Changing existing infrastructure to take 400m trains will not cost one billion per mile.
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Burnham proposes revival of HS2 Birmingham-Manchester funded by land value capture
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Yes, you got it. All is fine right now. If extra capacity is needed longer trains is the first line of attack. Then the Stafford bypass, in-cab signals, removal of bottlenecks, etc.But we don't have longer trains. Surely if we needed them we'd have them?
HS2 to Fradley/Handsacree is being built. Just build Stafford by as I have outlined in this thread is all that is needed.
Halifaxlad
Established Member
What the West Coast Main Line need is capacity relief, not just Southwards!
It's crazy that to travel to Oxenholme from Carnforth you first have to travel South and change before heading back through Carnforth.
What Leeds doesn't need is an obsession with trams which is purely political!
Its not a common point used to attack HS2, very rarely if at all mentioned in the mainstream media. Yes, I agree in long term, its better value, but the requirements, as pointed to by the 2020 NAO report, meant the railway was lowered further into the ground. If upfront costs are the issue, not using slab can reduce those costs.
Its also the finding of the Stewart review. As a government employee, he does fail to mention to impact of reduced annual/parliamentary term funding on the project.
False. Even if they had more stops, there is no relation between that and lower costs. There are multiple reasons why the costs are lower in comparable European countries, one of which is an issue with the set up of our construction industry, other issues include the population density leading to increased land costs and more requirements for bridges and utility moves. That's just for starters.
£10-20m?
It is, even though its a poor measure, its still significant. There's a long list of reasons why, but not having enough stops is not one of them. HS1 would be around 150m a mile in current prices.
nor does hs2.
phase 2a is the stafford bypass.
When compared with peer countries, HS2 represents a less than 100% cost premium - it’s not more costly than any other rail infrastructure we’ve built recently. It’s just really, really big.
And half-measures, like abandoning slab track or cancelling the leg to Manchester, will ultimately end up costing more than just getting on with the original design. It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.
And half-measures, like abandoning slab track or cancelling the leg to Manchester, will ultimately end up costing more than just getting on with the original design. It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.
MatthewHutton
Member
Why not?
It’s definitely much worse than a 100% cost premium. Phase 2a probably had a 20x cost premium over comparable projects when it was cancelled.
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Stations on non live tracks really should be pretty cheap and they cost far far too much in Britain. Maybe £10-20m is too low but it certainly shouldn’t be many hundreds of millions.
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Quite right.
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An hourly 275m train running 14 times a day with 700 seats would give you a capacity of 7 million a year.
There are only 12.5 million trips right now from the North West to London and the South East and the East.
There are only just over 4 million from Scotland to London, the South East and East.
Are 7 trains an hour not enough to handle what is currently 16.5 million trips?
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I’m not sure we can say that with much confidence. Britains costs are high, sure, but they’re not _that_ high. What you’re talking about probably involved baking in route-wide costs into a section of countryside track.
Plus, all of the problems we have with building costs are solvable - we just need to change the way the system works with legislation. Shift away from an adversarial planning system to a collaborative one where local concerns are raised and addressed early in the design phase, and spurious complaints are ruled immaterial early on. Then we could get on with building things quicker, and therefore cheaper, and then we can build more.
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I don’t see why there’s so much pessimism about what we can and can’t get built - we know what we need, we know what the obstacles are achieving them, so let’s push for changes to the law!
Sure, it’s complex and there are a lot of moving parts, but by positioning ourselves as a noisy constituency that won’t stop complaining until we get what we want, we can draw the politicians’ ears away from the residents complaining.
It's at least fair - and one thing about Burnham is that he's a Scouser (or halfway-ish - but accent-wise for sure) - but he's been working for Manchester. So those usual accusations will hopefully not come.
Crewe at least bypasses a lot of the trouble, and does have space to develop further, even without underground stations - for example, shifting to the west somewhat or using the diveunder lines.
What you'd see is two things - only 2tph to Manchester (1 frequency from today, 1 taken from the Stoke side)
If Curzon - Manchester was added, something else has to give between Stockport and Picc, surely - if it's full.
Or you divert XC, and you are really decimating the service through Stoke and Macclesfield.
North/West of Crewe - there are 4tph to Liverpool to play with. Preston station needs capacity work. And then you get into the capacity north of Lancaster, splitting and so on. And you could terminate an extra service at Lancaster or Blackpool for Lancs capacity and speed up the Scots.
MatthewHutton
Member
You could have two HS2 services via Crewe and one slower service via Stoke, I don't think that would be that awful actually.
Probably in the medium term does a better job of matching actual demand.
OK so 20x is probably going a bit far, but there's a lot of European projects at $40m/km PPP which is roughly £40m/mile. That would mean phase 2a would come to something like £1.5bn. I mean even at £15bn would it have been cancelled when you could say that the project was "done" if it was that price? And I would assume they'd have tried pretty hard to present a figure for phase 2a that didn't include shared costs to avoid it being cancelled.
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I think we have to acknowledge the costs have got very silly at the very least - and to begin to address them.
For sure, but the one they shouldn't do is pause to slow down delivery. The best way, to ultimately reduce costs is to keep building things and get better at doing so.
Obligatory "you have to control for the cost of building through built-up areas and delivering brand new city-centre stations, which european projects rarely need to do"
MatthewHutton
Member
Sure. But that doesn’t apply to phase 2a.
You’re kinda rewarding failure when it gets bad enough.
If your logic worked then Avanti's current services wouldn't be busy, with no need to price people off of peak services out of Manchester. But they are, and they do.
MatthewHutton
Member
Avanti’s current services make lots of intermediate stops. They also have 469 and 607 seats respectively on the Pendelinos and 299 and 453 on the newer 805/807s.
absolutelymilk
Established Member
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The issue is that people don't always want to travel at equally spaced intervals throughout the day and in the same directions, e.g. around half of all journeys into London arrive between 7am and 10am. So even if you technically have enough seats if people travelled throughout the day, that doesn't necessarily mean there are enough seats for when people actually want to travel
Yes, this is the fallacy of the world's worst 'transport advisor', Andrew Gilligan, who says that HS2 should be scrapped because overall, WCML trains are only half full (the percentage may be wrong, I'm doing this from memory, but you get the drift). This use of averages conveniently forgets that trains going against the main peak direction, or on the first or last journeys of the day, are quiet while for the majority of the day they're very busy or full. Presumably Mr Gilligan has a model railway layout where he uses the 'Hand of God' to move a train from one end of the line to the other, so they can always operate in the direction of peak flow.
Kingston Dan
Member
£200 million for the Werrington dive under.
Precisely
A bit like the woman on one of the South Manchester commuter trains who told the guard that they should put more coaches on. He pointed out that the rear coach was empty. That wasn't good enough for her, she wanted them to put an extra coach on the front. Completely oblivious to the fact that this would now mean two empty coaches at the back while the commuters packed out the front coaches in order to be first to the gateline at Piccadilly.
MatthewHutton
Member
That is much less true for long distance service than commuter service.
And it’s in general becoming less true over time.
EDIT: Avanti West coast had an average of 400 passengers per train in 2024/25. That’s fairly full - especially as there’s sections like the north wales coast or north of maybe Lancaster/Oxenholme where they will be less busy.
I cannot imagine that would cost that much in continental europe or rich Asia.
But even so if you had to increase the cost of HS2 phase 2a from £1.5bn to £1.7bn to accommodate that it’s not the end of the world.
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Technologist
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That makes sense as an argument in the abstract, however at most stages of the HS2 project it would have been cheaper to cancel it and start again. There is relatively little evidence that HS2 itself has the capability to lower costs and run things efficiently just by keeping it going.
Steven Lovegrove (God Calls Me God) is my bosses, bosses, bosses, boss his summary of HS2 and the DfT was that their cost control, decision making structure and information systems were more in line with what an SME would have than for an enterprise that would be on the FTSE 100 if it were a company.
Given the levels of cost overrun on HS2 are multiples of a likely "should cost" of the project the costs of building a new organisation and then learning by doing (both for the organisation and supply chain) on smaller projects (part of a larger plan) are relatively small by comparison.
Is this based on facts or feelings?
Is this based on facts or feelings?
Is this based on facts or feelings?
MatthewHutton
Member
With regards to off peak becoming more important - see e.g. figure 8 and 9 from https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...#changes-in-rail-passenger-numbers-since-2019. I believe there are longer term trends as well, but can't see the data for that right now.
With regards to costs in other countries see e.g. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D6nUGPHWkvJChmuDDMF27jb2pImUJCvMxA4ycN1rdWg/edit?gid=0#gid=0
With regards to off peak vs peak demand for long distance I can't see any evidence, however the commuter train companies do run extra peak service whereas the long distance operators typically don't, or run much less.
With regards to costs in other countries see e.g. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D6nUGPHWkvJChmuDDMF27jb2pImUJCvMxA4ycN1rdWg/edit?gid=0#gid=0
With regards to off peak vs peak demand for long distance I can't see any evidence, however the commuter train companies do run extra peak service whereas the long distance operators typically don't, or run much less.
Kingston Dan
Member
Whatever this plan is it appears to involve more than one flyover/dive under. Building stuff on an active railway (let alone the busiest mixed traffic railway in Europe) is hideously expensive - which is why phase 2a is the most sensible and cheapest bit to build. The land is bought, the permissions are there, the plans are developed and some of the initial work has been done. Anyone who thinks a back of an envelope plan is a serious alternative needs to give their heads a wobble. Just build the damn thing and see how transformational it will be.
MatthewHutton
Member
It’s not the cheapest to build when it’s more than 10x the cost of our peers for an equivalent project - you can see the project list in https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D6nUGPHWkvJChmuDDMF27jb2pImUJCvMxA4ycN1rdWg/edit?gid=0#gid=0
And if the crewe junction bit is extremely expensive because it’s a busy railway that probably strengthens the case for doing a flying junction further south next to the railway and then re-routing the existing railway through the middle at the end.
The Planner
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The original plans for the junction south of Basford Hall weren't overly complex. HS2 landed between the fasts, so it was a case of building/slewing offline, connecting new tracks, building the rest. I'd expect any junction proposed south of there to very similar. Handsacre was going to do the same before it was changed.
Cheaper than phase 2a. The plan I outlined is not a back of the envelope plan. It is basically one of Network Rail's plans. You need to get onto solid earth and let reality set in, realising that we cannot pay for a railway that gives marginal improvements at a billion a mile and rising. Cheaper ways of get higher speeds and higher capacity.
Palmerston
Member
The use of "a billion a mile" implies each and every mile has the same cost. This isn't the case. The cost includes very expensive miles (the ones with stations), quite expensive miles (tunnels, or a Delta junction) and less expensive (track in flattish countryside).
It also includes the cost of buying the land and doing the legal work - that's already been done.
Conclusion - it will not cost anywhere near £40bn for 40 miles of track from Handsacre to Crewe.
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Repeating it doesn't make it true. It's 140 miles. Not a billion a mile. Phase 1 is significantly different from phase 2a with many of the reasons why phase 1 ended up increasing not applicable to 2a.
Kingston Dan
Member
Phase 2a was budgeted at £7bn (I think) for 40 miles as it is mainly relatively flat open countryside - no tunnels or inner city property to acquire etc. It cost Sunak a fifth of the build cost to cancel it. As others have said this section will cost nothing like that (and neither will phase 1 as that cost includes much more than the cost of track construction).
Phase 2a omits Stoke. Also the Stafford bypass takes Manchester and Stoke trains off the WCML entirely. A better solution.