderstood in the UK, where people adhere to a tabloid type view that if the Chinese want to build new infrastructure for the benefit of their country then woe betide you if you have property in their way. What people in China told me was to agree that yes, the state takes priority and you're unlikely to find any procedures that can protect your property. However, rather than just being bulldozed out of the way, you will be given the full value of your property, plus 20% for the inconvenience. Now, given the absolutely crazy amount of delays and legal expenses that occur in the UK, which some might say was a major contributor to Sunak's HS2 decimating of the project, then I have to say I think there are at least some merits in the Chinese system.

When the travelling public of the UK and our whole future economy can be held to ransom by tiny minorities, then surely you have to wonder about the merits of pandering to nimbyism. And when I say that, I'm not being unsympathetic to genuine concerns, I'm looking at things like HS1, where stress centres were set up to provide counselling for those who claimed their whole lives would be ruined by the horrendous Eurostar trains. Then in practice, when the route became operational, some of those complainants weren't even aware that trains were running. When we cow-tow to complainers to such a massive extent, this explains why HS2 and numerous other projects have met with the costs, delays and curtailments that they have.

 

[SynthD]

However, rather than just being bulldozed out of the way, you will be given the full value of your property, plus 20% for the inconvenience. Now, given the absolutely crazy amount of delays and legal expenses that occur in the UK

Isn’t it 25% in this country? We have planning delays, legal delays, and then a better premium than China.

 

[BrianW]

Services like CrossCountry are very overcrowded and expensive, and existing services like EMR are run by old rolling stock to the point where using HS2 is quicker.

I don't really want to go into restating things like agglomeration, business-to-business connectivity, existing capacity, existing slow routes etc, but suspect we'll get progressively sucked into it anyway ...

Looking across developed Europe, fast, frequent, and capacious rail connectivity between multiple populous metropolitan regions (West Midlands, East Midlands, South Yorks, West Yorks) over a distance of 130km or so is a consistent feature. I'd have thought such requirements would be well understood and accepted as 'hygiene' by now.

I agree. I'm not convinced that HS2E was 'the answer', and nor it seems were the politicians and 'bean counters' at DFT and the Treasury.

Longer (and more?) XC trains linking the 'national powerhouses' surely a high-value/ relatively low cost 'no-brainer'?

 

[NCT]

I agree. I'm not convinced that HS2E was 'the answer', and nor it seems were the politicians and 'bean counters' at DFT and the Treasury.

Longer (and more?) XC trains linking the 'national powerhouses' surely a high-value/ relatively low cost 'no-brainer'?

There is no capacity on the classic network, and speed does matter.

 

[HSTEd]

And doing a giant version of Man Vic will be even more limiting. For ever. Articulating this and making the case for a future proof solution is the difference between strategic leadership and looking at lines on a spreadsheet (so naturally I share your pessimism!)

And a big part of the Euston fiasco are questions of scope around the existing rail and tube station, both of which need £££ spending on them to properly deal with passengers they already have.

A six platform station is far from ideal, sure.
But once we account for the changing nature of the traffic as journey times fall, I don't think it will be a catastrophic problem.

What train planners were willing to commit to when the scheme was first scoped and what they will ultimately be able to achieve in practice are (probably) not the same thing.

 

[Bald Rick]

Radlett was only a quick thought in the spirit of this thread, it’s certainly not something I ever considered seriously.

It does nevertheless seem a little disappointing when there are so many knee-jerk negative reactions to ideas which might actually have a little merit for a scheme in the future.

My responses weren’t “knee jerk”, nor negative. I was just presenting some facts, having done a little research. I find it is good to consider the facts and do some research before making proposals.

would it really be such a bad thing for the UK to have a new railway that provides links both to and across the northern (Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield/Leeds) corridor, when HS2 has so spectacularly failed these areas?

Thats what HS2 and NPR together were designed to do.

Without research I don’t know how long it took for some of the HSR in France, Spain, China, Japan and other countries to be designed and completed

Again, worth doing some research. For example, the LGV between Bordeaux and Toulouse (almost entirely open country) was first studied in 2002. The public inquiry was completed in 2005. Laws for compulsory purchase were progressed in 2008. Big protest banners were up on the route in 2010, 2013 & 2017 when I visited (“LGV NON”). Funding promised in 2021. It has yet to start construction. This is by no means the only example in France, let alone elsewhere in Europe. Google “Stuttgart 21”.

However, rather than just being bulldozed out of the way, you will be given the full value of your property, plus 20% for the inconvenience. Now, given the absolutely crazy amount of delays and legal expenses that occur in the UK, which some might say was a major contributor to Sunak's HS2 decimating of the project, then I have to say I think there are at least some merits in the Chinese system.

Again, worth doing some research. The UK system, has very clear procedures in place for those who wish to challenge proposals (unlike in China), and full protections for those where the planning consent affects them.

The compensation regime is well established and is:

1. full value
2. plus all costs of moving including legals, removals, stamp duty, and other costs for items not easily moved (eg built in kitchens, carpets, sheds, etc)
3. plus 10% for the inconvenience.

In value terms, probably better than the Chinese system. In procedural terms, rather more democratic.

 

[HSTEd]

Viaducts are expensive and will have plenty of trouble with the planning system. I don't think the "everything on viaducts or in tunnels" model is a good one to follow - Japan does it (indeed they invented it) and pays for it by having the highest per-mile costs outside the UK.

Viaducts are not particularly expensive once you include the cost of all the earth works and arguments over relocation of utilities that surface running entails. Plus all the time consuming work it takes to relocate all of that.

The majority of utilities or other infrastructure can be ignored unless they just happen to occupy the footings for the viaduct supports (which make up a small portion of the footprint of the viaduct). And if you, like the Chinese, have two prefabricated length segments available you can position the supports to avoid most utilities you do know about with a high degree of certainty.

There is a reason China adopted this model as opposed to other methods of construction.

The UK (especially England) is a crowded country, this is not rural France or Spain.

 

[Stossgebet]

Would the Japanese viaducts be built with an element of regards to being earthquake resistant. Would the viaducts be able to absorb tremors, and act in a potentially more predictable manner during earthquakes?

i am not suggesting they are, i am just asking. And if so, is it maybe jist a side benefit, rather than a main motivation?

 

[BrianW]

I agree. I'm not convinced that HS2E was 'the answer', and nor it seems were the politicians and 'bean counters' at DFT and the Treasury.

Longer (and more?) XC trains linking the 'national powerhouses' surely a high-value/ relatively low cost 'no-brainer'?

There is no capacity on the classic network, and speed does matter.

Do longer trains eat network capacity?

Does increased speed produce sufficiently more custom to repay the investment?

What was it anticipated that HS2 would 'deliver'; does that still hold post-pandemic?

Where will GBR obtain best 'bang for it's (my) buck'?

Where will promises of expenditure obtain most votes/ seats? Different question; maybe that will be XC/HS2E along the 'red wall'?

 

[FGWHST43009]

Services like CrossCountry are very overcrowded and expensive, and existing services like EMR are run by old rolling stock to the point where using HS2 is quicker.

Precisely the reason why I would also want HS2 East. I may be on the extreme end of things but as a student from South Wales studying in Newcastle it's a real lucky dip as to whether the train will run on time. If HS2 and Midlands Rail Hub were built in full my journey could be much quicker. Everyone on the NE-SW CrossCountry route north of benefits. I reckon it would've been faster to get HS2 to Curzon Street and change for a fast train from Moor St than today's direct. As much as I would like the existing service to be quicker, it just won't happen as you'd have to rewrite most of the timetable. York-Leeds-Sheffield is probably the bit that needs more capacity, as well as the ECML, which from the timetable issues, can be described as full.

 

[eldomtom2]

Viaducts are not particularly expensive once you include the cost of all the earth works and arguments over relocation of utilities that surface running entails.

But that's not borne out when you compare costs per mile of different HSR projects and find that an increased amount of viaducts correlates with higher per-mile costs.

 

[HSTEd]

But that's not borne out when you compare costs per mile of different HSR projects and find that an increased amount of viaducts correlates with higher per-mile costs.

Such a correlation is not really sufficient to make the cflaim that we should build lines without viaducts.
That just means countries with more viaducts have schemes that optimise to a higher cost per mile, not that the viaducts are responsible for this.

You'd have to construct a counterfactual where the countries that built lines with lots of viaducts built lines wiht no viaducts on comparable routes and compare the cost.

If you are in a deeply rural area with noone around viaducts are less likely to be optimal because there are no roads or utilities around to impact.
But in a more populated area viaducts are preferred because they reduce the number of utility diversions, but don't help you with the other challenges of building in a higher density area.

 

[Nottingham59]

The compensation regime is well established and is:

1. full value
2. plus all costs of moving including legals, removals, stamp duty, and other costs for items not easily moved (eg built in kitchens, carpets, sheds, etc)
3. plus 10% for the inconvenience.

Does that (3) 10% uplift apply to (1) Full value of the property, or just to (2) costs of moving?

If it applies to the full value, then increasing the uplift to 20% would in my opinion solve a lot of problems in getting new infrastructure built.

 

[Bald Rick]

Does that (3) 10% uplift apply to (1) Full value of the property, or just to (2) costs of moving?

If it applies to the full value, then increasing the uplift to 20% would in my opinion solve a lot of problems in getting new infrastructure built.

The property.

Trust me, another 10% would make littke difference.