Can a simpler station be built for HS2 at Euston?

[Nicholas Lewis]

Looking at Euston, just build a concrete box with 5 island platforms in it. Ensure it is strong enough to hold an office block above it and without requiring the station to be shut. At least it will be in keeping with the existing structure at Euston and it will cost pretty much nothing in comparison to what is currently planned.

mods note - split from this thread

indeed ditch the architects and provide functional infrastructure

 

[JonathanH]

indeed ditch the architects and provide functional infrastructure

Even functional infrastructure requires the skills of an architect. Would a 'small time' architect be able to design a station used by millions of people a year?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Even functional infrastructure requires the skills of an architect. Would a 'small time' architect be able to design a station used by millions of people a year?

we have a couple hundred years experience of building stations to be able to build a basic station the footprint of which at platform level has already been established anyhow by 10's of millions spent on consultants already. Stations are to pass through the train is the experience but we seem to want to emulate airports by making them a destination. Whats important here is to have cost effective infrastructure that enables an increase in rail usage.

 

[zwk500]

we have a couple hundred years experience of building stations to be able to build a basic station the footprint of which at platform level has already been established anyhow by 10's of millions spent on consultants already. Stations are to pass through the train is the experience but we seem to want to emulate airports by making them a destination. Whats important here is to have cost effective infrastructure that enables an increase in rail usage.

You can have as simple a design as you like but you will still need an architect to make sure everybody had the space to do what they need to and an engineer to make sure the whole thing doesn't fall down.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

You can have as simple a design as you like but you will still need an architect to make sure everybody had the space to do what they need to and an engineer to make sure the whole thing doesn't fall down.

only mentioned architects designing buildings to win prizes which without engineers would never get built anyhow.

Surely the train is what HS2 is about not fancy stations.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Surely the train is what HS2 is about not fancy stations.

It's not a good look if your shiny new trains on your shiny new railway rock up at some bland non descript boring station that looks like it was made for 10p. The public aren't going to like it if they can't see how it cost £100b+.

 

[HSTEd]

The mad thing is that this options appraisal hasn't been done already! Though I'm not sure that tops letting contracts for Euston before determining the construction cost...

HS2/DfT seem to have made an absolute pig's ear of this one.

The options appraisal has been done repeatedly, the results just aren't the ones the DfT want.

Therefore another analysis is ordered, this will continue until a quart manages to fit into a pint glass.

The more information comes out the more it appears the reality is that there is not enough money to deliver the planned Euston station and that is the way it is.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 May 2023 ==

It's not a good look if your shiny new trains on your shiny new railway rock up at some bland non descript boring station that looks like it was made for 10p. The public aren't going to like it if they can't see how it cost £100b+.

People won't really care, they will be too busy worrying about other things or staring at their phone.

EDIT: The New Civil Engineer article seem to boil down to "it will be cheaper, honest". Hardly fills me with confidence.

Time for the nuclear option, open air station with the only covered structure being the shelter for the gate line.

 

[SynthD]

we have a couple hundred years experience of building stations to be able to build a basic station the footprint of which at platform level has already been established anyhow by 10's of millions spent on consultants already. Stations are to pass through the train is the experience but we seem to want to emulate airports by making them a destination. Whats important here is to have cost effective infrastructure that enables an increase in rail usage.

We have nearly 200 years of building small stations. The only stations comparable to HS2 at Euston are Eurostar at St Pancras and Waterloo. Euston will be bigger than those combined.

 

[Snow1964]

We have nearly 200 years of building small stations. The only stations comparable to HS2 at Euston are Eurostar at St Pancras and Waterloo. Euston will be bigger than those combined.

You could add the huge extension at Liverpool Street, with new concourse for platforms 1-7 and platform extensions to reach it with new Central Line booking hall below.

Euston might be bigger, but it is still basically 2 parts a concourse and covered platforms. Almost certainly if you alight from second carriage or fifteenth carriage on any of the platforms, will look ident as whole platform area will be one design. Not like it will be unique design for each platform.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It's not a good look if your shiny new trains on your shiny new railway rock up at some bland non descript boring station that looks like it was made for 10p. The public aren't going to like it if they can't see how it cost £100b+.

oh so we need to spend money we don't have to create a fancy station in 10-15 years time rather than go for something bland that functions as a station. The whole point of a train is to be able to breeze onto the station 5mins before the train goes and get on it not arrive half an hour early to admire the station go by plane if you want that experience.

HS2 will have sunk 40B by the time phase 1 opens ex Euston is built but how much income will it generate vs a station located at Euston - a lot less i'll wager so better to have a terminus even if it is bland. Go to Germany and majority of their large city stations are bland monolithic concrete structures but that never put off passengers.

 

[zwk500]

oh so we need to spend money we don't have to create a fancy station in 10-15 years time rather than go for something bland that functions as a station. The whole point of a train is to be able to breeze onto the station 5mins before the train goes and get on it not arrive half an hour early to admire the station go by plane if you want that experience.

This isn't some prefab platform at the end of a car park on a single track branch line. It will be the terminus of a high-frequency high-capacity interchange with heavy passenger flows. The concourse will need to be able to manage those flows appropriately. You will also need rooms for all the various operational roles, such as the Station Control Room, Station Shift manager's office and station staff mess room, cleaners and equipment stores, a plant and systems room for the IT, Fire alarm, HVAC systems in case of an emergency, probably a driver's break room (unless the one at Euston classic is able to accommodate the uplift), and all the cabling conduits etc for the PIS systems. And that's before we get to the retail units, which is where the line will actually make some money.
Given the 400m length of the platforms, the concourse needs to be roughly in the middle to spread the passengers out properly. The buildings can't just be plonked anywhere or they'll obstruct passenger flows. And then it needs to at least make some effort to present a welcoming face, or it will put people off travelling, so you'd need some element of canopy or roof to protect people from the rain. yes it could be simpler, but not much.

Go to Germany and majority of their large city stations are bland monolithic concrete structures but that never put off passengers.

Cologne, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg are all predominantly glazed structures. Munich uses a lot of concrete but it's hardly bland and monolithic.

 

[JonathanH]

Euston will be bigger than those combined.

...if it is ever built, which right now seems very unlikely.

If it is a matter of building what might amount to a set of sidings with platforms and bus shelters that is affordable, and something grander that isn't, then maybe the former is better.

After all, from a functional point of view, what is needed is somewhere to terminate the trains and prepare them between journeys, with more capacity than turning trains at Old Oak Common. Most passengers can be directed to Old Oak Common if they want a station with more facilities.

 

[Meerkat]

...if it is ever built, which right now seems very unlikely.

If it is a matter of building what might amount to a set of sidings with platforms and bus shelters that is affordable, and something grander that isn't, then maybe the former is better.

After all, from a functional point of view, what is needed is somewhere to terminate the trains and prepare them between journeys, with more capacity than turning trains at Old Oak Common. Most passengers can be directed to Old Oak Common if they want a station with more facilities.

Arent the trains going to be 400m long? Got to have a central concourse for that, and that means serious construction above.

 

[najaB]

If only they had gone with the option where there was tunnel through Euston to somewhere south of the Thames, then the whole thing would be done already. Yes, it would mean potentially several miles more tunnelling, but Euston HS2 would just be a (relatively) simple box and wouldn't need as many platforms (since the train prep would be done elsewhere).

 

[HSTEd]

Arent the trains going to be 400m long? Got to have a central concourse for that, and that means serious construction above.

Why?

Lots of stations abroad operate 400m trains without centre concourses.....

Paris Termini have 400m TGVs arriving at normal end-served platforms.
Passenger flow on and off each platform island is not going to be that much greater than commuter railways elsewhere in Britain.

 

[Brubulus]

It's not a good look if your shiny new trains on your shiny new railway rock up at some bland non descript boring station that looks like it was made for 10p. The public aren't going to like it if they can't see how it cost £100b+.

I'd rather my tax money went towards funding functional infrastructure than a glamorous new station for a shuttle to Birmingham. If Euston spending was reduced significantly, phase 2a could be bought forward a year or two without increasing annual spend.

 

[Skie]

It's not a good look if your shiny new trains on your shiny new railway rock up at some bland non descript boring station that looks like it was made for 10p. The public aren't going to like it if they can't see how it cost £100b+.

They could have gotten away with bare concrete walls on the Elizabeth Line. Once a station has sufficient numbers of passengers you can’t even see the the details anyway so it always feels wasteful to make something that only looks pleasing when closed.

 

[Benjwri]

They could have gotten away with bare concrete walls on the Elizabeth Line. Once a station has sufficient numbers of passengers you can’t even see the the details anyway so it always feels wasteful to make something that only looks pleasing when closed.

Yes but when they brought the BBC in and told them they spent countless billions building it they would get significant bad press. Small decorations don’t cost that much compared to the overall project, but are surprisingly important to its perceived success.

 

[LOL The Irony]

People won't really care, they will be too busy worrying about other things or staring at their phone.

EDIT: The New Civil Engineer article seem to boil down to "it will be cheaper, honest". Hardly fills me with confidence.

Time for the nuclear option, open air station with the only covered structure being the shelter for the gate line.

oh so we need to spend money we don't have to create a fancy station in 10-15 years time rather than go for something bland that functions as a station. The whole point of a train is to be able to breeze onto the station 5mins before the train goes and get on it not arrive half an hour early to admire the station go by plane if you want that experience.

Thinking like this is 1. How we got that absolute disgusting 1960's honker of a station know as Euston and 2. Will make us a laughing stock. If you just throw it together and call it a day, people are going to question where their £100b went as they sit freezing cold in a bus shelter.

I'd rather my tax money went towards funding functional infrastructure than a glamorous new station for a shuttle to Birmingham. If Euston spending was reduced significantly, phase 2a could be bought forward a year or two without increasing annual spend.

So we get some slapdash looking, thrown together thing that looks more like a bus station, causing passengers to complain about it, so it has to be rebuilt at great expense in 30 years? And if we're doing that to the main terminus, why stop there? Just put some concrete cuboids down and slap some bus shelters on them and call them a station. Do it to all of them. In fact, why stop there? Let's not send it further north from Crewe, so Manchester doesn’t get it's much needed capacity upgrades. They don't need them anyways. In fact, why stop there...

If you stop caring about certain aspects of the project, you may as well stop caring about all aspects of the project.

They could have gotten away with bare concrete walls on the Elizabeth Line. Once a station has sufficient numbers of passengers you can’t even see the the details anyway so it always feels wasteful to make something that only looks pleasing when closed.

See

Yes but when they brought the BBC in and told them they spent countless billions building it they would get significant bad press. Small decorations don’t cost that much compared to the overall project, but are surprisingly important to its perceived success.

 

[HSTEd]

Thinking like this is 1. How we got that absolute disgusting 1960's honker of a station know as Euston

No, that reconstruction cost a lot of money. It is only believed to be "disgusting" now because of changes in architectural tastes.

A more apt comparison would be the pre-rebuild King's Cross concourse building.

and 2. Will make us a laughing stock. If you just throw it together and call it a day, people are going to question where their £100b went as they sit freezing cold in a bus shelter.

They will question where £100bn went anyway if they are that way inclined.

The important thing is to get the damn line open and functioning, we can debate aesthetics afterwards.
Huge numbers of people use "tatty" stations on the Underground and elsewhere all the time, they don't believe the line is not successful because they aren't at the cutting edge of architectural brilliance.

If you stop caring about certain aspects of the project, you may as well stop caring about all aspects of the project.

And this is the mindset that has driven the cost of rail projects so high that no more significant ones are likely to be approved in my lifetime.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 May 2023 ==

Yes but when they brought the BBC in and told them they spent countless billions building it they would get significant bad press. Small decorations don’t cost that much compared to the overall project, but are surprisingly important to its perceived success.

Why would they bring the BBC in? Does the BBC making a breathless documentary, or not, actually matter?

And these "small decorations" are apparently literally costing billions of pounds.

 

[matacaster]

oh so we need to spend money we don't have to create a fancy station in 10-15 years time rather than go for something bland that functions as a station. The whole point of a train is to be able to breeze onto the station 5mins before the train goes and get on it not arrive half an hour early to admire the station go by plane if you want that experience.

HS2 will have sunk 40B by the time phase 1 opens ex Euston is built but how much income will it generate vs a station located at Euston - a lot less i'll wager so better to have a terminus even if it is bland. Go to Germany and majority of their large city stations are bland monolithic concrete structures but that never put off passengers.

It's notable that the infrastructure up north eg Leeds, Bradford, Manchester etc is entirely functional. Whereas the main London stations all seem to get top dollar solutions. It's almost as if northerners should be happy they've got train stations at all.

 

[Meerkat]

Why?

Lots of stations abroad operate 400m trains without centre concourses.....

Paris Termini have 400m TGVs arriving at normal end-served platforms.
Passenger flow on and off each platform island is not going to be that much greater than commuter railways elsewhere in Britain.

Its not very attractive if you have to walk 400m to your seat, and a load of regular commuters piling through a gateline is a bit different to the same number of less frequent travellers ambling about trying to find their ticket with a much higher proportion needing the wide gate.

 

[JamesT]

oh so we need to spend money we don't have to create a fancy station in 10-15 years time rather than go for something bland that functions as a station. The whole point of a train is to be able to breeze onto the station 5mins before the train goes and get on it not arrive half an hour early to admire the station go by plane if you want that experience.

HS2 will have sunk 40B by the time phase 1 opens ex Euston is built but how much income will it generate vs a station located at Euston - a lot less i'll wager so better to have a terminus even if it is bland. Go to Germany and majority of their large city stations are bland monolithic concrete structures but that never put off passengers.

Isn’t the problem with “just build something that works now”, that it locks in constraints for decades to come?
Any sort of over station development will need support that you have to design the platform level around. Not having the concourse above the platforms limits the capacity to disperse passengers.
Coming back to revisit these decisions after the station opens will cost even more and result in massive disruption trying to rebuild an operational station.
I don’t believe the problem with Euston so far has been aesthetic, but how to build something that meets all the requirements.

 

[HSTEd]

Its not very attractive if you have to walk 400m to your seat,

I don't think walking just under 400m to your seat is much worse than walking just under 260m to your seat, which is what happens on a 10-car IEP today.
And given how long the walks in modern tube stations are, I'm not sure anyone would notice another hundred metres.

Could always just sell the frontmost vehicles as cheap advances if you want....
It's not as if there is a teleporter to move the passengers to the concourse, they still have to walk about the same distance, just they do it after they reach the concourse rather than after.

through a gateline is a bit different to the same number of less frequent travellers ambling about trying to find their ticket with a much higher proportion needing the wide gate.

A large fraction of the journeys on HS2 will be very short, 70 minutes or less in many cases.
I don't think its reasonable to assume that a huge proportion of people will need the wide gate.

 

[LOL The Irony]

No, that reconstruction cost a lot of money. It is only believed to be "disgusting" now because of changes in architectural tastes.

It's crowded and claustrophobic. Also doesn’t help that there's only one entrance for such a large station.

They will question where £100bn went anyway if they are that way inclined.

Even more so if the platform amenities consist of those identikit bus shelters and nothing else.

The important thing is to get the damn line open and functioning, we can debate aesthetics afterwards.

Is it so hard to get both at the same time?

Huge numbers of people use "tatty" stations on the Underground and elsewhere all the time, they don't believe the line is not successful because they aren't at the cutting edge of architectural brilliance.

Were those stations tatty when they opened or after they opened?

And this is the mindset that has driven the cost of rail projects so high that no more significant ones are likely to be approved in my lifetime.

No, it isn't. You can have nice looking things without breaking the bank. Putting a nice canopy/roof up and building a suitable concourse area is possible without spending hundreds of millions on the station and looks better than your idea of spending 10p on the stations.

 

[HSTEd]

Is it so hard to get both at the same time?

Empirical evidence is that it is.

No, it isn't. You can have nice looking things without breaking the bank. Putting a nice canopy/roof up and building a suitable concourse area is possible without spending hundreds of millions on the station and looks better than your idea of spending 10p on the stations.

The evidence we have from modern railway design is that that is not the case.

Even a bus shelter station costs many millions of pounds per platform, an overall roof over a large-ish station is going to cost an absolute fortune.

 

[JonathanH]

Even a bus shelter station costs many millions of pounds per platform, an overall roof over a large-ish station is going to cost an absolute fortune.

Yes, even taking something like the current stations at Great Yarmouth, Cleethorpes or Lowestoft as the architectural model would no doubt still come in costing billions of pounds, such is the way these things work.

 

[Roast Veg]

Why would they bring the BBC in? Does the BBC making a breathless documentary, or not, actually matter?

And these "small decorations" are apparently literally costing billions of pounds.

Future projects will not garner any political capital if they do not have form as well as function, and thus will never get tabled in the first place. We must make projects of this significance attractive in their own right.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It's absolutely usual for railways to open without a grand terminus.
Most of the early railways had severe financial problems simply building the approved railway route, and didn't have the means to build a proper terminus.
Euston itself was like that in 1837, while Robert Stephenson struggled with cost overruns and delays along the line of route to Birmingham, eg at Kilsby tunnel.
The initial estimate for the London & Birmingham was £2.5m, but it cost £5 million to get the line open.
Sounds a bit like déjà vu to me, but with the numbers of pounds multiplied by 10,000.

Arguably Euston never was the terminus the L&B/LNWR/LMS really wanted for the "Premier Line".
Most grand UK terminals were built at a later stage of development and expansion when revenue was flowing, and Euston never quite got it right.
Manchester Central is another example of a terminus which never got rid of its "temporary" wooden structures before it was abandoned by rail in 1969.
The Channel Tunnel never got round to building the intended architecturally impressive portals (they are pretty much invisible anyway).

There's general silence about the Birmingham end of Phase 1, but it wouldn't surprise me if the construction of the station at Curzon St was phased in some way to reduce the rate of spend until the network grows after several years of operation at low capacity.
Silence also about Birmingham Interchange, another station with an uncertain business case, with no interconnections like OOC.
Old Oak Common is the one site that can't be skimped, or we will throttle the system for decades.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Isn’t the problem with “just build something that works now”, that it locks in constraints for decades to come?
Any sort of over station development will need support that you have to design the platform level around. Not having the concourse above the platforms limits the capacity to disperse passengers.
Coming back to revisit these decisions after the station opens will cost even more and result in massive disruption trying to rebuild an operational station.
I don’t believe the problem with Euston so far has been aesthetic, but how to build something that meets all the requirements.

BR managed to incorporate oversite construction into five Victorian built London terminus oh and keep the trains running. Personally i will admit none of the stations are such nice places now at the platform level but as i say i don't goto a station to hang around looking at them. The station experience is a few minutes of peoples journeys and paying a bit more attention to train interiors and comfort would be far more valuable.