HS2 should stop at more stations in the Chilterns

The West Coast Main Line currently has to fulfil multiple functions, dealing with suburban, inter-urban and fast long-distance passenger services plus freight of varying speeds and lengths.

Theoretically, looking in isolation, flighting multiple services with similar stopping patterns can reduce capacity consumption. However the downside is that (as The Planner highlights) running successive services at minimum headway risks performance degredation. Also, it's an obvious customer requirement that services should be spread around the clock face, not clustered all together in the same 15 minutes of each hour.

Looking to the future, when HS2 is up and running, the substitution of Euston via WCML services by Euston via HS2 will free up capacity on the southern section of the WCML to enable more frequent stops on fast services at Watford Junction, Milton Keynes Central, and Rugby.

HS2 is supposed to be the solution to the congestion of the WCML, as a high capacity bypass.

It would be fundamentally foolish to stitch up the HS2 solution by seeking to replicate the WCML problem.

MatthewHutton said:

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

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Build wise its been fraught and civil engineering projects (rail and non-rail) in the UK so have a habit of going over budget.

Design wise it was done very carefully with lots of input from other countries.
Although there has apparently been changes in requirement imposed late on to the design.

MatthewHutton said:

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.

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Crickey you want to four track HS2 ? - double the cost then !.

MatthewHutton said:

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

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I don't get what you mean, its totally transformed compared to the 1950s !.

MatthewHutton said:

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.

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A consistent stopping pattern adds capacity but at the risk of not having a frequency spread evenly across the hour. There is not much more that can be done to improve the WCML services unless the fastest services are removed from it. Which is why HS2 was decided upon - a FAST route for the fastest trains so that the existing WCML could cope better with the needs of people using the intermediate stations. So why create a fast route for the fastest trains and then slow it down plus cripple its capacity with intermediate stations ?.

You are proposing the thing that is the very reason HS2 was needed as a solution to the problem you are trying to replicate.

CW2 said:

The West Coast Main Line currently has to fulfil multiple functions, dealing with suburban, inter-urban and fast long-distance passenger services plus freight of varying speeds and lengths.

Theoretically, looking in isolation, flighting multiple services with similar stopping patterns can reduce capacity consumption. However the downside is that (as The Planner highlights) running successive services at minimum headway risks performance degredation. Also, it's an obvious customer requirement that services should be spread around the clock face, not clustered all together in the same 15 minutes of each hour.

Looking to the future, when HS2 is up and running, the substitution of Euston via WCML services by Euston via HS2 will free up capacity on the southern section of the WCML to enable more frequent stops on fast services at Watford Junction, Milton Keynes Central, and Rugby.

HS2 is supposed to be the solution to the congestion of the WCML, as a high capacity bypass.

It would be fundamentally foolish to stitch up the HS2 solution by seeking to replicate the WCML problem.

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My bold - Exactly.

We need to avoid turning the solution to the problem into the very same problem.

MatthewHutton said:

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

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The fact that Old Oak Common is likely to change access to trains for London and parts of the South East.

Although having said that on the regional data; London to West Midlands (12.0 million) London to North West (10.5 million) London to Scotland (3.8 million), West Midlands to North West (5.8 million) Northwest to Scotland (2.9 million).

That's 35 million, so that's not that far off the 40 million. I mentioned, but doesn't include those from the South East and the Eastern regions who travel through London (which isn't going to be a lot but isn't nothing either).

Also, the 100 million passengers were for the full Y scheme, so that would include some traffic for East Midlands and North East too.

MatthewHutton said:

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.

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Where did I say Scotland traffic was going to double?

Currently London to Scotland is 3.8 million and South East to Scotland brings it up to 4 million. Likewise Northwest to Scotland is 2.9 million and West Midlands to Scotland 0.4 million.

That's 7.3 million, when to get 40 million we only needed 4 million.

MatthewHutton said:

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

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As I said the 100 million was for the full Y scheme, which would include other regional travel.

Likewise, it's for the opening date of the full Y scheme (originally 2033), that's 20% higher than currently, at 2.4% year in year growth that 40 million would be 48 million.

With other regions currently it's only need to be circa 62 million.

MatthewHutton said:

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.

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The whole of the South East (population of 9.6 million) to North West is 1.5 minion. Are you really saying that 6.7% of that will come from an area with a population of 200,000 within a 15km distance?

MatthewHutton said:

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.

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Your post has only demonstrated that you haven't understood the HS2 model.

For example not understanding that the 100 million is for the whole Y scheme, which adds other regions.

Likewise, 25% of that isn't from existing rail use and growth.

MatthewHutton said:

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

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One example please, excluding chsrter trains.

Sorcerer said:

Once again it must be pointed out that most intermediate stops are either due to political pressures rather than because they are actually practical, or in the case of Shinkansen lines it's because they are actually connecting major centres of industry.

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In the Shinkansen case it is also because they have three speed classes of service: on the Tokaido Shinkansen they have Nozomi (~ 130 mph average speed end to end), Hikari (~ 110 mph average speed) and Kodama (~ 80 mph average speed) with many of the intermediate stops only serviced by Kodama trains.

In Western European countries however, the classical rail network allows for higher speeds than the Japanese classical rail network (in part because Japan's classical lines are Cape gauge) and can already support Kodama-level services, meaning that dedicated high-speed lines would be used only for Nozomi- and Hikari-equivalent services.

GCarty80 said:

In the Shinkansen case it is also because they have three speed classes of service: on the Tokaido Shinkansen they have Nozomi (~ 130 mph average speed end to end), Hikari (~ 110 mph average speed) and Kodama (~ 80 mph average speed) with many of the intermediate stops only serviced by Kodama trains.

In Western European countries however, the classical rail network allows for higher speeds than the Japanese classical rail network (in part because Japan's classical lines are Cape gauge) and can already support Kodama-level services, meaning that dedicated high-speed lines would be used only for Nozomi- and Hikari-equivalent services.

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I believe the strategy following the loss of the Nozomi to the Chuo is to increase skip-stop services to serve more local stations on various stopping patterns with faster journey times at reasonable frequency. That will allow routine en route overtaking of Kodama trains to be largely eliminated, except in the case of late running, where an overtake might be a useful recovery measure. Overtaking costs journey time with long dwell times at local stations where it is scheduled.

GCarty80 said:

In the Shinkansen case it is also because they have three speed classes of service: on the Tokaido Shinkansen they have Nozomi (~ 130 mph average speed end to end), Hikari (~ 110 mph average speed) and Kodama (~ 80 mph average speed) with many of the intermediate stops only serviced by Kodama trains.

In Western European countries however, the classical rail network allows for higher speeds than the Japanese classical rail network (in part because Japan's classical lines are Cape gauge) and can already support Kodama-level services, meaning that dedicated high-speed lines would be used only for Nozomi- and Hikari-equivalent services.

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Welcome to the Forum.

MarkyT said:

I believe the strategy following the loss of the Nozomi to the Chuo is to increase skip-stop services to serve more local stations on various stopping patterns with faster journey times at reasonable frequency. That will allow routine en route overtaking of Kodama trains to be largely eliminated, except in the case of late running, where an overtake might be a useful recovery measure. Overtaking costs journey time with long dwell times at local stations where it is scheduled.

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Approaching 400 contributions to this thread now ... any more likely there will be an HS2 station in the Chilterns? No. The only value would have been in gaining approval sooner, and reducing continuing rearguard resistance. How many Chiltern residents refuse to use the M40, or M1, on principal? How many HS1 trains call at Bluewater, or Ashford International, or Stratford International?

BrianW said:

Welcome to the Forum.
Approaching 400 contributions to this thread now ... any more likely there will be an HS2 station in the Chilterns? No. The only value would have been in gaining approval sooner, and reducing continuing rearguard resistance. How many Chiltern residents refuse to use the M40, or M1, on principal? How many HS1 trains call at Bluewater, or Ashford International, or Stratford International?

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Isn't the main value of HS2 to the Chilterns that it will free up WCML capacity (currently used by long-distance trains) for more local services?

GCarty80 said:

Isn't the main value of HS2 to the Chilterns that it will free up WCML capacity (currently used by long-distance trains) for more local services?

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Indeed. I lived near Bicester for some years, and this 'consequential gain' was little spoken of by the 'gammon-faced' of the area, determined to complain, and be listened to, about everything.

BrianW said:

Indeed. I lived near Bicester for some years, and this 'consequential gain' was little spoken of by the 'gammon-faced' of the area, determined to complain, and be listened to, about everything.

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Quite possibly because Bicester stands to lose from it - too far from Milton Keynes for the WCML to be particularly useful, and it's likely the Chiltern line would lose its Birmingham expresses as a result of HS2 as why would you need two alternatives?

The whining about it you get in MK does show a lack of understanding, however.

Bletchleyite said:

Quite possibly because Bicester stands to lose from it - too far from Milton Keynes for the WCML to be particularly useful, and it's likely the Chiltern line would lose its Birmingham expresses as a result of HS2 as why would you need two alternatives?

The whining about it you get in MK does show a lack of understanding, however.

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I am not so sure they will, I can still see there being some sort of fast to Bicester and Banbury.

The Planner said:

I am not so sure they will, I can still see there being some sort of fast to Bicester and Banbury.

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That might be combined with limited-stop Birmingham outer suburbans to produce something very similar to today's Chiltern long distance. The route serves a number of markets. A bloomin great HS2 parkway just to the north of the Chilterns could abstract heavily from the Bicester/Banbury area, so could be a much bigger threat to the viability of such trains than HS2 as being built.

MarkyT said:

That might be combined with limited-stop Birmingham outer suburbans to produce something very similar to today's Chiltern long distance. The route serves a number of markets. A bloomin great HS2 parkway just to the north of the Chilterns could abstract heavily from the Bicester/Banbury area, so could be a much bigger threat to the viability of such trains than HS2 as being built.

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Exactly. HS2 releases just the right modest amount of capacity on Chiltern whose stopping pattern of all principle stations will most likely stay unchanged.

BrianW said:

How many HS1 trains call at Bluewater, or Ashford International, or Stratford International?

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What are in essence commuter services to Kent run on HS1 to Ashford and then continue on the existing lines. Nothing similar was ever designed or proposed for HS2. If the interchange was where it crosses EWR, would a direct Old Oak Common service to Oxford via HS1 be faster than via Reading?

The Planner said:

I am not so sure they will, I can still see there being some sort of fast to Bicester and Banbury.

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I'm sure there will be...

Chiltern has reportedly applied to run additional Marylebone-Birmingham services...

That’s just restoring the pre Covid service level though …

MarlowDonkey said:

What are in essence commuter services to Kent run on HS1 to Ashford and then continue on the existing lines. Nothing similar was ever designed or proposed for HS2.

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You could argue that services like the Macclesfield run would have been analogous to those Javelin routes. But the main reasons why a broader scope wasn't envisaged were: (a) freed up capacity on the WCML would allow equivalent services to run at 125mph from Euston – there is no equivalent fast route to Kent on the classic lines, which are predominantly twin track lines used by at least half-hourly stopping services, and (2) the plan for HS2 was to max out the capacity on the line with long-distance services, leaving no opportunity to run trains that run fast a little way and then turn back onto an old line to be a stopping service.