No thanks! Reading is a genuinely useful interchange for people travelling from the south west, forcing them to go to OOC instead wouldn't go down at all well. OOC on the other hand really needs to be for semi fasts , and leave anything bound for the far south west alone, certainly don't want to lose the Reading stop!
The key bit is your last point "except the Penzance services". Therefore these should be exempt from the OOC stop.
I think we established in some previous discussion that capacity pressure is such that either all of them have to stop or none. This would be separate for the Mains and Reliefs though. Maybe in time Heathrow Express will disappear, and if so that might create more flexibility on the Mains.
OK I'm no expert timetable planner, far from it, but surely if you let the xx to Penzance depart at xx00 from Paddington then have everything else, as now, in 2 or 3 minute intervals leaving after it. I'm sure it is more complex in the up direction, but I'm sure it isn't impossible.
So you are happy to extend journey times to the south west? Even a 5 minute journey extension is an extension. Would passengers to the north west or north east tolerate such an extension? Oh no, of course not. But they are getting vastly speeded up services, whilst poor old Cornwall still has the same journey times to London it had in HST days. No wonder levelling up is needed, I'm just not convinced the Government are looking at levelling up the right areas of the country!
ISTR long distance journey times into Paddington were often 'padded' by a similar amount on the last leg from Reading to keep on time arrival stats at the terminal within acceptable limits.
Levelling up is a slogan and nothing more.
That should work in principle if they all stop, or if they all don't, though I don't know what the current or future headway actually is. But if one stops and the next one is scheduled not to, then the non-stop is just going to see adverse signals and probably get brought nearly to a stand. The same will probably happen to at least one train after that, depending how much slack there is between the timetabled interval and the technical headway the signalling can achieve.
Pleased to hear that.
I tend to agree, depending how slick the transfer will be from GWML to Elizabeth Line, and whether commuters heading into the centre get a time advantage by doing so. And if the Overground lines are readily accessible and not over-whelmed.
If I remember the figures correctly (and it is a long time ago) roughly 1 in 3 of the passengers on HS2 will alight at OOC and the other 2 in 3 at Euston. The differing range of destinations available from each station accounts for the different choices. For a full HS2 service to operate, both stations are needed.
Paddington is not "in the sticks." It has a major hospital next door, innumerable small hotels nearby and Marble Arch is a few minutes walk away. It is a bit further away from "the middle" than any other London terminus but that isn't critical because much of London is not in "the middle" either. Places like Bayswater, Notting Hill and Earls Court are closer to Paddington than to any other terminus.
It is a lot further out than any of the other termini from any properly major destinations. I would be interested to see the proportion of onward travel for each station. Paddington doesn't even have much of a proper entrance from the street
I suspect this is coloured by lack of familiarity with visitors - I know I myself had little clue about walking around London until I moved there. Now I frequently walk from Euston or take a bus.
Totally agreed.
There is a TfL report from 2011 which has the data, Paddington is the lowest by a fair margin for people walking out
When I worked in various offices around Euston station, most days I would walk down to Oxford Street and back via various routes, easily accomplished within the hour with a short stop somewhere for lunch. Google maps suggest it's about 1 mile each way. On nice light evenings I would very occasionally walk from the Euston area to Paddington in the evening to get my train home. That's quite a bit further at nearly 2.5 miles, so much less attractive. I never had time for that in the mornings!
