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The UK has corruption and lots of it. Particularly in local government but also in national government too. As Robert Jenrick proved.
There is a reason why the UK’s Transparency International index score has been steadily decreasing for years (where low means bad and high means good) and now the UK’s score actually isn’t very much higher than Qatar’s score.
Chesham and Aylesbury are surprisingly deprived towns, certainly in parts. Amersham and the Chalfonts are the opposite.
Must be a pure coincidence that the line goes into a tunnel to the east of the Chalfonts, running underneath the Chalfonts and Amersham. Also a coincidence that the line comes back above ground just to the west of Chesham before running through the southern edge of Aylesbury.
All these people criticising NIMBYs and none of them are offering to swap houses with them. They could do their bit for Britain and they choose not to. Why do we think that is?
Houses in Fairford Leys that are a similar size to mine go for about double the price.
The worst of the nimbies live in large detached houses worth 5 times as much again.
Sure, I'll swap if any of them want to move to an ex-council estate in Yorkshire...
Not north it doesn’t. And given people don’t actually live in Aylesbury station even if the train took 45 minutes from there to OOC we are still talking a minimum of 90 minutes or so from one’s home to boarding the train in London. You’d be comfortably north of Birmingham in the car before the train had passed your house.
The big issue with any of these parkways is that you would generate a huge amount of inward commuting to London from this station, plus the local traffic in that area would become horrific. If you left it as a rail led site, the usage probably wouldn't be high enough to justify (at least at the HS2 EWR interchange). I think the only sensible site for such a station is where HS2 meets the Aylesbury to Princes Risborough line, or at Wendover but really, I don't think it's that necessary/useful as it will likely slow down London-Birmingham by 3-5mins for limited benefit.
They typically get many hundreds of thousands of passengers a year. Some are getting over 500k passengers a year.
Given you can only get to two places seriously from e.g Le Cresout TGV it compares pretty favourably with e.g Nuneaton which has 400k passengers to London.
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I must admit that every time I have used the M40, it has been free flowing, the only exceptions being when someone has been careless enough to crash their vehicle, so unless I have been extraordinarily lucky over the last 20 years, I am struggling to see any significant benefit in reducing traffic on a normally free flowing motorway. Reduce it on the M6 and I'm interested.
Getting people from the Thames valley to use HS2 to go on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland or to visit friends in Liverpool/Manchester would reduce traffic on the M6.
And HS2 would be massively massively faster than driving the whole way assuming you don’t have to waste the better part of two hours getting into London and out again.
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There is absolutely definitely spare capacity on the other lines aside from LGV Sud Est.
Do not forget that SNCF are hyper conservative about scheduling. There’s a small 1km section of single track after a grade separated junction off the Bordeaux line to the bypass. SNCF claim it limits capacity to 1 train per hour per direction. Us and the Swiss would run 6 per direction very comfortably.
At least in the case of M40 J9 to Calvert, that is not the situation. Google navigation reckons 20 minutes to the "Great Moor Sailing Club" adjacent to where EWR and HS2 meet, and after turning off the A41 it's in the kind of road that you wouldn't want to be sending much traffic along. The NIMBYs along that way would have a point. Plus it only addresses access from the west, things are no better in any other direction from Calvert.
I think the civils will permit a second track to be laid at some future juncture, too. Though probably not soon, if there's going to be a 90mph railway with no initial traffic...
At least in the case of M40 J9 to Calvert, that is not the situation. Google navigation reckons 20 minutes to the "Great Moor Sailing Club" adjacent to where EWR and HS2 meet, and after turning off the A41 it's in the kind of road that you wouldn't want to be sending much traffic along. The NIMBYs along that way would have a point. Plus it only addresses access from the west, things are no better in any other direction from Calvert
They don’t though. When they are late at New Street they can get through in 4 minutes.
The rest is delay recovery - it’s just the Japanese put it purely in the running time.
If we had the train carriages marked out on the platform, had painted queues setup etc, and made it clear on board it was a “brief stop” and that people should be stood up by the doors before the train arrived we could do small stops quicker than 2 minutes.
So we're building miles of new roads to this station now? HS2 was never going to have a station between OOC and Birmingham Interchange, and if it did then it wouldn't be at Calvert precisely because the only decent interchange available there is with rail.
So we're building miles of new roads to this station now? HS2 was never going to have a station between OOC and Birmingham Interchange, and if it did then it wouldn't be at Calvert precisely because the only decent interchange available there is with rail.
If we had the train carriages marked out on the platform, had painted queues setup etc, and made it clear on board it was a “brief stop” and that people should be stood up by the doors before the train arrived we could do small stops quicker than 2 minutes.
I'd love to believe the UK could adopt Japanese culture in this respect. But people won't even move aside to let passengers off the train first so I won't hold my breath.
I'd love to believe the UK could adopt Japanese culture in this respect. But people won't even move aside to let passengers off the train first so I won't hold my breath.
You don’t have to make absolutely everyone happy, that’s impossible as some people are completely unreasonable. What you have to do is to make a serious attempt at addressing the more reasonable majority.
I'd love to believe the UK could adopt Japanese culture in this respect. But people won't even move aside to let passengers off the train first so I won't hold my breath.
They’re no more or less selfish than the politicians who insist that The Thing must be built, and The Thing must be built right next to the poor people’s houses.
Ever noticed how these big construction projects never go through the areas where the influential politicians live?
We even saw that with HS2, George Osborne (who was an MP in Cheshire) made sure the line didn’t go through his constituency. And the line through suburban Birmingham very carefully goes through all the poor areas and not the rich ones. Where the rich people’s land absolutely can’t be avoided then they get a tunnel. Weird.
It’s the same everywhere. Here the government have decided we must have an on-shore wind farm. Two sites were selected as the best. One was near where the Chief Minister lives, the other was at the other end of the island. Care to guess which one was objectively decided by the government to be the better choice?
I disagree. I think insisting on something being built for the benefit of wider society is less selfish than objecting to it because they don't want it near them. I won't suggest leaving them out of any consultation before locking in a final design and contract, but we can't end up just building nothing nowhere when we absolutely need new infrastructure. "Build The Thing" selfishness can sometimes better society even if it brings temporary discomfort. NIMBY selfishness benefits nobody but themselves. So yes, I would definitely say more selfish.
It should never have been started, those of us who are against it have always said it would end up being a disaster. I can’t say I take any pleasure in being in proven right.
I don't think it was inevitable though. If this country could actually build things efficiently we wouldn't be dealing with such a fiasco and could've been operating Phase 1 this year. But alas we haven't laid down a single piece of rail line. I won't go over why we need it because your mind is already made up and it'll veer off topic, but let's not pretend like it was a Cassandra Truth to say everything would've went as horribly as it did.
A decision being democratic does not make the grounds not spurious. It means the decision reflects the will of the electorate which in this case is nimbyism.
The extent to which we make planning decisions based on evaluating the benefits to society as a whole rather than the preferences of the people who happen to be living nearby to the area (ignoring the people who might live nearby in the future or use the infrastructure that's built there) is an interesting question. I think in this country we have avoided really answering the question by pretending there are solutions that please everyone.
That's largely because most of those stations were designed very poorly, with no integration with regional rail or buses. So instead of these stops being quite a useful transport hub for the surrounding region, it's a cut-off parkway stop. If there were better connectivity and regular calls at these stations, they'd be well-used and would likely win a few rural votes. SNCF isn't too interested in building an integrated network though, their focus is on profitable intercity services.
At least in the case of M40 J9 to Calvert, that is not the situation. Google navigation reckons 20 minutes to the "Great Moor Sailing Club" adjacent to where EWR and HS2 meet, and after turning off the A41 it's in the kind of road that you wouldn't want to be sending much traffic along. The NIMBYs along that way would have a point. Plus it only addresses access from the west, things are no better in any other direction from Calvert.
And as a resident of Oxford I'd personally like that. But rail interchange at a station that is basically surrounded by fields isn't going to justify building the station and stopping the trains there. Anyone willing to interchange onto HS2 services from the surrounding areas will be able to do so easily at Birmingham Interchange (XC and WCML) or Curzon Street (Chiltern line), where there'd be many more trains calling.
The UK has corruption and lots of it. Particularly in local government but also in national government too. As Robert Jenrick proved.
There is a reason why the UK’s Transparency International index score has been steadily decreasing for years (where low means bad and high means good) and now the UK’s score actually isn’t very much higher than Qatar’s score.
Democratically elected officials making democratic decisions. The horror!
Chesham and Aylesbury are surprisingly deprived towns, certainly in parts. Amersham and the Chalfonts are the opposite.
Must be a pure coincidence that the line goes into a tunnel to the east of the Chalfonts, running underneath the Chalfonts and Amersham. Also a coincidence that the line comes back above ground just to the west of Chesham before running through the southern edge of Aylesbury.
Most towns have some deprived area somewhere. The poor are always with us. HS2 cuts through through swathes of affluent countryside, a much, much higher proportion than of poorer areas. It manages to cut across half of Warwickshire without passing through or even near any of the deprivation in that county. And even if it did - so what? Money talks, as you have already pointed out, and so it does everywhere in the world. A good incentive to get oneself out of deprivation!
I don't think it was inevitable though. If this country could actually build things efficiently we wouldn't be dealing with such a fiasco and could've been operating Phase 1 this year. But alas we haven't laid down a single piece of rail line. I won't go over why we need it because your mind is already made up and it'll veer off topic, but let's not pretend like it was a Cassandra Truth to say everything would've went as horribly as it did.
Why didn't we know we were incapable of building it to cost. That's the actual question!!
IMHO - (a) almost everyone likes a new railway, (b) everyone wants to draw their own railway (crayon), (c) someone has to procrastinate and decide which scribble of crayons to build, (d) the government contracts out the work, badly, (e) those whose scribble was rejected insist their scribble was better and introduce more years of delay and procrastination, variation orders, legal challenges etc.
If we'd known then what we know now .. then we should've all packed up and gone home, but they spent the money on a fast line that isn't going to be ready for a decade instead of the local line, so I'm afraid we'll have to pack up, and walk or catch the bus home instead..
And as a resident of Oxford I'd personally like that. But rail interchange at a station that is basically surrounded by fields isn't going to justify building the station and stopping the trains there. Anyone willing to interchange onto HS2 services from the surrounding areas will be able to do so easily at Birmingham Interchange (XC and WCML) or Curzon Street (Chiltern line), where there'd be many more trains calling.
The good old fashioned country junction is a relic from a time when travel patterns were very different. You'd never build a station at Dovey Junction now.
I would probably prefer an EWR trundle to "Calvert Parkway" than a trip on XC, too. But since I could pick up HS2 at Birmingham (or even OOC) I can't see how that justifies building a station there.
They don’t though. When they are late at New Street they can get through in 4 minutes.
The rest is delay recovery - it’s just the Japanese put it purely in the running time.
If we had the train carriages marked out on the platform, had painted queues setup etc, and made it clear on board it was a “brief stop” and that people should be stood up by the doors before the train arrived we could do small stops quicker than 2 minutes.
With all due respect, unless you are hiding something, I am a lot closer to it than you. Just because they do it on occasion in 4 minutes doesn't mean that applies all the time.
I would probably prefer an EWR trundle to "Calvert Parkway" than a trip on XC, too. But since I could pick up HS2 at Birmingham (or even OOC) I can't see how that justifies building a station there
With all due respect, unless you are hiding something, I am a lot closer to it than you. Just because they do it on occasion in 4 minutes doesn't mean that applies all the time.
But most people who could make use of it could already drive or catch a train north to Birmingham and pick up the train there. Calvert is in the middle of nowhere, there's next to no local catchment and it's nowhere near any significant road.
You can’t from Oxford Parkway as well as from Aylesbury and further south as there are no through services, and from Bicester/Haddenham and Thame/High Wycombe you only can get the services that start at Birmingham Curzon street and it takes at least 1h10 to get there.
Oxford to Birmingham international is an hour as well, so not the fastest. That will be more reasonable when they run all the cross country services that way.
But it won't be just five minutes, nor just one extra stop - if you add an Aylesbury HS2, there will be several others demanding their own local stop.
With HS2 (the clue is in the name, High Speed) it needs to be the minimum number of stops, with other (Chiltern, WCML) services serving the intermediate stops
M25: Not really, from a public transport perspective.
Claydon: Depends to what extent the Chiltern residents accept additional development. As stated upthread, EWR transfer options aren't massively helpful as both Bletchley and Oxford have good links to Birmingham, however it'd be a convenient 1-transfer option from Cambridge and Bedford. What'd make or break it are the connections to the towns it actually serves. Other than a massive car park, an extension of the London - Aylesbury Vale line out to Brackley/Buckingham with timed connections to/from HS2 trains (think Montabaur in Germany) would help with that, plus a bus interchange. Any major Tempsford-style development wouldn't be popular amongst the locals but you could probably get away with some science parks / offices (particularly as it's on the OxCam corridor). Either way, it wouldn't work without at least 2 trains an hour.
But it won't be just five minutes, nor just one extra stop - if you add an Aylesbury HS2, there will be several others demanding their own local stop.
With HS2 (the clue is in the name, High Speed) it needs to be the minimum number of stops, with other (Chiltern, WCML) services serving the intermediate stops
There are a lot of HS2 services. Plenty to spread around with different stopping patterns.
I suggested at the start that assuming 15tph overall you could do 3 stops with 3tph and 2tph in between that run non stop but with pathing allowance. And yes that means slowing all of your services down by 5/6 minutes or whatever, but you’d be gaining many millions of passengers. The nearby population density for Avignon, Aix and Valence TGV is somewhat higher than along HS2 perhaps, but they get 3-4 million passengers each which is very respectable.
If you got say 2 million a stop, that’d be 10-15% more total passengers in exchange for a 5-6 minute delay. And M25, Kenilworth and Stone, Staffordshire would likely do significantly better than that.
Our problem with NIMBY car owners not caring about infrastructure (for cars and not) is that we don't listen to them enough? And if we did listen to them more, they'd have a consistent request, and it would be your request? That's not my experience, the term Build Absolutely Nothing Absolutely Near Anywhere, BANANA, is accurate.
Emphasis added. The airport has 61m users and is five miles from the city centre. The station has long (the largest airport station in the country) and short distance rail services (which continue on to city suburbs/dormitory towns), more like Charles De Gaulle. I don't see how it's comparable to an M25 station, it's worth focusing on a valid comparison rather than a wildly hopeful one. The car park next to the station has 3000 spaces (more than Birmingham Interchange was once due to have) and seems to bill itself as a destination, as they spent a billion euros on it. https://www.thesquaire.com/#parking
With your proposal now featuring multiple intermediate stations and alternate stopping patterns south of Birmingham, it’s no longer HS2. Instead, it’s a second Chiltern Main Line.
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