HS2 should stop at more stations in the Chilterns

[MatthewHutton]

which would abstract heavily from passengers from Bicester, Banbury, Brackley, Buckingham, Towcester and the west side of MK.

OK so Buckingham, Brackley, Towcester don't have train services at the moment, so yes you would get those people and yes some of those would be using the train from Banbury/Bicester/MK as it stands, but there would be growth too.

From Bicester, you can get to London as it stands in 48-50 minutes at the moment and from Banbury in 62-65, so is it really worth going to the HS2 stop and changing?

How much have you allowed for the necessary improvements to the road network in your estimate?

How many road improvements have been done for other parkway stations?

 

[Starmill]

Because it’s Aylesbury+Oxford+Bicester+the surrounding towns to Birmingham and Manchester and likely other destinations with changes.

But all of those places have far, far, far more London demand than anywhere else on their current trains, this would be no different.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jun 2026 ==

Why do you think the intermediate stops in other countries aren’t practical?

They're generally not. Otherwise they'd exist. As per the previous several pages of the discussion where you say they exist and then it's pointed out they do not.

 

[MatthewHutton]

But all of those places have far, far, far more London demand than anywhere else on their current trains, this would be no different.

In part because the service is far, far, far worse away from London.

They're generally not. Otherwise they'd exist. As per the previous several pages of the discussion where you say they exist and then it's pointed out they do not

They do exist though. No one has pointed out that there aren’t intermediate stops in areas where there are towns of any reasonable size.

All people have said is that there aren’t stops in rural France. Which is true but it is also almost entirely empty - and where there are towns of 50,000 or even fewer there are stops or loops off the high speed line.

 

[Starmill]

They do exist though. No one has pointed out that there aren’t intermediate stops in areas where there are towns of any reasonable size.

All people have said is that there aren’t stops in rural France. Which is true but it is also almost entirely empty - and where there are towns of 50,000 or even fewer there are stops or loops off the high speed line.

So why did you bring it up then? And why didn't you bring up somewhere else?

 

[Bald Rick]

From Bicester, you can get to London as it stands in 48-50 minutes at the moment and from Banbury in 62-65, so is it really worth going to the HS2 stop and changing?

But the whole point of a Chiltern Parkway is to enable speedy trips into London, no? Calvert to OOC would be in the region of 15 mins, Euston 22.

So either you are going to attract people from where they live for HS2 services, in which case they will choose that rather than existing routes, or you’re not going to attract people from where they live for HS2, in which case it would be pointless. It is completely untenable to say that such a station would only generate new traffic, or even be a majority of new traffic. Unless of course it is built in the middle of nowhere with difficult access to it, when of course it would be majority new passengers, in the same way that Reston is majority new passengers (all 5 of them for each train).

How many road improvements have been done for other parkway stations?

Other parkway stations have generally been built right next to major roads, even in France…


So which is it:

1) a new station at Calvert to attract passengers from nearby populaton centres, accepting that it will abstract heavily by diverting assengers from existig services, and needing significant stretches of new higheay to serve it, or,

2) a new station at Calvert that is not intended to abstract, and therefore does not need significant stretches of new highway, but that no one can get to and thus see very little use?

Or are we bending the laws of economics as well as physics?

 

[MatthewHutton]

But the whole point of a Chiltern Parkway is to enable speedy trips into London, no? Calvert to OOC would be in the region of 15 mins, Euston 22.

So either you are going to attract people from where they live for HS2 services, in which case they will choose that rather than existing routes, or you’re not going to attract people from where they live for HS2, in which case it would be pointless. It is completely untenable to say that such a station would only generate new traffic, or even be a majority of new traffic. Unless of course it is built in the middle of nowhere with difficult access to it, when of course it would be majority new passengers, in the same way that Reston is majority new passengers (all 5 of them for each train).

The basic aim should surely be to roughly balance London and not London passengers?

Bicester Village is to be fair closer than I thought - it would be 28 minutes plus change time.

Other ones that would be worth doing I think are Aylesbury which would be something like 37 minutes plus change time, and Oxford Parkway which would be 38 minutes plus change time.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jun 2026 ==

It is completely untenable to say that such a station would only generate new traffic, or even be a majority of new traffic.

I think you would definitely new traffic heading north where people are currently driving given the current service is slower than driving in most or all cases and where it would be hours faster than currently. Oxford-Edinburgh would be a bit over 4 hours vs 6 or so today.

You would also get new traffic from the local area towards London.

 

[MarkyT]

It's worth considering how the Tokaido Shinkansen in Japan became what it is. I don't think this is an example of a 'typical Japanese' high speed design, but more a product of its corridor and circumstances. The line had to follow a narrow coastal corridor to avoid difficult mountains.

That corridor was and is even more well populated today. The existing Narrow Gauge railways were heavily constrained by the gauge, geometry and level crossings. Medium to long distance journeys were slow. With the new line built so near the existing settlements, sometimes closely following the old NG routes, intermediate 'local' stations on the route were inevitable and could dramatically improve journey times to major centres.

Today the extraordinarily successful Nozomi expresses have come to dominate the Tokaido route. The sheer number of these fastest tier, very limited stop trains effectively locks out any real growth potential for local and semi fast services along the corridor. Moving Nozomi services to the new Chuo line will provide a shorter route due to cutting across country through the mountains, mostly in tunnel. The route is much straghter too, avoiding the many legacy 2500m curves of the original 1960s line that limit the speed compared to later Shinkansens. I would argue that the Tokaido is the WCML equivalent and the Chou is Japan's HS2, taking a path largely unpopulated (underground). There are some intermediate stations though which have been politically neccessary. These make maglev operations difficult though, as an overtaking move is very time consuming with the switch technology.

 

[JonathanH]

I think you would definitely new traffic heading north where people are currently driving given the current service is slower than driving in most or all cases and where it would be hours faster than currently. Oxford-Edinburgh would be a bit over 4 hours vs 6 or so today.

Surely the economics and viability falls down on the point that there wouldn't be significant inbound traffic to this station. As a result space needs to be left for passengers to board at this intermediate station that is empty from origin to the intermediate station.

 

[The Ham]

Princes Risborough doesn’t even have direct service to Birmingham and changing at Haddenham and Thame would make trip times probably half an hour slower than driving to the city centre. It’s not really comparable.

OK, let's compare Haddenham and Thame Looking at the ODM results and scaling up by a factor of 10 you might see:

110,000 people going to Birmingham (about 367 people a day or about 28 an hour)

7,650 people going to Manchester (about 26 people a day or about 2 an hour)

1,500 people going to Edinburgh (about 5 a day)
You'd likely get double that (as that's just one way), let's be generous and say the two way flow is rounded up to 120,000 and then 3 times this much. That's 100 passengers an hour, between 3 trains that's around 34 people who are traveling to/from places north of there either boarding or alighting from a train with a seated capacity of over 1,000.

Oh, and I forgot to say, by multiplying by 3 that's quite an uplift for just one way, arguably it should be the two way flow, in which case the numbers per train are likely to be below 20.

Haddenham and Thame has 600,000 currently to London.

First up is 610,000 as a two way flow to/from London, whilst i specifically only listed to London.

Second, if we scale that up by 10, the target also scales up by 10 to 6 million.

Bearing in mind that Farnborough Main has a town population of 65,000 and an urban area population of around 250,000 and has a within 15km a population of over 550,000 and even pre covid was seeing total passenger numbers of 3 million, that's quite a big ask.

Therefore, I'm happy to update what I so to be:

Yes, you may then see 6,000,000 heading to/from London, however given currently the Aylesbury stations as well as Haddenham and Thame (when all of them are combined) don't even see 1,000,000 to London, that's quite a significant change.

Also, interestingly, you cut the quote short (which can, and I'll let others decide if that's the case here, be something people do when they don't like what is being said in the context of the whole quote and is hoping that others don't remember the context) as I'd said:

Yes, you may then see 2,000,000 heading to/from London, however given currently the Aylesbury stations don't even see 300,000 to London, that's quite a significant change.

I'm happy to revise that to:

Yes, you may then see 2,000,000 heading to/from London, however given currently Haddenhamand Thame station don't even see 350,000 to London, that's quite a significant change.

Either way you look at it, that's still quite a significant change.

---------------------------------------------

In summary, to get to your 1 million (new*) passengers that's a significant change.

*if they aren't new passengers, then as others have pointed out, that's not new money and they don't count towards paying for the new infrastructure to allow a new station to be built.

As if the station isn't setup so through trains aren't against the platform edge, either you're slowing down every train as they pass through the station or you're installing platform edge doors and probably still slowing the trains down a bit as they pass the station.

Also that will need those trains which are calling at the station to stop fairly accurately (+/- 0.2, and even that means the doors are around 0.5m wider than the actual door) and so will need to have the sightly longer penalty for a station stop than if a train can have have a tolerance of +/-2m, as the last (say) 5m would need to be done at a slow walking pace to ensure that the stop was accurate.

As well as likely needing a reasonable extra gap behind them, so if the train was only 30 seconds late in departing wasn't then slowing the following trains.

 

[Bald Rick]

The basic aim should surely be to roughly balance London and not London passengers?

How many stations in that area, or even within London’s sphere of influence acheive that? Why would this be different?

Bicester Village is to be fair closer than I thought - it would be 28 minutes plus change time.

Other ones that would be worth doing I think are Aylesbury which would be something like 37 minutes plus change time, and Oxford Parkway which would be 38 minutes plus change time.

But people wouldn’t do that. They would drive straight to the new station. No one in their right mind would drive to Oxford Parkway or Av Parkway to then catch a train to Calvert to then travel to London. They will just drive to Calvert, and that would have to be provided for.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Surely the economics and viability falls down on the point that there wouldn't be significant inbound traffic to this station. As a result space needs to be left for passengers to board at this intermediate station that is empty from origin to the intermediate station.

It’s going to be pretty hard to fill all the trains as it is. If we say the Tokaido Shinkansen with 150 million is full - and it is pretty full - no one believes we will get anywhere near that even with the full Y. And I did look at tickets on the Tokaido Shinkansen and there are tickets available for trains departing now - although yesterday some morning trains were full.

OK, let's compare Haddenham and Thame Looking at the ODM results and scaling up by a factor of 10 you might see:

110,000 people going to Birmingham (about 367 people a day or about 28 an hour)

OK so from Haddenham and Thame to Birmingham you have 110,000 annual trips. So from this new station to Birmingham you will get more trips. Let’s say 200,000 trips (don’t forget it’s an hour or 3x faster and quicker than driving vs the same).

Let’s say like London now you have direct service without changes you get the same to Manchester.

So to meet my target you only need 200k indirect people plus people willing to change to reach other destinations. That seems extremely conservative.

Are we really saying from Aylesbury alone you wouldn’t get 200k people going to Birmingham and Manchester even with a change? Bearing in mind you get 200k from Banbury to Birmingham today which is smaller.

I think people are assuming you’d get a bigger traffic multiplier than 2x from London where the train is already 2 hours quicker than driving.

But people wouldn’t do that. They would drive straight to the new station. No one in their right mind would drive to Oxford Parkway or Av Parkway to then catch a train to Calvert to then travel to London. They will just drive to Calvert, and that would have to be provided for.

Driving would be slower than using the existing train services to London unless the roads were all improved enormously - it’s an 18 minute drive from Bicester Village station to Calvert.

The win for driving is to go to the north where a 15-25 minute drive isn’t a big deal when you can do the trip 2 hours quicker than driving direct.

 

[Bald Rick]

Driving would be slower than using the existing train services to London unless the roads were all improved enormously - it’s an 18 minute drive from Bicester Village station to Calvert.

Again you miss the point. If you can’t drive there, people won’t use it. So you either improve the roads, or don’t have anyone use it. Which is it?

 

[Sorcerer]

70-100 must include future growth.

I'll be honest that was a number I quickly pulled out after a quick Google of InterCity traffic on the WCML (35m), MML (31m) and ECML (26m). Not obviously take those numbers with a pinch of salt and consider not all will be end-to-end journeys, but based on those numbers I don't think 70-100m is unreasonable for a present day numbers, never mind potential future growth from suppressed demand.

Agreed.

But given trains are stopping at Birmingham interchange there is capacity in there for stops. So you therefore have 2 stops including interchange without having a hit on capacity.

Birmingham Interchange isn't quite the same thing as a potential stop in a rural area. It's a parkway station with an urban catchment and connections to an international airport. Not quite a global hub like Heathrow and Manchester, but it's not quite as small as others and is still served by some long-haul carriers. By contrast a single rural station doesn't have anywhere near the same catchment to justify building it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

I would argue that the Tokaido is the WCML equivalent and the Chou is Japan's HS2, taking a path largely unpopulated (underground). There are some intermediate stations though which have been politically neccessary. These make maglev operations difficult though, as an overtaking move is very time consuming with the switch technology.

In the past I would've considered the classic Tokyo-Osaka line the WCML equivalent but today the Tokkaido Shinkansen works as one too, especially when you consider the fact the original route wasn't built to typical 300km/h standards (and still doesn't to this day; max 285km/h). If the line was constructed today it wouldn't even fall under the typical definition of high-speed rail.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Why do you think the intermediate stops in other countries aren’t practical?

Hindsight passed on in the form of advice from those in other countries to the designers of HS2.

.....................

The major cities on the Tokaido Shinkansen are much bigger than anywhere in Europe so the ridership from just serving them is much stronger than any other high speed line could manage.

Most of Japans population is concentrated in towns around the coast. There is no vast hinterland need connecting, except by a line cutting across the hinterland coast to coast with no intermediate stops. So there are decent populations at what could be argued are otherwise intermediate stops.

The RESULT is that new high speed lines are considered to bypass te original high speed lines.

In the UK the justification for HS2 was bringing LARGER cities closer together starting with London, Birminhgham and Manchester. If the Chlterns area was so important then perhaps a project to build a new line to serve that need (London to/from Chilterns) would have been proposed. But then those in the North who feel "left out" of the UKs economy might well have had good justification for complaining.

...........

It isn’t. Because in almost cases high speed lines aren’t running the absolute maximum number of trains with a high level of ridership.

BUT - HS2 was designed for maximum usage by long distance expresses. Not for stopping services the like of which have strangled West Coast Main Line capacity.

You cannot do this from anywhere affected by the HS2 construction south of Birmingham.

To justify an intermediate station you would be relying on passengers from a bigger area that just that affected by HS2 construction.

.......................

But given trains are stopping at Birmingham interchange there is capacity in there for stops. So you therefore have 2 stops including interchange without having a hit on capacity.

Birmingham interchange is a rather more significant station (in terms of engineering and carryings) than your proposed station(s) in the Chilterns. It is not where a fraction of services stop.

In part because the service is far, far, far worse away from London.

Perhaps that is because the demand is not there ?.
Quite likely not there for destinations convenient for HS2 at the other end from the Chilterns.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Hindsight passed on in the form of advice from those in other countries to the designers of HS2.

And yet the newest lines still have lots of stops. The Japanese influenced line north of Mumbai has lots of stops. EDIT: The Chuo Shinkansen stops at every conceivable settlement on the way too.

Most of Japans population is concentrated in towns around the coast. There is no vast hinterland need connecting, except by a line cutting across the hinterland coast to coast with no intermediate stops.

Distances in Japan are if anything longer. Manchester is closer to London than Osaka to Tokyo. And then beyond that there’s other fairly big cities going up to Fukuoka which is 1000km from Tokyo.

Perhaps that is because the demand is not there ?.

Well there’s chicken and egg for sure. But where the trains do exist the demand is there. Cross country is pretty successful these days - one of the least subsidised operators. Same with trans pennine express.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

I don't think 70-100m is unreasonable for a present day numbers

But there’s only 17m from Scotland and the North West and 14m travelling from Yorkshire and the North East to London, the South East and East combined.

West Midlands - London (excluding South East which won’t use HS2) is another 12m - that only comes to 43m.

This is from https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/regional-rail-usage/

And that includes non HS2 flows like Chester-London or Hull-London - maybe you’d be looking at 30-35m current passengers on full Y HS2 routes.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

Birmingham Interchange isn't quite the same thing as a potential stop in a rural area. It's a parkway station with an urban catchment and connections to an international airport.

Oxford, Aylesbury and Bicester are “urban catchment” too. And it’s not like people in Coventry will have meaningfully lower car ownership than those cities.

 

[Sorcerer]

But there’s only 17m from Scotland and the North West and 14m travelling from Yorkshire and the North East to London, the South East and East combined.

West Midlands - London (excluding South East which won’t use HS2) is another 12m - that only comes to 43m.

This is from https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/regional-rail-usage/

And that includes non HS2 flows like Chester-London or Hull-London - maybe you’d be looking at 30-35m current passengers on full Y HS2 routes.

That's still a lot of people with room for growth, and also further demonstrates just how many passengers could be affected by reduced line capacity brought on by intermediate stations in rural areas.

Oxford, Aylesbury and Bicester are “urban catchment” too. And it’s not like people in Coventry will have meaningfully lower car ownership than those cities.

Aylesbury's built up urban area is about 94k (the town itself being around just 63k) and Bicester is around 41k. Hardly an urban catchment compared to Birmingham and potential passengers using it's airport which stretch into the millions. Oxford is the strongest contender you mentioned here and even then it's just 116k people and way off the main HS2 route.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Aylesbury's built up urban area is about 94k (the town itself being around just 63k) and Bicester is around 41k. Hardly an urban catchment compared to Birmingham and potential passengers using it's airport which stretch into the millions. Oxford is the strongest contender you mentioned here and even then it's just 116k people and way off the main HS2 route.

So add them up and take whatever fraction you need to balance out.

I think you’ll find it would be lower but respectable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

That's still a lot of people with room for growth, and also further demonstrates just how many passengers could be affected by reduced line capacity brought on by intermediate stations in rural areas.

You aren’t going to increase the current traffic by a factor of 5 over any reasonable timeframe. And it does require you to do the Y and not do a separate line in the east. Otherwise you’d need to increase current traffic by a factor of 10.

 

[Sorcerer]

So add them up and take whatever fraction you need to balance out.

I think you’ll find it would be lower but respectable.

I don't know what this means nor how it will make a stronger case for adding an intermediate rural station with low catchment and ridership potential in areas already served by the existing railway at the cost of capacity on a line that was not designed to serve the areas you're advocating for. The fact is, the cost-benefit ratio does not support an intermediate rural station, and it certainly wouldn't have appeased the NIMBYs who did not want the railway on their landscape in any way shape or form.

 

[Peter Sarf]

And yet the newest lines still have lots of stops. The Japanese influenced line north of Mumbai has lots of stops. EDIT: The Chuo Shinkansen stops at every conceivable settlement on the way too.

Cannot comment for sure but how far back was that route in Japan designed and what were the political influences ?. Also in Japan generally it is easier to find enough small towns close enough together on the likely line of route. Everything is squeezed in between the sea and the mountains inland whereas in the case of HS2 and the Chilterns the populations you talk of are spread out further from HS2 AND have alternative rail lines serving them.

Distances in Japan are if anything longer. Manchester is closer to London than Osaka to Tokyo. And then beyond that there’s other fairly big cities going up to Fukuoka which is 1000km from Tokyo.

So. If Manchester to London is a shorter distance than Osaka to Tokyo then that is even less reason for so many intermediate stops.

Well there’s chicken and egg for sure. But where the trains do exist the demand is there. Cross country is pretty successful these days - one of the least subsidised operators. Same with trans pennine express.

It was hard enough justifying HS2 as was. Also Crossrail 1 was hard to justify - we have not yet started on Crossrail 2 !. So need very definite and conservative estimates of potential usage NOT optimistic estimates for likely use. There are people on here who have replied who have a very detailed knowledge of the planning for HS2. Even then a station in the Chilterns did not fit the idea of a relief line for the West Coast Main Line for those fastest services.

I am not sure the "Stop HS2" campaign ever considered stations as worth their hassle. I can remember the banners saying "Stop HS2" going back about twenty years. Any money that could have been spent on something useful for them was spent on mitigation of noise etc once opened. I prefer that anyway as it means more capacity for bringing parts of the UK closer together - remember the UK is not awash with high speed railway lines so HS2 will be even more important once a branch Eastwards happens.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Chilterns the populations you talk of are spread out further from HS2

Not really.

So. If Manchester to London is a shorter distance than Osaka to Tokyo then that is even less reason for so many intermediate stops.

It’s definitely the case that the closer together places are the less justification there is for running ultra aggressive express services.

Between Beijing and Shanghai having trains making only one stop makes sense because of how far it is.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

So need very definite and conservative estimates of potential usage NOT optimistic estimates for likely use.

If you’re being conservative you need more intermediate stops to make the ridership something sensible - because conservatively you’re only going to get like 30m passengers from the bigger destinations.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

The fact is, the cost-benefit ratio does not support an intermediate rural station

How do you know?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

it certainly wouldn't have appeased the NIMBYs who did not want the railway on their landscape in any way shape or form.

What about non NIMBY locals?

 

[SynthD]

If we could build new motorways for £25m a mile I would be pretty happy to be honest. That would mean the black cat junction improvement would be ~£250m and not £1bn.

Take care when applying costs to vastly different projects. Black Cat is a triple level junction built over an operating roundabout, not an unopened motorway on green land with regular above grade junctions far apart.

In terms of live railways if you take a weak station like Shin Fuji on the Tokaido Shinkansen it has around 1% of boardings and around 2% of passengers use it (and perhaps it produces 1% of revenue) But it probably cost 0.1-0.2% of the total cost of the line to build it.

I was hoping you’d find out or look at Birmingham Interchange, which is more like 0.4%. (And therefore more than 0.5% of Crossrail 2)

You do have to win over the wider public.

The people near the proposed station don’t want it. There is no destination there to generate inward traffic. Which portion of the public are you focusing on?

Building a new town at Tring meets many of your goals.

What about non NIMBY locals?

Have you found any? It might help to have a local group, to help the endangered few in Buckinghamshire.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Have you found any? It might help to have a local group, to help the endangered few in Buckinghamshire.

Do you really believe everyone who lives outside the big cities is a NIMBY?

I was hoping you’d find out or look at Birmingham Interchange, which is more like 0.4%. (And therefore more than 0.5% of Crossrail 2)

Then it's overpriced. But also going to get much more than 0.4% of the ridership.

 

[The Ham]

OK so from Haddenham and Thame to Birmingham you have 110,000 annual trips. So from this new station to Birmingham you will get more trips. Let’s say 200,000 trips (don’t forget it’s an hour or 3x faster and quicker than driving vs the same).

To get to the passenger numbers per train I'd TRIPLED passenger numbers from 120,000 to 360,000 per day (then assuming 300 days a year) is 1,200 per day, over a 12 hour day that's 100 an hour, and taking the 3tph you've talked about that's 33.333 which I rounded to 34 passengers per train.

If anything I've over estimated passenger numbers, as 12 hours a day is quite short a day.

Likewise, that needs to be new passengers.

Let’s say like London now you have direct service without changes you get the same to Manchester.

So to meet my target you only need 200k indirect people plus people willing to change to reach other destinations. That seems extremely conservative.

Are we really saying from Aylesbury alone you wouldn’t get 200k people going to Birmingham and Manchester even with a change? Bearing in mind you get 200k from Banbury to Birmingham today which is smaller.

I think people are assuming you’d get a bigger traffic multiplier than 2x from London where the train is already 2 hours quicker than driving.

200,000 is a tiny number for annual passenger numbers.

I'll be honest that was a number I quickly pulled out after a quick Google of InterCity traffic on the WCML (35m), MML (31m) and ECML (26m). Not obviously take those numbers with a pinch of salt and consider not all will be end-to-end journeys, but based on those numbers I don't think 70-100m is unreasonable for a present day numbers, never mind potential future growth from suppressed demand.

The 100 minion HS2 passengers are broadly 75% using existing trains, 20% new travel (note this is likely due to a mix of population growth and suppressed demand).

Not really.

It is, as I've said before, having a population of 200,000 within 15k is lightly populated.

If you’re being conservative you need more intermediate stops to make the ridership something sensible - because you’re only going to get like 30m passengers at most from the bigger destinations.

Given that Avanti has (on the latest data) 36 million passengers in the last 12 months.

Add to that London to Scotland would be comparable to the existing Kings Cross to Edinburgh journey times and so would likely add a few more million.

That's nearly 40 million without any growth (which over 15 years could add nearly 50%), phase 2, or suppressed demand, or passengers swapping from other operators (for example with high capacity and faster journey times it's possible that Birmingham to London could be not only faster but cheaper, or at least not significantly different, than Chiltern).

Add in 16 years of growth and you'll be looking at 50% more and so 60 million.

As such that's fairly conservative, and certainly not doing anything like tripling of passenger numbers which was used to demonstrate that a local service would add hardly any passengers (34) to a train with seating capacity of over 1,000 (less than 3.5%).

 

[MatthewHutton]

Given that Avanti has (on the latest data) 36 million passengers in the last 12 months.

Including going to lots of destinations HS2 isn't going to serve. When you look at the region-region data it is less impressive.

Add to that London to Scotland would be comparable to the existing Kings Cross to Edinburgh journey times and so would likely add a few more million.

Assuming the London-Scotland traffic will double because the train is sped up by 20 minutes isn't being remotely conservative about the ridership though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

The 100 minion HS2 passengers are broadly 75% using existing trains, 20% new travel (note this is likely due to a mix of population growth and suppressed demand).

Where are these 75 million passengers in the region-region data?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

TRIPLED passenger numbers

Given it's going to be quicker than driving rather than slower and would be like 3x faster that is really pretty reasonable. And actually the Elizabeth line which was comparatively conservative in its speed up tripled ridership.

It's much more reasonable than the HS2 general traffic assumptions which assume that speeding the train up from 2 hours to 90 minutes when it is already much quicker than driving and when long distance ridership is already comparable with France with the TGV is going to triple that ridership. Because you need it to be tripled to get to a hundred million from maybe 30 million today.

 

[Sorcerer]

How do you know?

Because if it did, it would've been done, but it hasn't, because that's not what HS2 nor high-speed rail in general is meant for. If anything, I should be asking you that question because you're trying to make a case of spending more money on something that won't bring much benefit compared to the cost. Just don't just say "other countries did it" because the context behind that has already been explained multiple times.

What about non NIMBY locals?

They might've liked a station if given one but since there was no campaigns called "Station For Aylesbury" or something like that then I think it's safe to say they would be largely indifferent.

The 100 minion HS2 passengers are broadly 75% using existing trains, 20% new travel (note this is likely due to a mix of population growth and suppressed demand).

I suspect it would unlocked suppressed demand like the Elizabeth Line did, but the thing about that is large London catchment so I wasn't sure if it was quite as comparable.

 

[Zomboid]

Aylesbury is about the same size as Hemel Hempstead. If it were on the WCML, the intercity trains wouldn't stop there. The typical train to London is 2 or 3 cars, twice an hour. Nothing about it suggests that it needs high speed services to London or the north.

And that's the biggest place that's not a meaningful drive from HS2 before you get to the Kenilworth/ Coventry area.

And it's not like there's some vast hinterland that would be served, go any distance one way and you hit the WCML which will still have services to London, Birmingham & Manchester, or the Cherwell valley line, which also has and will continue to have services to London, Birmingham & Manchester...

 

[MatthewHutton]

Because if it did, it would've been done

Or HS2 are incompetent. And there’s tonnes and tonnes of evidence they are incompetent.

Aylesbury is about the same size as Hemel Hempstead. If it were on the WCML, the intercity trains wouldn't stop there. The typical train to London is 2 or 3 cars, twice an hour. Nothing about it suggests that it needs high speed services to London or the north.

The fast services do stop at Oxford, Milton Keynes and Bicester though. And you can get a relatively quick train from Hemel to Milton Keynes to change onto other services. So if HS2 wants to be four track and have services from the Aylesbury line stopping at a few places and terminating at Birmingham interchange that would be a decent solution.

And there’s a lot of steam age running on the West Coast Mainline in general.

Having a consistent stopping pattern south of Rugby or batching the Milton Keynes and Watford Junction stopping services together would add more capacity for example.

 

[Sorcerer]

Or HS2 are incompetent. And there’s tonnes and tonnes of evidence they are incompetent.

The management and implementation teams are incompetent. The actual planners who designed the route and knew its purpose were not.

 

[The Planner]

Having a consistent stopping pattern south of Rugby or batching the Milton Keynes and Watford Junction stopping services together would add more capacity for example.

Its is consistent, and flighting is done now. Flight too many in one go and you run very quickly into performance problems.

 

[43074]

Or HS2 are incompetent. And there’s tonnes and tonnes of evidence they are incompetent.

The fast services do stop at Oxford, Milton Keynes and Bicester though. And you can get a relatively quick train from Hemel to Milton Keynes to change onto other services. So if HS2 wants to be four track and have services from the Aylesbury line stopping at a few places and terminating at Birmingham interchange that would be a decent solution.

And there’s a lot of steam age running on the West Coast Mainline in general.

Having a consistent stopping pattern south of Rugby or batching the Milton Keynes and Watford Junction stopping services together would add more capacity for example.

Dunno, the LMS back in the day weren't known for running Pacifics every 20 minutes from London to Birmingham and Manchester, and (Watford DC excepted) the suburban service wasn't much to write home about either

Consistent stopping patterns south of Rugby would actually cost capacity, if everything stopped at MK and Watford for instance it would be hard to exceed 12tph. In some hours there are 15tph on the West Coast fasts.