Birmingham - London represent a minority of users on the EBW services.
You don't need a new station at Coventry, MK is just about doable and Stoke has plenty of spare land to form an interchange station with the existing line.
- Coventry: Either you build your HS2 station in a box underneath it, which would basically close that section of the WCML for several years, or you have to demolish houses for the approach lines on either side. 400m is not much less than the distance between the two junctions either side of the station and the HS part would need to be operationally separate so you would have a huge amount of work rebuilding this station. Absolutely no where else on the line other than at Euston would this level of reconstruction of existing lines be needed. The amount of land required isn't just for the end result but for the construction - just have a look at the Environmental Statement map books to see just how much is required. Any HS2 line through Coventry would destroy entire rows of residential houses, quite like what it would be to four/six/eight track the WCML as proposed by the antis.
- Milton Keynes: I agree, the layout of the town is pretty well suited for a HS station but the fact still remains that it would not be significantly faster to London than the existing routes. Since the vast majority of people will be going to London, there isn't much point building a station here. How many people are going to visit Milton Keynes from the North? Not very many. Is that more than can fit on a normal train? No.
- Stoke: Unless you want to much of industrial Stoke you would have to put it in a station box and tunnel. These are very expensive things, strangely enough. Which trains would you stop at Stoke? Just the Manchester ones? Who would pay for the station box? - remember that the Airport stop is going to be funded partly by the private sector.
I don't see you having a problem with Toton which has all the issues you mention...
Toton is a difficult choice to make but there has to be a compromise made between Derby and Nottingham. Serving one but not the other wouldn't do as much good overall as doing what they're doing at Toton. By the time HS2 opens we will have had almost 15 years of extremely rail-oriented transport policy so there will be better connections than ever before - the links between the two cities will get even stronger because they both need to link to Toton.
Coventry and Stoke are cities (310,000 and 260,000 respectively) yet Crewe at 70,000 will be served with most places that might connect there (Runcorn, Warrington etc.0 are due to have direct services anyway.
The WCML either side of Crewe is straight and direct enough that it makes perfect sense to reuse a lot of the alignment. Crewe is only being served by means of a simple connection between the HS2 and WCML lines just south of the station before HS2 goes into tunnel. If Stoke were that position instead it is highly likely HS2 would have served there instead, but it isn't.
Isn't it funny how when anyone suggests an alternate way to provide capacity, suddenly the speed argument gets trotted out despite 'HS2 not being about speed'....
Capacity alone isn't enough to justify the new route, and neither is pure speed. Both together are what makes it possible. Every compromise taken at the southern end to suit a small-ish number of people does much more damage as you go further north. The overarching goal of our HS network must be to diminish the role of the domestic air market as much as possible and that is made so much more difficult if you try to make the line do everything for everyone by serving more places than absolutely necessary.
Yet you don't suggest removing stops on the current services...
If Virgin can make a Glasgow or Carlisle train even faster then they will, but they have franchise obligations to make.
Preston and Toton are major international-scale cities?
By removing any intermediate stops whatsoever you do reduce the passenger numbers enough to make a real impact. From Preston it is then possible to connect to much of the north of England.
What part of HS2 allows connections between the East Midlands (Notts, Derby, Leicester) and Milton Keynes. I guess we'll have to keep that M1 full....
How many people want to go there? Is it enough to warrant stopping a 400m train?
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The French TGV trains seem able to call at intermediate stations, by turnout loops, where necessary, or to run via high speed avoiding lines when no stops are required.
Why can HS2 not provide an hourly service north from a Chilterns Parkway, for example, somewhere near High Wycombe or Aylesbury? It might help to buy off some of the local opposition to the project if the locality actually had some benefit, and not just the negatives. It would need turnouts and passing loops.
TGV trains have the advantage that they are completely compatible with any electrified mainline in France, including platforms and so on. Anything that we build to serve with most HS2 services has to be built bigger otherwise we lose the benefit of double-decker trains. The French also did not have as developed a classic rail system as ourselves so they don't have much choice whereas we will still have a 110mph/125mph WCML, MML and ECML once HS2 is finished. The only difference is that services will stop more often. 125 Aventra commuter EMUs are in the pipeline and in-cab signalling so services aren't going to decrease massively in speed or frequency.
The Chiltern region isn't densely populated enough and the route HS2 follows is far from existing transport links. If they want a station, they wouldn't want the traffic changes that would result. They would by a large margin use HS2 to commute to London, even though the trains are going to be when they run on Phase 1 and no one will be getting off at this Chiltern Parkway. They would benefit much more overall by upgrading the Chiltern mainline with electrification and speed increases.
Secondly, HS2 needs to be plumbed in to the existing system further north: near Colwich, for example, so that Manchester via Stockport, Stoke and Macclesfield to London services can use it, and at Crewe, so that Chester and N Wales, and Liverpool services can run on to it. A link to Stafford would allow Stafford/Shrewsbury services to use it. Is Birmingham Curzon St going to be connected by a travelator or something similar to New St? Otherwise it will be inconvenient for anyone wanting to switch to suburban services there.
The failure to serve Coventry is also puzzling. Maybe an alternative line following the old GC to a point on the LNW between Coventry and Rugby would permit this for some services, to then take the conventional route to Coventry, Birmingham Int. New St and Wolverhampton.
Maybe these are additions for once the main spine has been completed. But an HS2 hermetically sealed off from the rest of the network will be of diminished usefulness.
Phase 1 has a grade separated link to the WCML fast lines at Lichfield.
Phase 2 has another just south of Crewe and one just south of Wigan, while there is a link to the ECML at Church Fenton, just south-west of York.
The more links you provide to the classic network the more HS2 will cost (each one has to be grade-separated at both ends and built to the same standard as HS2 itself) and the more chance of classic network problems infecting the HS network.
HS2 only needs to serve the places which will overwhelm the WCML, of which Coventry is not one. It tries to do one thing and do it well. If Coventry grows enough to justify a new line in the future it will be decades away and it will be perfectly possible just to build another line. HS2 is not the endgame for the British rail network - it is just the start (otherwise they may as well call it HSΩ).
