If you read the article by Andrew Gilligan, you will see that Birmingham accounts for less than half of the EBW traffic to London (never mind all the "local" traffic)
First of all, I think you raise some interesting points in your argument, a lot better than the "usual" anti-HS2 arguments. I was going to reply to this on my lunch break on Sunday but didn't have time...
Birmingham New Street is under half of the "London" trade on the London - Wolverhampton trains? Not *that* surprising, given the six stops that the train makes (Coventry, International, New St, Sandwell, Wolves). If you are talking about that one hourly service (xx.23 ex Euston) then clearly it'll have a disproportionate number of Sandwell/ Wolverhampton passengers on it (since it is their one direct train each hour). If you are talking about all three services each hour from London to Birmingham New Street then there are Milton Keynes/ Rugby passengers too, so the fact that New Street is under 50% of the total "ex London" passengers isn't too surprising.
The plan for HS2 has categorically not been based on increasing network capacity - it has purely been based on speed. If it was based on capacity which it should then it would serve far more places including all those cities that it bypasses such as Stoke & Coventry
I prefer the "capacity" argument to the "speed" argument, I'll be honest. We need more capacity from London to "the North" (given the bottle necks that exist at places like Welwyn). We can either extend existing lines (not always easy, needs a lot of disruption, may only push the "pinch points" a few miles along the line).
Building a new "fast" line (as HS2 proposes) means it'll be faster to use HS2 to get to Sheffield/ Leeds/ Newcastle etc. Building a slower "new" line from London to Wigan won't help ECML/MML problems (because it won't take any Yorkshire/ North East services).
I am against building new lines on principal when so many hundreds of towns (some very large) have no rail service at all
Examples? Where do you think its worth building new lines to? Dunstable is an example that gets trotted out on here, Washington in Tyne & Wear is another... what proposals would you have?
others have very poor service - such Worcester to Bristol which is an inter-city journey
Worcester to Bristol has never been an "inter city" level of train service. Worcester is a city (though not a big one), but then there are lots of cities which lack "inter city" service between them. Are you suggesting that this is a bigger priority?
Under the plans, train path capacity will only be released if the likes of Stoke and Coventry get a far worse service
Not sure about this. As I see it, the existing services will continue on the WCML but will make a handful of extra stops (e.g. instead of running "fast").
At the moment we have stopping patterns each hour like London - Warrington... London - Crewe... London - Stoke... I'd imagine that these services would add stops at the likes of Watford/ Milton Keynes/Rugby/ Trent Valley Stations to take pressure off the London Midland services (which is only going back to how these journeys used to be, pre Virgin). Maybe an extra five minutes in journey time, but not "far worse".
Slowing down the existing WCML services like this means that more trains can be squeeze in, fewer speed-differentials, so there may be additional paths each hour for new services (I've suggested some new uses for these before))
HS2 will see £34bn spent for a worse service!
I certainly wouldn't claim that HS2 will be "Pareto optimal", there are bound to be some "losers" (as with any shake up). Look at how every big improvement in railways ends up with some "non core" links/ services being downgraded/cut. I'm not going to naively state that
everywhere will be better off under HS2, in the way that VHF lost direct trips like Tamworth - Stockport or Runcorn - Nuneaton - you have to balance up the winers and losers.
To get maximum benefit we need to be looking at a 'London to Wigan' route with a connection near Rugby for EBW services which would run along a 4-tracked route, a branch to Manchester (with through route capability) and loops to include Stoke & Milton Keynes. Then we *could* release the WCML from Intercity traffic
So would your London - Birmingham/Manchester services run on this new alignment? However you do it there will be some "loser" (e.g. Watford - Coventry). Not sure about the importance you attach to Stoke, personally, maybe that's just me.
how is HS2 going to abtract custom from Plymouth, Aberdeen, Humberside, Jersey, Belfast? It is insane to suggest we could eliminate or even massively reduce domestic air travel
This is something which I don't think anyone has ever claimed (and has been discussed since your post). The bulk of "internal" air journeys are between London airports and Manchester/ Newcastle/ Glasgow/ Edinburgh. HS2 will tackle some of those. Not all, because there will always be some business market (e.g. London City Airport for the Docklands market) and "connection" market (people flying to London to catch flights elsewhere - unless HS2 is serving Heathrow *properly*). I think HS2 could do enough to kill of most London - Scotland flights though.
As far as wildcard suggested he is right to say you can release a lot of capacity by re-opening cross country routes. Oxford and Cambridge are our top university cities and despite the rivalry and faux suggestions of 'we don't deal with them' there is a key need for travel between the two but how do you get there? At the moment it has to be done via either London or Birmingham (unless you really to go via the slow route via Bedworth) which means a lot of traffic is going through London, clogging capacity unnessarily when people don't actually want to go there!
This is something I'd like to see Crossrail evolve to provide. In the way that the initial "Bedford - Brighton" Thameslink service is being extended to link Cambridge/ Peterborough with Kent/ Sussex, I think Crossrail will grow beyond Maidenhead - Shenfield.
However, the Anglia experiment shows the flaws with avoiding central London, given the size of that market. The "avoiding central London" market has been tried a few times, like the South Central plans for Birmingham - Clapham - Brighton, but the maths aren't as strong as they may be.
Northamptonshire is a wealthy county put possibly has the worst access to the railways than any other county with just 6 stations - Northampton & Long Buckby on the LNWR Northampton loop, Wellingborough, Kettering & Corby on the MML and Kings Sutton on the Oxford - Birmingham line
This is a historical problem, but are you suggesting that its a bigger priority than HS2?
People moan on here that Corby is not well used but it is not surprising when the some of the key destinations for Corby folk - Northampton, Peterborough & Glasgow are not accessibile or require long out of the way and expensive diversions
Corby only opened a couple of years ago. Whilst I can appreciate the demand for a Scottish service, these kind of things will happen in the longer term (if they happen), can't really complain that a risk like this wasn't taken from day one...
Northamptonshire is one of the five counties that make up the East Midlands yet the county town, Northampton has no links to the other four counties or their respective cities
Again, is this really a priority? A direct railway from Northamptonshire to Rutland?
If you look at the massive road building that happened in the 90s such as the A14, A43 widening and upgrading the A45/A605 you will see they are mainly east/west or 'avoiding London' routes
Partly because of all the money spent on building "to London" routes prior to that. There has certainly been a lot of money spent on "to London" motorways recently too, like the four lanes on the M1, the M40 extension towards Birmingham, the upgrading of the A1 to Motorway standard (slowly...).
There is a lot assumption that if you build a line from the largest city from to the second largest then by definition it must get well used but that isn't necessarily true. Greater Manchester & Merseyside are both very large conurbations but the the traffic between them is very small - why? Because most people living in Greater Manchester want to travel to...the city of Manchester and most in Merseyside want to go to Liverpool. One only travels to a 'foreign' area when you can't get what you need from the local environ
Of course most people's travel demands gravitate to their local "big" cities (which is why I'm surprised at the importance you put on Stoke/Coventry - London trade, when these places have bigger "needs" to Manchester/Birmingham).
Coventry has 3 60-minutes trains an hour to London but is a hovel whilst Harrogate has no regular service and is very wealthy
I'm confused. I don't think the railway has had anything to do with the prosperity (or lack of) in these places (Harrogate has a daily train to London, from May it becomes an "each way" service), and you've attached a lot of importance to the "Coventry to London" train service... are you saying that Coventry would be better off with even more London trains?
2. Whilst the motorways might be 'express' roads they are several local/regional links. The M1 finishes at something like junction 46 - far far more places benefitted from quick links than HS2 will
The motorways are a good example for HS2. They're not all about journeys from Brent Cross to Wetherby (using the M1 as an example), but they are used as part of longer journeys. I say this as a contrast with those who think HS2 is only about getting people from London to Birmingham...
Where is the planning for Crossrail 2?
Only something to consider when Crossrail 1 is up and running, I'd presume. What are you suggesting gets done? Another tunnel through central London? Or extending the first phase?
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