HS2 advert - red face!

[LNW-GW Joint]

What was the stopping pattern for the first London -Brum and Manchester-Liverpool trains, which one had limited stop services first?

Both lines were essentially limited stop, as there were few intermediate stations to start with.
The L&B stopped half-way at Wolverton to change engines and for refreshments.

 

[JamieL]

Not too sure why HS2 promotion is still present at Euston anyway, considering the uncertainty about whether and when it will get there.

This comment hasn't aged well!

 

[Krokodil]

and reaching Manchester involved reversal at Newton Jn (Earlestown), as the junction faced Liverpool.

How the tables have turned - that junction currently gets used by about one passenger train per day (if it doesn‘t get cancelled) and almost everything goes to Manchester instead.

 

[AndrewE]

Liverpool - Manchester gets 3 fast tph, the TPE Liverpool - Cleethorpes and the Liverpool - Newcastle and the EMR Liverpool - Norwich. The issue is not speed (though I would say Birchwood, Irlam and Urmston should be removed from a fast TPE and served by a better local service) but the quality and capacity of these services.

You have just made my point for me... Even the "fast" or inter-regional "inter-city" services stop too frequently.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Thanks - 6.5 hrs, I wonder what on-board facilities passengers had?! I expect third had to sit on benches in the open air, but what of the others?

Third Class ticket holders generally only had one, parliamentary, all stations service per day.

 

[JordR]

A city of over a million people is not 'in the sticks' by any reasonable definition. A combined population of at least five million in the four contiguous urban areas of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield is very considerable indeed.

I was responding to AndrewE's claim to live "in the sticks".

In any case, those four cities are not remotely contiguous nor do they have a population even close to five million.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It's not really. If you live outside London you get sick of the Establishment's assumption that London is and always has been the centre of the world, which is why people are quick to call this sort of thing out! (Especially given the clear evidence that the establishment think that London is the most important place in the country to look after...)

I always remember people in the Northern city areas being annoyed in the days when the BBC weather forecasters said "And here in the South East". Victoria Wood paradied this in one of the sketches she wrote.

 

[TurbineEnginee]

Mate your numbers look a bit off. Unless we’re going to play silly games, the population of London is about twice that of Liverpool + Manchester.

And if we are going to play silly games then the City of Manchester has a population 55 times that of the City of London.

 

[Krokodil]

In any case, those four cities are not remotely contiguous

In pairs they are: Leeds and Sheffield, and Liverpool and Manchester are just as contiguous as the Dutch Randstad.

nor do they have a population even close to five million.

You're right, it's not close to five million at all. It's nearly seven million.

Mate your numbers look a bit off. Unless we’re going to play silly games, the population of London is about twice that of Liverpool + Manchester.

It would be nice if Liverpool and Manchester had public transport which was half as good as London's.

 

[AndrewE]

I was responding to AndrewE's claim to live "in the sticks".

I didn't claim that, I said that people in "the provinces" had woeful public transport provision (and poorer perks like fare caps and senior railcards) compared with London; then @DarloRich teased me by saying

and if you live in London I am sure you get sick of the pointless, chippy, provincialism of the hicks in the sticks!

In fact I live in a small town with relatively good rail access to Liverpool, Manc, Brum - but outside the town most people are dependant on cars as local rail services aren't wonderful and bus services in town and around the area to other towns and villages are quite poor and declining by the week.

I'm sure that the economy of "the North" (and the south-west and other places too) would all be far stronger with better public transport.

 

[DarloRich]

In fact I live in a small town with relatively good rail access to Liverpool, Manc, Brum - but outside the town most people are dependant on cars as local rail services aren't wonderful and bus services in town and around the area to other towns and villages are quite poor and declining by the week.

I'm sure that the economy of "the North" (and the south-west and other places too) would all be far stronger with better public transport.

I don't disagree with you actually - I have lived in the north east and Yorkshire for a long time. My family still do. Like i said when i lived in Yorkshire the last bus left in 1963! If you didn't have a car you didn't leave. There are public transport issues but they are different to any other area. We should stop comparing and start looking at what each area actually needs and can be afforded

 

[Deepgreen]

Is it now High Speed Two?

All the other numbers in the photo are written as numerals, where the High Speed Two is using words.

Indeed - it's yet another poorly-written and lazy message.

 

[Grumpy Git]

Is it now High Speed Two?

All the other numbers in the photo are written as numerals, where the High Speed Two is using words.

Its normal to write out the single digit numbers (one to nine) as letters, but why they haven't used "HS2" at the end is totally bizarre.

 

[HaxbyTraveller]

Reported in Liverpool and manchester, but apparently not down south: (https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/sign-london-euston-corrected-after-30256855)


View attachment 168182
Why am I not surprised?

And soon you'll be able to travel from Birmingham nearly to London Euston in 45 minutes ... and then change to another local service to get to Euston. Of course it also hasn't taken 5 hours to get from London to Birmingham for decades (except on a bad day )

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Oct 2024 ==

There's a "dense railway network" because there's a dense population. There are cheaper bus fares because there are greater economies of scale. If you choose to live "in the sticks" those are things you don't get.

Bit rude about the intellect of the people of London

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Oct 2024 ==

Crossrail (Elizabeth line £18.9bn), HS2 for London (cost: think of a number and double it). Upgrade of the transpennine line to link Leeds (population 809,000), York (220,000), Hull (326,000), Bradford (560,000), Manchester (2,800,000), Liverpool (484,000) - sorry guys, we've overspent on white elephant HS2 and hugely overspent on making it easier to travel around London (so making it more attractive as a place to work), so you Northerners get diddley squat ... AGAIN!

 

[renegademaster]

HS2 for London

HS2 is for the Midlands

 

[Krokodil]

HS2 is for the Midlands

Which to certain people in government counts as "the North"

 

[HaxbyTraveller]

HS2 is for the Midlands

Disagree ... the bit that is built is for people in Birmingham to get to LONDON quicker, or for people from LONDON to get home after a hard day in the remote parts of the UK (ie. not the South East). When it was going to reach Manchester the argument was the same ... the focus was on travel to the 'big city' or for people from that benighted place to get to and from the sticks 5 minutes quicker.
Another post referred to the resentment felt up north, well I think that partially explains why the 'levelling up' (lies) had such a resonance in that election. Justifying the spending because more people live in London can easily be turned on its head - if there are more people then economies of scale should mean the subsidised spending in London should be less than the rest of the country, but I don't see that; I see a transport plan for London that has lots of tax-payer funded expenditure, and a lack of a plan for anywhere else that has minimal spending.

 

[renegademaster]

the bit that is built is for people in Birmingham to get to LONDON quicker

The bit that is being built is to divert Avanti services so more WCML stopping services can run, that it's faster is just a benefit of new line being built

 

[TurbineEnginee]

And soon you'll be able to travel from Birmingham nearly to London Euston in 45 minutes ... and then change to another local service to get to Euston. Of course it also hasn't taken 5 hours to get from London to Birmingham for decades (except on a bad day )

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Oct 2024 ==


Bit rude about the intellect of the people of London

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Oct 2024 ==

Crossrail (Elizabeth line £18.9bn), HS2 for London (cost: think of a number and double it). Upgrade of the transpennine line to link Leeds (population 809,000), York (220,000), Hull (326,000), Bradford (560,000), Manchester (2,800,000), Liverpool (484,000) - sorry guys, we've overspent on white elephant HS2 and hugely overspent on making it easier to travel around London (so making it more attractive as a place to work), so you Northerners get diddley squat ... AGAIN!

I agree Manchester at about 2.8 million yet that puts Liverpool (Merseyside and Halton) at about 1.5 million.

If you put a pin in the middle between Manchester and Liverpool and draw a shape the area of London, you get north of 4 million people.

Yet we still have to read upthread that London is 7 times larger than anything else.

That would put the population of London at 28 million.

It isn’t.

 

[Indigo Soup]

HS2 is for the Midlands

...to get to London. That includes the bit of the WCML being bypassed, since increasing service allows more London commuters.

Yet we still have to read upthread that London is 7 times larger than anything else.

The only way you can get close to that is by taking the largest possible definition of 'London' - a very large area indeed that reaches as far out as Southend, Basingstoke and Luton - and the smallest possible definition of non-London cities.

ONS data (more conveniently found here) puts the urban areas at:

1. London (10.6 million)
2. Greater Manchester (2.72 million)
3. West Midlands (2.59 million)
4. West Yorkshire (1.86 million)
5. Greater Glasgow (1.03 million)
6. Liverpool (891,000)
7. South Hampshire (888,000)
8. Tyneside (791,000)
9. Greater Nottingham (763,000)
10. Sheffield (689,000)

 

[Krokodil]

ONS data (more conveniently found here) puts the urban areas at:

1. London (10.6 million)
2. Greater Manchester (2.72 million)
3. West Midlands (2.59 million)
4. West Yorkshire (1.86 million)
5. Greater Glasgow (1.03 million)
6. Liverpool (891,000)
7. South Hampshire (888,000)
8. Tyneside (791,000)
9. Greater Nottingham (763,000)
10. Sheffield (689,000)

Counting Merseyside as a whole it would be at number 4 with a population of 1,442,081

 

[Travelmonkey]

I agree Manchester at about 2.8 million yet that puts Liverpool (Merseyside and Halton) at about 1.5 million.

If you put a pin in the middle between Manchester and Liverpool and draw a shape the area of London, you get north of 4 million people.

Yet we still have to read upthread that London is 7 times larger than anything else.

That would put the population of London at 28 million.

It isn’t.

Warrington as a city centre there's a scary thought , although bank Quay does have non-stop trains to London, guessing they'll be swapped to HS2 at Handsacre some time in the 2030s being optimistic

 

[JordR]

I think it's a bit difficult to say an area stretching from Leeds to Liverpool should be treated as a single urban area deserving of London-like public transport (and I say that living within it). That area is about 65 miles across including miles of empty space between several cities and towns.

The "seven times" comparison I had in mind was between the populations of London and Birmingham. I accept that relies on some arbitrary boundaries but I think the ONS urban areas do similar, some of them aren't even organised around a main city and most of them have large rural areas within them. The point is there's lower population density so the same level of public transport can't be expected. That's not the same as saying bad public transport should be accepted.

 

[TurbineEnginee]

I think it's a bit difficult to say an area stretching from Leeds to Liverpool should be treated as a single urban area deserving of London-like public transport (and I say that living within it). That area is about 65 miles across including miles of empty space between several cities and towns.

The "seven times" comparison I had in mind was between the populations of London and Birmingham. I accept that relies on some arbitrary boundaries but I think the ONS urban areas do similar, some of them aren't even organised around a main city and most of them have large rural areas within them. The point is there's lower population density so the same level of public transport can't be expected. That's not the same as saying bad public transport should be accepted.

Your comment was deeply disingenuous.

Rail serves populations across geographic regions, not arbitrary political boundaries.

Instead of fixating on Birmingham, you should be considering the West Midlands as a whole.

The population of the Northwest is at least half that of London, when looked at over the same area.

And to reiterate, the population of the City of Manchester is 55 times that of the City of London.

Draw silly boundaries, reach silly conclusions.

 

[43066]

The "seven times" comparison I had in mind was between the populations of London and Birmingham. I accept that relies on some arbitrary boundaries but I think the ONS urban areas do similar, some of them aren't even organised around a main city and most of them have large rural areas within them. The point is there's lower population density so the same level of public transport can't be expected. That's not the same as saying bad public transport should be accepted.

I tend to agree. It all starts to look a little bit arbitrary and political.

Instead of fixating on Birmingham, you should be considering the West Midlands as a whole.

The population of the Northwest is at least half that of London, when looked at over the same area.

The South East England region, excluding London, has a population density not dissimilar to the West Midlands (some sources have it slightly higher). Therefore, by your logic, we should combine its population with that of London (London being geographically in the southeast in the same way as Birmingham is in the West Midlands), into a single metropolitan area. So adding another 10m to London’s total.

Put another way excluding London from the southeast, much of which also has fairly poor public transport, seems more arbitrary than combining Leeds with Liverpool etc.

Draw silly boundaries, reach silly conclusions.

Well quite.

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

There's a "dense railway network" because there's a dense population. There are cheaper bus fares because there are greater economies of scale. If you choose to live "in the sticks" those are things you don't get.

Ah… those cheaper fares are entirely funded by usage then, and not by TfL being given billions of pounds of taxpayer cash from taxpayers across the country, not just London, because it couldn’t balance the books, whereas if a route in rural Cumbria doesn’t pay its way, Stagecoach are free to drop it like a hot potato? Yup, I can’t see why anyone not living in London might be a bit chippy about that!

I maintain this is a very odd thing to get annnoyed about!

It possibly is, but it’s the latest in a long line of things that show London is disproportionately benefiting from the rest of the country, e.g. Kensington & Chelsea received more money for winter road maintenance than the entire county of Cumbria did. Cumbria is around 217 times the size of Kensington & Chelsea, and from memory, a lot more hilly… get enough things like that going on, it’s no wonder people can get a bit chippy about it.

 

[43066]

It possibly is, but it’s the latest in a long line of things that show London is disproportionately benefiting from the rest of the country, e.g. Kensington & Chelsea received more money for winter road maintenance than the entire county of Cumbria did. Cumbria is around 217 times the size of Kensington & Chelsea, and from memory, a lot more hilly… get enough things like that going on, it’s no wonder people can get a bit chippy about it.

How much more tax was paid in Kensington in Chelsea, I wonder, and how much denser is the road network? It’s difficult to compare apples with apples. Ultimately, though, in terms of tax revenues, the rest of the country benefits from London, not the other way around.

You also have to ask why do those “chippy” people keep voting in politicians who prioritise cars over public transport in the regions. A good example relevant to this thread being how the last government, who curtailed HS2, enjoyed significant support in Cumbria in 2019. Similarly, London has largely got what it voted for by (generally) returning Labour MPs and (mostly) mayors who have successfully lobbied central government for good funding for London’s transport network.

 

[Indigo Soup]

How much more tax was paid in Kensington in Chelsea, I wonder, and how much denser is the road network? It’s difficult to compare apples with apples.

A better metric would be, how many lane-miles of road are the respective local authorities responsible for maintaining. That could very well go either way, especially if an appreciable amount of the long-distance roads in Cumbria are managed by central government.

Likewise, while winter maintenance is likely to be greater in Cumbria, there's probably more wear and tear to the road surface under traffic conditions in London.

You also have to ask why do those “chippy” people keep voting in politicians who prioritise cars over public transport in the regions outside London.

Fixed that for you, London is a region too.

But it's a bit of a self-licking ice cream cone. Public transport is crap, so everyone drives and elects politicians who promise to make life better for those in cars. If anyone advocates making public transport better, they get criticised for wasting money on something nobody uses.

Yes, you're inevitably going to get more car use and less rail use in less dense and less centralised areas, and spending priorities do need to be different as a result. But there does need to be a degree of equity in capital expenditure between the regions of the UK.

Making comparisons of who 'deserves' more spending on the basis of who pays most tax is very definitely not what a government should be doing!

 

[RT4038]

But there does need to be a degree of equity in capital expenditure between the regions of the UK.

Making comparisons of who 'deserves' more spending on the basis of who pays most tax is very definitely not what a government should be doing!

A degree of equity, however I would expect more spending on the basis of who pays most tax, on the basis of ensuring that such (or even higher) a level of tax paying is maintained, and as a reward of such good work.

 

[Cross City]

so you Northerners get diddley squat ... AGAIN!

I'm sorry but this is laughable.

The amount of investment into the North West compared to the West Midlands over the past 30 years is gigantic. We're finally getting something in Brum and all you hear is inferiority complex Mancs and chip-on-their-shoulder Northerners moaning about it.

It's all a bit crabs in a bucket mentality.