Specifically reinforcing what Chris Gibb was promoting by saying
3.9 HS2 Ltd awarded a contract for trains in 2021. The cancellation of Phase 2 in 2023 means that trains will run on the existing railway north of Birmingham. However, the stations on the existing West Coast Main Line railway are smaller than the HS2 stations that were planned. Therefore, the platforms are too small to accommodate the HS2 trains running with two 200-metre units as was originally planned. If HS2 trains operate as a single 200-metre unit, they would carry fewer passengers than the trains which currently run on the West Coast Main Line. In addition, the new trains will not be able to go as fast as the current Pendolino trains on certain sections of the track. A reduction in the length of the trains, and in turn seat capacity, will impact on the programme’s benefits and the wider rail network.
The thing is, the trains are shorter isn't as big a deal as people are making out as the current 9 coach trains (class 390's with 469 seats) and current 7 coach trains (class 807's with 453 seats) have a lower capacity than the new rolling stock (504 seats) and these make up about half of the current fleet.
Likewise, it doesn't impact everywhere equally.
Of the major destinations:
- Birmingham, will see 400m rolling stock
- Liverpool, is mostly 7 coach class 807's with the occasional 9 coach and occasional 11 coach
- Manchester, is where the issues is, I'll come back to that
- Edinburgh, doesn't see many services and will likely see an uplift in services
- Glasgow, currently can be around 50:50 of 9 and 11 coach sets (especially when the existing via Birmingham services are excluded) as such the reducing is an average of around 40 seats, there's also potential to fit in an extra trains in the evening as there's potential to add a (say) 20:00 service to Glasgow and it still not extend the last arrival time of the existing services due to the faster journey times post HS2 phase one opening, whist that may impact another departure, it's at a time of day when that's less of an issue (and can be done by swapping a path with another service)
- stations north of Crewe are likely to see more services (more Edinburgh services)
As such, the main impact is Manchester and so coming back to Manchester, the actual impact is fairly small during the busiest times of day:
Having looked at the numbers, the actual real world case necessarily as bad as it could be.
The core of the issue isn't just about the number of seats per train, but about how faster journey times can unlock additional capacity during critical peak periods.
To illustrate this, let's look at a recent example of morning services from Manchester to London:
Current Services (a recent week day Schedule):
05:54 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
06:02 - 9 coaches (489 seats)
06:14 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
06:23 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
06:29 - 11 coaches (607 seats) - Arrives 08:40
06:54 - 11 coaches (607 seats) - Arrives 09:15
07:00 - 11 coaches (607 seats) - Arrives 09:02
07:14 - 9 coaches (519 seats) - Arrives 09:31
Total Capacity:
Before 09:05: 3,624 seats
Before 09:35: 4,820 seats
Now, let's factor in the benefit of HS2's faster journey times. Assuming a 30-minute reduction in travel time on a post-Phase 1 timetable, the arrival times for these services would shift significantly. For instance, the 07:14 service would arrive at 09:01 instead of 09:31, and the 07:34 service would arrive at 09:16.
This shift means more services fall within the morning peak arrival windows. Using the same 09:05 and 09:35 cut-off points with 200m stock (504 seats per train), the capacity picture remains robust:
Capacity before 09:05: 4,032 seats (+11% increase)
Capacity before 09:35: 5,040 seats (+4.5% increase)
It's also worth noting that pre-2022, the 11-coach trains had 589 seats. The recent upgrade to 607 seats already represents a 3% capacity uplift on those services.
While individual services may still be busy, the data shows that the faster journey times provided by HS2 compensate for the shorter train length during the most critical morning peak hours, still providing a net gain over the current baseline.
This analysis demonstrates that the current 200m train specification is more than adequate for the immediate future. Rather than reopening contracts and risking delays, our focus should be on successfully delivering HS2. The capacity will support initial growth, and if demand continues to rise as projected, it will make a compelling case for the subsequent phases of the project, which will bring their own significant capacity increases.
I've looked at Friday evenings, as I believe this could also be a rather busy period.
For Friday 10th April there were the following services between 17:00 and 19:00:
17:13 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
17:33 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
17:53 - 9 coaches (489 seats)
18:13 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
18:33 - 9 coaches (489 seats)
18:53 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
That's a total of 3,406 whilst the new HS2 trains would have a capacity of 3,024 seats and so there's would be a reduction of 11.2% which isn't ideal, but it's noticeably less than the per train capacity of up to 17.0% as not all services are 11 coach units.
Whist after 19:00 through to the end of service there were these services:
19:13 - 9 coaches (489 seats)
19:33 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
19:53 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
20:13 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
20:33 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
20:53 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
21:39 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
22:03 - 11 coaches (607 seats)
That's a total of 4,738 whist by adding one extra service at the end at 22:33 which would arrive into Manchester at the same time as the current 22:03 the total seats post HS2 would be 4,536 and so a 4.3% capacity reduction. Again not ideal but not as significant as the per train capacity indicates.
Although, pre Covid there was a later service which if reinstated (or the running of 4 services between 20:53 and 22:13 rather than the current 3 in this 80 minute period) that would result in there being a small increase to 5,040 (+6.4%) after 19:00.
How've when comparing the whole evening period this is a quite small reduction (-1%) as the current number of seats is 8,144 whilst after HS2 this would be 8,064 seats.
Although, if the 20 minute frequency was continued to the end of services from 20:53 and the pre Covid service was reinstated (8,568 seats) then this would mean over the whole Friday evening there was a 5.6% capacity uplift.
Obviously, such a situation isn't ideal, however if there's a need for extra capacity beyond this, then clearly HS2 into Manchester should be back in the table and is probably justified.
On the factor of speed north of HS2 up to Scotland, the potential increase in frequency is likely to help offset the limited impact of slower services for those stations (as the time penalty from Preston is up to 15 minutes for an Avanti service vs a TPE service).
That's assuming that there's no speed improvements delivered.
For those traveling from Euston the overall journey time is still 30 minutes faster.
All the above should be understood in the context of a 5% uplift to the rolling stock order (and it could be as high as 20%) could add £100 million before any changes to train lengths are added as there's no need for the manufacture to keep to their original costs as they are not in a competitive tender process.
It's also possible that a tender for class 390's could be needed around the same delivery timeframe and so as part of that extra (longer) trains could be delivered for HS2 for Manchester and some of the 895's could be used to run the services on the WCML which stay post HS2.
As whilst there's talk of not needing to replace the 390's, that's probably dependent on there being low passenger growth. If that's the case, the need for longer trains for HS2 isn't there.
If that's not the case (and current rail growth is fairly high compared to the HS2 modeling, which was around 2.5%, at 4% for Avanti for the 12 months to the end of March between 2025 and 2026) then there's likely going to be a need for the class 390's to be at least partly replaced and so new longer sets can be ordered at that time (and £100 million will get you a few sets without needing to spend that extra money now for limited benefit).
