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HS2 Reset: Evidence to Transport Committee - 9 July 2025 "Total overspend on high-speed rail could be as much as 100%"
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Hasn't there? Lots of stations have had car park development in recent years.
Multi-storey car park at HS2 Interchange Station scrapped
Plans for a multi-storey car park at the HS2 Interchange Station at the Arden Cross development have been scrapped. An initial 2,750-space surface-level car park has been agreed by Solihull Council as the preferred option and hailed as an ‘incredible success’ by the council leader.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
But the shortened version of HS2 does still mean an increase in capacity on the existing and busy Southern end of the West Coast Main Line to cater for commuters needing to travel between parts of the Birmingham to Euston (classic) route. A doubling of frequency of LNWR services North of somewhere like Milton Keynes, Northampton or even Coventry would dramatically improve the attractiveness of rail over using the M1 or M6 (or M45).
Yes, as per IRP, but in fact, in a recent foi disclosure on network north reveals there was an internal comment that hs2 east cancellation would reduce the business case for mml electrification.
And that would be attractive for morehousing. The first whitepapers specifically talked about housing growth in the corridor, which is connected to significant economic growth in the oxcam arc.
And Milton Keynes has actually been named one of the seven potential new towns. Encouragingly five of the seven new towns are more like urban infills / densifications of existing cities.
The existing central Milton Keynes can be comprehensively redeveloped to a high-density urban character mixed-use district. Adding 20,000 in population over a 2km^2 area while maintaining / increasing the supply of office-based employment space should be fairly straightforward.
Densification is a very interesting idea - as long as the sewage systems can cope!
I have thought for quite a while that the hollowing out of our towns and loss of retail from high streets could be addressed by replacing in-town shopping precincts with affordable and social housing together with useful retail. "High quality" housing (think Barbican) should be possible too.
Happening in Reading with the Oracle shopping centre. The good thing about that is you're providing extra customers to the stores and entertainment in the town centre and the homes are less likely to require private vehicles being near, in the cases of MK and Reading, major rail hubs.
Oxcam is a great example of how the railway can enable economic activity, and but doesn't show in the BCRs because it requires several policies to come together - such as, and as you say, ensuring sewage, but also reservoirs. Original plan for oxcam was 1 million homes and hs2 would have been a big part of providing infrastructure for that. Now only on 2-3 north-south corridors rather than 5, but still.
Which sewers are you concerned about?
Surface water; well all new developments (especially brownfield sites which these would be) have to demonstrate that they are not increasing flood risk downstream. This is fairly easy to do by retaining water on site during peak storms and letting it out slowly.
In urban areas this can include having rooftop terraces (including planting which soaks up some of the water) with water storage underneath. Some of those rooftop vantage points in London are good examples of what can be done.
Foul water; this is harder, although the developers do have to fund any upgrades to the network and often these are fairly limited as you often don't have to increase pipe sizes over a very long length in urban areas (although you may need to do this to several lengths of pipe).
This is because you can serve a lot of houses (the starting point to need to upgrade from a 150mm pipe is over 200 homes and the latter has a cross sectional area of 2.25 times the size of the former) from a 225mm pipe and a more again from a 300mm one (which is 1.77 times larger than the 225mm one and a 450mm pipe is 2.25 larger than the 300mm pipe or nearly 4 times the size of the 225mm pipe).
To put the above into context, surface water drainage will often need 225mm pipes after a few houses and 300mm pipes from a few dozen houses.
Whilst a lot of people are concerned about drainage (and rightly so), due to government planning policy new developments actually reduce food risk (which also reduces the risk of foul water entering the water courses, as whilst there's be more foul water, even small changes in the reduced water discharge from rainwater would more than compensate for this).
It's why, if we can improve busses and cycle facilities, which in turn allows more people to use the same amount of road space (a near empty bus with just 8 people on, where the bus is taking up the road space of 2 cars, is carrying the same number of people as 5 cars typically would - so a bus with 20 to 50 people on would be carrying a lot of cars worth of people) and providing new rail capacity (be that more lines or extra seats on existing trains, which really frees up road space for other users, a 3 coach train with seats for 200 people can carry 130 cars worth of people, whilst 6tph with 6 coaches can carry the same number of people as a very busy road*) we could increase housing density and so provide a significant amount of extra housing without needing much more land space or road space.
* To link this back to HS2 then with it running 15tph with 1,100 seats it can carry 92.5% the number of people as three motorways with 3 lanes in each direction (or slightly more than two motorways with 4 lanes in each direction), and whilst there's been a lot of concerns about the land take of HS2 (although a lot of this land is associated with bunds and other earthworks which will be landscaped) it would require far more land to build the comparable motorways.
The cross seconal width of a 4 lane urban motorway (each direction), excluding any edge verge, is around 38.5m (as you'd need two this would be around 77m of corridor take), this compares with HS2 which with the access road alongside is under 25m wide (neither include earthworks as these would be green areas their impact on wildlife, carbon emissions, etc would be limited and so are reasonable to exclude).
I agree with all this, I was thinking that brownfield sites' roof drainage would be reduced by modern buildings, but adding high density housing into or replacing shops / warehousing would dramatically increase the load on the actual sewage works, even if the same volume arrived because of the removal of rainwater flows.
I travelled from near Fenchurch Street to home last night was
1) 10 minute walk to Aldgate
2) wait for tube, 11 minutes to Euston Square
3) 5 minutes to Euston
So 30 minutes already.
I arrived 10 minutes early for the train to Crewe, it left 8 minutes late. So it's 50 minutes before pulling out
The train is scheduled to take 96 minutes, it took 103 minutes
I then had to wait 45 minutes for my connection, and then 21 minutes to my local station, followed by a 20 minute walk home
Entire trip was thus 4 hours.
If HS2 journey time from Euston to Crewe by 20%, it would have reduced my overall journey time by 8%.
A half hourly service from Crewe to Shrewsbury would save more than HS2.
In the morning my arrival into Crewe was delayed due to congestion and platform schenanegans at Crewe. I pulled into platform 5, with the London train on platform 1, a mere 20 seconds away, with the doors closing as we waited for our train doors to open.
Unless you're doing a point-to-point journey, speeding up the long distance part doesn't make much difference.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
I agree. Frequency trumps quite a lot plus also reducing the number of connections reduces risk (also called spare time to change trains). I worked that out in the 1980s when travelling from the Medway towns to the BBC at Shepherds Bush !. Eventually my solution was to move nearer - to Croydon (it was nice back then).
The way this would work in regards to HS2 is if the frequency on the West Coast Mainline for existing services was increased as a result of stripping out the faster services. That covers the services that stop at more stations. So not necessarily Euston to Crewe except the frequency uplift on LNWR might become attractive in your case. Then again HS2 will have room for more fast services as well because there will not be any semi fast services cluttering HS2 up - that is unless someone gives in to the desire for intermediate stops at hamlets with virtually no population !.
Now something I have been trying to do is steer clear of most of the discussion on this thread about justifying or otherwise HS2.
As per the subject - this HS2 reset. Is this really an opportunity to properly evaluate the benefits of HS2 and its costs and/or options for getting nearer to Manchester ?.
Or is it just a kicking the can down the road. Putting off any decision until the next party gets into power. HS2 is in danger therefore of dying due to forgetting it exists.
You might have made an earlier connection though, and the chances of disruption would be reduced.
The largest market: London - Manchester is one where frequency is already high (3tph) and a large proportion of passengers have (Manchester end) onward access not sensitive to low-frequency trains.
There seems to be a tendency on these boards by minority rural folks to trivialise majority urban/metropolitan experiences and impacts.
There seems to be a tendency on these boards by minority rural folks to trivialise majority urban/metropolitan experiences and impacts.
actually out here in the sticks (by which I mean not in London) there are quite a few onward rail services which are only hourly even in the conurbations. Trams may be more frequent but serve remarkably few parts of the country...
The rural minority often have to make do with 2-hourly.
I would respond to @miami that this is why I want HS2 to be seen as a major upgrade to our railway network. So another part of the strategy to encourage modal shift will be onward connections at a frequency that doesn't leave HS2 as just an airline-on-wheels for the favoured few.
The “jointly enabling” point is true for other transport modes, of course, and as you note for infrastructure more generally. Hence the importance of the strategic context section of the business case and of programme and now place-based business cases which incorporate the full range of costs and benefits. That said, a prudent, no -regrets policy would favour projects that still stack up even if the other elements in the overall package fail to progress.
Again this is overstating the importance of hourly land. Onward travel ranges from walking and cycling, bus, tram/metro, half-hourly rail connections, taxi / car pick-up. Inbound visitors overwhelmingly go to city centre offices / attractions or go to city centre hotels, which outside of London is a walking job. These are the prevailing chunk of inter-city rail demand - calling them 'the favoured few' is misrepresentation.
This stuff matters, because as a country we desperately needs to improve and expand the metropolitan economy, where the majority of people are concentrated on small land mass. Yes, a lot of things still need improving, but things are not quite as bad as people make out. A lot of commentators default to the idyllic English countryside view of things which is not representative of how the economy actually functions. I dare say much of this is because of Telegraph journalists who live in the Chilterns and Cheshire.
/rant.
One of the problems there is with the selling of the idea of HS2 is that it's not been able to talk about what other services could be delivered because of its development.
For example, what additional local services could see improvements at Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, etc due to the relocation of long distance services (which might include other terminating services by XC, TPE and the like if suitable junctions were built).
Such a gap in information means that people are unable to identify if HS2 could just to a better frequency for their local services or even just the potential of longer trains for those services.
As an example, whilst some of the services would be needed to run to serve existing stations leading into Manchester served by Avanti, there's two things which are overlooked by those who talk about these services still being needed.
Firstly, such a service might not need to be a class 390 (and by the time of HS2 reaching Manchester they may not have long left and it's unlikely that they'll be replaced with tilting trains) as such it's possible that they could be 5 coaches long and take up half a platform rather than a full one.
Secondly some of these services may become regional services and so may not need to occupy the platforms for so long (again shorter trains may save a bit of cleaning time at the end of the service, likewise with shorter on train durations of passengers the volume of rubbish is likely to be reduced).
As such if these services could be turned around in 20 minutes then following change could be made (now I've used letters for the platforms to identify them, the actual platform could be any suitable platform):
Existing:
Platform A
xx:00 Avanti class 390
xx:30 another service (or two if shorter
Platform B
xx:20 Avanti class 390
xx:50 another service (or two if shorter lengths)
Platform C
xx:40 Avanti class 390
xx:10 another service (or two if shorter lengths)
Total:
3 class 390 services
6 local services of 6 coaches
Post HS2
Platform A
xx:00 Avanti class 80x 5 coach
xx:05 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:20 Avanti class 80x 5 coach
xx:25 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:40 Avanti class 80x 5 coach
xx:45 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
Platform B
xx:00 local service 6 coaches
xx:05 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:20 local service 6 coaches
xx:25 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:40 local service 6 coaches
xx:45 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
Platform C
xx:00 local service 6 coaches
xx:05 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:20 local service 6 coaches
xx:25 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
xx:40 local service 6 coaches
xx:45 local service 6 coaches (stacked)
Total
3 class 80x services with 5 coaches
15 local services with 6 coaches
Of those extra 9 services of they had been running already they would have likely have been shorter length services, so will instantly benefit from more capacity, and the platform space that they previously needed can now be used to lengthen other services, for example:
Existing (all on one platform in a 20 minute block)
Service A - 4 coaches, service B - 4 coaches and service C - 4 coaches
Post HS2:
Service C gets moved to stack with other services from the released capacity - 6 coaches
Service A - 6 coaches, service B - 6 coaches
That's a potential of 27 services going from 4 to 6 coaches.
Whilst new services may reduce that uplift you could see 9 services increasing to 6 coaches and service frequency increases (retaining 4 coaches)
- 9 lines seeing train frequencies rising from hourly to half hourly with 4 coach services
- 9 lines seeing train frequencies rising from half hourly to every 20 minutes with 4 coach services
- 4 lines seeing train frequencies rising from half hourly to every 15 minutes and one seeing train frequencies rising from half hourly to every 20 minutes with 4 coach services
- a mixture of the above
There is a reasonably good reason why there's not been details given of the potential tertiary improvements, that being that something which would have made sense in 2009 might not be the best option in 2026, let alone post 2030.
However, it would have been possible to have given a high level overview for the above giving a draft improvement list adding the lines of:
By reducing the time needed from the current requirement Manchester (or Leeds or Birmingham - adjust accordingly) could see the following:
- 9 services across a few key lines see their services lengthen from 4 coaches to 6 coaches
- 4 lines see train frequencies improve from 1tph to 2tph
- 1 lines see train frequencies improve from 2tph to 4tph
- 3 lines see train frequencies improve from 2tph to 3tph
- potential for future schemes (including but not limited to Northern Powerhouse Rail) to relocate XC and maybe TPE services to the HS2 platforms to allow further capacity and frequency improvements to local services
That would have been a much bigger political loss when Boris cancel the Eastern arm and when Sunak cancelled into Manchester. It would have also made the case made by those opposed to HS2 much harder (especially the "we don't need HS2, we just need better services in the North" argument).
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
One of the things people think about the rural population (which is about 15% of the total) is that they all live in small villages with a pub if their lucky.
The government definition of rural (and defines that about 15% value) can include places with 5 pubs, 4 churches, 2 supermarkets, a village centre with 4 fat food options, a travel agent, butchers, 2 petrol stations, 2 garages offering servicing and MOT's, a car sales garage, 2 other (i.e. not churches) community buildings, a railway station with 2tph, some large office buildings suitable for the likes of Senco to use, 4 storey blocks of flats and several other small town features.
That's because to be rural the settlement only needs to be smaller than 10,000 people.
You don't need many places of 9,000 people to house 50% of those places classed as rural (around 600). You need broadly the same with populations of 2,000 to make up just 11% of the rural population and that percentage falls as the population size shrinks.
To the point that a very small percentage of that rural population (and a very tiny amount of the total population) really lives in the "ideal" small English village with just a post office and pub (if you're lucky) - note you're more likely in Scotland and Wales, but then those who portray the ideal often want it to be English.
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Snow1964
Established Member
Although frequency only really works without advance tickets, where can just get on first train when connecting.
If get penalties for being on wrong train, then every connection adds risk of missing specific one, so people naturally build in extra connection time or arrival time, which has opposite effect. So in an advance ticket world need more individual trains doing longer routes without connections.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
If a connection is missed with an Advance ticket (whether one or multiple) then you just board the next one of the right TOC, which by then will just be GBR anyway. You do need to build in extra time at the start though, which is one reason that is often suggested for why Euston's concourse is busier than it used to be.
InTheEastMids
Established Member
- Joined
- 31 Jan 2016
- Messages
- 1,382
I don't agree. Even back in 2015, DfT/HS2 published a report (linked below). On page 11, it sets out what WCML services could look like after HS2 Phase 1 opens. This is one of the critical benefits of the project, but I don't remember HS2/DfT ever providing a proper narrative of the post-HS2 network.
Even now, HS2's communications are still dominated by stats that relate to inputs and activities. The concrete poured, the mud moved, structures and machines. In a recent comms, they talk in suprising detail about Curzon Street - 2011 piles apparently. But I'd be surprised if anybody that didn't work for HS2 or its contractors cared. But on the important stuff like capacity release, we get a handwavy statement about freeing up space on the WCML. That has no meaning for normal people. If they think Tamworth, Tile Hill or wherever will get twice as many trains, then say so.
Presumably HS2’s communications say nothing about the legacy WCML because they won’t be running those services? It’s up to the TOC/GBR to negotiate future services. Given you can’t realistically free up capacity until HS2 runs to Euston, that’s a decade away. Who can say what a future service pattern might look like then?
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Yes indeed. I regularly turn up at Euston with over 30 minutes spare. First because I do not trust my mode of public transport getting me there but also because it is nice to have time to work out which platform my advanced booked service is on before they deem it necessary to trigger the stampede when the platform is announced with minutes to spare.
Perhaps when Euston has the extra (11 ?) HS2 platforms then platforming can be a bit more civilised.
This indicates that HS2 is very inward looking and does not want to accept that there is a real world of customers out there. But then are they supposed to be bothered with things beyond building it - like running it ?.
Someone should.
So daft. HS2 should try harder to sell the thing. Even if that means making SUGGESTIONS of what other bodies could do to improve services on the West Coast Main Line. After all HS2 are not going to be blamed if those other bodies fail to deliver.
It's government(s) that need to sell things like HS2, and they completely failed.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Almost as though the government really have no interest in railways.
But then sadly that probably reflects the vast majority of the electorate.
The Planner
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 15 Apr 2008
- Messages
- 19,628
HS2 won't be running anything, the proposal was/is that the West Coast Partnership does.
It will be NR/GBR that decides that, not HS2.
Nottingham59
Established Member
Thanks for this. I've not seen it before. Interesting that HS2 expected to get 12tph through Colwich with Phase 1 (7tph from HS2, in blue in the attached extract) and 5tph from the WCML, in red and green). With no mention of freight. Was that robustly modelled? Or were the figures just wishful thinking, like their financial forecasts turned out to be?
[Image shows clip from "the indicative HS2 Phase One service pattern that has been presented to the hybrid Bill Committee".]
EDIT: And 5tph to Manchester. How were they planning to path those through South Manchester?
HS2 had to operate within the prevailing rail industry and political environment. There was a good deal of released capacity narrative in technical documents but politicians of the day were more interested in the speed argument. Released capacity service patterns were only ever modelling assumptions, and this country has never been good at whole network timetabling. It wasn't in HS2 Ltd's remit to develop a validated whole network timetable - without express political direction it would be treading on too many toes. Without the confidence of a validated timetable ministers wouldn't want to make policy statements about location X getting Y improvements. It was a failure of politics, and we all know what the state of politics has been like since 2016. HS2 Ltd had to navigate that political landscape.
These same arguments have been rehearsed for at least the last 10 years. There's been a lot of water under the bridge. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good seems to be a pastime of this forum.
These same arguments have been rehearsed for at least the last 10 years. There's been a lot of water under the bridge. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good seems to be a pastime of this forum.
The point I was making wasn't to do with retained WCML capacity, rather the sort of improvements which could be delivered to local services within cities and city regions.
Whilst there will be some crossover (when it comes to platform capacity and usage) I'm not sure that those reports ever talked about, or even hinted at, how there could be yet wider benefits to the local services as well as the longer distance services.
There's this from WMCA, which is not all hs2 released capacity, but does base a lot of the plans on it. https://wmre.org.uk/our-strategies/west-midlands-rail-investment-strategy/
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
There was some work from midland connect on their midland engine rail plan, which proposed some extra interventions to make the most of released capacity and some additional hs2 routes https://www.midlandsconnect.uk/media/1593/final-mer-report.pdf
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The problem is that recasting a timetable can produce winners and losers. Whenever an hs2 planet assumptions report was published, those opposing the project would look for the losers and then claim hs2 would make journeys slower. Such stories featured in Gilligan's early anti hs2 articles and stophs2 campaigning. Somehow, that sort of false argument ended up in "Network North".
Planet assumptions weren't intended to be the end specification, it was conservative in its assumptions and there were a number of different ways the capacity could be used depending on the focus and needs at the time. You couldn't promise a certain spec, though I think they would have done well to brand a new type of high frequency service that would run on wcml post hs2.
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