High Speed Two (HS2) discussion

[gordonthemoron]

maybe HS2 should be renamed the Milton Keynes relief route as we'll benefit enormously

 

[NotATrainspott]

While there is strong growth in rail travel now, I would be much less confident about the trend in 10-20 years time. I appreciate that offering too much capacity may be preferable to offering too little, but I wouldn't consider it responsible to provide more capacity to facilitate additional travel rather than modal shift. A shrinkage in the overall market for travel and modal shift to rail would mean only moderate requirements for increased capacity on the routes mainly affected by HS2, where rail's market share is strong (excluding Scotland, where perhaps two extra trains from each of Edinburgh and Glasgow using paths gained from some incremental improvements could cover the market shift from air and road).

There would have to be an enormous shrinkage in the travel market for the modal shift from air to fit entirely on our existing rail network. Rail has around a fifth of the market from London to Scotland, and there is very little scope for additional capacity without HS2. If people are stopped from flying then there will be severe economic repercussions - unfortunately the economic effects of not building HS2 are not included in its business case as the alternative. As ridiculous was the argument of the value of working time on trains, the fact remains that if everyone is standing between London and Birmingham then no one will be able to do any work. Especially if they're wanting to rip out every first class carriage.

You also do not address the issue of network resillience as today, the existing mainlines are only a single Pacer or freight train breakdown (or indeed as is the case right now, a minor engineering train collision) away from almost total collapse. If we reduce the air travel market and rely upon the existing lines, the effects of disruption will be magnified. If we only add enough capacity to deal with the passenger numbers then that's fine when it's all working to timetable but what happens when a train is cancelled or delayed? Pendolinos can't tilt if they're dangerously overloaded with passengers so the timetable effects can reverberate around the network. If the air market were suppressed at the same time, there would effectively be no alternative way of going between London and the Central Belt which is a journey not only made for discretionary reasons but for immediate business and political ones too.

There's a very good reason the travel market is the size it is and blindly trying to reduce it for narrow-minded environmental reasons is not going to help at all. If you believe that we should perform economic masochism in order to immediately reduce our environmental impact then there are a lot of implications for individual liberties you have to consider. I am not a climate change denier and I know we need to work towards a zero-carbon world but this approach is not going to work. Your approach would be like shutting down coal power stations (quite rightly) but then not building lesser-polluting or zero-pollution replacements. HS2 is the first step towards replacing all these stupid wee inefficient 737s and A320s which fly up and down the country with a method which is not polluting.

I would consider a no-growth economy to be one in which consumption of goods and services does not increase. Consumption may alter, as people consume different goods and services to previously. The focus would be on providing the goods and services more efficiently in terms of use of energy and resources. Travel would be provided more efficiency through a shift to public or green transport, through the increasing energy efficiency of all modes and a switch to renewable energy. I would question the notion that increased consumption leads to increased happiness or somehow a better life.

HS2 does provide a more efficient use of resources than we have today. Yes, the construction of it will have an environmental impact but that is a one-time thing over only a few decades. The majority of the HS2 construction will only affect local areas for around two years, with the exception being the bored tunnels and the work at the stations. Once we've built it the marginal environmental cost of using it to its full capacity is minimal so why not use it? Instead of burning petrol or diesel or kerosene people will be able to travel the lengths and breadths of the country in comfort and at high speed powered only by the ridiculous amount of power renewable provided to us by mother nature. The renewable sources are only going to become more and more efficient and we're going to reduce transmission losses even more so it is going to have a beneficial environmental effect overall.

The load factor on WCML trains is low, capacity could be provided by reducing headways as mentioned previously. Flighting of two long-distance trains also means more capacity for other services. On the ECML there is also a lot of room for growth and open access operators often using short trains do not seem to make the best use of capacity.

This. Is. Not. True.

The organisations which own and run the network know that the network will not have enough capacity. Why don't you believe them? The WCML has only just been upgraded to 11-car Pendolinos and 12-car 350s at the end of the £8bn modernisation programme which caused chaos, went several times over budget and still did not provide a massive increase in capacity. We know that these schemes are not good value for money any more as a sole source of capacity increase for the future. The Great Western is being electrified and IEPed and so on but that is because it still had easy capacity gains to be made. Our north/south rail links do not have that ease of upgrade any more and we cannot upgrade them forever to cope with capacity. We are rapidly receiving diminishing returns from our investment as we're doing all we can reasonably do without causing chaos and risk to our network. Building HS2 is very low risk as there is nothing about it which is actually that amazing from an engineering perspective.

As I said earlier, you do not appreciate the ease with which our current network can fall apart due to disruption. Forcing more trains onto the current tracks may be possible at the best of times but during even minor disruption these extra trains will cause a domino effect of disruption where something will have to give. If you are happy with these extra services needing to be cut back or cancelled entirely when something so frequently goes wrong then that is not at all acceptable. Modal shift will only happen when they are switching to a network which is dependable. Are you really going to switch from plane or car when you know that some time every week this service is cancelled due to disruption? No, you're not. If you timetable a service then people expect it to run and to run reliably. We cannot have a rail network where we overextend what it can safely and reasonably manage just to avoid the inevitability of needing a new line.

Discouraging quite a bit of discretionary travel would mean quite a bit of additional capacity for modal shift. The remaining fares would imperatively not be more expensive than car travel and this could perhaps best be achieved by amending the way car travel is priced. A National Railcard would make travel cheaper, but not as cheap as low Advance fares. It could perhaps be an alternative to reducing Off-Peak fares significantly - the fares would effectively be reduced by the existence of the Railcard, but the railways would receive a lump sum up front from passengers buying the Railcard which most would not calculate as part of their journey cost, as most do not perceive running a car as part of their car journey cost. The Railcard would also mean that visitors to Britain who do not support our railway through taxation and often have little option but to use it pay around 50% more (assuming 34% discount). I see that the points you make are valid however and even railways without extensive yield-management systems have not limited discretionary travel, which perhaps suggests that a change in public transport pricing imperatively needs to happen simultaneously to changes in the pricing of car travel.

How many more services could be provided by (re-)building sections of four track line where practicable for fast services to overtake? The government doesn't seem to have made a strategic investigation of the network and how it should be improved in the long term, aside from the very limited scope Alternatives to HS2 report.

Oddly enough in the reports you criticise as being of limited scope they do actually look at this. The capacity issues are on the main axis of Britain - north/south from Bristol and London in the south through Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the north. There are four extant lines which serve this axis - the West Coast, the Midland, the East Coast and the Cross Country main lines. These are the lines which have no 'quick wins' of capacity left to get. These are the ones which will require a very large amount of money and disruption to upgrade and these are the ones which will still remain capacity limited after these upgrades.

The fundamental fact is that it is far cheaper and better to build a new line, designed for efficiency and high capacity, than it is to try to force upgrades of all the existing routes. The environmental cost of forcing upgrades on the existing routes will not be negligible and they still will not allow double decker trains. Remember that the energy efficiency figures per seat kilometre do not take into account the number of trains actually in service. You need half as many trains running at 400km/h to provide the same service as you would running at 200km/h so there are half the number of trains using electricity at the same time.

The country in which rail infrastructure is most intensively is Switzerland. The hubs at Zürich and Bern in particular cater for huge volumes of trains. Heavy usage at main hubs is a reason to urgently adopt strategic timetable planning to ensure best use of capacity.

Their infrastructure has been designed for their timetable - passing loops and stations and linespeeds and everything - which has been built up steadily over several decades. Our rail infrastructure was built by the Victorians without any regard for common sense. Our network is also three times the size of Switzerland so there would be a truly enormous amount of work needing done. As a small but significant example, think about RETB lines like the West Highland Line: to make this integrated with the rest of our network we would either have to completely rebuild it so that the stations and passing loops would be in the right place or we would have to retimetable the rest of our network around it. The same problems apply to longer lines, all the way up to the mainlines themselves. The Swiss won't have the same speed differentials along their lines as we have as there is little need to go much faster in such a dense little country. Their fastest trains only go up to 160km/h which doesn't matter much as most journeys aren't going to be very long - thus leading to connection times being a much greater source of overall journey time. In the UK, our mainline stations are very long distances away from one another and for most people their journey time would be longer if we forced every service to connect directly to one another rather than simply increase the pure speed of the services.

I agree that this is a benefit of HS2.

And that's why we're building it.

I also agree with you on most of these points. However, population is still growing and I suspect we have passed or will very soon pass the long-term carrying capacity for humans, particularly in a world affected by climate change. Desertification, flooding, storms and diseases caused by climate change seem likely to cause huge problems before we have tackled the issues. If much more were being done to tackle impending climate change which will cause a gradual build-up of problems I may be inclined to agree with you.

The UK will not begin to starve very soon due to climate change. These problems will affect people mostly in countries far more vulnerable to the elements, where the land is low and the temperatures are either hot or cold or so on. A clear reason why the UK was able to rule the greatest empire ever seen by mankind was simply because our home country is never afflicted by particularly damaging winters or summers or floods or storms or hurricanes or earthquakes or any such environmental disasters. HS2 isn't going to directly cause people to die around the world. It will start to make us less dependent upon oil and the instability it brings.

Thank you for the time you have taken to respond to these questions on HS2. I don't feel that the serious arguments for and against are done justice, instead the debate seems to focus on the Chilterns.

Indeed, the arguments against HS2 seem to revolve mostly around the cost and the effect on the Chilterns. However, there is also a very good reason why the Paving Bill was passed with a majority of 350-34. The economic arguments seem to be mostly dictated by whatever stupid report the Institute of Economic Affairs have put out that week (like the ridiculous £80bn figure) because the media needs to report the opposition to HS2 and there isn't much else to go on. The StopHS2 folk are given a much bigger voice than their actual membership should entitle them to despite the fact that their 'counter-arguments' to HS2 tend to be mostly emotional rather than having a basis in cold hard facts. They seem to believe in a parallel universe where the HS2 route is the width of Heathrow Airport and on the surface along the entire route, purposely seeking to demolish as many churches and houses as is physically possible because the Government has a vested interested in costing themselves more money.

 

[The Ham]

While there is strong growth in rail travel now, I would be much less confident about the trend in 10-20 years time. I appreciate that offering too much capacity may be preferable to offering too little, but I wouldn't consider it responsible to provide more capacity to facilitate additional travel rather than modal shift.

The growth model for HS2 was based on 2.5% growth year on year from 2009 to 2033 (phase 2) giving a total growth rate of about 76%. With the growth rate to date (about 5% per year up to end of 2013) which is about 21% since 2009, we only need another 8 years (2021) running at 5% to then be exceeding the 2033 model numbers. This could be likely given the amount of investment due between now and 2020.

As such we may not need to look at passenger growth beyond 10 years time before we see the level of passenger demand for which HS2 is viable.

This is why I tend to favour HS2, as if growth stays high no one has come up with a package of measures if passenger numbers hit 80% and HS2 isn't at least being built.

 

[Oscar]

Their infrastructure has been designed for their timetable - passing loops and stations and linespeeds and everything - which has been built up steadily over several decades. Our rail infrastructure was built by the Victorians without any regard for common sense. Our network is also three times the size of Switzerland so there would be a truly enormous amount of work needing done. As a small but significant example, think about RETB lines like the West Highland Line: to make this integrated with the rest of our network we would either have to completely rebuild it so that the stations and passing loops would be in the right place or we would have to retimetable the rest of our network around it. The same problems apply to longer lines, all the way up to the mainlines themselves. The Swiss won't have the same speed differentials along their lines as we have as there is little need to go much faster in such a dense little country. Their fastest trains only go up to 160km/h which doesn't matter much as most journeys aren't going to be very long - thus leading to connection times being a much greater source of overall journey time. In the UK, our mainline stations are very long distances away from one another and for most people their journey time would be longer if we forced every service to connect directly to one another rather than simply increase the pure speed of the services.

Swiss infrastructure has not been designed for the Swiss timetable. The Bahn 2000 infrastructure project and integraler Taktfahrplan timetable were only launched in 1984. A best possible integrated timetable was introduced first of all and infrastructure has been upgraded over the last three decades to optimise that timetable. Most of the network was built as single track lines at the start of the 20th century, meaning even greater capacity limitations. Significant improvements can be made to end to end journey times even before targeted infrastructure improvements take place. The fact that the average fare paid in Britain is around £5 shows that a huge proportion of rail journeys are very short. While many of these will be direct journeys to city centres, a significant proportion must involve at least one change. Most car journeys are also very short and rail's modal shift of these journeys outside London is normally very low. This is where the greatest potential for modal shift lies. Short to medium-distance journeys involving at least one change and in particular multi-modal journeys involving rail currently tend to be very unattractive. Although Switzerland is a small country, journey times by rail to be relatively slow - the Intercity route between St. Gallen and Genève takes over four hours end to end. In the UK rail journey times tend to be much faster, while demographics limit the distance of most flows - few people need to travel from Plymouth to Aberdeen. This means that connection times are likely to form a similar proportion of most rail journeys. While rail in Britain often already has a journey time advantage over road for long-distance Intercity travel which is not present in Switzerland, making the reduction of connection times seem less pressing, the increase in door to door journey time due to poor connections often means that the car is still very competitive.

Leeds to Norwich has a standard journey time of around 3h30, of which around 30-40 minutes is typically connection time at Peterborough. Given that journey time by car is around 4 hours, 30 minutes could make a huge difference to the attractivity of rail. Birmingham to Norwich and Newcastle to Cambridge are similar.

York to Chester effectively has an hourly connection taking 2h45 - 3h05, often involving changes at Crewe as well as Manchester or use of the stopping service via Altrincham as the connection to the ATW service in the Chester direction is 31 minutes. Journey time by car is around 2h-2h30, so reducing connection times could make rail considerably more attractive.

Workington to Manchester takes 2h50 with a fast connection at Carlisle but 3h-4h on most connections because connections are generally poor.

For short journeys, the connection time can be a high percentage of overall journey time. Consider Chepstow - Bristol, Selby - Harrogate and Leeds/York - Filey/Bridlington.

Connections to/from bus services are often much worse, but this is outside of the control of the rail industry.

Of course reducing journey times is also crucial to making these services more attractive and many flows do have good connection times, but the important flows with poor connections need to be tackled.

The West Highland Line does not connect with any other line apart from around Glasgow so connections elsewhere do not need to determine the timetable.
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The UK will not begin to starve very soon due to climate change. These problems will affect people mostly in countries far more vulnerable to the elements, where the land is low and the temperatures are either hot or cold or so on. A clear reason why the UK was able to rule the greatest empire ever seen by mankind was simply because our home country is never afflicted by particularly damaging winters or summers or floods or storms or hurricanes or earthquakes or any such environmental disasters. HS2 isn't going to directly cause people to die around the world. It will start to make us less dependent upon oil and the instability it brings.

I agree with you, however the UK is highly dependent on trade and imports in particular and problems elsewhere are likely to have a huge impact on the social, political and economic climate in the UK. It would seem logical that this would shrink the long distance travel market.
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Oddly enough in the reports you criticise as being of limited scope they do actually look at this. The capacity issues are on the main axis of Britain - north/south from Bristol and London in the south through Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the north. There are four extant lines which serve this axis - the West Coast, the Midland, the East Coast and the Cross Country main lines. These are the lines which have no 'quick wins' of capacity left to get. These are the ones which will require a very large amount of money and disruption to upgrade and these are the ones which will still remain capacity limited after these upgrades.

The capacity issues are on these axes because the travel market is growing and Advance fares encourage this. Whether the travel market has the potential to continue to growth in the long term is questionable. There is a lot of spare capacity on Pendolino trains, so there is capacity for growth and modal shift on the WCML. New, longer trains for the CrossCountry services provide capacity for growth there. Off-peak trains on the ECML are also far from being full.
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There would have to be an enormous shrinkage in the travel market for the modal shift from air to fit entirely on our existing rail network. Rail has around a fifth of the market from London to Scotland, and there is very little scope for additional capacity without HS2. If people are stopped from flying then there will be severe economic repercussions - unfortunately the economic effects of not building HS2 are not included in its business case as the alternative. As ridiculous was the argument of the value of working time on trains, the fact remains that if everyone is standing between London and Birmingham then no one will be able to do any work. Especially if they're wanting to rip out every first class carriage.

You also do not address the issue of network resillience as today, the existing mainlines are only a single Pacer or freight train breakdown (or indeed as is the case right now, a minor engineering train collision) away from almost total collapse. If we reduce the air travel market and rely upon the existing lines, the effects of disruption will be magnified. If we only add enough capacity to deal with the passenger numbers then that's fine when it's all working to timetable but what happens when a train is cancelled or delayed? Pendolinos can't tilt if they're dangerously overloaded with passengers so the timetable effects can reverberate around the network. If the air market were suppressed at the same time, there would effectively be no alternative way of going between London and the Central Belt which is a journey not only made for discretionary reasons but for immediate business and political ones too.

There's a very good reason the travel market is the size it is and blindly trying to reduce it for narrow-minded environmental reasons is not going to help at all. If you believe that we should perform economic masochism in order to immediately reduce our environmental impact then there are a lot of implications for individual liberties you have to consider. I am not a climate change denier and I know we need to work towards a zero-carbon world but this approach is not going to work. Your approach would be like shutting down coal power stations (quite rightly) but then not building lesser-polluting or zero-pollution replacements. HS2 is the first step towards replacing all these stupid wee inefficient 737s and A320s which fly up and down the country with a method which is not polluting.

HS2 does provide a more efficient use of resources than we have today. Yes, the construction of it will have an environmental impact but that is a one-time thing over only a few decades. The majority of the HS2 construction will only affect local areas for around two years, with the exception being the bored tunnels and the work at the stations. Once we've built it the marginal environmental cost of using it to its full capacity is minimal so why not use it? Instead of burning petrol or diesel or kerosene people will be able to travel the lengths and breadths of the country in comfort and at high speed powered only by the ridiculous amount of power renewable provided to us by mother nature. The renewable sources are only going to become more and more efficient and we're going to reduce transmission losses even more so it is going to have a beneficial environmental effect overall.

This. Is. Not. True.

The organisations which own and run the network know that the network will not have enough capacity. Why don't you believe them? The WCML has only just been upgraded to 11-car Pendolinos and 12-car 350s at the end of the £8bn modernisation programme which caused chaos, went several times over budget and still did not provide a massive increase in capacity. We know that these schemes are not good value for money any more as a sole source of capacity increase for the future. The Great Western is being electrified and IEPed and so on but that is because it still had easy capacity gains to be made. Our north/south rail links do not have that ease of upgrade any more and we cannot upgrade them forever to cope with capacity. We are rapidly receiving diminishing returns from our investment as we're doing all we can reasonably do without causing chaos and risk to our network. Building HS2 is very low risk as there is nothing about it which is actually that amazing from an engineering perspective.

As I said earlier, you do not appreciate the ease with which our current network can fall apart due to disruption. Forcing more trains onto the current tracks may be possible at the best of times but during even minor disruption these extra trains will cause a domino effect of disruption where something will have to give. If you are happy with these extra services needing to be cut back or cancelled entirely when something so frequently goes wrong then that is not at all acceptable. Modal shift will only happen when they are switching to a network which is dependable. Are you really going to switch from plane or car when you know that some time every week this service is cancelled due to disruption? No, you're not. If you timetable a service then people expect it to run and to run reliably. We cannot have a rail network where we overextend what it can safely and reasonably manage just to avoid the inevitability of needing a new line.



The fundamental fact is that it is far cheaper and better to build a new line, designed for efficiency and high capacity, than it is to try to force upgrades of all the existing routes. The environmental cost of forcing upgrades on the existing routes will not be negligible and they still will not allow double decker trains. Remember that the energy efficiency figures per seat kilometre do not take into account the number of trains actually in service. You need half as many trains running at 400km/h to provide the same service as you would running at 200km/h so there are half the number of trains using electricity at the same time.

I agree that if we aim for a 100% capacity increase, then a new line is probably the best solution. However, government and industry predictions assume a huge growth in the long distance travel market and by repressing this it seems that we could avoiding building a new line and limit the upgrades of existing routes. Provision for local journeys however definitely must be tackled as this affects most people's daily journeys to work or education and public transport has a low modal share. This is what doesn't seem to have been investigated.
What is the very good reason why the travel market is the size it is? HS2 plans do not include running to Scotland and a potential line to Scotland would have to be built through hundreds of kilometres of challenging terrain and would require a huge expansion in the current travel market to be justified. It would presumably not be built until the 2040s/2050s, probably in a very different context to that of today. Meeting the capacity needs of the current air and road market to and from Scotland probably only means filling or near filling existing trains and adding one or two additional trains per hour on the WCML and ECML. In any case, significant modal shift to/from Scotland will need to occur well before the 2050s to contribute to environmental objectives. The Strategic Alternatives report suggests passing loops for freight between Newcastle/Carlisle and Scotland and a power supply upgrade between Newcastle and Edinburgh to provide additional capacity. Why could minor investments, reducing headways or flighting trains not produce the one or two extra paths needed?

The need to tackle climate change is extremely urgent. The Arctic will probably be ice free in the summer in a few years, meaning not major changes to wind and currents, but also release of the very powerful greenhouse gas methane currently stored there which will accelerate climate change. Delivering improvements in 50-100 years time will simply not be sufficient, perhaps if we have transformed our economy by then that might be the time to build a new transport scheme like HS2.

Punctuality and reliability are improving steadily on the classic network. A high speed line may be more punctual and reliable but a large proportion of passengers will continue their journeys on conventional rail or high speed trains will continue over the classic lines so will still be affected by disruption there. I also don't propose squeezing as many trains onto the classic network as the Alternatives to HS2 report which suggests doubling or tripling frequencies on many routes. Air and car travel are also very susceptible to disruption.

HS2 may aim to reduce domestic aviation but currently plans intend for slots to be taken by additional long-haul flights. Given that there is currently not much prospect of sustainable air travel the market will start to shrink when kerosene prices increase significantly.

I don't see how having fewer trains drawing electricity at the same time benefits the environmental case, as those trains will also be drawing increased energy per minute. An AGV running 100 km at 200 km/h would draw 24.4 kWh over each minute whereas an AGV running 100 km at 400 km/h would draw 159.5 kWh over each minute. Fewer trains are required but they are run more intensively, which is operationally beneficial.

 

[tbtc]

Leeds to Norwich has a standard journey time of around 3h30, of which around 30-40 minutes is typically connection time at Peterborough. Given that journey time by car is around 4 hours, 30 minutes could make a huge difference to the attractivity of rail. Birmingham to Norwich and Newcastle to Cambridge are similar.

York to Chester effectively has an hourly connection taking 2h45 - 3h05, often involving changes at Crewe as well as Manchester or use of the stopping service via Altrincham as the connection to the ATW service in the Chester direction is 31 minutes. Journey time by car is around 2h-2h30, so reducing connection times could make rail considerably more attractive.

Workington to Manchester takes 2h50 with a fast connection at Carlisle but 3h-4h on most connections because connections are generally poor.

For short journeys, the connection time can be a high percentage of overall journey time. Consider Chepstow - Bristol, Selby - Harrogate and Leeds/York - Filey/Bridlington

How many of these are regular journeys though?

There are always going to be some places with poor connections (especially in one direction - e.g. you could optimise the hourly services through Sleaford to give a good connection for Peterborough - Boston/ Skegness but that may mean a terrible connection for Lincoln - Boston/ Skegness passengers).

If the Harrogate trains are retimed to provide a better connection at York to Selby trains then that may disrupt the Harrogate - London connections, for example.

There is a lot of spare capacity on Pendolino trains, so there is capacity for growth and modal shift on the WCML

Most 390s have recently been extended from nine coaches to eleven, so there ought to be some spare seats in 2014. How many more seats will be spare in 2024 though?

Off-peak trains on the ECML are also far from being full

True, but (given that it'd take at least ten years for any significant upgrades in capacity on the ECML to become reality - probably after a lot of "five day railway") how long do we wait before taking action?

National Express or Stagecoach (Megabus) could probably double their number of coach services in twelve months (ordering new vehicles from Plaxton or whoever, training staff etc).

The railway is pretty inflexible - it takes a long time to plan/build/operate new infrastructure - look at "Thameslink 2000" - so if we want to meet demand in twenty years time, we have to start planning today.

The fact that there are empty seats on some services at the moment makes it harder to convince some members of the public that we are going to face problems in the future, but we've got to take some tricky decisions well before things become a bigger problem.

 

[Oscar]

How many of these are regular journeys though?

There are always going to be some places with poor connections (especially in one direction - e.g. you could optimise the hourly services through Sleaford to give a good connection for Peterborough - Boston/ Skegness but that may mean a terrible connection for Lincoln - Boston/ Skegness passengers).

If the Harrogate trains are retimed to provide a better connection at York to Selby trains then that may disrupt the Harrogate - London connections, for example.

I agree that some flows will always have sub-optimal connections, but these could be minimised with a national timetable planning policy. I imagine that there are large flows involving interchange at Peterborough, for example.

 

[HSTEd]

Whilst the right of way of a high speed line generates significant carbon dioxide emissions during its construction (although not as much as might be assumed considering the route's titanic capacity) the fact remains that during its operation it can be made to effectively produce no emissions whatsoever.

This will occur if it is powered by a low carbon generating source, such as my preferred nuclear option. Considering the very long life of an alignment the construction emissions very rapidly amortise to almost nothing.

A national High Speed Rail network that put 90% of the people in the United Kingdom within 30km of a high speed station with multiple trains per hour is not going to significantly increase the carbon emissions of the nation during its construction phase, let alone during its operation when the massive modal shift would cancel out any construction costs.

And since it would be powered by nuclear generation it could ship unlimited numbers of people with no significant carbon emissions.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Swiss infrastructure has not been designed for the Swiss timetable. The Bahn 2000 infrastructure project and integraler Taktfahrplan timetable were only launched in 1984. A best possible integrated timetable was introduced first of all and infrastructure has been upgraded over the last three decades to optimise that timetable. Most of the network was built as single track lines at the start of the 20th century, meaning even greater capacity limitations. Significant improvements can be made to end to end journey times even before targeted infrastructure improvements take place. The fact that the average fare paid in Britain is around £5 shows that a huge proportion of rail journeys are very short. While many of these will be direct journeys to city centres, a significant proportion must involve at least one change. Most car journeys are also very short and rail's modal shift of these journeys outside London is normally very low. This is where the greatest potential for modal shift lies. Short to medium-distance journeys involving at least one change and in particular multi-modal journeys involving rail currently tend to be very unattractive. Although Switzerland is a small country, journey times by rail to be relatively slow - the Intercity route between St. Gallen and Genève takes over four hours end to end. In the UK rail journey times tend to be much faster, while demographics limit the distance of most flows - few people need to travel from Plymouth to Aberdeen. This means that connection times are likely to form a similar proportion of most rail journeys. While rail in Britain often already has a journey time advantage over road for long-distance Intercity travel which is not present in Switzerland, making the reduction of connection times seem less pressing, the increase in door to door journey time due to poor connections often means that the car is still very competitive.

Leeds to Norwich has a standard journey time of around 3h30, of which around 30-40 minutes is typically connection time at Peterborough. Given that journey time by car is around 4 hours, 30 minutes could make a huge difference to the attractivity of rail. Birmingham to Norwich and Newcastle to Cambridge are similar.

York to Chester effectively has an hourly connection taking 2h45 - 3h05, often involving changes at Crewe as well as Manchester or use of the stopping service via Altrincham as the connection to the ATW service in the Chester direction is 31 minutes. Journey time by car is around 2h-2h30, so reducing connection times could make rail considerably more attractive.

Workington to Manchester takes 2h50 with a fast connection at Carlisle but 3h-4h on most connections because connections are generally poor.

For short journeys, the connection time can be a high percentage of overall journey time. Consider Chepstow - Bristol, Selby - Harrogate and Leeds/York - Filey/Bridlington.

Connections to/from bus services are often much worse, but this is outside of the control of the rail industry.

Of course reducing journey times is also crucial to making these services more attractive and many flows do have good connection times, but the important flows with poor connections need to be tackled.

The West Highland Line does not connect with any other line apart from around Glasgow so connections elsewhere do not need to determine the timetable.

Improvements to local-ish lines, such as the many which run through Manchester and Leeds, are happening now and would not be happening any faster if HS2 were cancelled. HS2 solves a large series of problems across the country but does not solve everything. However, interventions on the scale of HS2 are not required around the country to improve these journeys you speak of. There can be many more schemes like the Northern Hub in the timeframe of HS2 as they will not require hundreds of kilometres of entirely new main line to be built. These lines have not been upgraded and restored to full Victorian scale yet, as our north/south lines have and will be soon.

We want to run more and more local/regional services but when these interact with our current intercity network, there are severe capacity constraints where the more profitable and more nationally important long-distance services take priority. When we have HS2 up and running, the speed differential between local/regional and the remainder semi/full-intercity trains remaining on the classic lines will be severely reduced - not only from slowing down the IC services but from other improvements made to the regional services at the same time. The removal of a non-stop 125mph path from an existing line may allow more than one additional local or regional stopping service to take its place. The majority of the regional and local lines are far away from the law of diminishing returns making additioanl investment uneconomic - some grade separation here, some redoubling or quadrupling there and some extra platforms and higher line and junction speeds dotted around and you'll be to massively increase capacity and connectivity without a vast amount of additional expenditure. As I said, we are embarking on a programme of rolling electrification where after our current schemes are finished, we will begin work on others which will have a very significant effect on the reliability and quality of services across the country. These schemes are not happening in spite of HS2, they are happening because we know that we need to invest in rail infrastructure across the country which is also the rationale behind HS2 itself. The Government, Network Rail and HS2 Ltd know that there is no point in the additional capacity of HS2 unless people will actually be able to use it via connections from both car and from all modes of public transport.

I live in a town connected to both Glasgow and Edinburgh by the second-largest suburban rail network in the country and I know how much of a benefit it has been to where I live. It is disheartening to know that BR electrified it back almost fifty (!) years ago yet they had not continued in other cities to provide the same level of connectivity it has provided this town to the whole of the country. Four AC electric trains an hour, each with at minimum three carriages with two bogies each and two continuing through to Edinburgh via the towns and suburban areas between Scotland's two largest cities. This level of service can be put in place across the country with the investment being brought to the rail network but it is HS2 which will finally provide the capacity at the main city centre stations like Manchester Picadilly for these services to truly thrive.

What do you think about East-West rail? Is this the type of scheme you would like to see the Government invest in more? I believe it is a fantastic scheme which is going to do exactly what you want us to do - take people off the roads and put them onto electric trains as the journey is made faster, cleaner and more regular via public transport. We can and we will be reopening and upgrading any routes which have a positive business case, especially those which will lead to modal shift from car.

The HS2 documents also describe how the government sees the medium/long term endgame of the GB high speed rail network. This includes some form of link across the Pennines. New build HSR is only required when there will be passenger flows of tens of thousands of people per hour predicted and it will take a long time for this to be needed through the Pennines. More likely is that a combination of upgraded and new routes can be designed so that the journey time can drop well below the M62 time using Javelin-style units running straight into the existing terminii and the new HS2 hubs at Meadowhall and Manchester Airport for swift onward connections across the country to the Continent. When people are going to have better connections, they're going to use them for discretionary travel as well as essential and modal shift travel.

I agree with you, however the UK is highly dependent on trade and imports in particular and problems elsewhere are likely to have a huge impact on the social, political and economic climate in the UK.

The capacity issues are on these axes because the travel market is growing and Advance fares encourage this. Whether the travel market has the potential to continue to growth in the long term is questionable. There is a lot of spare capacity on Pendolino trains, so there is capacity for growth and modal shift on the WCML. New, longer trains for the CrossCountry services provide capacity for growth there. Off-peak trains on the ECML are also far from being full.

There is not 'a lot' of capacity on the Pendolinos when we're not talking about today. HS2 is us talking about when it is finished. At only 1% of passenger number increases, whether from modal shift or from more discretionary travel, there will have been a 22% increase in passengers by the Phase 2 opening date. The percentages build upon previous growth - if growth continues but then tapers back down to 1% then it's still going to be a lot more than the miniscule capacity increases that year another massive route modernisation programme would provide. As you believe that intercity rail travel numbers will peak and then flatten out, I can see why you might believe that the amount of capacity increase HS2 provides is unnecessary. As our predictions are that your scenario will not happen, it is beyond obvious to us that HS2 and further capacity increases beyond are going to be necessary. Longer trains for CrossCountry are extremely likely to happen before Phase 2 opens as the infrastructure is there, but the rolling stock won't be until there are IEPs built and more HSTs freed up to relieve the Voyagers on the XC network. However, the ability for the XC network for further growth beyond this is limited by the ad-hoc nature of non-London intercity infrastructure in the UK. We will be able to do some more capacity increases on the few lines where XC has a monopoly of services but the network is still very much constrained by the capacity issues of the lines and stations it must cross and stop at. HS2 provides the same level of speed and quality for journeys from Leeds to Birmingham as it does for Leeds to London and is in fact designed such that a London-Glasgow train (WHICH IS PLANNED FOR PHASE 1...) has no scheduling conflict whatsoever against one going between Birmingham and Leeds. Nothing of the sort is at all the case at the moment and that only hurts non-London travel even more.

I agree that if we aim for a 100% capacity increase, then a new line is probably the best solution. However, government and industry predictions assume a huge growth in the long distance travel market and by repressing this it seems that we could avoiding building a new line and limit the upgrades of existing routes. Provision for local journeys however definitely must be tackled as this affects most people's daily journeys to work or education and public transport has a low modal share.

As has been made clear by HS2 themselves, they see the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 being local and regional trains. At the same time we are investing much more money into these trains than we are into HS2 itself. You need to make yourself aware of what is happening beyond HS2 in only the next few years.

What is the very good reason why the travel market is the size it is?

People travel between Scotland and London because they either have to for business or because they want to experience things which they cannot do where they are normally. People from London like going to Scotland because it's a reasonably not bad place to want to visit and vice-versa. Would the world be better if Eurostar didn't exist to let people travel between London and Paris?

HS2 plans do not include running to Scotland

!

and a potential line to Scotland would have to be built through hundreds of kilometres of challenging terrain and would require a huge expansion in the current travel market to be justified. It would presumably not be built until the 2040s/2050s, probably in a very different context to that of today. Meeting the capacity needs of the current air and road market to and from Scotland probably only means filling or near filling existing trains and adding one or two additional trains per hour on the WCML and ECML. In any case, significant modal shift to/from Scotland will need to occur well before the 2050s to contribute to environmental objectives. The Strategic Alternatives report suggests passing loops for freight between Newcastle/Carlisle and Scotland and a power supply upgrade between Newcastle and Edinburgh to provide additional capacity. Why could minor investments, reducing headways or flighting trains not produce the one or two extra paths needed?

On the other hand, it's not actually that much more difficult than tunnelling through the Chilterns. The route would be entirely along the route of the M6/M74 and the existing WCML so access won't be particularly difficult and no one is going to NIMBY it at all because it's so empty and pretty desolate anyway. Things get magnificently cheaper to build the further you are away from London, which is what makes the amount of investment in London only so painful for places where even a few million pounds would make a massive difference in quality and quantity of public transport. With a high-speed bypass, the existing WCML can more or less dedicate itself north of Preston to freight which will have an enormous effect in removing lorries and their pollution from the roads. By far the slowest parts of the existing IC network are those north of Newcastle and Preston so the journey time improvements will be much greater than they are on HS2 further south. The same logic of building HS2 for future 400km/h operation will apply here, and the trains will have to do very high speed further south so there won't be any additional rolling stock requirements (in fact, it will reduce them as fewer trains will be needed for the same service versus when they're plodding along at ~100-110 for most of their journey north). At this high speed, there will be no way for air to effectively compete no matter what happens to the price of oil which cannot be said to be the case today. Not only this, but the improvements for non-London travel will be even greater than they are for travel to London. The journey from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Manchester or to Leeds is long, which will adversely affect the overall journey time for spoke-hub-hub-spoke journeys like the ones you say are particularly arduous today.

The need to tackle climate change is extremely urgent. The Arctic will probably be ice free in the summer in a few years, meaning not major changes to wind and currents, but also release of the very powerful greenhouse gas methane currently stored there which will accelerate climate change. Delivering improvements in 50-100 years time will simply not be sufficient, perhaps if we have transformed our economy by then that might be the time to build a new transport scheme like HS2.

How are we going to transform our economy without reducing our dependency on oil for city-city travel? HS2 does that gradually without any pain or sacrifice for anyone in the country, which will prevent an economic catastrophe if we just shut down air travel without an alternative. Growth is exponential - in 50-100 years time even with HS2 we will probably be looking at another line or three or even a full on maglev if required. We can't replace all the old, polluting economy without a functioning economy to build the replacements - if we go about replacing power stations then we'll need a boom in building whatever we're going to replace them with - nuclear, solar, wind, wave or whatever.

Punctuality and reliability are improving steadily on the classic network. A high speed line may be more punctual and reliable but a large proportion of passengers will continue their journeys on conventional rail or high speed trains will continue over the classic lines so will still be affected by disruption there.

Punctuality and reliability are improving because we are making our network more resilient at the moment in lots of small steps. However, there is again a law of diminishing returns as we are currently replacing the worst and most easily fixable parts of the rail network - much like the capacity issues. This cannot continue forever, and there will still always be failures and vandalism and suicide and the numerous other problems which beset our classic lines. If we want to run more and more trains on the network, the number of failures is going to go up per day simply because there will be more trains and passengers to go wrong. However, the difference will be that there will be no spare capacity in which to allow the network to recover. If two Pendolinos are going to be 50% full, and the earlier one is cancelled and people pile onto the next one then it's only going to be 100% full, which is still fine. If we're running every Pendolino and every other train at 95% capacity, what happens when one of them inevitably is cancelled or heavily delayed? People are going to become very unhappy with rail if it is all going to fall apart and they're going to lose trust and confidence. If you know that you are very likely going to be unable to get to work by train due to regular and unavoidable disruption, you are likely to go back onto the roads and cause pollution.

HS2 is operationally going to be extremely simple to run, once built (which won't be particuarly difficult either, mind). The entire network will be controlled from one room and there are no legacy considerations to be taken into account when running it. Every single part of the infrastructure will be built to a guaranteed and very high standard and it will be able to be much more heavily controlled than the WCML. HS1 is by far the most punctual railway in GB because it is exactly the same. Only trains kept to an extremely high standard of maintenance and design are allowed anywhere near the tracks where all of them are reasonably new. At the stations, the HS2 tracks are going to be operationally isolated from the classic network so even if all the classic services fail completely the intercity services will keep running. At the same time though, the classic services are going to have their reliability improve as well - not only from the infrastructure improvements coming now and through the next decades but from disrupted IC services no longer disrupting all along their route. Today, when the IC services are disrupted there can be a severe effect on the local services they run alongside as late running services will cause a cascade of lateness across the network from the start of the delay right until where they finally terminate, and then in outbound services as well. Intercity services have priority along the existing network because of this, which means that local and regional services suffer in order to keep longer-distance services on time. This can only get worse if there is less recovery space in an HS2-less network.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

What do you think about East-West rail? Is this the type of scheme you would like to see the Government invest in more? I believe it is a fantastic scheme which is going to do exactly what you want us to do - take people off the roads and put them onto electric trains as the journey is made faster, cleaner and more regular via public transport. We can and we will be reopening and upgrading any routes which have a positive business case,

I really am enjoying this discussion and admire your patience in arguing the case with Oscar. I thought at first he was going to be completely close-minded. There is absolutely loads of valuable information in this thread. Thanks. I am even more convinced that HS2 and on is the way to go.

 

[Will222]

NotATrainspott
You have the patience of a saint for going into such detail in your answers.

Oscar
While most people agree on the need to cut greenhouse emissions (and NO2, PM2.5 and PM10 for that matter), you will not find any consensus that reducing economic activity is the best way to achieve this.

If the tail of warming models is realised and hundreds of millions are displaced in Asia, I think we can assume that migration will boost UK population figures above the 75m predicted by roughly HS2 Phase II's opening.

Surely the best contribution that UK transport could make to our post Kyoto obligations (whatever they are agreed to be) would be to electrify our train network, boost its capacity (for passenger and freight) as far as possible and incentivise the replacement of petrol/diesel road transport with EV's. Beyond that, it's up to the Dept of Energy to improve our energy mix (though even if all new power comes from coal, that would still be more efficient than petrol engines and aviation).

Consigning the regions outside of London to continued relative economic decline by disincentivising "discretionary" travel seem a pretty shoddy thing to be recommending.

 

[HowardGWR]

If you look at the Sky news web site (home page & world) you will see a report stating that China has built 6000 miles of HSL since 2008 and is building another 6000 while we chat about HS2.

 

[Oscar]

Your reasoning is very sound if the economy grows exponentially in the 21st century as it has done through most of the 20th century. Increasing competition for resources from other areas of the world and the disruption of climate change mean that this assumption is very questionable. In particular running to/from Scotland would require a very large growth in the travel market. It seems likely that the strong and growing London economy and weak economy elsewhere is currently driving growth in the demand for Intercity travel to and from London. Rebalancing this would mean less demand for travel to and from London.

I agree that East-West Rail is a sensible scheme and that where new conventional lines would serve a large number of passengers and there is a case for reopening, this should be a priority for investment.

Unfortunately Eurostar appears to have generated a substantial amount of additional travel between London and Paris. It may be lovely to spend a weekend out in Paris, but is it the best use of capacity? If any station in the UK to any destination in western Europe were priced at around £100-£150 return rather than using dynamic pricing and pricing each leg of a journey separately, this would remove much of the discretionary travel between London and Paris and increase modal shift from air for other destinations where air is much more attractive. The size of markets beyond northern France and Belgium means this could allow the full capacity of the Channel Tunnel to be used.

As to whether the infrastructure should have been built, the high costs (an 80% overrun), low usage and travel it is created suggest that it may not have been a wise investment or has not been used wisely. The construction of the tunnel cost the equivalent of £12 billion today and the construction HS1 cost £6.16 bn. The Channel Tunnel have not managed to achieve the predicted passenger and freight volumes twenty years after the opening of the Channel Tunnel, mainly because of competition from air for passenger traffic but also because of high access charges, long journey times from freight and optimistic predictions. The high cost of tickets for HS1 and location of St. Pancras reduce the attractivity of the line for Kent commuters.

The additional capacity generated from HS2 will be for more conventional long distance trains on the classic main lines. The increased capacity on the south end of the WCML could be used by additional local services which would enable additional leisure trips or commuting to/from London. Removing the long distance trains from around the major termini would only cause a slight increase in capacity, as these only make up a small proportion of the trains running there. In addition, trains long distance trains currently call at stations such as Wakefield, Coventry and Stockport before reaching major centres and if HS2 is built, additional services will need to run to/from these stations. HS2 will provide little additional capacity for the networks of the West Midlands, the North of England or the Central Belt.

The construction of new HS2 stations would mean that passengers making connections would lose a significant proportion of the journey time savings in transfers between stations, so HS2 only makes rail attractive for long distance city centre to city centre travel for which it is already attractive. If services on the classic network slow down to reduce headways, rail will become less competitive for many journeys. On the CrossCountry axis for example, journeys between North East England and South West England or West Midlands destinations will require a change and walk between stations at Birmingham, journeys to/from Derby will require a transfer from Toton, Meadowhall will only be convenient for the north of Sheffield, Wakefield will not be served and Leeds will again require a walk between stations. Does this really encourage modal shift?
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If you look at the Sky news web site (home page & world) you will see a report stating that China has built 6000 miles of HSL since 2008 and is building another 6000 while we chat about HS2.

The size of China's population and the wealth of the Chinese state and Chinese business are not comparable to the UK. Spain has been burdened by debts arising from the high speed rail construction of the last two decades which has failed to attract the passenger numbers predicted or boost the economy. Italian high speed rail also ran greatly over budget and has failed to deliver great benefits. The French high speed network has been built over a longer period of time and, while the first line between Paris and Lyon greatly boosted passenger numbers, the benefits of building new lines have diminished as the network covers more of the country. The French government is no longer prioritising the building of high speed lines. The distance between major population centres in France, Spain and Italy is much higher than that of the UK with much lower population density between the centres. Classic line speeds are generally slower, meaning that high speed rail delivers bigger journey time benefits. The costs of civil engineering are also much lower in France than in Britain - LGV Nord cost just 3.3 bn € http://www.cgedd.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/LGV_Nord_cle58b46b.pdfin 2003 and LGV Méditerranée cost 3.8 bn € in 2001.

An early evaluation of Italian high speed projects
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Surely the best contribution that UK transport could make to our post Kyoto obligations (whatever they are agreed to be) would be to electrify our train network, boost its capacity (for passenger and freight) as far as possible and incentivise the replacement of petrol/diesel road transport with EV's. Beyond that, it's up to the Dept of Energy to improve our energy mix (though even if all new power comes from coal, that would still be more efficient than petrol engines and aviation).

I agree with you on this. However, high speed rail has not regenerated the regions of most other European countries which have invested in it. Instead investment is drawn into capital cities as outlying areas of the country can be served more easily from there. Increasing population does mean increased demand for travel, but predominantly over short distances within metropolitan areas as this is where most travel takes place. Perhaps light rail systems or investment in conventional rail in these areas may be a better way to meet these challenges. A large and growing long distance discretionary travel market to and from London is dependent on high spending power, which for many people is already declining.

 

[Will222]

Oscar, I think our disagreement is one of perspective.

Whereas you seem to expect universal global misery, I am optimistic about this century, my opinion informed by the accelerating rate of scientific discovery and technological application in just about every field over the last two decades. I therefore don't think the very modest passenger growth rates assumed in the HS2 business case are far fetched. Given this, my question is whether HS2 is the best way of meeting this demand and whether it will help reduce the North-South gap. This has been comprehensively debated in the many thousands of comments on this thread. And even after the scheme is scrapped or built, the debate will no doubt continue.

Beyond that, it is not for you, me or anyone else to judge the economic usefulness of a journey. What value do you attach to a Yorkshire based grandmother seeing her London based grandchildren weekly rather than monthly? Or the husband who can accept a job outside his home county while maintaining his marriage? Or the academic that has a chance encounter at a conference he would otherwise not have attended? Or the schoolchild that takes the train to Paris and has their first kiss in the courtyard of the Louvre? All these experiences enrich lives and in turn boost the economy. If I think it's worth paying the fare to take an "unnecessary" journey then I will do so. It's the job of government to ensure this journey is provided for, not to question its worth.

Others far better qualified than me (including the DfT) have laid out in detail the case for this scheme and why it is the best way of meeting intercity demand AS WELL AS shorter distance demand. You and others may disagree.*

But arguing whether that increased demand is the "right" sort of demand is not a question that can be answered without political philosophy. And I think, not one on which we will ever agree.

 

[pablo]

I really am enjoying this discussion and admire your patience in arguing the case with Oscar. I thought at first he was going to be completely close-minded. There is absolutely loads of valuable information in this thread. Thanks. I am even more convinced that HS2 and on is the way to go.

NAT, I echo Gralistair's sentiment, genuinely.
Apart from being a saint you also seem to have the power to direct governments' policy for the next 30 to 50 years. I like it and would like to rely on it but something tells me... not likely. Who do you represent?

 

[HowardGWR]

@Oscar
You seemed to think I was making a point about the Sky News article, whereas I was only pointing out the article (and interesting videos).

Anyway here is the link.

http://news.sky.com/story/1194709/china-high-speed-rail-network-to-be-doubled

On modal shift we must discern between the various components of traffic on HS2.

a) transfer from WCML and ECML and others from existing rail. This is the core of the BCR for HS2. So not modal shift.

b) growth generated by HS2's presence that did not previously exist. This is not modal shift either (unless some of that growth would have gone by air or road -possible, but unlikely IMO). A major component of the positive BCR for HS2.

c) transfer from road and air. Yes this is modal shift but interestingly was not considered for the BCR AFAIK.

I think we need to dissect b) more but I will simply name the components.

a1) making discretionary travel more attractive. I assume this would be anathema to environmentalists, although a trip to the Dome make give much pleasure to some and pleasure is surely beneficial to human health.

a2) population growth. This is transfer from other parts of the world as we indigenous are not doing the business so well on reproduction. Such growth will have a negative carbon impact, as an immigrant comes mainly from a poorer country, where his carbon footprint in his relative poverty is low compared with here.

c) business growth. This will increase because it makes the seeking of new markets for regional-based business easier. I imagine it would be difficult for environmentalists to oppose this, unless they are of the 'back to mud huts' viewpoint.

I can't think of any other types but when one refers to growth / modal shift issues, one needs to look a bit deeper, I contend.
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Or the schoolchild that takes the train to Paris and has their first kiss in the courtyard of the Louvre?

Ooh missus! A bit more exciting than my cited trip to the Dome, but in the same tradition. I agree with you. You are clearly influenced by current news possibly?

 

[tbtc]

Unfortunately Eurostar appears to have generated a substantial amount of additional travel between London and Paris

Its kind of hard to argue with you when you treat this as being A Bad Thing...

Meadowhall will only be convenient for the north of Sheffield

Much as I'd love an HS2 station in central Sheffield (within walking distance of my house), I'm realistic enough to accept that this city isn't important enough for such a deviation.

A station at Meadowhall will be five minutes from Sheffield Midland by train (based on the current timetable - nine trains an hour manage it in around this time - I expect that a number of these services will run through to Dore etc in twenty years time)...

...its got a bus station with services to various parts of Sheffield...

...it'll be on the Supertram line which provides direct services through to Hillsborough, Gleadless etc)...
...its right next to the M1 (at Tinsley Viaduct)...
...its got a lot more land for car parks than a City Centre station could find...

...its much more convenient for the Advanced Manufacturing Park (which is where the most talented graduates are likely to end up).

And that's ignoring the obvious benefits to Rotherham/ Barnsley etc in having a Meadowhall station (rather than a city centre one).

Reading some of the comments about Meadowhall on anti-HS2 sites, you'd think it was going to be a station several miles from the nearest ameneties - far from it.

 

[The Ham]

Unfortunately Eurostar appears to have generated a substantial amount of additional travel between London and Paris.

As to whether the infrastructure should have been built, the high costs , low usage and travel it is created suggest that it may not have been a wise investment or has not been used wisely.

It could be argued that the low cost airlines have generated the extra trips between London & Paris and Eurostar has not performed quite as well as it should have done. Although most of that under performance I would suggest is down to the lack of places served rather than doing badly in general.

One thing that is overlooked is although Eurostar have only just made it to the 10 million passengers per year mark the number of passengers through the tunnel is about 20 million. The question is, how does that compare with the models, as if the tunnel is out performing where it should be as a whole, even if part of it is doing worse can that be seen as a bad thing?

Also, did any of the models for use of the tunnel have any freight using it (IIRC it didn't) yet there is now a bi-weekly freight service through the tunnel between London and Poland. As such there are more benefits to the tunnel than just passenger numbers.

However, in the next few years we could see passenger numbers using the tunnel jump quite dramaticly as new passenger services start.

We therefore could find that by 2020 the passenger numbers on HS1 are a lot closer to being on target and that passenger growth on the WCML and ECML are getting close to that which the model was predicting for the opening of Phase 1. In which case the two stings to the anti's main arguments about capacity could be seriously undermined and the need for HS2 would be proven. However if we wait until then to start doing anything then the existing network would be creaking at the seems and would need some major upgrades just to keep it going, which would cost us a lot more than getting on with HS2 now and it not being quite as full as the model had said at opening (given we're already about 40% of the way there from the start of the model in terms of passenger growth, yet only about 25% of the way in terms of time).

Even if passenger growth stopped now (which is highly unlikely) then the passenger numbers for the opening of Phase 1 would be about 80% of those which there would be if the model was accurate. Even at Phase 2 (allowing for no extra growth because of the opening of Phase 1, which is unlikely) it would be about 70% of the predicted number of passengers. Either way that is unlikely to be able to be called a white elephant.

The only way that it would be a waste would be if passenger growth reversed, however that is unlikely in the short term which would mean that it would have to reverse a lot in later years to result in a reversal from now.

In reality (as HSTed would point out) if there are lots of empty seats they will just be sold off cheap. As the running costs of running a full length train with 7 passengers is practically no cheaper than running a train with 700 passengers (although with 700 passengers the extra cost may be off set by a few of them buying coffee).

 

[NotATrainspott]

Your reasoning is very sound if the economy grows exponentially in the 21st century as it has done through most of the 20th century. Increasing competition for resources from other areas of the world and the disruption of climate change mean that this assumption is very questionable. In particular running to/from Scotland would require a very large growth in the travel market. It seems likely that the strong and growing London economy and weak economy elsewhere is currently driving growth in the demand for Intercity travel to and from London. Rebalancing this would mean less demand for travel to and from London.

The 'Y' network is centred around Birmingham. The route control centre, IIRC, is at Washwood Heath next to the first rolling stock depot. HS2 Ltd are going to move to Birmingham once the Hybrid Bills are passed because they won't have to shuttle between their current offices and the DfT so often. By a large margin the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 are those who will travel between the cities in the North. The best way of stimulating economic growth in these cities, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, is to upgrade their public transport infrastructure to be clean, fast and reliable. HS2 does that. No one is suggesting that we run 8tph double-decker 400m long trains between these cities as that would be a waste of resources, not even HS2. Indeed, the plans for HS2 revolve around 200m long trains which are able to couple together on the 400m long HS2 platforms. When demand is going to be quiet they can run 200m long trains on any of the routes and when it's going to be busy they can run 400m long trains on any of them as well. That's an improvement on now because our current platforms aren't long enough to allow half-sets to be long enough for anything useful outside of extensions off the IC network (e.g. the half-set IEPs are 130m long). The Pendolinos are 9 or 11 car long and that's all they can ever be in service right now.

Extending HS2 to Scotland has not currently been detailed but it is the desire of the Scottish Government to build at least some of the network for a Glasgow-Edinburgh HSR link. At the same time the DfT and Scotland are working together to get the HS2 journey times under 3 hours which is where the train really becomes competitive with air. That will require new-build tracks above and beyond a Glasgow-Edinburgh-Carstairs link. HS2 has four connections to the classic lines - at Lichfield for Phase 1, and at Crewe, Bamfurlong (S of Wigan) and Church Fenton (SW of York) for Phase 2. These links cost money to build so they must have some forseeable future use; there are few places other than possibly Carlisle where such a link would ever be used again north of Bamfurlong towards Glasgow and Edinburgh so there is no point building only very short sections of HSR to achieve this 3 hours journey time. The network effect of allowing standard EU-sized trains to travel along the whole length of HS2 is yet another reason why an extension to Scotland is not a matter of if but a matter of when.

I agree that East-West Rail is a sensible scheme and that where new conventional lines would serve a large number of passengers and there is a case for reopening, this should be a priority for investment.

Yes, precisely. These reopening schemes will not take 20 years to come to fruition so we can reopen lots of them before HS2 Phase 1 or 2 opens. East-West is happening now so it is a priority for investment, as will any other reasonable scheme.

Unfortunately Eurostar appears to have generated a substantial amount of additional travel between London and Paris. It may be lovely to spend a weekend out in Paris, but is it the best use of capacity? If any station in the UK to any destination in western Europe were priced at around £100-£150 return rather than using dynamic pricing and pricing each leg of a journey separately, this would remove much of the discretionary travel between London and Paris and increase modal shift from air for other destinations where air is much more attractive. The size of markets beyond northern France and Belgium means this could allow the full capacity of the Channel Tunnel to be used.

The capacity on Eurostar is limited by the paths through the Channel Tunnel and on the LGV Nord and there are only a few departures an hourat the moment. The capacity of HS1 is so great and effectively unused by Eurostar that they have trains running at only 225km/h running happily in between the 300km/h and very slow to accelerate TGV-TMSTs. On this route though the main concern was the journey time to the Continent and the capacity on the Kent lines the trains used to use rather than passenger numbers demanding a new line all on its own. At the same time the new line here allows Eurostar to buy off-the-shelf trains from anywhere in Europe rather than the entirely custom-designed TGV-TMST, including double-decker trains if ever required. The capacity provided by this limited Eurostar operation has a lower bound on the length of train allowed through the Tunnel as the Eurostars have to be a full 400m long all day every day. As they have to run the trains this length, and because the service needs to be as frequent as air or it would encourage air travel, there is a very fixed environmental cost already. It is the most efficient option to encourage as many people to travel as possible as the marginal environmental cost of a full train over a half full one is minimal. Even then, the power on LGV Nord and in the Tunnel is all provided by the French through nuclear power so there is no additional carbon being released at all.

As to whether the infrastructure should have been built, the high costs (an 80% overrun), low usage and travel it is created suggest that it may not have been a wise investment or has not been used wisely. The construction of the tunnel cost the equivalent of £12 billion today and the construction HS1 cost £6.16 bn. The Channel Tunnel have not managed to achieve the predicted passenger and freight volumes twenty years after the opening of the Channel Tunnel, mainly because of competition from air for passenger traffic but also because of high access charges, long journey times from freight and optimistic predictions. The high cost of tickets for HS1 and location of St. Pancras reduce the attractivity of the line for Kent commuters.

If we hadn't built the infrastructure people would be flying instead. The CTRL (HS1) was originally designed for Regional Eurostar services to benefit most - the entire point of Stratford International was to act as the London stop to replace Kensington Olympia on the classic lines. It's also the reason why HS1 connects in to the North London Line at the Kings Cross railway lands. As these services never ran, it is not difficult to understand why the passenger numbers proved to be much lower than expected. On the other hand, rail now has more than 80% of the passenger numbers between the two cities - the remainder mainly being from connecting flights through BA at Heathrow and AF/KLM through Paris.

At the same time you must also remember that there is a difference between building a new line to add capacity and building a new line where one has not existed before. There was no forerunner to HS1 or the Channel Tunnel other than the train ferries which were not nearly on the same level of utility. It has gradually won out over air for the three capitals market but it is still inhibited by the airline lobby demanding security checks and our refusal to join Schengen, both of which reduce the benefit of rail travel over air. HS2 connects regions between which there is already a very large volume of non-stop travel on existing rail lines, and frees up space on the existing lines for the freight and local demand which is currently supressed.

The additional capacity generated from HS2 will be for more conventional long distance trains on the classic main lines. The increased capacity on the south end of the WCML could be used by additional local services which would enable additional leisure trips or commuting to/from London. Removing the long distance trains from around the major termini would only cause a slight increase in capacity, as these only make up a small proportion of the trains running there. In addition, trains long distance trains currently call at stations such as Wakefield, Coventry and Stockport before reaching major centres and if HS2 is built, additional services will need to run to/from these stations. HS2 will provide little additional capacity for the networks of the West Midlands, the North of England or the Central Belt.

However, these long-distance trains are the ones which spend the longest time in the platforms and take up more of the platform space. Depending on exactly how they manage the extra capacity, this could mean that there will finally be space for 4-8 car local trains and there can be more as they don't need to spend as long in the platforms as LDHS services require. Just because there might only be a few an hour doesn't mean they aren't a significant drain on station resources. My point about HS2 solving one major problem also stands here - there are still other capacity increases outside of its reach which can and will increase capacity before the law of diminishing returns becomes significant. If that means reopening the Leamside line for whatever reason then that's absolutely fine and it isn't competing with HS2 for resources; it is complementary. Obviously at the Phase 2 level there is little going to be done once it has connected back onto the classic lines but that is what the, again, inevitable Phase 3 will be there for. Unless we want to increase our spending on HS2 to speed the phases up (something which I am in no way opposed to and would in reality be delighted by) there's little point in confirming details of the route for Phase 3 until we are getting close to actually building it. We have left passive provision in Phase 2 for it and that's all we have currently timetabled for construction for the next two decades.

The construction of new HS2 stations would mean that passengers making connections would lose a significant proportion of the journey time savings in transfers between stations, so HS2 only makes rail attractive for long distance city centre to city centre travel for which it is already attractive. If services on the classic network slow down to reduce headways, rail will become less competitive for many journeys. On the CrossCountry axis for example, journeys between North East England and South West England or West Midlands destinations will require a change and walk between stations at Birmingham, journeys to/from Derby will require a transfer from Toton, Meadowhall will only be convenient for the north of Sheffield, Wakefield will not be served and Leeds will again require a walk between stations. Does this really encourage modal shift?

If we can make these transfers as painless as possible then there won't be too much of a problem. We cannot serve everywhere directly on any possible transport network and what we are planning for HS2 is effectively the least worst option overall. HSR is very expensive to build and requires as straight and unhindered a route as possible for high speed running. If we build the station in Derby, it wouldn't serve Nottingham very well and it will mean a detour for people not wanting to go to Derby involving either extremely expensive tunnels or viaducts or widescale city demolition - a worse option overall. The same is true for a Nottingham through route. The only way of serving the markets to Derby, to Nottingham and the people who don't want to go to either is to build the through route but with loops to both of the cities on either side. The costs of this would increase dramatically and you're going to leave all three stations (i.e. Toton will have to still exist) with a worse service overall for each. If we do that for Derby and Nottingham, the precedent will be set for every other place along the line to demand its own station on a loop so the price increases exponentially and it starts to fail at its original purpose of high speed and simplicity.

HS2 laid upon the rail and public transport networks of today does not make sense but in the 20 years until it opens there will be a massive change in transport provision in order to make these hubs much more accessible. We have learned from the experience of HS1, where we have Ebbsfleet International separated and not connected to Northfleet station only 400m away. The Nottingham Express Tram is being extended almost all the way to Toton at the moment even without HS2. If the business case stacks up, there's no reason it couldn't be extended to Derby so that all the communities along the route have a direct link to both cities and to the HS2 station. You have to remember that it is cheaper and easier to build some kind of metro or rapid transit link to the stations than it is to move the HSR route itself and there's plenty time for it to happen. Every HS2 station is served by some kind of classic rail - the EMT network will rearrange around the central hub of Toton while in Manchester the HS2 station is already the centre of the Northern Hub works. Every line which connects to Crossrail will connect to HS2 at OOC as the Crossrail core operations will be extended from Paddington to OOC in the west giving 24tph into the centre of London. The Chiltern network will connect at one end to Curzon street, as Moor St is literally next door, and may possibly be put through OOC as well on the way to Paddington Crossrail and high level, if Marylebone proves to be a major constraint on capacity.

The size of China's population and the wealth of the Chinese state and Chinese business are not comparable to the UK. Spain has been burdened by debts arising from the high speed rail construction of the last two decades which has failed to attract the passenger numbers predicted or boost the economy. Italian high speed rail also ran greatly over budget and has failed to deliver great benefits. The French high speed network has been built over a longer period of time and, while the first line between Paris and Lyon greatly boosted passenger numbers, the benefits of building new lines have diminished as the network covers more of the country. The French government is no longer prioritising the building of high speed lines. The distance between major population centres in France, Spain and Italy is much higher than that of the UK with much lower population density between the centres. Classic line speeds are generally slower, meaning that high speed rail delivers bigger journey time benefits. The costs of civil engineering are also much lower in France than in Britain - LGV Nord cost just 3.3 bn € http://www.cgedd.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/LGV_Nord_cle58b46b.pdfin 2003 and LGV Méditerranée cost 3.8 bn € in 2001.

An early evaluation of Italian high speed projects

HS2 is the same thing for us as the LGV Sud-Est was for France, or the AVE Madrid-Barcelona for Spain. Diminishing returns applies to HSR too - you build the easiest routes first with the highest predicted passenger numbers because that is common sense and so any further routes you build are going to produce fewer and fewer benefits for the same price. HS2 is not going to have to worry about filling its seats because it serves routes which are already busy and are nearing capacity. The infamous Spanish line that saw 7 passengers using it is entirely unlike HS2 - it would be like a new-build high speed line from Crewe to Holyhead without an Irish Sea fixed link. As I said, the benefits of HS2 will be greater on the journeys which will not go to London and the ones which spend a long time away from London: the Central Belt to London will see its journey time halve once there's HSR all the way whereas Birmingham only sees about 30% journey time improvement because the distance is shorter and the linespeeds are currently higher. The XC route will also be able to see dramatic improvements, even if people will need to change.

There is definitely something wrong with how much things cost to build in Britain. HS1 is the most expensive HSR line in the world per kilometre which is entirely absurd. HS2 passes through a lot less expensive land and NIMBYs than there will be in Kent (other than the Chiltern section) so the costs will be less, and the economies of scale it can provide should reduce the overall cost of construction.

I agree with you on this. However, high speed rail has not regenerated the regions of most other European countries which have invested in it. Instead investment is drawn into capital cities as outlying areas of the country can be served more easily from there. Increasing population does mean increased demand for travel, but predominantly over short distances within metropolitan areas as this is where most travel takes place. Perhaps light rail systems or investment in conventional rail in these areas may be a better way to meet these challenges. A large and growing long distance discretionary travel market to and from London is dependent on high spending power, which for many people is already declining.

We are seeing more investment in light rail and conventional rail in these cities you want us to focus on. That is happening with HS2 and is not being stopped by HS2. Our rail network will be almost unrecognisable by the opening of Phase 2 as everything you could possibly ever want can happen in the next twenty years. HS2 will encourage high-density growth in these northern cities as people will want to live and work close to the intercity arteries of the country. That makes cars a less valuable prospect at the expense of the kind of public transport which has made London so effective as a city.
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NotATrainspott
You have the patience of a saint for going into such detail in your answers.

If it makes it easier for someone to understand the questions about HS2 then it has been a success. The public aren't interested in reading the tonnes of technical papers which explain why it happens and the anti-crowd know that it is very easy to spin HS2 as being a big train set for the boys to play with rather than what it actually is. It certainly doesn't help when an interest in the railways is seen as some kind of an autistic spectrum disorder by many people in society nowadays.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

Good to hear that now Sir David Higgins has taken over as chairman of HS2 Ltd he is going to look at cost savings by increasing the construction timetable for HS2 to bring the benefits to the north sooner.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25724576

Interesting report in the Telegraph where he mentions talking to Ed Balls last year about the project and seems to be winning him round.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ports-HS2-scheme-projects-chief-suggests.html

 

[billio]

The terrain at Newark is a nightmare - the railway is competing for space with the A46 and a kink in the River Trent - it wouldn't be cheap to do a two track fly over there. Useful, very useful, but not cheap.

I would have thought it more useful if the flyover was to the south of Newark Northgate, where there appears to be plenty of space, use the old formation south towards Melton Mowbray and provide a connecting line across the southern edge of Newark to the Nottingham - Newark Castle line.

This would mean all Nottingham - Lincoln services could connect into services north and south of Newark Northgate. A station on the southern edge of Newark might also be more accessible than Newark Castle.

 

[swt_passenger]

...cost savings by increasing the construction timetable for HS2 to bring the benefits to the north sooner.

That's illogical Captain...

 

[HSTEd]

It might work if this allows income streams from the trains using HS2 Phase 2 to come into being earlier, reducing the capital costs by reducing interest payments in the mean time.

But that will be a minor effect, unless of course they are talking about being able to reduce the order for classic compatibles since fewer CC trains are needed in the Phase 2 plan.

 

[YorkshireBear]

I would have thought it more useful if the flyover was to the south of Newark Northgate, where there appears to be plenty of space, use the old formation south towards Melton Mowbray and provide a connecting line across the southern edge of Newark to the Nottingham - Newark Castle line.

This would mean all Nottingham - Lincoln services could connect into services north and south of Newark Northgate. A station on the southern edge of Newark might also be more accessible than Newark Castle.

Well that almost certainly isn't economically viable.

 

[HowardGWR]

It might work if this allows income streams from the trains using HS2 Phase 2 to come into being earlier, reducing the capital costs by reducing interest payments in the mean time.

But that will be a minor effect, unless of course they are talking about being able to reduce the order for classic compatibles since fewer CC trains are needed in the Phase 2 plan.

If it were so started, then I think the connection from east of Curzon St to New st is a no-brainer. Mind, I think it is anyway, whatever the phasing of the project. NE or NW to SW is a big market which is stifled by capacity of stock, and both slow and poor service.

 

[WatcherZero]

I think you mean reducing the construction timetable to get the benefits sooner, you could say increasing the pace of construction.

 

[swt_passenger]

I think you mean reducing the construction timetable to get the benefits sooner, you could say increasing the pace of construction.

I thought 'speeding up' or 'compressing' - but that would work too...

 

[Oscar]

By a large margin the biggest beneficiaries of HS2 are those who will travel between the cities in the North. The best way of stimulating economic growth in these cities, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, is to upgrade their public transport infrastructure to be clean, fast and reliable. HS2 does that. No one is suggesting that we run 8tph double-decker 400m long trains between these cities as that would be a waste of resources, not even HS2. Indeed, the plans for HS2 revolve around 200m long trains which are able to couple together on the 400m long HS2 platforms. When demand is going to be quiet they can run 200m long trains on any of the routes and when it's going to be busy they can run 400m long trains on any of them as well. That's an improvement on now because our current platforms aren't long enough to allow half-sets to be long enough for anything useful outside of extensions off the IC network (e.g. the half-set IEPs are 130m long). The Pendolinos are 9 or 11 car long and that's all they can ever be in service right now.

HS2 would not serve the core North East - York - Leeds - Manchester - Liverpool axis, though would significantly reduce journey times for Manchester - Birmingham and Leeds - Birmingham passengers. The lower usage, capacity and frequency of the routes to/from Birmingham suggest that they are of lesser importance to passengers and business than the Leeds - Manchester axis. However, evidence from the rest of Europe suggests that connecting regional centres to a capital city benefits the capital city more than the regional centres.

Extending HS2 to Scotland has not currently been detailed but it is the desire of the Scottish Government to build at least some of the network for a Glasgow-Edinburgh HSR link. At the same time the DfT and Scotland are working together to get the HS2 journey times under 3 hours which is where the train really becomes competitive with air. That will require new-build tracks above and beyond a Glasgow-Edinburgh-Carstairs link. HS2 has four connections to the classic lines - at Lichfield for Phase 1, and at Crewe, Bamfurlong (S of Wigan) and Church Fenton (SW of York) for Phase 2. These links cost money to build so they must have some forseeable future use; there are few places other than possibly Carlisle where such a link would ever be used again north of Bamfurlong towards Glasgow and Edinburgh so there is no point building only very short sections of HSR to achieve this 3 hours journey time. The network effect of allowing standard EU-sized trains to travel along the whole length of HS2 is yet another reason why an extension to Scotland is not a matter of if but a matter of when.

Would a line to Scotland be able to support a number of (possibly double-decker) 200m / 400m trains per hour, even if carrying almost all of the traffic? For such a line to have a very dominant modal share fares would have to be very low. In the rest of Europe many people prefer to take slower services than pay higher fares for high speed rail. The failure of the Channel Tunnel to drive ferry companies out of business as predicted in the business case suggests that conventional rail is likely to respond to the challenge of HS2 if competition between operators continues. How much would the travel market have to grow for this line to be viable? I couldn't suggest an answer to this questions but imagine that this would need to be investigated before making judgements on the viable of such a line.

The capacity on Eurostar is limited by the paths through the Channel Tunnel and on the LGV Nord and there are only a few departures an hourat the moment. The capacity of HS1 is so great and effectively unused by Eurostar that they have trains running at only 225km/h running happily in between the 300km/h and very slow to accelerate TGV-TMSTs. On this route though the main concern was the journey time to the Continent and the capacity on the Kent lines the trains used to use rather than passenger numbers demanding a new line all on its own. At the same time the new line here allows Eurostar to buy off-the-shelf trains from anywhere in Europe rather than the entirely custom-designed TGV-TMST, including double-decker trains if ever required. The capacity provided by this limited Eurostar operation has a lower bound on the length of train allowed through the Tunnel as the Eurostars have to be a full 400m long all day every day. As they have to run the trains this length, and because the service needs to be as frequent as air or it would encourage air travel, there is a very fixed environmental cost already. It is the most efficient option to encourage as many people to travel as possible as the marginal environmental cost of a full train over a half full one is minimal. Even then, the power on LGV Nord and in the Tunnel is all provided by the French through nuclear power so there is no additional carbon being released at all.



If we hadn't built the infrastructure people would be flying instead. The CTRL (HS1) was originally designed for Regional Eurostar services to benefit most - the entire point of Stratford International was to act as the London stop to replace Kensington Olympia on the classic lines. It's also the reason why HS1 connects in to the North London Line at the Kings Cross railway lands. As these services never ran, it is not difficult to understand why the passenger numbers proved to be much lower than expected. On the other hand, rail now has more than 80% of the passenger numbers between the two cities - the remainder mainly being from connecting flights through BA at Heathrow and AF/KLM through Paris.

At the same time you must also remember that there is a difference between building a new line to add capacity and building a new line where one has not existed before. There was no forerunner to HS1 or the Channel Tunnel other than the train ferries which were not nearly on the same level of utility. It has gradually won out over air for the three capitals market but it is still inhibited by the airline lobby demanding security checks and our refusal to join Schengen, both of which reduce the benefit of rail travel over air. HS2 connects regions between which there is already a very large volume of non-stop travel on existing rail lines, and frees up space on the existing lines for the freight and local demand which is currently supressed.

Given that the infrastructure Eurostar uses has capacity limits, I would argue that it is important to use it to the greatest environmental benefit, meaning attracting passengers from air. Given that Eurostar has the dominant share of the three capitals market, this means attracting passengers making longer journeys. Others however take a different view. However, the European Commission states that 43% of the Channel Tunnel's capacity is unused and I believe LGV Nord runs around 7-8 tph, suggesting that there is capacity for additional services. I agree that there is a large potential for expanding international rail services currently hampered by the security and passport checks mandated by the UK government in a Parliamentary bill, in particular by running direct trains from London to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Köln and Frankfurt and Lyon and Marseille.
Freight was always a central part of the business case for the building of the Channel Tunnel (http://www.parliament.uk/business/p...s/RP95-2/channel-tunnel-rail-link-bill-199495 - see page 4) and some magazines have devoted articles to the failure of the Channel Tunnel to attract significant freight flows. If the infrastructure had not been built, European governments could have heavily taxed airlines while railways could have promoted the lower fares on the rail-sea-rail service which would not have faced the high access charges Eurostar faces on HS1 and in the Channel Tunnel today. However, heavily taxing airlines does not fit with the philosophy of current European governments and the Channel Tunnel may have been justifiable due to the very long journey times of the rail-sea-rail route and the greater potential of the Channel Tunnel route to serve longer distance markets.

However, these long-distance trains are the ones which spend the longest time in the platforms and take up more of the platform space. Depending on exactly how they manage the extra capacity, this could mean that there will finally be space for 4-8 car local trains and there can be more as they don't need to spend as long in the platforms as LDHS services require. Just because there might only be a few an hour doesn't mean they aren't a significant drain on station resources. My point about HS2 solving one major problem also stands here - there are still other capacity increases outside of its reach which can and will increase capacity before the law of diminishing returns becomes significant.

This is a valid point, though most local services serving Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds terminate there. Most platforms at Manchester Piccadilly and some at Leeds are terminating platforms. This limits the difference in time the different categories of train need to spend in the platforms.

If we can make these transfers as painless as possible then there won't be too much of a problem. We cannot serve everywhere directly on any possible transport network and what we are planning for HS2 is effectively the least worst option overall. HSR is very expensive to build and requires as straight and unhindered a route as possible for high speed running. If we build the station in Derby, it wouldn't serve Nottingham very well and it will mean a detour for people not wanting to go to Derby involving either extremely expensive tunnels or viaducts or widescale city demolition - a worse option overall. The same is true for a Nottingham through route. The only way of serving the markets to Derby, to Nottingham and the people who don't want to go to either is to build the through route but with loops to both of the cities on either side. The costs of this would increase dramatically and you're going to leave all three stations (i.e. Toton will have to still exist) with a worse service overall for each. If we do that for Derby and Nottingham, the precedent will be set for every other place along the line to demand its own station on a loop so the price increases exponentially and it starts to fail at its original purpose of high speed and simplicity.

HS2 laid upon the rail and public transport networks of today does not make sense but in the 20 years until it opens there will be a massive change in transport provision in order to make these hubs much more accessible. We have learned from the experience of HS1, where we have Ebbsfleet International separated and not connected to Northfleet station only 400m away. The Nottingham Express Tram is being extended almost all the way to Toton at the moment even without HS2. If the business case stacks up, there's no reason it couldn't be extended to Derby so that all the communities along the route have a direct link to both cities and to the HS2 station. You have to remember that it is cheaper and easier to build some kind of metro or rapid transit link to the stations than it is to move the HSR route itself and there's plenty time for it to happen. Every HS2 station is served by some kind of classic rail - the EMT network will rearrange around the central hub of Toton while in Manchester the HS2 station is already the centre of the Northern Hub works. Every line which connects to Crossrail will connect to HS2 at OOC as the Crossrail core operations will be extended from Paddington to OOC in the west giving 24tph into the centre of London. The Chiltern network will connect at one end to Curzon street, as Moor St is literally next door, and may possibly be put through OOC as well on the way to Paddington Crossrail and high level, if Marylebone proves to be a major constraint on capacity.

HS2 stations may all have some form of connection to the rest of the network, but the extra time spent connecting to and from the HS2 stations is likely to negate the time savings the line makes possible.

We are seeing more investment in light rail and conventional rail in these cities you want us to focus on. That is happening with HS2 and is not being stopped by HS2. Our rail network will be almost unrecognisable by the opening of Phase 2 as everything you could possibly ever want can happen in the next twenty years. HS2 will encourage high-density growth in these northern cities as people will want to live and work close to the intercity arteries of the country. That makes cars a less valuable prospect at the expense of the kind of public transport which has made London so effective as a city.

The approximately £40 bn to be spent on HS2 could be spent on any other project. HS2 therefore inevitably prevents other projects from going ahead or at the very least prevents a reduction of the national debt.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

I think you mean reducing the construction timetable to get the benefits sooner, you could say increasing the pace of construction.

Sorry I should have been clearer with my statements I meant to say increasing the pace of construction, teach me to read back what I have typed. I suppose building faster would increase costs in the short term ( i.e. spending more than the £2 billion per annum that is currently spent on Crossrail), but not increasing the total costs or perhaps decreasing them as there will be less impact from rising costs like wages or inflation over the longer term.

Isn't the way the BCR for HS2 calculated assume that there is no growth in passenger numbers 5 years after completion because of Treasury rules? If phase two is completed sooner then that should help to boost the BCR calculation as it will allow for growth over a longer period.

 

[transmanche]

The failure of Eurostar to drive ferry companies out of business as predicted in the business case suggests that conventional rail is likely to respond to the challenge of HS2 if competition between operators continues.

I assume you mean Eurotunnel rather than Eurostar. Rather a different comparison...

 

[Oscar]

Yes, I think Eurotunnel would be more appropriate here, though both are involved - I have amended the post.