HS2 : how would you build it?

[ohgoditsjames]

If NPR wants to pay for that alignment, they can pay for that alignment.
But for HS2's purposes, the via Manchester route has much to recommend it over the current arrangement.

And the bulk of the journey time saving to Sheffield can be achieved with a only 60km of track to somewhere in the vicinity of Long Eaton.
Indeed HS2 trains for Sheffield will leave HS2 only 20 or so miles beyond that.



Really?
Just how slow do you project it being between Leeds and Manchester?

Manchester-Euston will be 67 minutes.
HS2 Ltd put Leeds-Euston at 81 minutes.

Assuming an underground triangle junction immediately south of Picadilly, we can proceed at line speed from Manchester Airport to Leeds, a distance of approximately 70km.
Euston-Manchester airport is ~63 minutes.

If we go to my big book of HSL section times, Class 395s manage 57km in 19 minutes with 140mph top speed.
Even at 140mph top speed that gives us something like 23 minutes.

Which would be 5 minutes slower than the time via Phase 2-East.
With a 320km/h top speed you will achieve comparable journey times.

Certainly not 25 minutes slower.

EDIT:

Shizuoka to Hamamatsu on the Tokaido Shinkansen (distance of 77km), non N700 Shinkansen set did it in 26 minutes in 2010.
That means it was probably a normal 700 series set.
Fast accelerating but we could do better.

270km/h top speed or so implies something like a 25 minute section time.

Which takes us to 88 minutes, so 7 minutes slower. And we can definitely do better now.

Let’s look at the bigger picture here, your plan would leave Sheffield in a significantly worse position than Liverpool. Although let’s be honest it’s already in a worse position than Liverpool.

At least with Liverpool now being name-checked today in the talk of 'High Speed North' (ie the rebrand for the combination of the HS2 Phase 2B and NPR) the chances of Liverpool getting captive (or at least high speed) tracks into its city centre hub station served by both Transpennine high speed and London/Brum high speed) are greatly improved - DfT indicative maps are showing this. But Sheffield (and wider SCR) is still on a very slow classic loop with limited capacity and no commitment to improving its TP services (which are already inferior to those further north before even before the TPE upgrade, not to mention 'HS3'). It’s bad enough that there’s a complete and utter lack of electrified lines in the Sheffield region.

Are you proposing NPR build a new line between Sheffield and Leeds? That’s not going to happen is it?

 

[edwin_m]

If NPR wants to pay for that alignment, they can pay for that alignment.
But for HS2's purposes, the via Manchester route has much to recommend it over the current arrangement.

And the bulk of the journey time saving to Sheffield can be achieved with a only 60km of track to somewhere in the vicinity of Long Eaton.
Indeed HS2 trains for Sheffield will leave HS2 only 20 or so miles beyond that.

Your switch of units is a little misleading here. If you express 20 miles as 32km it's clearer that you are cutting out over a third of the new track, with a proportionately greater erosion of journey time saving because the extra section of classic line that would be used from Long Eaton to south of Clay Cross is pretty slow. Nevertheless it's possible this will happen in the medium term, since this part is less relevant to Midlands Connect and NPR than the bits either end of it.

Assuming an underground triangle junction immediately south of Picadilly, we can proceed at line speed from Manchester Airport to Leeds, a distance of approximately 70km.

I think this hits capacity problems particularly between the airport and Piccadilly, which would be carrying all the HS2 services for Manchester and for Leeds and beyond, plus the NPR service from Liverpool. Changing the route to enter Piccadilly from the west instead of an underground triangle allows some of these to be combined but not many (London-Manchester plus London-Leeds is too many passengers for a 400m set), but adds a few minutes back into the Leeds journey times. ​

 

[Mogz]

I would have built it as four track with intermediate stations (perhaps Parkway stations) so that some of the blighted communities actually felt some benefit.

 

[Meerkat]

Missing out Sheffield can be a temporary thing.
Biggest earliest gains for the most would be building Euston-Manchester-Leeds-York, then adding Liverpool (from both Manchester and Euston), then as traffic builds up on those lines you build the Eastern arm and switch services over.
Maybe electrify MML to Sheffield and Doncaster in the meantime, complete with Dore-Sheffield quadrupling. If you did that how much slower would Sheffield be than full HS2, and would an electric connection service to the ECML at Doncaster be quicker?

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Missing out Sheffield can be a temporary thing.
would an electric connection service to the ECML at Doncaster be quicker?

Amusingly enough plenty of folk from Sheffield go to London via Doncaster as it is then there's some of the South Western Sheffielders (where all the money is) prefer to travel to Chesterfied and catch a train from there!

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Well that's fine since its been deleted from the scheme.
Sheffield now gets a spur with a token service southbound and no service at all northbound, I hope the council is happy.

So.... Meadowhall is bad because lots of people go there, thus ensuring that lots of transport links are available?

Taking a train to Meadowhall and connecting takes an hour?

There are no other major urban areas in West Yorkshire to serve.
South Yorkshire is not just Sheffield.

EDIT:

It's too late to meaningfully affect Phase 1 or 2A.... but 2B should be built entirely in tunnels.
I'm sick of getting bogged down in years of arguments.

Another point about Meadowhall.

People keep saying that Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham are more important than Sheffield. I for one don’t disagree, it would be hard to argue otherwise although Sheffield is experiencing a lot of regeneration right now with up to 900,000 sqrt feet of Office developments in the Pipeline.

But how on earth can Sheffield possibly try and compete with a city like Leeds if it is treated as a afterthought when plans like these come about. Should there not be a level playing field here?
If Meadowhall is the location for HS2 then Sheffield will go backwards not forwards.
If you were relocating your bank from London to the north its obvious that you will relocate to Leeds rather than Sheffield. Their trains will arrive in the heart of their business district yet Sheffield trains will drop you off in the middle of some industrial, polluted wasteland in East Sheffield.
Most people who travel long distances want to travel point to point without the need for changing trains along the route, its just to inconvenient. Could there be a more inconvenient place that Meadowhall?
The trains that are going to stop in Sheffield need to be in the city centre otherwise this will be a disaster economically for the city.

We are very much in danger of Sheffield becoming another Bradford, Blackburn or Sunderland, ie good connections to a fast high speed rail head, but relegated to a secondary city and left economically deprived as companies don't set up in places without direct connections.

 

[HSTEd]

Another point about Meadowhall.

People keep saying that Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham are more important than Sheffield. I for one don’t disagree, it would be hard to argue otherwise although Sheffield is experiencing a lot of regeneration right now with up to 900,000 sqrt feet of Office developments in the Pipeline.

Everywhere is, I go to my office in Manchester (top floor of a tower in Uni North Campus) and where once it was a flat skyline it is now a forest of cranes.

If Meadowhall is the location for HS2 then Sheffield will go backwards not forwards.
If you were relocating your bank from London to the north its obvious that you will relocate to Leeds rather than Sheffield. Their trains will arrive in the heart of their business district yet Sheffield trains will drop you off in the middle of some industrial, polluted wasteland in East Sheffield.

It is only an industrial polluted wasteland now.
Meadowhall would become an industrial polluted wasteland that has excellent transport connections to London and to the surrounding area via the Tram and the classic railway, and wastelands tend to the advantage of cheap land.

This turns it into the London Docklands or Stratford.
The Council should have petitioned for the creation of a Development Corporation along the lines of the LDDC.

The business district need not be where it currently is forever.

Most people who travel long distances want to travel point to point without the need for changing trains along the route, its just to inconvenient. Could there be a more inconvenient place that Meadowhall?
The trains that are going to stop in Sheffield need to be in the city centre otherwise this will be a disaster economically for the city.

The station was for the benefit of South Yorkshire, not the benefit of Sheffield.

And Sheffield city centre is not the centre of South Yorkshire.
Rotherham isn't that much smaller than Sheffield, and both it and Barnsley are located north of Sheffield.
It's certainly much closer than say Nottingham and Derby.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Everywhere is, I go to my office in Manchester (top floor of a tower in Uni North Campus) and where once it was a flat skyline it is now a forest of cranes.


It is only an industrial polluted wasteland now.
Meadowhall would become an industrial polluted wasteland that has excellent transport connections to London and to the surrounding area via the Tram and the classic railway, and wastelands tend to the advantage of cheap land.

This turns it into the London Docklands or Stratford.
The Council should have petitioned for the creation of a Development Corporation along the lines of the LDDC.

The business district need not be where it currently is forever.

The station was for the benefit of South Yorkshire, not the benefit of Sheffield.

And Sheffield city centre is not the centre of South Yorkshire.
Rotherham isn't that much smaller than Sheffield, and both it and Barnsley are located north of Sheffield.
It's certainly much closer than say Nottingham and Derby.

Meadowhall absolutely will never see that kind of development regardless of whether HS2 is there or not.

Rotherham isn't that much smaller than Sheffield

Please tell me this is a joke? Sheffield is the economic powerhouse of South Yorkshire, has the best education, 2 enormous Universities, some of the best student retention rate, they really are not comparable and I find it insulting that you think that they are. It's a bit like saying Wakefield is similar in size to Leeds.

Your argument also applies for the West Yorkshire, why don't they just build a hub that suits the whole of West Yorkshire? Because it doesn't make sense.

Connections between Meadowhall and Midland are in theory brilliant, however in practice that isn't the case. The Northern throat at midland causes significant delays to incoming South bound services and North bound services, in theory you could make it to Midland in 5 minutes assuming there's no hold ups at the Northern Throat but in reality this is never the case.

The Derby and Nottingham proposals are also ridiculous in my mind.

 

[edwin_m]

I can't see the Meadowhall option coming back. I get the impression that HS2 grabbed the opportunity to use the M18 route and a central Sheffield connection instead, once they found out that it was £1bn+ cheaper just as they were coming under pressure on cost escalation. It will be interesting to see if a South Yorkshire Parkway appears, as Meadowhall effectively provided that for both Sheffield and Leeds.

I've always been doubtful about the Toton location. This isn't because I see HS2 as realistically going to the centres of either Derby or Nottingham, but because no existing train service passes the site so it will need extra services (cost and capacity issues) or re-routeings (making existing journeys slower). Toton is also in the wrong place for any HS2-classic connection to support Nottingham-Birmingham fast services. Perhaps there's scope to re-consider the alternative at East Midlands Parkway?

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Other countries that have High Speed rail is as follows:

Germany: -

As I stated above the Germans went a different route with their High Speed network than we are. Germany is obviously a much larger country and far less centralised so linear transport networks weren't appropriate. Instead they went for an incremental approach to high speed rail, improving links slowly over time between regional cities and running high speed trains through normal tracks into the existing Hauptbahnhofs. Of course they had the advantage of European Loading Gauge and less congestion into their cities than we have. Indeed even now High Speed routes don't operate with anything like the frequency HS2 will see here. When my German friend traveled from London to Manchester in the summer he couldn't believe that we had 3 trains an hour yet his train was standing room only! In Germany most ICE services operate once per hour.

Being as Germany has developed High Speed Rail in this way, there aren't any parkway stations within the country, so it's impossible to learn from Germany how a parkway station might affect a city's development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Germany

^ High Speed Map of Germany showing how the network is piecemeal and largely made up of incremental improvements between regional centres.

Italy: -

Italy's experiences with High Speed appear to me to have more in common with Great Britain. Italy like Britain is a largely linear and very built up country with a huge North/South divide and dense urban areas that are hard to construct through.

Italy's current High Speed Network operates at present directly into the original city centre stations, which in some cases are through stations easily adapted for High Speed Rail, but in the cases of Rome and Naples are terminal stations which means that in these cities there are plans to move through services to new stations on the periphery of the urban area.

In Rome Tiburtina, a historic through station on the edge of the city centre has become this through station with not all services now running into the city centre terminal station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Ti...ailway_station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rom...gl=uk&t=h&z=14

^ Rome Tiburtina in relation to the Rome Urban Area.

In Naples the plan has more similarities to Sheffield and Nottingham.

A Zaha Hadid designed station has been planned on the North Eastern fringes of the city, far from the main urban core.

http://www.architypereview.com/17-tr...apoli-afragola

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sta...ius=15000&z=15

^ Location of the new planned station. With associated retail and office park (an Ikea has already opened on the site).

However construction is currently on hold due to disputes between the city and contractors and so services will continue to run through to Naples' historic city centre terminal station for a long while yet.

Spain: -

Spain meanwhile has quietly gone about building Europe's largest High Speed Rail network.

The network has pretty different characteristics from that planned in Britain though, with the system being very much based upon the idea of linking Madrid with the regions.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_ve...en_Espa%C3%B1a
^ Spanish High Speed Info (In Spanish).

Spain also is far less densely populated, particularly in it's semi-desert hinterland which means trains travel very long distances between Madrid and the provinces without passing through other urban areas.

In the large cities the approach has largely been to either use the older stations, or to build anew as close to the city centre as possible. Reasons for doing this included releasing land from approach tracks and previous stations to allow large scale redevelopment within cities.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...de_Santa_Justa
^ New Seville Station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sev...ia,+Spain&z=15
^ Aerial photo of Seville showing the location of the main station.

The two main urban areas that sit midway along High Speed lines are Cordoba and Zaragoza.

Cordoba (population circa 330k) also built a new station, just to the N.West of the city centre, running the high speed line largely through cut & cover tunnels which became an urban park.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...3rdoba-Central
^ Cordoba Central Station (In Spanish)

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=C%C...ia,+Spain&z=15

^ Aerial photo of Cordoba

Zaragoza is a large historic yet industrial city that sits located between Madrid and Barcelona (population circa 700k). Zaragoza also decided to build a new station, moving the main station from approximately 1km further away from the city centre to free up space and build a new large interchange in the North West of the city.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...agoza-Delicias
^ Zaragoza station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Zar...on,+Spain&z=14
^ Map of Zaragoza showing location of the station in the North West of the city.

Interestingly Zaragoza doesn't sit on the main line between Barcelona and Madrid but rather on a loop. Service provision on this line is two trains per hour with one of these stopping at Zaragoza. Stopping at Zaragoza increases the Madrid - Barcelona journey time from 2:30 to 2:45.

With all this mind it seems to me the situation in Zaragoza has some parallels to if Nottingham or Sheffield has been served by a city centre loop rather than a high speed parkway stop.

Spain does have some parkway stations too, with these largely being located near small cities along the route (and less trains stopping per day).

An example of this is at Antequera (population of 41k) which is served by a stop 17 miles from the town.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...uera-Santa_Ana

Spain's network is entirely purpose built as the existing Spanish network uses a different gauge which meant services couldn't run on existing tracks without changing wheels.

France: -

France has probably Europe's most famous high speed network, and in many ways it is very similar to Spain in that is is largely a radial network operating out from the capital.

France also operates as a bit of a mix between a German and Spanish system in that some services run on short sections of high speed lines before continuing on classic lines (a bit how services will operate to Liverpool and Glasgow etc on HS2), albeit France has the advantage of operating at European loading gauge. It also has long sections of purpose built line (such as to Lyon and Marseille) that don't operate on classic lines.

France also offers us in Britain perhaps the best case studies for how parkway stations might affect development.

This report on the planning and construction of the TGV to Marseilles shows how many similar arguments were had about locations of stations along the way, as well as destruction of countryside.

http://www.omegacentre.bartlett.ucl....ILE_190411.pdf

The term "Beet Stations" meaning stations located far from towns in the middle of beetroot fields was coined in France as intermediate stations shunned passing through medium sized town, instead stopping at Parkways on the edge of the cities (similar to what is planned in Nottingham and Sheffield).

This very interesting page on Wikipedia (in French) debates some of the very same issues we are here on the benefits and downsides of this:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_betterave

Whilst some of these beet stations serve very small urban areas that don't have much correlation with the situation here in the UK some small to medium sized towns are serves in this way. These include:

Avignon - A historic city of 90k people, Avignon is located in the South of France between Lyon and Marseilles.

The TGV station is located 6km outside of the city and many of the same arguments about harming the city centre were made:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_d'Avignon_TGV

Avignon TGV station is currently only linked to the city centre with shuttle buses due to funding arguments over building better connections with the city.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=avi...r,+France&z=14

^ location of the TGV station to the South of Avignon.

Valence - The city of Valence (population circa 60k) is also served by a rural TGV station, although one that is connected to the city centre by shuttle train.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de_Valence_TGV

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Val...s,+France&z=15

^ location of station in Valence.

In common with most French TGV stations a 330 hectare enterprise zone has been set up around the station, but by and large these enterprise zones have failed with very few businesses setting up in the location of the station.

Reims - Reims (population 190k) TGV station has been built on the southern outskirts of the city, however as services continue to operate from Reims centre to Paris, usage is only 650k.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de...-Ardenne_-_TGV

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rei...e,+France&z=15

^ location of the station within Reims.

One similarity between France and the UK's plans can be found in Lyon. Despite being halfway between Paris and Marseilles, Lyon isn't a through station, instead terminating on a spur within the city with through services operating around Lyon. This is similar to how HS2 Ltd will serve Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.

Both Lyon and Lille have gone down the route that Leeds and Birmingham will take in HS2 with new stations built within the city centre.

Lyon -

Lyon's existing main station is on a highly constrained site on a peninsula within the city centre, with that in mind Lyon is served by a second purpose built station just to the east of the city centre.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de_Lyon-Part-Dieu

Over the last 30 years a second business and shopping district has grown up around Lyon's new station, which is fully linked into the rest of the city thanks to Lyon's extensive metro system.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=lyo...s,+France&z=14
^Map showing location of Lyon's new station

Lyon is also served by a through station for services between Paris and Marseilles, this is located at the airport and so comparisons could be made with the plans for Birmingham Interchange.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de...up%C3%A9ry_TGV

This station has not proved a success, with few long haul flights operating from the airport only 500k passengers a year have made use of this station.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=lyo...ius=15000&z=12

^ Map showing location of Lyon's airport station.

Lille - Lille is the other example of a new urban station within France. Lille is the regional capital of the North of France and has a population of 225,000 and an urban area of nearly a million.

TGV originally wanted to serve Lille with a parkway station similar to Nottingham and Sheffield due to the fact that the route through Lille was not the most direct and also the approaches into the city are slow and twisty. However political pressure meant the station was eventually located within the city.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_Lille-Europe

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Lil...s,+France&z=15

^ Location of Lille's new station on the North East of the city centre.

The existing station stayed open in Lille serving regional trains as well as the majority of direct services to Paris whilst the new station served Eurostar and TGV services to Paris, London and other major French and European cities. Similar to if Victoria re-opened in Sheffield there is a 500m distance between the 2 stations.

Despite the existing station serving the main market over 7 million people use Eurolille and a shopping and business district has grown up around the station.

The Rest of the World:-

I haven't researched outside of Europe as I felt Europe offered more obvious parallels to Britain but as some people will point out the model in Japan appears different, with the large cities building new stations generally outside of the city centres and linked to the huge metro areas by the efficient Japanese transport systems.

Taiwan has also built stations in the countryside, hoping to develop new towns along the line of their high speed network.

Conclusion:-

In conclusion, whilst there are several different models of high speed rail service provision out there from adapting existing stations (seen in Germany and largely in Italy) to replacement city centre stations (in Spain) and new additional city centre stations (in France) to rural parkway stations (in Spain and France) and occasionally small to medium sized towns served by parkway stations (as seen in Valence and Avignon). Naples also has plans for a large parkway station though this has stalled at the moment.

So what conclusions can we draw from the success or failures of some of these stations? Well from the success of the new business districts that have have grown up around Lille and Lyon's new stations you have to say this bodes well for Leeds and Birmingham. Whilst meanwhile the enterprise zones that have been set up around parkway stations in France haven't been as successful as hoped.

This seems to go along with the argument that the Sheffield HS station location report indicated when it said that a station at Meadowhall wouldn't be as successful at attracting jobs in the immediate vicinity as a station at Victoria:

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...t-in-sheffield

This report stated that locating a station in Sheffield City Centre would generate up to £5.5bn in additional economic benefits and 6500 jobs, over building a station at Meadowhall. People like to dispute this stating the report doesn't take into account the benefits a station at Meadowhall would have for the city centre.

I'll leave that up to you to decide that point.

However it wouldn't be entirely fair to use the examples of Avignon or Valence to see how development will be affected in Sheffield or Nottingham for this reason. Both Sheffield and Nottingham are far far larger than any other city in Europe to be served by a parkway station on High Speed Rail, I make it to a factor of at least 4 or 5 to 1.

In other words if Sheffield or Nottingham were in France, Spain or Italy their populations would be deemed large enough to justify being served by a city centre station, either on a through line like Lille or Cordoba, or a loop like Zaragoza.

If Naples had been built yet that would perhaps offer us the best example of how a parkway station might work in a city the size of Sheffield or Nottingham (indeed Naples is even larger with a population of 1 million and 3 million in the urban area). However construction disputes (Naples living up to its stereotype there) mean that the project is currently on hold and the site looks like this:

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=nap...,91.83,,0,3.75

So how will it work out in Sheffield and Nottingham in terms of economic development? I guess we will have to wait and see, as no cities the size of these have ever been served by a parkway station in Europe.

In terms of passenger usage though the French experience shows us that the Parkway stations at Avignon and Valence have been successful (attracting 2 to 3 million passengers each) despite being located outside of the city centre.

In Reims and Lyon where there is a choice of city centre station and parkway station however passengers have shunned the parkway station in both instances, with only half a million passengers preferring to use the parkway station. This experience could be seen as similar to that with East Midlands Parkway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Mi...ailway_station

Here, despite good road access and fast services to London, less than a third of a million use the station, with passengers instead preferring the existing connections from Nottingham and Derby.

In these cases though the existing services from the city centre aren't any slower than the parkway stations, so when the choice is to do with location then passengers will (in the vast majority) use the city centre stations. However how much faster services will entice passengers away from Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham stations to the Parkways can't be gauged as there isn't any comparisons in Europe.

 

[HSTEd]

Meadowhall absolutely will never see that kind of development regardless of whether HS2 is there or not.

Why not?
If HS2 had been built there, it have been a huge area of relatively cheap land less than 80 minutes from London.
Unless the local council actively tried to prevent development, development would have followed en masse.

Please tell me this is a joke? Sheffield is the economic powerhouse of South Yorkshire, has the best education, 2 enormous Universities, some of the best student retention rate, they really are not comparable and I find it insulting that you think that they are. It's a bit like saying Wakefield is similar in size to Leeds.

Sheffield has a population of 582,000.
Rotherham has a population of 257,000
Barnsley tips the scales at something like 98,000.

This is a far less dominant position than the ratio of populations of say Nottingham and Derby.
Perhaps it is the "economic powerhouse" because it jealously guards all transport links for itself and cannot concieve a world where that might not be the case?

Your argument also applies for the West Yorkshire, why don't they just build a hub that suits the whole of West Yorkshire? Because it doesn't make sense.

Finding a site that suits that is not really very possible.
Compared to Meadowhall where a site is literally sitting right there.

EDIT:
I don't really think its fare to compare meadowhall or toton to East Midlands Parkway or the Beet Field stations in France.

Meadowhall might not be central Sheffield but it is still claerly an urbanised area.
Same for Toton, its surrounded on all sides by housing.

I can't see the Meadowhall option coming back. I get the impression that HS2 grabbed the opportunity to use the M18 route and a central Sheffield connection instead, once they found out that it was £1bn+ cheaper just as they were coming under pressure on cost escalation. It will be interesting to see if a South Yorkshire Parkway appears, as Meadowhall effectively provided that for both Sheffield and Leeds.

I doubt it will either, so Sheffield council should be glad that they get their tiny handful of trains on their dead end from the network.

Barring NPR charging to the rescue, which I doubt, they will never get anything more.

I've always been doubtful about the Toton location. This isn't because I see HS2 as realistically going to the centres of either Derby or Nottingham, but because no existing train service passes the site so it will need extra services (cost and capacity issues) or re-routeings (making existing journeys slower). Toton is also in the wrong place for any HS2-classic connection to support Nottingham-Birmingham fast services. Perhaps there's scope to re-consider the alternative at East Midlands Parkway?

The cost of running extra trains on a shuttle out to Toton are likely to be much smaller than the cost of the Toton station, let alone the cost of the scheme.
I really wouldn't worry about it.
You probably only need two units on shuttle duty or whatever.

Also as it stands, a portion of Nottingham inhabitants are able to directly travel to Toton by bus or on the tram.
Moving the station completely outside the city is not helpful in that regard.

Improvements can be made to the transport system to ease access to Toton for far less money than doing anything else.
For example extending the tram beyond Toton into Long Eaton proper, or running shuttles Ilkeston-Toton-Nottingham "non-stop", since people in Beeston can just catch the tram.

Indeed its only 12km between Toton and Derby station on a straight line, mostly through open fields.
Even at 50mph the tram could cover that in ten minutes.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Why not?
If HS2 had been built there, it have been a huge area of relatively cheap land less than 80 minutes from London.
Unless the local council actively tried to prevent development, development would have followed en masse.


Sheffield has a population of 582,000.
Rotherham has a population of 257,000
Barnsley tips the scales at something like 98,000.

This is a far less dominant position than the ratio of populations of say Nottingham and Derby.
Perhaps it is the "economic powerhouse" because it jealously guards all transport links for itself and cannot concieve a world where that might not be the case?

Finding a site that suits that is not really very possible.
Compared to Meadowhall where a site is literally sitting right there.

EDIT:
I don't really think its fare to compare meadowhall or toton to East Midlands Parkway or the Beet Field stations in France.

Meadowhall might not be central Sheffield but it is still claerly an urbanised area.
Same for Toton, its surrounded on all sides by housing.


I doubt it will either, so Sheffield council should be glad that they get their tiny handful of trains on their dead end from the network.

Barring NPR charging to the rescue, which I doubt, they will never get anything more.



The cost of running extra trains on a shuttle out to Toton are likely to be much smaller than the cost of the Toton station, let alone the cost of the scheme.
I really wouldn't worry about it.
You probably only need two units on shuttle duty or whatever.

Also as it stands, a portion of Nottingham inhabitants are able to directly travel to Toton by bus or on the tram.
Moving the station completely outside the city is not helpful in that regard.

Improvements can be made to the transport system to ease access to Toton for far less money than doing anything else.
For example extending the tram beyond Toton into Long Eaton proper, or running shuttles Ilkeston-Toton-Nottingham "non-stop", since people in Beeston can just catch the tram.

Indeed its only 12km between Toton and Derby station on a straight line, mostly through open fields.
Even at 50mph the tram could cover that in ten minutes.

The council wanted Victoria, it was costed at £700 million and was to help drive regeneration of the Wicker and the Castlegate areas. Cities don't want out of town development on that scale, they want city centre regeneration.

Same argument applies then, the population difference between Bradford and Leeds is even less dominant yet you're not proposing a Parkway station between them?

 

[HSTEd]

The council wanted Victoria, it was costed at £700 million and was to help drive regeneration of the Wicker and the Castlegate areas. Cities don't want out of town development on that scale, they want city centre regeneration.

The Victoria station would have compromised the operation of the entire Eastern Leg and hurt everyone else with longer journey times etc etc.
It was never a practical choice.

Same argument applies then, the population difference between Bradford and Leeds is even less dominant yet you're not proposing a Parkway station between them?

Find me a practical site for a station between Bradford and Leeds in a heavily built up area with good transport links to the two dominant components.

Meadowhall ticks all those boxes.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

The Governments own words!

At Victoria, the station has much greater potential to become a driver of place
development, becoming a centrepiece for a new city centre business quarter. At
Meadowhall, place-making is influenced principally by the established use mix including
the regional shopping centre and the concentration of manufacturing activities in the Lower
Don Valley;
‰ The propensity to attract added value economic activity will be greater at Victoria given its
proximity to other city centre assets important to service sector business location decisions
and the record of success for the city centre in attracting regional and national business
investments. The business sectors most influenced by HSR services have no similar
presence or prospect at Meadowhall ;
The business sectors most influenced by HSR services are clustered in the city centre.
Victoria maximises accessibility benefits for users through more direct proximity to these
sectors. Meadowhall has weaker access given the need for connecting trips to the city
centre which may compromise business to business transactions, especially in connecting
into London and Europe.
‰ The influence over the type, scale and quality of business investment will be greater at
Victoria given the more extensive range of development sites that will be available by the
time HS2 is in place. Office development at Victoria has the potential to attract inward
investment from outside of the Sheffield City Region, whereas Meadowhall is a lower value
office location with a higher propensity to displace existing economic activity from
elsewhere in the City Region;
‰ A station at Victoria will be more readily accessible to the target labour and passenger
markets for HS2, particularly the concentration of passenger demand projected by HS2 to
be derived from residents in South West Sheffield, for whom public transport connectivity
to Meadowhall would require interchange in the city centre.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

The Victoria station would have compromised the operation of the entire Eastern Leg and hurt everyone else with longer journey times etc etc.
It was never a practical choice.


Find me a practical site for a station between Bradford and Leeds in a heavily built up area with good transport links to the two dominant components.

Meadowhall ticks all those boxes.

The predicted penalty to the journey time to the Leeds services was 5 minutes IRRC.

Plenty of land available in Tong.

 

[tbtc]

The Meadowhall stop makes absolutely no sense at all.

Meadowhall isn’t a great idea for a regional hub. Why might you ask? Well for one thing it’s one of the busiest junctions on the M1, combined with the traffic going to and from Meadowhall shopping centre that sees around 30 million visitors per year, then there’s the traffic from the Arena, centertainment, Ikea, and the retail park. The roads struggle as it is, creating a major station hub there would make it even worse.


Despite the fact that passengers numbers for Sheffield Midland are suppressed (anecdotal evidence suggests this), it still has more passengers per year than all of the South Yorkshire stations combined! Why should passengers have to faff around with the inconvenience of catching a connecting train to and from Midland station just to use the new HS2 line? There wouldn’t be any time benefits for people travelling from Sheffield to Leeds and Sheffield to London.Any time saved is lost because of the connection.

Imagine if HS2 were to miss out Leeds city centre in favour of an out of town regional hub for West Yorkshire.

Another point about Meadowhall.

People keep saying that Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham are more important than Sheffield. I for one don’t disagree, it would be hard to argue otherwise although Sheffield is experiencing a lot of regeneration right now with up to 900,000 sqrt feet of Office developments in the Pipeline.

But how on earth can Sheffield possibly try and compete with a city like Leeds if it is treated as a afterthought when plans like these come about. Should there not be a level playing field here?
If Meadowhall is the location for HS2 then Sheffield will go backwards not forwards.
If you were relocating your bank from London to the north its obvious that you will relocate to Leeds rather than Sheffield. Their trains will arrive in the heart of their business district yet Sheffield trains will drop you off in the middle of some industrial, polluted wasteland in East Sheffield.
Most people who travel long distances want to travel point to point without the need for changing trains along the route, its just to inconvenient. Could there be a more inconvenient place that Meadowhall?
The trains that are going to stop in Sheffield need to be in the city centre otherwise this will be a disaster economically for the city.

We are very much in danger of Sheffield becoming another Bradford, Blackburn or Sunderland, ie good connections to a fast high speed rail head, but relegated to a secondary city and left economically deprived as companies don't set up in places without direct connections.

I'd have preferred a Meadowhall station.

Realistically, Sheffield Midland is going to get *at best* one train per hour to Birmingham and one train per hour to London (with nothing to the north, as things stand). We'll have a slower journey to London than Leeds gets (as the trains trundle along conventional lines through Chesterfield), and half an hour slower to London than Manchester will have.

A Meadowhall station would give us a fast frequent service to Leeds (something close to a fifteen minute journey time? there's only one train per hour at the moment from Sheffield to Leeds that does it in much under an hour)

A Meadowhall station would give us an increased frequency to Birmingham and London, as well as faster journey times than Leeds gets for equivalent journeys (this isn't petty parochial bitterness, this is the kind of thing that businesses will look at in terms of locations - it doesn't matter how far places are away on the map, what matters will be how long it takes to get to them)

Meadowhall has frequent trams to Sheffield City Centre/ University/ Hillsborough (maybe there's a fifteen minute "penalty" for the tram journey from Meadowhall vs Midland Station, which has to be taken into account when comparing a journey from Euston to Cathedral/ University, but the train aspect of the journey would be faster in compensation)

Meadowhall has frequent trains to the rest of South Yorkshire (everywhere that Midland has, other than Dore and the local stations towards Worksop)

Meadowhall is right by the motorway, has much more scope for parking than trying to squeeze in a HS2 platform at Midland, could be a hub for a lot of northern England

A station at Meadowhall would only be around an hour away from London (with frequent trains - closer to Birmingham), thus putting things here as potential leisure destinations (if you were in London/Birmingham then a frequent service to Meadowhall means you could combine an afternoon of shopping and an evening gig at the Arena and still be home for a cup of cocoa)

If the alternative to Meadowhall was a city centre station that meant a frequent service in both directions (e.g. if the main line was to run through Victoria) then that'd be something but an hourly train south and no Leeds train is less attractive than Meadowhall IMHO

(yes, maybe one day we'll see a northern connection for HS2 journeys from Sheffield to Leeds, but it'll be forgotten about, the cost of cramming HS2 services through the Brightside/ Aldwarke/ Swinton etc will be too much, I can't see it happening - the attention will have moved onto something else and The Powers That Be will pat us patronisingly on the head and say "you got the HS2 that you wanted, now don't complain")

 

[ohgoditsjames]

I'd have preferred a Meadowhall station.

Realistically, Sheffield Midland is going to get *at best* one train per hour to Birmingham and one train per hour to London (with nothing to the north, as things stand). We'll have a slower journey to London than Leeds gets (as the trains trundle along conventional lines through Chesterfield), and half an hour slower to London than Manchester will have.

A Meadowhall station would give us a fast frequent service to Leeds (something close to a fifteen minute journey time? there's only one train per hour at the moment from Sheffield to Leeds that does it in much under an hour)

A Meadowhall station would give us an increased frequency to Birmingham and London, as well as faster journey times than Leeds gets for equivalent journeys (this isn't petty parochial bitterness, this is the kind of thing that businesses will look at in terms of locations - it doesn't matter how far places are away on the map, what matters will be how long it takes to get to them)

Meadowhall has frequent trams to Sheffield City Centre/ University/ Hillsborough (maybe there's a fifteen minute "penalty" for the tram journey from Meadowhall vs Midland Station, which has to be taken into account when comparing a journey from Euston to Cathedral/ University, but the train aspect of the journey would be faster in compensation)

Meadowhall has frequent trains to the rest of South Yorkshire (everywhere that Midland has, other than Dore and the local stations towards Worksop)

Meadowhall is right by the motorway, has much more scope for parking than trying to squeeze in a HS2 platform at Midland, could be a hub for a lot of northern England

A station at Meadowhall would only be around an hour away from London (with frequent trains - closer to Birmingham), thus putting things here as potential leisure destinations (if you were in London/Birmingham then a frequent service to Meadowhall means you could combine an afternoon of shopping and an evening gig at the Arena and still be home for a cup of cocoa)

If the alternative to Meadowhall was a city centre station that meant a frequent service in both directions (e.g. if the main line was to run through Victoria) then that'd be something but an hourly train south and no Leeds train is less attractive than Meadowhall IMHO

(yes, maybe one day we'll see a northern connection for HS2 journeys from Sheffield to Leeds, but it'll be forgotten about, the cost of cramming HS2 services through the Brightside/ Aldwarke/ Swinton etc will be too much, I can't see it happening - the attention will have moved onto something else and The Powers That Be will pat us patronisingly on the head and say "you got the HS2 that you wanted, now don't complain")

I've been unable to find it but there was a substantial report detailing just how few opportunities there were for high density development around Meadowhall, compared to the city centre, but currently there is nothing to support this in the public domain.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Does anyone have any sense of, how extensive the Government's review into Phase 2B will be? As in .... is it possible that the review will decide on significant changes in the Phase 2B routes?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Regarding the London end... There seem to be concerns about the Euston throat. And the huge cost of Euston has lead to people suggesting we terminate HS2 at Old Oak Common. That by itself is obviously silly because there's no way the transport links to OOC could cope with all the passengers from all HS2 trains.

But... could it work if some HS2 trains (maybe, 4-5 of the 14-18 tph) terminated at OOC, with the majority of trains - but not all of them - continuing to Euston? That way the transport links at OOC wouldn't get too overwhelmed, and the smaller number of trains at Euston might enable a simpler/cheaper station and throat design?

 

[Ianno87]

Regarding the London end... There seem to be concerns about the Euston throat. And the huge cost of Euston has lead to people suggesting we terminate HS2 at Old Oak Common. That by itself is obviously silly because there's no way the transport links to OOC could cope with all the passengers from all HS2 trains.

But... could it work if some HS2 trains (maybe, 4-5 of the 14-18 tph) terminated at OOC, so that not all trains continued to Euston? That way the transport links at OOC wouldn't get too overwhelmed, and the smaller number of trains at Euston might enable a simpler/cheaper station and throat design?

Cue lots of politics about who gets through trains to Euston and who doesn't.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Cue lots of politics about who gets through trains to Euston and who doesn't.

Like the project hasn't already been dominated by politics. And if doing things that way saves a few £billion, the Government will easily be able to argue that's more money for the North (even if the way HS2 is funded means that isn't really true)

But if the answer has to be designed to satisfy the politics, rather than the timetable... the solution is obvious: Each hour, you terminate ONE of the 3 Birmingham trains at OOC. And ONE of the 3 Manchester trains. And ONE of the two Newcastle trains. And so on. Then everyone is equally (un)happy

Actually, more seriously, one answer might be to pick on the trains from Newcastle/Edinburgh - and the trains from Glasgow. The reasoning there is that they contain people coming from further afield, so are less likely to be commuters/etc. with a regular need to get into central London - and more tolerant of more time on a local train from OOC - since getting to/from OOC is a smaller proportion of their journey.

And in the case of Newcastle/Edinburgh - those HS2 trains will be replacing trains that didn't go to Euston in the first place.

 

[Ianno87]

Actually, more seriously, one answer might be to pick on the trains from Newcastle/Edinburgh - and the trains from Glasgow. The reasoning there is that they contain people coming from further afield, so are less likely to be commuters/etc. with a regular need to get into central London - and more tolerant of more time on a local train from OOC - since getting to/from OOC is a smaller proportion of their journey.

Although much, much more likely to be luggage-encumbered and less conducive to / familiar with interchanging somewhere like Old Oak.

And in the case of Newcastle/Edinburgh - those HS2 trains will be replacing trains that didn't go to Euston in the first place.

Although if release capacity on the ECML is to be realised, some element of replacement of current King's Cross services, not net additional trains.

 

[Bald Rick]

Other countries that have High Speed rail is as follows:

Germany: -

As I stated above the Germans went a different route with their High Speed network than we are. Germany is obviously a much larger country and far less centralised so linear transport networks weren't appropriate. Instead they went for an incremental approach to high speed rail, improving links slowly over time between regional cities and running high speed trains through normal tracks into the existing Hauptbahnhofs. Of course they had the advantage of European Loading Gauge and less congestion into their cities than we have. Indeed even now High Speed routes don't operate with anything like the frequency HS2 will see here. When my German friend traveled from London to Manchester in the summer he couldn't believe that we had 3 trains an hour yet his train was standing room only! In Germany most ICE services operate once per hour.

Being as Germany has developed High Speed Rail in this way, there aren't any parkway stations within the country, so it's impossible to learn from Germany how a parkway station might affect a city's development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Germany

^ High Speed Map of Germany showing how the network is piecemeal and largely made up of incremental improvements between regional centres.

Italy: -

Italy's experiences with High Speed appear to me to have more in common with Great Britain. Italy like Britain is a largely linear and very built up country with a huge North/South divide and dense urban areas that are hard to construct through.

Italy's current High Speed Network operates at present directly into the original city centre stations, which in some cases are through stations easily adapted for High Speed Rail, but in the cases of Rome and Naples are terminal stations which means that in these cities there are plans to move through services to new stations on the periphery of the urban area.

In Rome Tiburtina, a historic through station on the edge of the city centre has become this through station with not all services now running into the city centre terminal station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Ti...ailway_station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rom...gl=uk&t=h&z=14

^ Rome Tiburtina in relation to the Rome Urban Area.

In Naples the plan has more similarities to Sheffield and Nottingham.

A Zaha Hadid designed station has been planned on the North Eastern fringes of the city, far from the main urban core.

http://www.architypereview.com/17-tr...apoli-afragola

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sta...ius=15000&z=15

^ Location of the new planned station. With associated retail and office park (an Ikea has already opened on the site).

However construction is currently on hold due to disputes between the city and contractors and so services will continue to run through to Naples' historic city centre terminal station for a long while yet.

Spain: -

Spain meanwhile has quietly gone about building Europe's largest High Speed Rail network.

The network has pretty different characteristics from that planned in Britain though, with the system being very much based upon the idea of linking Madrid with the regions.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_ve...en_Espa%C3%B1a
^ Spanish High Speed Info (In Spanish).

Spain also is far less densely populated, particularly in it's semi-desert hinterland which means trains travel very long distances between Madrid and the provinces without passing through other urban areas.

In the large cities the approach has largely been to either use the older stations, or to build anew as close to the city centre as possible. Reasons for doing this included releasing land from approach tracks and previous stations to allow large scale redevelopment within cities.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...de_Santa_Justa
^ New Seville Station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sev...ia,+Spain&z=15
^ Aerial photo of Seville showing the location of the main station.

The two main urban areas that sit midway along High Speed lines are Cordoba and Zaragoza.

Cordoba (population circa 330k) also built a new station, just to the N.West of the city centre, running the high speed line largely through cut & cover tunnels which became an urban park.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...3rdoba-Central
^ Cordoba Central Station (In Spanish)

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=C%C...ia,+Spain&z=15

^ Aerial photo of Cordoba

Zaragoza is a large historic yet industrial city that sits located between Madrid and Barcelona (population circa 700k). Zaragoza also decided to build a new station, moving the main station from approximately 1km further away from the city centre to free up space and build a new large interchange in the North West of the city.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...agoza-Delicias
^ Zaragoza station

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Zar...on,+Spain&z=14
^ Map of Zaragoza showing location of the station in the North West of the city.

Interestingly Zaragoza doesn't sit on the main line between Barcelona and Madrid but rather on a loop. Service provision on this line is two trains per hour with one of these stopping at Zaragoza. Stopping at Zaragoza increases the Madrid - Barcelona journey time from 2:30 to 2:45.

With all this mind it seems to me the situation in Zaragoza has some parallels to if Nottingham or Sheffield has been served by a city centre loop rather than a high speed parkway stop.

Spain does have some parkway stations too, with these largely being located near small cities along the route (and less trains stopping per day).

An example of this is at Antequera (population of 41k) which is served by a stop 17 miles from the town.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estaci%...uera-Santa_Ana

Spain's network is entirely purpose built as the existing Spanish network uses a different gauge which meant services couldn't run on existing tracks without changing wheels.

France: -

France has probably Europe's most famous high speed network, and in many ways it is very similar to Spain in that is is largely a radial network operating out from the capital.

France also operates as a bit of a mix between a German and Spanish system in that some services run on short sections of high speed lines before continuing on classic lines (a bit how services will operate to Liverpool and Glasgow etc on HS2), albeit France has the advantage of operating at European loading gauge. It also has long sections of purpose built line (such as to Lyon and Marseille) that don't operate on classic lines.

France also offers us in Britain perhaps the best case studies for how parkway stations might affect development.

This report on the planning and construction of the TGV to Marseilles shows how many similar arguments were had about locations of stations along the way, as well as destruction of countryside.

http://www.omegacentre.bartlett.ucl....ILE_190411.pdf

The term "Beet Stations" meaning stations located far from towns in the middle of beetroot fields was coined in France as intermediate stations shunned passing through medium sized town, instead stopping at Parkways on the edge of the cities (similar to what is planned in Nottingham and Sheffield).

This very interesting page on Wikipedia (in French) debates some of the very same issues we are here on the benefits and downsides of this:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_betterave

Whilst some of these beet stations serve very small urban areas that don't have much correlation with the situation here in the UK some small to medium sized towns are serves in this way. These include:

Avignon - A historic city of 90k people, Avignon is located in the South of France between Lyon and Marseilles.

The TGV station is located 6km outside of the city and many of the same arguments about harming the city centre were made:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_d'Avignon_TGV

Avignon TGV station is currently only linked to the city centre with shuttle buses due to funding arguments over building better connections with the city.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=avi...r,+France&z=14

^ location of the TGV station to the South of Avignon.

Valence - The city of Valence (population circa 60k) is also served by a rural TGV station, although one that is connected to the city centre by shuttle train.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de_Valence_TGV

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Val...s,+France&z=15

^ location of station in Valence.

In common with most French TGV stations a 330 hectare enterprise zone has been set up around the station, but by and large these enterprise zones have failed with very few businesses setting up in the location of the station.

Reims - Reims (population 190k) TGV station has been built on the southern outskirts of the city, however as services continue to operate from Reims centre to Paris, usage is only 650k.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de...-Ardenne_-_TGV

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rei...e,+France&z=15

^ location of the station within Reims.

One similarity between France and the UK's plans can be found in Lyon. Despite being halfway between Paris and Marseilles, Lyon isn't a through station, instead terminating on a spur within the city with through services operating around Lyon. This is similar to how HS2 Ltd will serve Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.

Both Lyon and Lille have gone down the route that Leeds and Birmingham will take in HS2 with new stations built within the city centre.

Lyon -

Lyon's existing main station is on a highly constrained site on a peninsula within the city centre, with that in mind Lyon is served by a second purpose built station just to the east of the city centre.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de_Lyon-Part-Dieu

Over the last 30 years a second business and shopping district has grown up around Lyon's new station, which is fully linked into the rest of the city thanks to Lyon's extensive metro system.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=lyo...s,+France&z=14
^Map showing location of Lyon's new station

Lyon is also served by a through station for services between Paris and Marseilles, this is located at the airport and so comparisons could be made with the plans for Birmingham Interchange.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de...up%C3%A9ry_TGV

This station has not proved a success, with few long haul flights operating from the airport only 500k passengers a year have made use of this station.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=lyo...ius=15000&z=12

^ Map showing location of Lyon's airport station.

Lille - Lille is the other example of a new urban station within France. Lille is the regional capital of the North of France and has a population of 225,000 and an urban area of nearly a million.

TGV originally wanted to serve Lille with a parkway station similar to Nottingham and Sheffield due to the fact that the route through Lille was not the most direct and also the approaches into the city are slow and twisty. However political pressure meant the station was eventually located within the city.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_Lille-Europe

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Lil...s,+France&z=15

^ Location of Lille's new station on the North East of the city centre.

The existing station stayed open in Lille serving regional trains as well as the majority of direct services to Paris whilst the new station served Eurostar and TGV services to Paris, London and other major French and European cities. Similar to if Victoria re-opened in Sheffield there is a 500m distance between the 2 stations.

Despite the existing station serving the main market over 7 million people use Eurolille and a shopping and business district has grown up around the station.

The Rest of the World:-

I haven't researched outside of Europe as I felt Europe offered more obvious parallels to Britain but as some people will point out the model in Japan appears different, with the large cities building new stations generally outside of the city centres and linked to the huge metro areas by the efficient Japanese transport systems.

Taiwan has also built stations in the countryside, hoping to develop new towns along the line of their high speed network.

Conclusion:-

In conclusion, whilst there are several different models of high speed rail service provision out there from adapting existing stations (seen in Germany and largely in Italy) to replacement city centre stations (in Spain) and new additional city centre stations (in France) to rural parkway stations (in Spain and France) and occasionally small to medium sized towns served by parkway stations (as seen in Valence and Avignon). Naples also has plans for a large parkway station though this has stalled at the moment.

So what conclusions can we draw from the success or failures of some of these stations? Well from the success of the new business districts that have have grown up around Lille and Lyon's new stations you have to say this bodes well for Leeds and Birmingham. Whilst meanwhile the enterprise zones that have been set up around parkway stations in France haven't been as successful as hoped.

This seems to go along with the argument that the Sheffield HS station location report indicated when it said that a station at Meadowhall wouldn't be as successful at attracting jobs in the immediate vicinity as a station at Victoria:

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...t-in-sheffield

This report stated that locating a station in Sheffield City Centre would generate up to £5.5bn in additional economic benefits and 6500 jobs, over building a station at Meadowhall. People like to dispute this stating the report doesn't take into account the benefits a station at Meadowhall would have for the city centre.

I'll leave that up to you to decide that point.

However it wouldn't be entirely fair to use the examples of Avignon or Valence to see how development will be affected in Sheffield or Nottingham for this reason. Both Sheffield and Nottingham are far far larger than any other city in Europe to be served by a parkway station on High Speed Rail, I make it to a factor of at least 4 or 5 to 1.

In other words if Sheffield or Nottingham were in France, Spain or Italy their populations would be deemed large enough to justify being served by a city centre station, either on a through line like Lille or Cordoba, or a loop like Zaragoza.

If Naples had been built yet that would perhaps offer us the best example of how a parkway station might work in a city the size of Sheffield or Nottingham (indeed Naples is even larger with a population of 1 million and 3 million in the urban area). However construction disputes (Naples living up to its stereotype there) mean that the project is currently on hold and the site looks like this:

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=nap...,91.83,,0,3.75

So how will it work out in Sheffield and Nottingham in terms of economic development? I guess we will have to wait and see, as no cities the size of these have ever been served by a parkway station in Europe.

In terms of passenger usage though the French experience shows us that the Parkway stations at Avignon and Valence have been successful (attracting 2 to 3 million passengers each) despite being located outside of the city centre.

In Reims and Lyon where there is a choice of city centre station and parkway station however passengers have shunned the parkway station in both instances, with only half a million passengers preferring to use the parkway station. This experience could be seen as similar to that with East Midlands Parkway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Mi...ailway_station

Here, despite good road access and fast services to London, less than a third of a million use the station, with passengers instead preferring the existing connections from Nottingham and Derby.

In these cases though the existing services from the city centre aren't any slower than the parkway stations, so when the choice is to do with location then passengers will (in the vast majority) use the city centre stations. However how much faster services will entice passengers away from Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham stations to the Parkways can't be gauged as there isn't any comparisons in Europe.

Wow that is some post.

A couple of points.

The German High Speed Network was initially devised when it was two countries, principally to improve north - sout( links in W Germany. Hence Hanover - Würzburg, Frankfurt - Köln, Mannheim - Stuttgart. Then, on reunification, the ‘new’ Germany wanted to spend some money reunifying infrastructure, quickly, hence Hannover - Berlin.

Spain was more about having every regional centre within 4 (?) hours of Madrid. And, frankly, getting a railway that wasn’t an embarrassment by european standards.

Does anyone have any sense of, how extensive the Government's review into Phase 2B will be? As in .... is it possible that the review will decide on significant changes in the Phase 2B routes?

Given the reason for the review I think it is unlikely to see major changes to the route, although it is possible if it drives significant cost savings.

Regarding the London end... There seem to be concerns about the Euston throat. And the huge cost of Euston has lead to people suggesting we terminate HS2 at Old Oak Common. That by itself is obviously silly because there's no way the transport links to OOC could cope with all the passengers from all HS2 trains.

But... could it work if some HS2 trains (maybe, 4-5 of the 14-18 tph) terminated at OOC, with the majority of trains - but not all of them - continuing to Euston? That way the transport links at OOC wouldn't get too overwhelmed, and the smaller number of trains at Euston might enable a simpler/cheaper station and throat design?

Read the Oakervee review. That explains the choices. Personally I think terminating some services at OOC in the ‘end state’ would be mad. It would be the equivalent of terminating some WCML services today at Stockport instead of Piccadilly, or on other lines at Clapham vs Waterloo or Victoria.

 

[edwin_m]

A terminating train occupies a platform for longer than a through train. With six platforms Old Oak could terminate maybe 10TPH (my guess) which is enough for an interim service while Euston is being completed. But as soon as trains start running through the same platforms to Euston, that number drops to almost zero.

 

[The Ham]

A terminating train occupies a platform for longer than a through train. With six platforms Old Oak could terminate maybe 10TPH (my guess) which is enough for an interim service while Euston is being completed. But as soon as trains start running through the same platforms to Euston, that number drops to almost zero.

Indeed, a typical turn around time for long distance trains is around 30 minutes, at best you're going to get 12tph, you may be able to tighten that up for the Birmingham trains to 20 minutes as they're going to be sub one hour. However that's all going to be very tight.

 

[Senex]

Indeed its only 12km between Toton and Derby station on a straight line, mostly through open fields.
Even at 50mph the tram could cover that in ten minutes.

OK, so assume 10 minutes journey-time and allow quarter of an hour for the connection (I certainly wouldn't be happy with less, for train-specific tickets). And then suppose it were a 15-minute-interval service. This is Britain, so you need to allow for at least one tram (or bus! to fail to turn up. That suggests to me 40 minutes from the tram-stop in Derby to departing from the HSL station—and a total jounry-time that's going to have no significant advantage over the MML, but with the inconvenience of the low-quality environment of the tram to start off with and then the fuss of the change. (I must make clear that I have no objection to changing trains if the connections are reliable and are made in stations well designed for changes, neither of which applies in this country. And then all railway enthusiasts are happier to accept a need to change trains than members of the general travelling public appear to be.)

 

[HSTEd]

OK, so assume 10 minutes journey-time and allow quarter of an hour for the connection (I certainly wouldn't be happy with less, for train-specific tickets). And then suppose it were a 15-minute-interval service. This is Britain, so you need to allow for at least one tram (or bus! to fail to turn up. That suggests to me 40 minutes from the tram-stop in Derby to departing from the HSL station—and a total jounry-time that's going to have no significant advantage over the MML, but with the inconvenience of the low-quality environment of the tram to start off with and then the fuss of the change. (I must make clear that I have no objection to changing trains if the connections are reliable and are made in stations well designed for changes, neither of which applies in this country. And then all railway enthusiasts are happier to accept a need to change trains than members of the general travelling public appear to be.)

I'm not sure why you would build a brand new tram line from Toton Lane out to Derby and then not run every tram that currently terminates at Toton along it.

The Toton branch service currently runs 8 trains per hour for much of the day, including the peak times when lots of people will be travelling to and from London.

So 10 minute journey time, 15 minute connection time and an ~8 minute "paranoia margin".
You seem to have stacked backup margins there, since you have packed 23 minutes of margin into a 10 minute journey!

And given that we have a brand new station, I'm not sure why it wouldn't "be well designed for changes"?

Then 52 minutes from Toton to Euston.


That gives us 85 minutes.
Despite the paranoia in planning that is still faster than the direct trains from Derby!
And what do you think the travelling environment on MML trains will be like once traffic growth leaves them packed to the gills with Leicester passengers?

 

[PartyOperator]

Get China to build it?

https://www.building.co.uk/news/chi...hs2-and-save-tens-of-billions/5104268.article

A Chinese firm that is one of the world’s largest contractors has offered to save the government “tens of billions” of pounds by taking on the HS2 project and building it within five years, Building understands.

The firm, part of China Railway Construction Corporation, has raised the prospect of the line reaching speeds of up to 420km/h, versus the maximum 340km/h currently envisaged, increased passenger capacity as well as delivering the scheme closer to its current £56bn budget.
CRCC has been one of the main players behind the construction of China’s 25,000km network of high-speed rail lines, which account for around two-thirds of the world’s total length.

The offer comes in the week that HS2 finally got the official government go-ahead, despite the Oakervee review of the project suggesting the budget has risen from £56bn to £106bn, with construction due to take at least 15 years.

China Railway Construction Corporation, known as CRCC, is a part state-owned and publicly listed Chinese contractor with a turnover in 2018 of more than £80bn, operating in 121 countries.

In a letter sent at the end of last month to HS2 chief executive Mark Thurston seen by Building, a CRCC division named 16th Bureau Ltd confirmed that it was prepared to make a “turnkey” offer to build the whole project within five years for a fixed price “significantly lower than the projections we have seen”.

The letter, signed by a CRCC representative, said it was also offering to deliver 420kph line speeds with “shortened journey times and increased capacity” adding that it would fund “up to 80% of the project value.

 

[algytaylor]

Personally, i'd try to make at least some trains terminate at St.Pancras. Billed as regional Eurostars, you'd have an easy path - get off one train, straight through to passport control, straight on to a connecting Eurostar service. You could easily tie in improved services to London without needing extra infrastructure in the regional stations. It'd be a PR coup to be able to offer 'seemless' international train travel from Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, North Wales, etc.

Potentially in the future you could have segregated coaches where passport checks were performed on board. That could reduce the interchange times in London, particularly for higher traffic routes where a dedicated carriage would make sense.

 

[swt_passenger]

Personally, i'd try to make at least some trains terminate at St.Pancras. Billed as regional Eurostars, you'd have an easy path - get off one train, straight through to passport control, straight on to a connecting Eurostar service. You could easily tie in improved services to London without needing extra infrastructure in the regional stations. It'd be a PR coup to be able to offer 'seemless' international train travel from Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, North Wales, etc.

Potentially in the future you could have segregated coaches where passport checks were performed on board. That could reduce the interchange times in London, particularly for higher traffic routes where a dedicated carriage would make sense.

Isn’t this thread supposed to be about how to build what is already agreed in the phase 1 Act?

There is no link to St Pancras, and AFAICT no intention to add one.