Do you support High Speed 3?

[UrbanWorld]

I do actually think it will help the other way too, or at least I hope so. I can see that some firms will be in a better position to relocate a lot of staff away from London, but still be closely connected. Why not take advantage of the skills based outside of the capital, along with the reduced leasing costs (and I guess even pay).

A gripe is that cities other than London will be used as cheap back office staff for London Companies. They can do that now, but they want the boss to visit the office in a day. This will make an impact on the hotel industry in cities.

 

[UrbanWorld]

London may not have been as magnificent as it is now (or had been before) but it was still, by far, the greatest city on these islands.

Only because of taxpayers money and ensuring that all vital HMG depts are in the place. Your knowledge of this period is skant indeed. HMG cut one third of
the Merseyrail network; work started and was stopped, then proceeded to build a new 30 odd station metro on dock wasteland in London; not even in the centre. Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Sheff, Notts, etc, can only dream of having such a metro. The Overground has been built and even a new underground station recently built between Kings X and St.Pancras. Then the Heathrow rail links and Crossrail at about £20 bn when all the costs are added up. The city airport, M25 and new terminals at Heathrow and now expansion of Heathrow. We can go on and on what they did from 1979 onwards in London while all others were stagnant.

Of course money should have been spent in London, it needed it, but not at such ridiculous levels and at the expense of others.

 

[DownSouth]

Maybe the enthusiasm for CC trains as a kludge for anything but the most essential services will wane when the Eurostar 374s have been experienced.

Who knows? It could take as long as a generation to get over the three big hairy enemies of (1) Not Invented Here, (2) It Was Better In The Good Old Days, and of course the nastiest one of (3) If We Wanted Integrated Transport We'd Go To Switzerland.

 

[Loki]

When occasionally mention all renovation/rebuild work by NR should be done to GB gauge I get told how this is impossible and expensive/never gonna happen. At the same time money is being spent on regauge programs... People really need to experience more proper size trains before promoting CCs over Captives.

 

[TheKnightWho]

Who knows? It could take as long as a generation to get over the three big hairy enemies of (1) Not Invented Here, (2) It Was Better In The Good Old Days, and of course the nastiest one of (3) If We Wanted Integrated Transport We'd Go To Switzerland.

The second one will always be around. People have been harking back to the "good old days" since forever.
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FACT... 35 years ago the UK promoted London to be a world-class mega city. There is only NYC and London. They succeeded at the expense of all others.

I have never understood this attitude that for some things to succeed, others must fail.

It's very common, and absolutely ridiculous. Do you think anyone outside of UKIP would pump money into London for nationalistic reasons and not because it was at a time when financial centres were growing across the world and London was the most suitable place for them to be located?

 

[Sapphire Blue]

The second one will always be around. People have been harking back to the "good old days" since forever.
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Yeah but harking back to the "good old days" isn't as good as it used to be.

 

[UrbanWorld]

The Scots have that their priority and that is a very fast kink between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Being so close that is unlikely to be 225mph high-speed trains.

Higgins stated last month that a full London to Scotland high-speed link was an option for phase 3 presented to the Dept for Transport last month. This would be to the east of the Pennines where the land is flatter than to the west. Higgins was not confident that the full high-speed line would be chosen. Another option was the upgrade of the CC WCML or ECML.

The ECML is flatter than the WCML through Cumbria. The coastal route of the ECML north of Newcastle slows the line down, but having HS2 from Leeds south will make travelling fast enough to London and Birmingham. This would also certainly guarantee that no high-speed track would run north of the Crewe Hub. HS2 trains to Liverpool and Manchester will uses the existing CC tracks from Crewe. The Liverpool link of the WCML spur can be updated cutting around 15 minutes.

 

[Deerfold]

Only because of taxpayers money and ensuring that all vital HMG depts are in the place. Your knowledge of this period is skant indeed. HMG cut one third of
the Merseyrail network; work started and was stopped, then proceeded to build a new 30 odd station metro on dock wasteland in London; not even in the centre. Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Sheff, Notts, etc, can only dream of having such a metro. The Overground has been built and even a new underground station recently built between Kings X and St.Pancras. Then the Heathrow rail links and Crossrail at about £20 bn when all the costs are added up. The city airport, M25 and new terminals at Heathrow and now expansion of Heathrow. We can go on and on what they did from 1979 onwards in London while all others were stagnant.

Of course money should have been spent in London, it needed it, but not at such ridiculous levels and at the expense of others.

I was living in West Yorkshire in the 80s. The network centred on Leeds saw enormous growth, many new stations, increased frequency (my line at the time went from 1 train an hour and talk of singling the line to 4 trains an hour, the line I live on now from infrequent oddly spaced trains to 4 an hour - 2 to Leeds and 2 to Bradfrod). A little later Manchester seems to have grown a substantial tram network. Nottingham reopened the Robin Hood line.

All smaller scale than London, but then populations are lower. I'm sure more could have been done, but at least some of the areas were not stagnant.

Meanwhile much of the NHS HQ has moved to Leeds. In the 80s my uncle's IR office was relocated from London to Shipley.

 

[UrbanWorld]

I was living in West Yorkshire in the 80s. The network centred on Leeds saw enormous growth, many new stations, increased frequency (my line at the time went from 1 train an hour and talk of singling the line to 4 trains an hour, the line I live on now from infrequent oddly spaced trains to 4 an hour - 2 to Leeds and 2 to Bradfrod). A little later Manchester seems to have grown a substantial tram network. Nottingham reopened the Robin Hood line.

All smaller scale than London, but then populations are lower. I'm sure more could have been done, but at least some of the areas were not stagnant.

Meanwhile much of the NHS HQ has moved to Leeds. In the 80s my uncle's IR office was relocated from London to Shipley.

Manchester's trams were a decade later, and Notts trams much later. Trams are not mass-transit metros so should not be mentioned in the frame, being more like electric buses on rails. Despite some services being increased in the 1980s, Leeds still has no metro network and neither do most cities. Cities the size of Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Edinburgh, etc, all need proper metro networks. They are all sizeable conurbations. They are not small.

As I pointed out, Liverpool's metro network was planned to be one third larger than what it is now and work started on certain sections. It was all dropped and work started on brand new metro in London with over 30 odd stations with connection to other networks. London is bigger than all other cities but the level of rail transport to other cities when scaled is phenomenal. Birmingham would love to have either the Overground or the DLR. One of those would really project the city forwards.

 

[jon0844]

Some or the above mentioned upgrade work in London was related to the Olympics.

 

[LS-Colin]

Overall I do think high speed rail lines are a good thing, providing we follow in the steps of France and Germany etc. High speed lines have to be integrated with the rest of the rail system to enable connections with other rail services. High speed trains need to have their main stations in town and city centres rather than be focused on remote and unconnected 'parkway' stations. The HS2 routes proposed for the UK appear to be almost completely divorced from the rest of the rail network. The stations on it seem to involve inconvenient road journeys in order to get to the town/city centres (defeating the reduced rail journey time). Birmingham is a perfect example of this. The proposed HS2 station would be sited to the east of the city centre with no integration with services at New Street station. Passengers making journeys from say Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stourbridge etc. to London are highly unlikely to want to change stations in Birmingham. It'll be far more convenient and quicker to simply board a 'classic' fast train from New Street to Euston. To get the full potential of HS2 it needs to be fully integrated.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Overall I do think high speed rail lines are a good thing, providing we follow in the steps of France and Germany etc. High speed lines have to be integrated with the rest of the rail system to enable connections with other rail services. High speed trains need to have their main stations in town and city centres rather than be focused on remote and unconnected 'parkway' stations. The HS2 routes proposed for the UK appear to be almost completely divorced from the rest of the rail network. The stations on it seem to involve inconvenient road journeys in order to get to the town/city centres (defeating the reduced rail journey time). Birmingham is a perfect example of this. The proposed HS2 station would be sited to the east of the city centre with no integration with services at New Street station. Passengers making journeys from say Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stourbridge etc. to London are highly unlikely to want to change stations in Birmingham. It'll be far more convenient and quicker to simply board a 'classic' fast train from New Street to Euston. To get the full potential of HS2 it needs to be fully integrated.

The city centre HS2 terminals are located as close to the existing classic rail terminals as is reasonably practical. Curzon Street will already be next door to Moor Street station but to move it further towards New Street would require the demolition of the entire Bullring centre. If minimal-distance connectivity between the New Street and HS2 networks is worth that much, it would be far easier to build new platforms for the New Street lines parallel to the HS2 station. For very local passengers, the bus and tram networks will be geared towards Curzon Street as well as the existing terminals, so they'll see great connectivity.

 

[LS-Colin]

Thank you for that additional information NotATrainspott. As I said, the finer details of HS2 still appear very patchy and confusing to myself and many others. Regards, Colin.

 

[Haydn1971]

Local news reports today re "Transport for the North" summit in Leeds reports that the transpennine HS3 would be a 125mph line. Also reported that a report is due in March to make the case for government funding.

 

[HSTEd]

Well that throws routes up in the air - since that is sufficiently fast that a largely upgraded route is impractical, but insufficiently fast to make less direct routes practical.

Leeds-Manchester at only 125mph cannot go via the Airport, and a classic entry to Manchester would cause all sorts of other problems in capacity and reliability terms.
Which means we now have a second entry to Manchester at enormous cost.

Of course, this could be like the original decision to build CTRL for 125mph before more sensible heads prevailed.

 

[Haydn1971]

My money would still be on a route parallel with the M62 for much of the way... That scuppers a Huddersfield station though, but could provide great park and ride opportunities - people don't go central to central by choice, they go mixed mode, car/bus/tram to nearest station then to central station in Leeds/Manchester/Sheffield

 

[Chester1]

Well that throws routes up in the air - since that is sufficiently fast that a largely upgraded route is impractical, but insufficiently fast to make less direct routes practical.

Leeds-Manchester at only 125mph cannot go via the Airport, and a classic entry to Manchester would cause all sorts of other problems in capacity and reliability terms.
Which means we now have a second entry to Manchester at enormous cost.

Of course, this could be like the original decision to build CTRL for 125mph before more sensible heads prevailed.

If you) assume TfN will make the decisions, when in reality George Osborne will. He will either go for an upgrade of the existing line to as close as possible to 125/140mph, which even with signigicant tunneling is unlikely to be that fast for all but very limited stretches or he will go for something more like HS2 that connects with it at Manchester Aiport and shares the HS2 tunnel into Piccadilly. If HS3 used Pendalinos (plausible considering their limited need on WCML after HS2 then they could run at 140mph on shared HS2 track and HS2 trains could be slowed down to 140mph. I can't imagine this would increase HS2 Journey times more than a couple of minutes as there wont be much time at 140mph+ speeds between Piccadilly and the airport anyway. All depends on the predicted costs in March. If the cost between 125/140mph and 220mph is very small Osborne will most probably ignore TfN recomendations. I think you will be right about the comparison with HS2 originally suggested to be 125mph until it became obvious 220mph was virtually the same cost. I guess the deciding factor will be money, I am hoping that upgrading the existing line is not cost effective and that a new line will need to be built.

 

[matacaster]

Spotted a Range Rover yesterday near Huddersfield.

Registration number = HS3

 

[WatcherZero]

Gonna be in the budget, phase 1 Manchester to Leeds in 30 minutes rather that 48 minutes, phase 2 connecting Liverpool and Hull as well. Going to narrow down the cost of the rail line between 7 and 9 billion (Other improvements Northern authorties proposed took the package cost to £15bn) and theres going to be a Dft business case for HS3 posted later in the week.

 

[Haydn1971]

...and Sheffield gets missed out

 

[Snapper]

UKIP's Nigel Farage caught out telling porkies on Hs2 again; https://paulbigland.wordpress.com/2...ges-fag-packet-calculations-are-more-porkies/

 

[backontrack]

Yes, I do. But it should also serve York.

 

[WatcherZero]

...and Sheffield gets missed out

Should still reach Sheffield, talk continuing to be that it will propose a new tunnel across the pennines linking in to HS2 Eastern branch and using Man Pic hs2 station. And that a new road tunnel linking Manchester and Sheffield is likely to be built at the same time gaining synergy savings from combined tunneling project.

Essentially Government is returning to the inverted A Hs2 alignment.

 

[Haydn1971]

Should still reach Sheffield, talk continuing to be that it will propose a new tunnel across the pennines linking in to HS2 Eastern branch and using Man Pic hs2 station. And that a new road tunnel linking Manchester and Sheffield is likely to be built at the same time gaining synergy savings from combined tunneling project.

Given the discussions I've been privy too, the chances of a road tunnel on the Woodhead line are extremely slim. There's aspirations in local government to do both, but the funding for both rail/road improvement on this scale would wipe out northern transport investment funding for decades. The current high level political suggest is just pre election bribes that will never see the light of day.

 

[WatcherZero]

Well the road route study just completed by the highways agency found there was a business case for a road tunnel and that environmental concerns ruled out another overland route so spend £170m on short term upgrades because it was pointless to ivest in a long term upgrade when a tunnel was likely to be built.

 

[Haydn1971]

Well the road route study just completed by the highways agency found there was a business case for a road tunnel and that environmental concerns ruled out another overland route so spend £170m on short term upgrades because it was pointless to ivest in a long term upgrade when a tunnel was likely to be built.

That's a very optimistic reading of the HA report, the report says there are clear potential benefits to be gained from major infrastructure investment including a tunnel - there's little more commitment in the report, so I wouldn't hold your breath. I worked on Mottram/Tintwistle back in 2001, the project was decades old then, 14 years on, it's no nearer cutting turf. Whilst I worked at Derbyshire, one of the old boys told me about plans in 1942 to build a "freeway" between Salford Docks and Lincolnshire via the Pennines to help shift munitions to the airfields, I'm not hopeful at this time of that dream happening before the 100 years is up.

 

[Altnabreac]

That's a very optimistic reading of the HA report, the report says there are clear potential benefits to be gained from major infrastructure investment including a tunnel - there's little more commitment in the report, so I wouldn't hold your breath. I worked on Mottram/Tintwistle back in 2001, the project was decades old then, 14 years on, it's no nearer cutting turf. Whilst I worked at Derbyshire, one of the old boys told me about plans in 1942 to build a "freeway" between Salford Docks and Lincolnshire via the Pennines to help shift munitions to the airfields, I'm not hopeful at this time of that dream happening before the 100 years is up.

My Father based his CEng application on his designs for what was then the M67 Extension project working for Scott Wilson in Stockport back in 1978.

His designs then were broadly similar to what's in the current HA report so it will be interesting to see if any of it has been built in another 37 years.

I think Woodhead is probably the best corridor for HS3 but I'll be impressed if work starts anytime soon.

 

[Haydn1971]

Small world, I'd love to grab a copy of the drawings if he still has copies ! What's his name, I may have worked with him at some point over my 26 years
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Agreed re Woodhead as a route, would link well with HS2 at Barnsley, the environmental impact on the Longdendale Valley may well go against it vs a M62 type corridor though.

 

[work-traveller]

I support the idea of HS3 in principle but would like it in the West Country and Wales

It would be a lovely idea, but I imagine the business case to get to Bristol or Cardiff would be reasonable, to Plymouth would be unrealistic and to Cornwall is non-existent.

Also, given the (gradual) electrification of the Great Western line, it would seem unlikely anyone in power (now or the future) will seriously propose much more to the SW any time soon.

 

[NotATrainspott]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/revolutionary-plans-for-northern-transport-set-out

Well well well, it appears that the people at the DfT/Network Rail/TfN are as enthusiastic about the idea of HS3 as we are. It appears that the idea of a captive link into Liverpool is now genuinely on the table, and that it is beyond all doubt that Scotland will be served via the western arm. An eastern arm extension doesn't appear to factor in at this point in time, which does not surprise me given the high speeds already possible.