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I enjoy the way this place flips between "we shouldn't be spending money just so businessmen can get from Birmingham to London ten percent faster" and "we should spend billions just so people can get from Glasgow to London ten percent faster"
It's surely not about businessmen/women/etc any more... One of the HS2 original benefit ££s was based on travel time being wasted business ££ - but the advent of connectivity has made travel time (not disturbed by changing trains) productive - so that one disappeared, and virtual meetings are the overwhelming default these days.. so, HS2 must be more about leisure than originally considered.
IMHO - Pendolino for the win - you cannot possibly hope to build a straighter network cost effectively - either in the UK, or in a lot of Europe - trains are still cheaper than tunnels, and delivered sooner. I'd settle for APT
It's surely not about businessmen/women/etc any more... One of the HS2 original benefit ££s was based on travel time being wasted business ££ - but the advent of connectivity has made travel time (not disturbed by changing trains) productive - so that one disappeared, and virtual meetings are the overwhelming default these days.. so, HS2 must be more about leisure than originally considered.
A business worker travelling between London and Manchester would still benefit from the reduced travel times, which in the original plans would've been about 1h30 down from the current 2h8 at the fastest. Time is everything. But business or leisure, HS2 was largely about capacity in which speed as an added bonus that came with it's own benefits for an extra 9% cost.
IMHO - Pendolino for the win - you cannot possibly hope to build a straighter network cost effectively - either in the UK, or in a lot of Europe - trains are still cheaper than tunnels, and delivered sooner. I'd settle for APT
Dijon, population 160k, is 50 miles off LGV Sud Est and is only slightly larger than Dundee (148k) (and also significantly smaller than Aberdeen (230k)). Which rather illustrates the point that the LGV travels through miles and miles of incredibly sparsely populated land to serve some relatively modest (by British standards) cites that are, wait for it, miles off the actual route. Could you imagine if HS2 served every British city with a population of 160k within 50 miles of the route?
Yes I could imagine that, because I've been advocating that for about a decade on this forum!
HS2 justified skipping urban areas because it was going to be full of longer distance traffic.
That holds for the core section, but less well the further north you go.
By the time we get to scotland the line is almost empty and needs to gather up all the traffic it can find to justify its existance.
It’s not just the Sud-Est line. LGV Bretagne-Pay de la Loire goes as far as Rennes (pop 230k, greater metropolitan area 800k). Compare that with the central belt. Beyond Rennes there is Brest (pop 140k, metropolitan area 380k), Lorient (population 60k, metropolitan area 250k if you really stretch it) and Saint-Malo, pop 47k
And I have no idea what major conurbations LGV Rhin-Rhone serves that are comparable to the central belt…
Notably LGV Bretagne-Pay de la Loire cost only €3.3bn to build and was 183km of new construction.
Serving the central belt from a sensible southern end point on the west coast will require much more track and an awful lot more money. As to LGV Rhin-Rhone, its not really a 'line' in the sense of most LGVs, given that it has no significant trunk and in any case amounts to only 140km.
EDIT: LGV Rhin-Rhone is a bit of an oddity as its disconnected from the rest of the system, and in any case has been effectively cancelled partway completed.
It's also next to Germany, the world doesn't end at the French frontier.
This is just France. How about the Madrid-Galicia High Speed line. Galicia is 5 times larger than the central belt but has an entire population of 2.7million.
Spain is a country that built high speed lines with such low traffic potential they were completed as single track railways.
Spain also built lines for political ends, with the objective that provincial capitals would all be within a given travel time of Madrid, many of these lines were known to have awful business cases and were built anyway.
And as noted, if this line serves purely political objectives (high speed rail must reach Scotland) then there are much better routes for political objectives than proceeding to Scotland along the west coast from Manchester.
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I'm not saying it's necessarily viable to build a HS line all the way to Scotland but I'd dispute that the travel market is tiny. There's around 3 million journeys from Edinburgh to London airports alone. There's already over 2 million passengers per year on trains from London to Edinburgh. That's more than currently take the train from Manchester to London currently (~3.6 million). Add Glasgow and journeys to other English cities and its a pretty significant market.
Origin Destination Matrix data shows 1.1 million from Edinburgh to Scotland, so I assume you are counting passengers both ways.
Whilst Manchester Piccadilly does have 3.6 million passengers to/from London, you also have to add a big chunk for Stockport (630k or so) and arguably another chunk from Wigan (~300k), although mostly those don't use the 3tph from Manchester.
But 4.2 million from Manchester Piccadilly and Stockport.
If we assume 3 million air passengers from Edinburgh to London airports and they all can be made to switch to trains (connecting flights mean they probably can't), 2 million rail passengers from Edinburgh and about 1.5 million more from Glasgow. That's 6.5 million.
~50% greater than Manchester/Stockport, but Manchester/Stockport only justifies 3 250m trains per hour.
High Speed trains are going to be something like 400m, so you probably won't be able to justify more than 3-4 trains per hour.
And 3-4tph on a 130 mile railway probably won't have a good business case.
As to non London destinations in England, the top two non London destinations in England from Edinburgh are Newcastle and York, which would not be well served by a west coast high speed line.
Newcastle-Edinburgh is about another million passengers (both ways).
Notably LGV Bretagne-Pay de la Loire cost only €3.3bn to build and was 183km of new construction.
Serving the central belt from a sensible southern end point on the west coast will require much more track and an awful lot more money. As to LGV Rhin-Rhone, its not really a 'line' in the sense of most LGVs, given that it has no significant trunk and in any case amounts to only 140km.
EDIT: LGV Rhin-Rhone is a bit of an oddity as its disconnected from the rest of the system, and in any case has been effectively cancelled partway completed.
It's also next to Germany, the world doesn't end at the French frontier.
Spain is a country that built high speed lines with such low traffic potential they were completed as single track railways.
Spain also built lines for political ends, with the objective that provincial capitals would all be within a given travel time of Madrid, many of these lines were known to have awful business cases and were built anyway.
And as noted, if this line serves purely political objectives (high speed rail must reach Scotland) then there are much better routes for political objectives than proceeding to Scotland along the west coast from Manchester.
Yes, exactly, 183km of new railway through miles and miles of sparsely populated land to serve a conurbation that is a fraction of the size of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and a handful of places beyond that are even smaller. The ultimate aim of HS2 should be the central belt. I’m not saying it would or even should happen tomorrow. Clearly we need to sort out the existing mess of HS2 and other infrastructure projects costs (Eg Lower Thames Crossing). But claiming there isn’t enough passengers to justify the link is absurd, when we can see from other countries that there are once you significantly reduce the journey times to the extent true high speed rail does.
A business worker travelling between London and Manchester would still benefit from the reduced travel times, which in the original plans would've been about 1h30 down from the current 2h8 at the fastest. Time is everything. (....)
Yes, but it is no longer as valuable as it was when creating original cost-benefit because of how work has changed.
Economic value of supping tea waiting to arrive, Vs economic value of supping tea and sending emails...
I didn't say it's not a benefit, just the value is not as high as it was in the dark ages (2012). In any event, the cost of building HS2 skyrocketed so at that point the cost benefit ratio just became irrelevant...
Yes, but it is no longer as valuable as it was when creating original cost-benefit because of how work has changed.
Economic value of supping tea waiting to arrive, Vs economic value of supping tea and sending emails...
I didn't say it's not a benefit, just the value is not as high as it was in the dark ages (2012). In any event, the cost of building HS2 skyrocketed so at that point the cost benefit ratio just became irrelevant...
Has work actually changed enough to change the business case of the project though? Bearing in mind they won't just be sipping tea waiting to arrive regardless, the faster journeys just mean there has been better use of their time.
The premise of the thread is about the idea of an APT Mk2. But besides which I don't think the APT exudes class anymore than a Pendolino and Frecciarossa (which HS2 will be based off). Arguably their premium products exude even more of it, but class isn't relevant with train procurement anyway.
If we are building a high speed railway to keep scotland in the union for political reasons (although I am not sure you could get Scottish government cooperation for such a project in any case), you'd probably want to build a railway from Newcastle (or just south of it) to Edinburgh and then a section from Edinburgh to Glasgow.
A high speed railway from the Scottish central belt to England is much more likely to be built if Scotland is independent as an independent Scotland will want to enhance connectivity to the remaining UK and Europe.
A high speed railway from the Scottish central belt to England is much more likely to be built if Scotland is independent as an independent Scotland will want to enhance connectivity to the remaining UK and Europe.
A high speed railway from the Scottish central belt to England is much more likely to be built if Scotland is independent as an independent Scotland will want to enhance connectivity to the remaining UK and Europe.
An independent Scotland could not afford to pay for the route and there would be very little appetite for the government of the rest of the UK to pay for it or otherwise enable it's construction.
Independence would likely heavily cut cross border traffic and there would be no real payback for burning the political capital necessary to get it approved, let alone paid for.
An independent Scotland could not afford to pay for the route and there would be very little appetite for the government of the rest of the UK to pay for it or otherwise enable it's construction.
Independence would likely heavily cut cross border traffic and there would be no real payback for burning the political capital necessary to get it approved, let alone paid for.
Just not true. Capital spending isn't/shouldn't be part of current account deficits - and the economics of devolution is very different to that of independence see Fraser of Allender Institute.
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