Could HS2 have been planned and built in the 1980s?

[Peter Sarf]

Where is the freight going once it gets to South Ruislip? No easy way to get towards the North London Line or Kew etc... Doesn't help with DIRFT or Northampton Gateway terminals either.

+

The Great Central route would be so expensive to reopen that you aren't going to justify it unless it has some major operational advantages over the status quo freight options.
Giving those advantages (loading gauge, train length, access to terminals etc etc) would probably require so many remedial works that you might as well just start fresh.

Same problem the Great Central always had. It was a late comer to the party and missed a lot of the more important traffic generators both passenger and freight. That was because things had naturally continued to build up around the existing railways lines.

Though I can suppose that a few links to existing lines at the London and Rugby ends might not have ended up costing as much as HS2 phase 1 has so far. Would have needed to get to Crewe to be really useful though - just like HS2 Phase 2a sadly isn't !.

 

[stuu]

I'm fairly sure I can remember seeing a proposal in a railway magazine to reopen the GC line between Rugby and Leicester as part of IC250 and run fast trains to the E Midlands that way, but it was a long time ago so it might have been a less than official suggestion

 

[Bald Rick]

Indeed, the Great Central is significantly west of the WCML. However use of the GC alignment is usually mentioned when Intercity 250 is mentioned in threads here, which is puzzling. That is why I am asking if anyone has ever seen anything with more details, or what other cut-offs were considered.

My particular information comes from the contemporary issues of RAIL magazine; I know which issue announced the proposal and which announced it had been canned, but I'd have to rummage some more through my back catalogue to unearth any mention as the project developed.

There's a fairly cursory summary of IC250 in 'The Intercity Story 1964 - 2012', by Chris Green and Mike Vincent, which Wikipedia quotes as a source, and I don't have the book to hand right this minute but some of the more targeted deviations to "straighten out" the south WCML sound plausible.

John Prideaux stated at the start that any new deviations would be "less than Selby", so wholesale use of the GC alignment was probably out of the question.

AIUI they werent really ‘cut offs’, but mostly heavy straightening. Linslade for example, Wolverton (straight through the works, I saw a plan for that once), Weedon, Rugby. I think Colwich was more of a cut off, and Norton Bridge too. Some of this got done, eventually, at least in part.

 

[Technologist]

I'm not sure that there was the need for another line in the 1980's, as such whilst HS2 could have be possible it wasn't politically viable.

As for eVTOL aircraft, sometimes it's forgotten just how much capacity railways have.

If you were to build a new line with 12tph (so only 1 train every 5 minutes in each direction) to be able to run 12 coach 350/450 trains for 15 hours a day your capacity for that line is 285,000 seats.

If you were to run 30 seat aircraft 24 hours a day you'd need to run 400 an hour to have the same capacity. That's one every 9 seconds.

Now whilst you wouldn't need all that capacity in one location, your air space along one route is going to get fairly congested fairly quickly and it's just not going to be viable for into London travel. Whilst it might be possible between other locations (say Woking to Reading where rail travel isn't easy), it's still likely to be fairly expensive to build the landing locations.

Whilst rail station rooftops could work, I'm not sure network rail would be all that keen unless there was a significantly low risk of aircraft coming down near (let alone on) a rail line - that would likely mean a significantly large area of roof space built to a high enough strength to withstand a small height uncontrolled decent.

I think that's kind of the point, any two city pairs don't actually have the full capacity of a high capacity line.

It's much better to look up the actual capacity of stations. If you take something like Liverpool Lime street usage is more like 3000 people per hour. That's more like 150 flights and hour or 1 per 24 seconds. Which is easily doable with 10 pads if the vehicle taxis away after landing. Thus the actual land area for something with the capacity of a mainline station will fit within about the same area as a mainline station.

In practice I would imagine that you'd utilise existing roof space from multistorey car parks near to station or bus stations first. It also has the advantage of scalability, you can build for initial demand and add more pads and charging spots as you go.

I also suspect that eVTOL will probably mostly be used to make trips that you can't today, particularly leisure trips. Today if you wanted to visit a North Wales beach from Manchester on a Friday night when there's good weather with no planning you couldn't do that easily. With eVTOL you could be there a hour after you left work with no need to build high capacity infrastructure to do so.

Air space is not really an issue for capacity there is a hell of a lot of it and automated ATC, sense and avoid systems and "air routes" are all doable. Relatively easily from a technology perspective, the issues are planning and chucking GA aircraft out of a lot of the airspace. I think a lot of those issues will be resolved once people start flying on eVTOLs and how useful they could be to them/FOMO from watching people in other countries.

I think all of this will pretty inevitably happen, timing will be the issue, but in the long game high capacity batteries and ever increasing computational power pretty much guarantee that this will happen.

 

[The Ham]

I think that's kind of the point, any two city pairs don't actually have the full capacity of a high capacity line.

It's much better to look up the actual capacity of stations. If you take something like Liverpool Lime street usage is more like 3000 people per hour. That's more like 150 flights and hour or 1 per 24 seconds. Which is easily doable with 10 pads if the vehicle taxis away after landing. Thus the actual land area for something with the capacity of a mainline station will fit within about the same area as a mainline station.

In practice I would imagine that you'd utilise existing roof space from multistorey car parks near to station or bus stations first. It also has the advantage of scalability, you can build for initial demand and add more pads and charging spots as you go.

I also suspect that eVTOL will probably mostly be used to make trips that you can't today, particularly leisure trips. Today if you wanted to visit a North Wales beach from Manchester on a Friday night when there's good weather with no planning you couldn't do that easily. With eVTOL you could be there a hour after you left work with no need to build high capacity infrastructure to do so.

Air space is not really an issue for capacity there is a hell of a lot of it and automated ATC, sense and avoid systems and "air routes" are all doable. Relatively easily from a technology perspective, the issues are planning and chucking GA aircraft out of a lot of the airspace. I think a lot of those issues will be resolved once people start flying on eVTOLs and how useful they could be to them/FOMO from watching people in other countries.

I think all of this will pretty inevitably happen, timing will be the issue, but in the long game high capacity batteries and ever increasing computational power pretty much guarantee that this will happen.

So in addition to 10 pads you need somewhere for the aircraft to taxi to, assuming that there's going to be some margin of error it's not unreasonable that 10 pads is going to be at least 200m long and 20m wide you then need extra parking spaces.

If we assume that those pads each need say 5 spaces linked to it (note the 24 second assumes that every 20 seater aircraft is 100% occupied - whilst the same could be said about my railway line, trains can have people standing, 12tph can be increased, 15 hours per day is 6am to 9pm, so there's still a bit of extra capacity), that would allow each space to be occupied for 20 minutes.

In that time those aircraft would have to land, taxi to their space, be emptied, be cleaned and reloaded and be back in the air ready for the next aircraft to land. Likewise each pad would need to land and taxi off one aircraft and then taxi on and clear the landing area every 4 minutes. Whilst Heathrow manages it much closer times than that, they are always moving along, which isn't something that a vertical take off aircraft is doing (as it's likely to be coming downwards a lot more than traditional aircraft.

As to air space, it's likely to get very busy very quickly (not the 100km upwards - as that's not really a limiting factor) as a lot of people would want to be landing in some fairly dense places.

Whilst Liverpool Lime Street may be 3,000 per hour (pre COVID that was the average over the whole day, so peaks would have been noticeable busier than that) Manchester Piccadilly is about double that.and that's only the 10th busiest station in the UK.

For there you're at a flight every 12 seconds (again peak demand is likely to reduce that further).

That's also not allowing for the potential for future increases in rail use (HS2 trains, if the full station was every built, could provide capacity between Manchester and London of 3,300 seats in each direction compared with the current circa 1,800 seats in each direction).

The per person land requirement for each rail passenger (based on Network Rail land ownership) is 0.331m2, this compares with 0.201m2 for Heathrow. Whist that sounds an easy win for aircraft in terms of aircraft, it's comparing the busiest airport with the whole of the rail network (which includes a lot of very lightly used lines and stations), it also only compares one end of the route, so at the very least we need another Heathrow for people to be going to, which puts air travel at 0.402m2 per person.

 

[HSTEd]

So in addition to 10 pads you need somewhere for the aircraft to taxi to, assuming that there's going to be some margin of error it's not unreasonable that 10 pads is going to be at least 200m long and 20m wide you then need extra parking spaces.

If we assume that those pads each need say 5 spaces linked to it (note the 24 second assumes that every 20 seater aircraft is 100% occupied - whilst the same could be said about my railway line, trains can have people standing, 12tph can be increased, 15 hours per day is 6am to 9pm, so there's still a bit of extra capacity), that would allow each space to be occupied for 20 minutes.

In that time those aircraft would have to land, taxi to their space, be emptied, be cleaned and reloaded and be back in the air ready for the next aircraft to land. Likewise each pad would need to land and taxi off one aircraft and then taxi on and clear the landing area every 4 minutes. Whilst Heathrow manages it much closer times than that, they are always moving along, which isn't something that a vertical take off aircraft is doing (as it's likely to be coming downwards a lot more than traditional aircraft.

Why would VTOLs have to taxi?
Wouldn't you just have a huge array of helipads?

It would just be a large array of landing "bays" with access and servicing provided direct to them.

Attempting ground handling is just asking for trouble, especially in limited visibility conditions.

 

[Energy]

I'm fairly sure I can remember seeing a proposal in a railway magazine to reopen the GC line between Rugby and Leicester as part of IC250 and run fast trains to the E Midlands that way, but it was a long time ago so it might have been a less than official suggestion

There were plans from MML fast trains to run along the Market Harborough - Northampton line to Euston, with trains serving MML stations south of Market Harborough running into Moorgate.

However the Kelmarsh and Oxendon Tunnels are single-bore single-track tunnels (one is the up, the other the down) and would be unable to be electrified so this didn't go ahead.

This proposal was more about closing St Pancras to save money rather than speeding up journey times.

 

[Technologist]

Why would VTOLs have to taxi?
Wouldn't you just have a huge array of helipads?

It would just be a large array of landing "bays" with access and servicing provided direct to them.

Attempting ground handling is just asking for trouble, especially in limited visibility conditions.

If everyone is interested in this I suggest looking through the Uber Elevate conference materials (you may need to use the Way back Machine)

Various architects and transport planners expended thousands of hours on the design of vertiports.

The takeaways are that with 5 seat aircraft vertiports with capacity akin to an underground station are possible. With 10-20 seaters the aircraft is only slightly bigger but much higher capacity.

The reason you taxi is that the landing pads need to be spaced out more than the hard standing and a helicopter/eVTOL.can land and taxi away in seconds compared to minutes to change passengers and charge up.

Ground handling is an electrically powered front wheel using the crafts perception system to drive itself 25-50m.

 

[sprinterguy]

AIUI they werent really ‘cut offs’, but mostly heavy straightening. Linslade for example, Wolverton (straight through the works, I saw a plan for that once), Weedon, Rugby. I think Colwich was more of a cut off, and Norton Bridge too. Some of this got done, eventually, at least in part.

Yeah I don't doubt you are right there - thanks for the additional info.

 

[Peter Wilde]

Why would VTOLs have to taxi?
Wouldn't you just have a huge array of helipads?

It would just be a large array of landing "bays" with access and servicing provided direct to them.

Attempting ground handling is just asking for trouble, especially in limited visibility conditions.

Wait a moment - these projected future clouds of landing VTOLs (which some are arguing could replace high speed rail!) are going to be EVs, in this scenario.

So they will be often be landing with batteries that if not flat exactly, will be depleted to the lowest acceptable safety margin, so will have to be recharged before the vehicle can take off again.

So each airport would need ground handling facilities with either a large number of recharging bays, or (less likely) some forklift trucks and a massive store of charging slot-in batteries. For mass transportation, the location for all this would be about the size of London City Airport, not a helipad.

This is unlikely to work other than as an expensive niche service for a few rich folk.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Dec 2023 ==

Forgot to add that the other significant issue in the near future is that during the transition away from fossil fuels, all green substitutes (electricity itself - or manufactured liquid fuels like SAF) may often be in short supply. It will be imperative to deploy them in the most effective ways.

That is never likely to be air transport on short overland routes. Aircraft have a fundamental disadvantage in that energy has to be constantly expended to keep the vehicle in the air, as well as to move it forward. Trains (and road vehicles, and ships) don’t.

 

[The Ham]

Why would VTOLs have to taxi?
Wouldn't you just have a huge array of helipads?

It would just be a large array of landing "bays" with access and servicing provided direct to them.

Attempting ground handling is just asking for trouble, especially in limited visibility conditions.

I was commenting on what was said by another:

Which is easily doable with 10 pads if the vehicle taxis away after landing.

To get to the same capacity with just landing pads you'd need significantly more than the 10 suggested and so the land required stays to ramp up rather rapidly.

Either way, as I highlighted later in my post, air travel in the UK is likely to be more land intensive than rail (at least it is when comparing 2 Heathrows with the land ownership of Network Rail, the reason for two is so you are comparing origin and destination for air travel).

 

[stuu]

There were plans from MML fast trains to run along the Market Harborough - Northampton line to Euston, with trains serving MML stations south of Market Harborough running into Moorgate.

However the Kelmarsh and Oxendon Tunnels are single-bore single-track tunnels (one is the up, the other the down) and would be unable to be electrified so this didn't go ahead.

This proposal was more about closing St Pancras to save money rather than speeding up journey times.

No this would have been early 90s, it was definitely Rugby to Leicester, I think the Northampton-MH idea was a lot earlier. It may well have been some loon enthusiastic amateur who got his diagram printed in Modern Railways or whatever it was

 

[Technologist]

Wait a moment - these projected future clouds of landing VTOLs (which some are arguing could replace high speed rail!) are going to be EVs, in this scenario.

So they will be often be landing with batteries that if not flat exactly, will be depleted to the lowest acceptable safety margin, so will have to be recharged before the vehicle can take off again.

So each airport would need ground handling facilities with either a large number of recharging bays, or (less likely) some forklift trucks and a massive store of charging slot-in batteries. For mass transportation, the location for all this would be about the size of London City Airport, not a helipad.

This is unlikely to work other than as an expensive niche service for a few rich folk.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Dec 2023 ==

Forgot to add that the other significant issue in the near future is that during the transition away from fossil fuels, all green substitutes (electricity itself - or manufactured liquid fuels like SAF) may often be in short supply. It will be imperative to deploy them in the most effective ways.

That is never likely to be air transport on short overland routes. Aircraft have a fundamental disadvantage in that energy has to be constantly expended to keep the vehicle in the air, as well as to move it forward. Trains (and road vehicles, and ships) don’t.

1: Again I reference the Uber Elevate studies, vertiports developed against charging times for actual craft were developed and had very high capacities for their physical size. Compared to rails vehicles these things are light so you can put the boarding/charging pads, taxiways and landing spots on the roof, and the passenger handling facilities on two floors beneath.

If we have a facility for 150 landings/ departures per hour (3000pax with a 20 seater) with we need around 50 hard standings (20 min charge), 10 landing pads all 15X15m, we need 50% more space for taxi ways and we add 15% for pedestrian walkways and some segregation to the landing pads. Capacity will go up over time as charge time decreases with battery innovation.

We could fit all that into a space 250x100m, or about commensurate with a mainline terminal station.

Even if you space it out further it's not a massive issue and it is arguably easier to package as you could put it over multiple rooftops and you don't have to accommodate a throat and approach tracks.

2: Re: Efficiency - fixed wing aircraft can be very efficient. The one I posted an image of has a cruise lift to drag of around 20-1. For the 16 passenger variant which weighs 7 tonnes loaded once you account for propulsion efficiency you get an energy expenditure of ~80Wh/passenger km. That's about twice the energy consumption of a high-speed train, though most of that difference is due to the eVTOL being relatively small, a larger plane would have a better mass to passenger ratio. Also energy consumption is not a high portion of the cost or a particular environmental concern.

3: Re SAF I agree, see above.

4: Initially eVTOL will be expensive due to novelty, however as it shares a supply chain with BEVs this has the potential to come down significantly. Once you get vehicle utilisation up it could potentially be very cheap as it is infrastructure light. See comparison of low cost flying Vs high speed rail.

 

[The Ham]

Only it wouldn't be infrastructure light, you'd need a very large energy supply upgrade to be charging 50 aircraft at a time at higher speeds and unlike car charging hubs which often have batteries to cope with peak demand, you're not going to have those quiet periods. You're also not able to use all that much on site solar (something else some car hubs have).

If we assume a 250KWH charger per aircraft that's 12,500KWH, to put that in perspective a large home uses an average of 20,000KWH a year (combined had and electric use), so that one hub (assuming 15 hours of 150 flights an hour) would have a similar energy need as a small town with 3,400 homes (population of about 8,200).

That's a very serious grid upgrade and would add a LOT to the setup costs.

Also you're assuming 100% seat occupancy, just an average of 2 empty seats per aircraft would require 3 extra flights per hour. Current plans for ICWC services to Liverpool would provide over 1/3 of the same capacity in just 2tph. If a dedicated pair of platforms were provided (400m x 15m or 6,000m2, this compares with 100m x 250m or 25,000m2) there could be capacity for 4tph easily (4,400 seats) which would easily be the same capacity as the morning peak needed to deliver as you'd need less than 10% standing (even allowing for a lightly used first class section, the over capacity would be 2.3%). Peak usage is something you're numbers hasn't allowed for.

As you're also assuming flights would be fairly equal through the day, on the roads it's fairly typical that about 10% of the daily use is in the morning peak and a similar amount in the evening peak (although slightly less as the school peak is typically earlier in the evening).

That's going to mean you'll need to cater for 4,500 passengers in the morning peak (so you're going to need 50% more pads/aprons) and have a large number of aircraft not doing anything for a lot of the day (whilst this could help with your charging as they could be your battery supply during the daytime whilst you could then trickle charge some on site batteries to cater for the peak, it's potentially not going to reduce your peak energy draw from the grub that much as you've got 50% more aircraft flying).

It'll happen, but just not in the numbers you're expecting and isn't likely to be much of a threat to the railways. Especially given your going to need to employ a lot of people to provide that capacity. Buses often struggle to cover their costs and they can generally fit more people in and have a driver who'll be on far lower pay than a pilot - OK their ticket prices are far lower however locally it's cheaper to go by train the same distance as it is to go by bus (that's an 5 mile trip, so about the worst price per mile you'll see).

 

[Matt P]

Personally I dont think HS2 could have been planned or built in the 1980s. The political environment was definitely not pro-rail enough at the time. BR has to jump through plenty of hoops to justify the investment that it did get, ECML electrification for example.

A number of people have already mentioned the IC250 project. Whilst it is true that one of the options considered was a new alignment from Rugby to a London, BR ruled this out for two reasons. The first was that there wasnt the same capacity issues there is now to justify it as necessary. Secondly, BR didnt think it would be approved by the government.

The best BR could have hoped for was to be allowed to implement one of the other IC250 options considered, which proposed some new build cut off sections to 'iron out' some of sections of the WCML that would prevent higher speed trains from being run at their design speed.

I suspect that the Rugby to London new build option considered by BR for IC250 was as much a genuine exercise of considering options for the WCML as much as an exercise of smoke and mirrors to make the option that proposed the cut off sections seem reasonable and therefore more likely to get government approval.

It is interesting to note that both of the IC250 options referred to above included a Stafford bypass which followed a route not a million miles from the route planned for the now cancelled Hansacre to Crewe section of HS2.

 

[PTR 444]

Personally I dont think HS2 could have been planned or built in the 1980s. The political environment was definitely not pro-rail enough at the time. BR has to jump through plenty of hoops to justify the investment that it did get, ECML electrification for example.

A number of people have already mentioned the IC250 project. Whilst it is true that one of the options considered was a new alignment from Rugby to a London, BR ruled this out for two reasons. The first was that there wasnt the same capacity issues there is now to justify it as necessary. Secondly, BR didnt think it would be approved by the government.

The best BR could have hoped for was to be allowed to implement one of the other IC250 options considering, which proposed some new build cut off sections to 'iron out' some of sections of the WCML that would prevent higher speed trains from being run at their design speed.

I suspect that the Rugby to London new build option considering by IC250 was as much a genuine exercise of considering options for the WCML as much as an exercise of smoke and mirrors by BR to make the option that proposed the cut off sections seem more reasonable and therefore likely to get government approval.

It is interesting to note that both of the IC250 options referred to above included a Stafford bypass which followed a route not a million miles from the route planned for the now cancelled Hansacre to Crewe section of HS2.

With hindsight, it probably would have made the most sense to build HS2 phase 2a first, as that’s the easiest bit and would still reduce WCML journey times even if the extra capacity isn’t needed. Then once demand exceeds capacity it would make sense to finish phases 1 and 2b.

Had we planned a UK high speed rail network sensibly, we might have seen a 186mph Stafford Bypass open sometime in the early 00s.

 

[The Planner]

With hindsight, it probably would have made the most sense to build HS2 phase 2a first, as that’s the easiest bit and would still reduce WCML journey times even if the extra capacity isn’t needed. Then once demand exceeds capacity it would make sense to finish phases 1 and 2b.

Had we planned a UK high speed rail network sensibly, we might have seen a 186mph Stafford Bypass open sometime in the early 00s.

How can you build 2A when it doesnt connect to anything going south? Stafford bypass wasnt designed for that speed AFAIK.

 

[PTR 444]

How can you build 2A when it doesnt connect to anything going south? Stafford bypass wasnt designed for that speed AFAIK.

I would have designed 2A to include an additional junction allowing access to the south WCML at Handsacre. That’s what the Stafford Bypass essentially was - it seems an oversight that it wasn’t future proofed for possible higher speeds, even if it was only say 140mph on opening.

 

[The Planner]

I would have designed 2A to include an additional junction allowing access to the south WCML at Handsacre. That’s what the Stafford Bypass essentially was - it seems an oversight that it wasn’t future proofed for possible higher speeds, even if it was only say 140mph on opening.

Thats a billion quid for something thats redundant once phase 1 opened though, even Handsacre had a tenuous use for 1tph with 2A.

 

[Matt P]

With hindsight, it probably would have made the most sense to build HS2 phase 2a first, as that’s the easiest bit and would still reduce WCML journey times even if the extra capacity isn’t needed. Then once demand exceeds capacity it would make sense to finish phases 1 and 2b.

Had we planned a UK high speed rail network sensibly, we might have seen a 186mph Stafford Bypass open sometime in the early 00s.

The best BR could have hoped for by the early 2000s was some modest route realignments to permit higher speeds with non-tilt rolling stock, as per the IC250 proposed.

In the 1980 I dont think anyone was envisaging the southern end of the WCML being full. So even an incremental approach to building a full HSL wouldnt have been on the cards.

 

[Bald Rick]

I suspect that the Rugby to London new build option considered by BR for IC250 was as much a genuine exercise of considering options for the WCML as much as an exercise of smoke and mirrors to make the option that proposed the cut off sections seem reasonable and therefore more likely to get government approval.

See my post #10 above.

Stafford bypass wasnt designed for that speed AFAIK.

It wasn’t designed!
However the initial feasibility had an alignment that “might” have permitted speeds of more than 225km/h

(as an aside, the Selby Diversion also has an alignment that permits speeds of more than 225km/h, but that’s another story).

 

[The Planner]

See my post #10 above.




It wasn’t designed!
However the initial feasibility had an alignment that “might” have permitted speeds of more than 225km/h

(as an aside, the Selby Diversion also has an alignment that permits speeds of more than 225km/h, but that’s another story).

Interesting, some of the old lags I know who were about from WCRM days suggested they knew where it was going.

 

[Bald Rick]

Interesting, some of the old lags I know who were about from WCRM days suggested they knew where it was going.

Oh a route was drawn up, but that isn‘t design by any stretch.

 

[Guano]

Was one of the objectives of the plans that were floating around in the 1980s and 1990s to have a pair of line from Euston to Crewe that were only for 100 mph plus services?

The objectives of HS2 are speed, capacity and segregation of traffic by speed. Was the need for the latter appreciated by the 1980s and 1990s?

 

[The Ham]

Was one of the objectives of the plans that were floating around in the 1980s and 1990s to have a pair of line from Euston to Crewe that were only for 100 mph plus services?

The objectives of HS2 are speed, capacity and segregation of traffic by speed. Was the need for the latter appreciated by the 1980s and 1990s?

The primary objective of HS2 is capacity (and hat been from the start).

Speed is there because you want people to switch from the existing services and from other modes to use the capacity.

Whilst segregation by traffic speed is too maximise the capacity.

If anyone doubts that HS2 was about capacity from the start, as many opposed to it have said that the arguments about it have changed, only need to look at the letter from HS2 to the government dated 13th February 2009 where it states:

Objectives for HS2, London to West Midlands

My understanding is that the objectives for the new line, subject to what I say below about the environment, are as follows, broadly in order of priority:

Passenger capacity: this is the driving consideration, including capacity released on classic lines.

Speed: the new line should be sufficiently high speed to optimise journey time benefits balanced with operational energy costs and achievement of maximum capacity. It is likely to be designed to at least the maximum speed for HS1. It should also have the ability to maintain high average speed, which will mean avoiding any permanent speed restrictions (e.g. sharp bends) which also impact on energy consumption and effective capacity, managing the approaches to cities (especially if shared with classic lines) and avoidingintermediate stops.

Land use and development objectives: We need to ensure that transport and land use planning are properly integrated in respect of the new line. We will pay particular attention to the extent to which new housing development in the West Coast corridor is supported by our proposals – probably mainly through the provision of additional regional and local services using capacity released from the WCML. We will also consider the scope for enhancing economic regeneration in the West Midlands though improved connectivity.

Freight: HS2 should be viewed principally as a fast passenger service route. However, there would be advantage in building it to be freight capable, for the added network resilience this would provide, and potential provision of a cost-effective route for large gauge traffic, subject to no significant cost or operational penalties being attached to this. Whether paths were subsequently allocated to freight services would be a separate decision, depending on the passenger, freight, maintenance, economic etc requirements at the time. This is the German approach. HS2 should accordingly investigate the costs of providing freight capability on the new line.

In addition, there is an objective to provide enhanced capacity for freight onclassic lines, through the capacity released as a result of HS2.

If your want to t ready the letter for yourself or can be found here:

http://stophs2.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/20090213_letter_to_lord_adonis_re_objectives_for_hs2.pdf

(Yes they irony of citing a letter which is conveniently hosted on one of the organisations which is most opposed to HS2 and is probably the one who had probably said the most that the argument for HS2 had changed isn't lost on me - in truth one of the main reasons for using them as a source is so that there can't be any accusation of the letter being "updated", in fact the link implies that they uploaded to their website is September 2011).

Even within that section of the letter (where capacity is at the top of the list in order of priority) it's effectively saying capacity is priority, we then need it be fast (for capacity trains), as well as providing development opportunities (by using the capacity released from the WCML to allow more development to be built without clogging up the roads), and finally allowing freight to use HS2. Oh and by the way more freight on the existing network too (which needs the capacity released).

It says capacity 8 times, whilst speed is also said 8 times two of those are from the S is HS2.

Effectively HS2 is about Capacity, Capacity, Capacity and has been from day one; anyone who says otherwise is lying to you (as the above letter proves).

(Yes I know the letter has 4 or 5 points, but you'd get board of reading the word Capacity if I said Capacity to much, even when talking about Capacity).

 

[Guano]

"Segregation by traffic speed is to maximise the capacity."

Yes, I agree; and that was an objective of HS2. My question was whether, with the upgrades that were planned in the 1980s and 1990s, it was realised that segregation by speed was necessary. Some cut-offs planned for speeds of over 125 mph are of little value if, in between, express passenger services share the line with freight. I get the impression, from some of the answers here, that in the 1980s and 1990s there was little in the way of an overall strategy because the government of the day wasn't interested in an overall strategy.

Some rail planning documents in the early 1960s talk about both fast passenger and freight services at 75 mph. The WCML timetable of 1974 had express passenger services leaving Euston in one half of the hour leaving space for fast freights in the other half of the hour. But by then express passenger services were being developed for 125 or 140 mph, a very large speed differential with the fastest freights, so timetabling the two over the same lines was going to be challenging. Was it only with plans for HS2 that it was envisaged that express passenger services would be segregated all the way from London to Crewe, or was that envisaged earlier?

 

[Bald Rick]

Was it only with plans for HS2 that it was envisaged that express passenger services would be segregated all the way from London to Crewe, or was that envisaged earlier?

For as long as I can remember, and I’m going back well over 40 years, the WCML has always segregated express services from ’the rest’ where there are 4 tracks. Express services included postals and paper traffic too.

In the early days of the WCMl upgrade, theproposal with Virgin was to see the fast lines reserved exlusively for Virgin tilting trains at 140mph (in daytime), with everything else on the slows, including any north of London Eurostars had they ever happened.

 

[Topological]

The time to have put HS2 in as a policy would have been 1992/3, then it would have been a problem for the incoming Blair government. Had work started then it could have been tied in with privatisation as examples of what commercial support could do for the railways.

That is not saying that it would have happened etc, this is just hypothesising about when a Conservative government could have used HS2 to the best advantage.

 

[The Ham]

The time to have put HS2 in as a policy would have been 1992/3, then it would have been a problem for the incoming Blair government. Had work started then it could have been tied in with privatisation as examples of what commercial support could do for the railways.

That is not saying that it would have happened etc, this is just hypothesising about when a Conservative government could have used HS2 to the best advantage.

There's a good chance that they would have looked at it, but still focused on improving busses in the short to medium term.

Actually that could have been quite useful, as it would have weakened one of the arguments against HS2 (which I don't necessarily disagree with, but rather an area where it should be both) in that people suggest that buses should be improved before building HS2 (of course if buses hadn't been cut back then there wouldn't be such a significant need for improved buses as there currently is).

 

[quantinghome]

The thing to remember is that pretty much all high speed lines are essentially decided on the same "capacity with speed an important extra benefit" basis.

Shinkansen was built because the existing Japanese lines were metre-gauge, very slow and low capacity. It made sense to build a new line.

TGV was built because the prohibitive cost of upgrading existing lines (the Paris-Marseilles line having already been speeded up and electrified from the 50s to the 70s).

Germany's high speed 'network' is essentially bypasses to the most overcapacity parts of its classic network.

China - same story, lots of upgrades to the existing network over several decades then once there were few options left, new lines.

The UK was different because it had significant spare capacity on its main lines thanks to the network being built by lots of competing companies. And the lines were pretty fast - even after the advent of high speed rail, I think a GW IC125 service was something like the third fastest in the world, and it took a long while for the UK average intercity journey times to fall out of the international top ten. When demand for rail travel took off in the 1990s it was fairly easy for intercity train companies to double service frequencies. But eventually, like other countries, we hit the limit on upgrading existing lines.

There's a decent argument that HS2 should have begun a few years earlier to immediately follow on from HS1. But not in the 1980s.