HS2 support in 2015

[Voglitz]

Freight services run non-stop, so their normal running speed is approximately their average speed, which is what matters over long distances.

Freight services don't generally run non-stop, so their normal running speed isn't approximately their average speed.

Even though passenger services may run at faster speeds, their average speeds will be lower since they will stop regularly. As a result, freight and stopping passenger services can actually fit together not too badly.

HS2 wouldn't reduce the existing passenger service on the West Coast slow lines currently shared with railfreight. So it's a mystery how railfreight on those lines could increase.

I don't see how a ~50% journey time saving (2 hour 8 minutes down to 1 hour 8 minutes for Manchester trains) is less than 25%.

With Britain's closely spaced cities, the journey time savings tend to be nothing like 50% when the local legs are factored in. To be meaningful, the comparison would need to consider the effect of high speed on the gamut of inter-city journeys (rather than cherry-picked outliers).

Please describe how you're going to cut journey times between London and Manchester, without using high speed rail. There's only so much you can do to improve things at either end.

Journey times between London and Manchester are not an issue which real people are particularly bothered about. The average Mancunian hardly ever travels by train to London.

 

[AE]

@mccoy and @Pigeon

Have you seen the film "Groundhog Day"?

Your points have all been made many times, over the years, by people against HS2 and each time have they have been refuted using logic and facts.

The constant repetition of these tired, worn out, invalid and illogical points doesn't make them any more valid or logical each time that you make them. Especially, since they are comprehensively demolished each time that they are made.

 

[The Ham]

Freight services don't generally run non-stop, so their normal running speed isn't approximately their average speed.

Freight only need to stop when there is another train in the way, which means the busier the network is the more freight has to stop.

HS2 wouldn't reduce the existing passenger service on the West Coast slow lines currently shared with railfreight. So it's a mystery how railfreight on those lines could increase.

Although HS2 will not take passenger services from the slow lines it will take passenger services from the fast lines which will allow passenger services to move from the slow lines to the fast lines.

Also, if HS1 is anything to go by, HS2 could be used overnight for freight services.

With Britain's closely spaced cities, the journey time savings tend to be nothing like 50% when the local legs are factored in. To be meaningful, the comparison would need to consider the effect of high speed on the gamut of inter-city journeys (rather than cherry-picked outliers).

True, but there is still the potential for journey time savings. With HS2 there will be (for the majority of passengers who pick to use that route) journey time savings of between 0% and 50%, without HS2 there is no journey time savings. In fact if higher capacity 110mph stock is used to cope with capacity journey times for everyone will get worse.

Journey times between London and Manchester are not an issue which real people are particularly bothered about. The average Mancunian hardly ever travels by train to London.

Anyone who travels between Manchester and London are imaginary people!

It may well be that lots of Mancunians don't go to London (not that it means that lots of people don't travel to London from Manchester), but by building HS2 it frees up paths into Manchester allowing other local services to be run.

HS3 will also likely further improve matters for local services.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Freight services don't generally run non-stop, so their normal running speed isn't approximately their average speed.

Modern railfreight moves in paths which run from one location to another; we don't have trains stopping at every town to pick up or drop off freight as we did back before BR. That a freight train might need to stop on the route is just because of pathing constraints, e.g. freight needing to stop in the loops on the WCML north of Preston to allow a Pendolino to pass. Without express passenger services there would be no need to stop, since all the remaining services would run at the same average speed.

HS2 wouldn't reduce the existing passenger service on the West Coast slow lines currently shared with railfreight. So it's a mystery how railfreight on those lines could increase.

No, it means the slow lines can be properly slow since places currently served only by slow line services could be served by fast line services instead. When every service runs at the same speed, you get more paths.

With Britain's closely spaced cities, the journey time savings tend to be nothing like 50% when the local legs are factored in. To be meaningful, the comparison would need to consider the effect of high speed on the gamut of inter-city journeys (rather than cherry-picked outliers).

If Britain's cities were any further apart, then you would be saying that HS2 was useless because it would still be faster to travel by air.

You also have to account for the number of people making a journey when comparing journey times. It's not a good idea to spend billions on upgrading every single possible city-to-city pair journey times when the few lines which actually desperately need more capacity and reduced journey times are being ignored. How many people travel between Liverpool and Norwich compared to Liverpool and London, and which line would you prioritise for speed improvements? The Government wants its money to go on the schemes which deliver the biggest bang for the buck and while cutting hours off of the Liverpool-Norwich time would be wonderful, it would affect far fewer people than Liverpool to London.

Journey times between London and Manchester are not an issue which real people are particularly bothered about. The average Mancunian hardly ever travels by train to London.

The average Briton doesn't take the train to work, since they normally drive instead. Does that mean we shouldn't bother with the rail network and should instead invest billions on more roads and motorways?

 

[Geezertronic]

That's the problem solved right there - cancel the 3 x VT services per hour to Manchester and there's no need for HS2

 

[Snapper]

New blog on Stophs2's 'Vicky Pollard' moment yesterday:

he anti hs2 mob are having a terrible election. Their ‘ no votes for you with Hs2′ has been as much use as a chocolate teapot. None of the major parties (or even a single MP) have been persuaded to change their minds. Yesterday it went from bad to worse as the Labour party released their manifesto containing a clear commitment to build Hs2....

Read more here..

https://paulbigland.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/stop-hs2s-vick-pollard-moment/

 

[Voglitz]

Although HS2 will not take passenger services from the slow lines it will take passenger services from the fast lines which will allow passenger services to move from the slow lines to the fast lines.

The PFM Assumptions report suggests there is no intention to use the Fast lines as a second pair of Slow lines.

Also, if HS1 is anything to go by, HS2 could be used overnight for freight services.

HS1 doesn't seem to be anything to go by. There is no intention to use HS2 for railfreight.

True, but there is still the potential for journey time savings. With HS2 there will be (for the majority of passengers who pick to use that route) journey time savings of between 0% and 50%, without HS2 there is no journey time savings.

If HS2 funds were redirected into improving metropolitan transport, there would be potential for much larger aggregate journey time savings.

It may well be that lots of Mancunians don't go to London (not that it means that lots of people don't travel to London from Manchester), but by building HS2 it frees up paths into Manchester allowing other local services to be run.

How many paths into Manchester would HS2 free up?

Modern railfreight moves in paths which run from one location to another; we don't have trains stopping at every town to pick up or drop off freight as we did back before BR. That a freight train might need to stop on the route is just because of pathing constraints, e.g. freight needing to stop in the loops on the WCML north of Preston to allow a Pendolino to pass. Without express passenger services there would be no need to stop, since all the remaining services would run at the same average speed.

I never said we have trains stopping at every town to pick up or drop off freight as we did back before BR. I said, "Freight services don't generally run non-stop, so their normal running speed isn't approximately their average speed". Which is correct.

No, it means the slow lines can be properly slow since places currently served only by slow line services could be served by fast line services instead. When every service runs at the same speed, you get more paths.

When freight and slow passenger trains don't run at the same speed, you don't get more paths. And there is no evidence that the HS2 scheme would increase freight paths on the southern WCML.

You also have to account for the number of people making a journey when comparing journey times. It's not a good idea to spend billions on upgrading every single possible city-to-city pair journey times when the few lines which actually desperately need more capacity and reduced journey times are being ignored.

I quoted the DfT: "Higher speed is not the only or best way of cutting journey times. Nor is it without cost. Increasing the maximum speed of a train from 200 km/h to 350 km/h means a 90 per cent increase in energy consumption. In exchange, it cuts station-to-station journey time by less than 25 per cent and door-to-door journey-time by even less."

The aggregate journey time savings from HS2 must be much lower, in comparison with alternative uses of the same money.

How many people travel between Liverpool and Norwich compared to Liverpool and London, and which line would you prioritise for speed improvements?

How many travel between Surrey and London, compared to Liverpool and London?

The Government wants its money to go on the schemes which deliver the biggest bang for the buck and while cutting hours off of the Liverpool-Norwich time would be wonderful, it would affect far fewer people than Liverpool to London.

If a government wanted its money to go on the schemes which deliver the biggest bang for the buck, it would be going for upgrade-based road and rail schemes.

Compare for example, the benefit-cost of 51M (not a particularly good scheme), with HS2.

The average Briton doesn't take the train to work, since they normally drive instead. Does that mean we shouldn't bother with the rail network and should instead invest billions on more roads and motorways?

Most commutes are short distance (mainly by bus or car). Investing billions in motorways just to enable more long distance commuting, would be a massive waste of resources. In the same way, heavy subsidies for long distance rail commuting are a large-scale transfer of resources, from poorer to richer.

 

[NotATrainspott]

The PFM Assumptions report suggests there is no intention to use the Fast lines as a second pair of Slow lines.

No, the 'fast' lines would become 'medium' lines, with HS2 as the 'fast' lines instead. You wouldn't have any non-stop services using the tracks.

HS1 doesn't seem to be anything to go by. There is no intention to use HS2 for railfreight.

Indeed there isn't, partly because the WCML has seen a lot of money spent on it to make it a freight route.

If HS2 funds were redirected into improving metropolitan transport, there would be potential for much larger aggregate journey time savings.

How would you improve metropolitan transport then? Manchester already has a well-fleshed out tram system and its heavy rail system is being electrified right now. Do you mean spending billions on underground railways which aren't actually necessary for areas with the sorts of population density and land values that they have?

How many paths into Manchester would HS2 free up?

Three fast paths along the Stockport corridor.

I never said we have trains stopping at every town to pick up or drop off freight as we did back before BR. I said, "Freight services don't generally run non-stop, so their normal running speed isn't approximately their average speed". Which is correct.

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H00342/2015/04/14/advanced

Does this freight service need to stop? It certainly isn't stopping everywhere and anywhere along the WCML like a stopping passenger service would.

When freight and slow passenger trains don't run at the same speed, you don't get more paths. And there is no evidence that the HS2 scheme would increase freight paths on the southern WCML.

Which is wonderful, except freight and slow passenger service do run at approximately the same speed, so your point is meaningless.

I quoted the DfT: "Higher speed is not the only or best way of cutting journey times. Nor is it without cost. Increasing the maximum speed of a train from 200 km/h to 350 km/h means a 90 per cent increase in energy consumption. In exchange, it cuts station-to-station journey time by less than 25 per cent and door-to-door journey-time by even less."

How would you cut journey times from Greater Manchester to Greater London? You can't rebuild the Mancunian rail network so that everywhere and anywhere has frequent non-stop services to the centre; you have to accept that some places will take many minutes to reach from the city centre. Virgin don't give up trying to get London-Glasgow times down just because Clydebank is still more minutes away from Central and Hackney is still more minutes away from Euston.

The aggregate journey time savings from HS2 must be much lower, in comparison with alternative uses of the same money.

How many travel between Surrey and London, compared to Liverpool and London?

These people are commuters who use the railway as nothing more than a larger-scale version of the Underground to get them to and from work every day. HS2 is for long-distance journeys on a corridor which connects Great London to Great Birmingham and most other major conurbations in Britain. By your logic, the only people we should invest in are those using London's buses since even more people use those than use the Tube.

If a government wanted its money to go on the schemes which deliver the biggest bang for the buck, it would be going for upgrade-based road and rail schemes.

Compare for example, the benefit-cost of 51M (not a particularly good scheme), with HS2.

Which would be wonderful, if you want only a small increase in capacity. If you want to get much more capacity, your business case starts to go down and down. None of the upgrade proposals provided as many extra seats in total as HS2 while retaining comfort and journey times.

Most commutes are short distance (mainly by bus or car). Investing billions in motorways just to enable more long distance commuting, would be a massive waste of resources. In the same way, heavy subsidies for long distance rail commuting are a large-scale transfer of resources, from poorer to richer.

But we're not subsidising long distance rail commuting, any more than it is already necessary as a consequence of providing a service that people can use anyway. HS2 commuters would be just as common as those commuting on long distance services today; a Manchester-London fare on HS2 would cost more than a distance taking the same time along the GWML.

 

[Pigeon]

What project isn't being taken forward as a result of spending on HS2?

I said I am concerned about the possibility of that happening.

When you start running out of space, you start limiting economic growth.

Wrong way round. Space is finite, therefore economic growth needs to be limited. But that's a whole nother rant.

Journey time savings of 50% to Manchester and Leeds, and in future 50% to Scotland once the full captive line is built, are not to be sniffed at. These are precisely the sorts of journeys which the speed improvements of HSR make much better - London to Manchester will now be around an hour, which would make it possible to properly split a working day between the two cities. London to Scotland would be only two-and-a-bit hours, which would mean a business day trip would be feasible in a way it currently isn't when it's 4 hours 30.

You are neglecting both the time spent fiddling around at either end to get to and from the HS2 station, and the need to consider twice the journey time because you have to do the journey once in each direction. So London/Manchester becomes a good four hours, as opposed to six-odd at present, which is not a lot less useless.

No, that's not what HS2 is being justified on.

Funny, I got it off either the official HS2 website or a quote from an MP, I forget which - they just didn't express it quite like that

Also, when you're not having to appeal to end-to-end travellers, you don't need to run as fast by skipping as many stops as possible, so more people would be able to use the train. With that, you can then fit more trains on the classic lines since they'll have more regular stopping patterns. If you actually look at the things HS2 Ltd have produced you'll see proposed stopping patterns for the WCML, MML and ECML once HS2 Phases 1 and 2 have been implemented have actually been produced. The only remaining long distance WCML services would be one to Chester/North Wales, one to Scotland via Manchester and Stoke, another to Scotland via Birmingham and one more Birmingham service, all of which would stop at most major WCML stations like Milton Keynes and Rugby.

Which proves my point. You only get more capacity by using HS2 as an excuse to get rid of most of the Inter-City type services to make more space for stoppers. Only you don't think losing most of the Inter-City type services matters and I think it does. Having to do, say, Milton Keynes to Birmingham on a stopper because the shortage of fast services means there isn't one when you need to travel is painful.

Freight services run non-stop, so their normal running speed is approximately their average speed, which is what matters over long distances. Even though passenger services may run at faster speeds, their average speeds will be lower since they will stop regularly. As a result, freight and stopping passenger services can actually fit together not too badly. The trains which cause problems are the non-stop ones which run at full linespeed, e.g. the current Scotland services which run non-stop to Warrington Bank Quay or York. These are the ones you put on HS2.

The Freight Transport Association reckon that HS2 will be a big problem for getting freight paths to Scotland, and regard HS2 as something against which the needs of the freight industry need to be protected. What they want from the railway is a European loading gauge route to the north, not a high speed one.

So we shouldn't build HS2 because we're not solving other problems first?

What I said was that sorting out things which cannot presently be done well, or at all, should be a higher priority both for money and for "drive" than things which are done well already. If you're going to spend billions on building new lines, build them in places where the existing railway system is useless, not where it's excellent.

Virgin run 11-car Pendolinos. How are you going to extend them further? The new IEP sets will be either 234m long or 260m long (2x5 car). How are you going to extend these further, once a 10th car is added to the 9-car sets? London Midland run 12-car 350s in the peak. How are you going to extend these further?

My answer to that one is the same as I have been saying ever since HSTs came in: don't build trains that have that limitation in the first place. Instead, build fully flexible formations that allow you to add or subtract arbitrary numbers of vehicles as the need arises (and also allow a defective vehicle to be removed without having to take the whole set out of service). The latest election puff from the Conservatives talks about 50 billion for HS2. That buys a LOT of rolling stock...

Please describe how you're going to cut journey times between London and Manchester, without using high speed rail.

Maglev in a vacuum tunnel. Transporter beams. A giant catapult in each city that throws people into the air and an enormous foam rubber glove on a two-hundred-foot spring to catch them at the other end...

...I don't intend to bother trying to cut journey times between London and Manchester. They are short enough already - they comfortably beat the car, and since the journey by car isn't going to get any faster, the train doesn't need to either. Instead I'd cut journey times between, say, Bedford/Luton/Northampton et al and Cambridge/East Anglia, or South Wales and Cardigan Bay, where you go by car and if you haven't got a car you stay at home.

 

[The Ham]

Indeed there isn't, partly because the WCML has seen a lot of money spent on it to make it a freight route.

True, but I did say may. HS1 has a freight service running from Poland to London, that was never even a consideration when HS1 was being built.

Likewise the first rail lines were built solely for freight and look what's happened to them!

The point being is that there could be ways in which HS2 (if it doesn't conflict with passenger services) could directly provide benefit to freight.

 

[DownSouth]

True, but I did say may. HS1 has a freight service running from Poland to London, that was never even a consideration when HS1 was being built.

For what other purpose were the freight passing loops built though?

The point being is that there could be ways in which HS2 (if it doesn't conflict with passenger services) could directly provide benefit to freight.

And if HS2 is to be operated as a business, the introduction of overnight freight would be a logical step in monetising it.

 

[Windmill10]

It would be interesting to discover how many voters on the poll will have their towns interrupted by a train line, particularly if they are not one of the select destinations. ie making a local sacrifice for a national benefit.

 

[glbotu]

I said I am concerned about the possibility of that happening.

My answer to that one is the same as I have been saying ever since HSTs came in: don't build trains that have that limitation in the first place. Instead, build fully flexible formations that allow you to add or subtract arbitrary numbers of vehicles as the need arises (and also allow a defective vehicle to be removed without having to take the whole set out of service). The latest election puff from the Conservatives talks about 50 billion for HS2. That buys a LOT of rolling stock...

(Sorry I've rearranged your post a little, it's so I can answer similar points together).

This is the "pie fallacy" of the economy, whereby people envisage a fixed amount of money which is divvied up between all projects. That's not really how it works. The point is the money is there for HS2 to be built and only for HS2 to be built. If HS2 is not built only a small portion of the £50 bn will be spent, because the government does not believe it would see the return on investment. Whether you (or anyone else) feels that that £50bn could have a better return on investment elsewhere is a different story, but from a funding perspective, that's the bottom line of all the major parties.

Wrong way round. Space is finite, therefore economic growth needs to be limited. But that's a whole nother rant.

Indeed.

You are neglecting both the time spent fiddling around at either end to get to and from the HS2 station, and the need to consider twice the journey time because you have to do the journey once in each direction. So London/Manchester becomes a good four hours, as opposed to six-odd at present, which is not a lot less useless.

I agree, the journey time saving shouldn't be the selling point of HS2 and the unfortunate problem is that the government doesn't trust people with understanding the capacity argument and as such, pushed the "High Speed" argument instead. High Speed is more of a happy bi-product. The premise is basically:

- The WCML needs relief.
- The cost differential between building a high speed service and a non-high speed one is negligible, might as well do the one that goes faster.

Which proves my point. You only get more capacity by using HS2 as an excuse to get rid of most of the Inter-City type services to make more space for stoppers. Only you don't think losing most of the Inter-City type services matters and I think it does. Having to do, say, Milton Keynes to Birmingham on a stopper because the shortage of fast services means there isn't one when you need to travel is painful.

This document from the government might help you to get to grips with this. I think you just misunderstand what the change is going to be.

Basically, the current service pattern from MK to Birmingham is one stopper on the slows + 1 stopper on the fast and 1 "semi-fast"* on the fast in the off peak. The indicative WCML service pattern with HS2 Phase 1 sees 2 stoppers on the fast lines + 2 "semi-fast*" services.

If you look at services to WCML destinations, you'll see that no services are reduced except Warrington (which I'm not sure why, goes from 2tph WC to 1tph HS2).

Off Peak**:

Birmingham - 3tph to 5 tph (2 WCML + 3 HS2)
Wolverhampton - 1tph to 2tph (WCML)
Crewe - 4tph to 5tph (3 WCML + 2 HS2)
Stafford - 1tph to 4tph (3 WCML + 1 HS2)
Manchester - 3tph to 5tph (2 WCML + 3 HS2)
Wigan - 2tph to 2tph (1 WCML + 1 HS2)
Scotland - 1tph to 2tph (1 WCML + 1 HS2)
Milton Keynes*** - 3tph to 9tph (9 WCML)

* calling at Rugby, Coventry, Birmingham International and Birmingham NS, not exactly a "slow" service.

** The diagram on page 13 of the document shows the current peak service, compared to an indicative mixture of peak and off peak, I've used RTT to figure out the current off-peak service pattern. The peak improvement for Milton Keynes Central is a change from 12 tph (of which 3 are pick up/set down only) to 17 tph.

*** This value ONLY includes Fast services

The Freight Transport Association reckon that HS2 will be a big problem for getting freight paths to Scotland, and regard HS2 as something against which the needs of the freight industry need to be protected. What they want from the railway is a European loading gauge route to the north, not a high speed one.

If this is the case, there should certainly be some considerations about this, it could be solved by an effective HS2 - HS1 link (as glbotu desperately tries to shut the can of worms he's just opened........).

What I said was that sorting out things which cannot presently be done well, or at all, should be a higher priority both for money and for "drive" than things which are done well already. If you're going to spend billions on building new lines, build them in places where the existing railway system is useless, not where it's excellent.

...I don't intend to bother trying to cut journey times between London and Manchester. They are short enough already - they comfortably beat the car, and since the journey by car isn't going to get any faster, the train doesn't need to either. Instead I'd cut journey times between, say, Bedford/Luton/Northampton et al and Cambridge/East Anglia, or South Wales and Cardigan Bay, where you go by car and if you haven't got a car you stay at home.

I do agree with you that we should be looking at everywhere from a public transport perspective. The point being that the WCML is currently very overcrowded and is only going to get worse.

I would very much like to see a government that puts getting people out of their cars as a top priority, but remember that governments want to appeal to voters. In places where public transport is currently poor, everyone drives, which means that easy votes go to supporting drivers. In places where it's good, everyone gets public transport, so easy votes go to supporting public transport.

Welcome to failings of capitalist-bipartite-democracy 101.

Maglev in a vacuum tunnel. Transporter beams. A giant catapult in each city that throws people into the air and an enormous foam rubber glove on a two-hundred-foot spring to catch them at the other end...

Don't give them ideas. Virgin Elastic anyone?

Anyway, my stance on HS2 is "cautious support", I think it'll do a job, but it won't be a miracle. Whether we should instead consider spending £50bn somewhere else is a totally different question.

 

[Snapper]

New blog on UKIP, Hs2 & the election campaign.

"As if the fact all the major political parties have now endorsed Hs2 in their manifesto’s,there’s yet more disastrous news for the anti Hs2 campaign, c/o newspaper ‘City AM’ & polling company electionforecast.co.uk. They’ve looked at how UKIP are polling in their 12 target seats. "...

https://paulbigland.wordpress.com/2...ign-goes-from-bad-to-worse-for-the-hs2-antis/

 

[The Planner]

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H00342/2015/04/14/advanced

Does this freight service need to stop? It certainly isn't stopping everywhere and anywhere along the WCML like a stopping passenger service would.

LOL, without wishing to get involved in the argument, that is a bad example. Find one that runs during the day, not in the middle of the night with nothing else around it. Once your south of Northampton on the slows you run until Wembley or you stop in Kings Langley (which that does...) as there is nowhere else to stop. If the freight is longer than 500m you have no choice but to run it in a lot of cases as we don't have enough loops that are long enough.

Which is wonderful, except freight and slow passenger service do run at approximately the same speed, so your point is meaningless.

Can't remember the exact figure, but it is widely quoted within the industry that the average freight speed taking into account being looped is in the low 20mph area.

 

[DownSouth]

Can't remember the exact figure, but it is widely quoted within the industry that the average freight speed taking into account being looped is in the low 20mph area.

That might be a plausible figure for the whole end-to-end journey time, but what is of more interest here comparing the cruising speed of the freight trains with the station to station average speed of a stopping passenger train.

A non-stop freight train cruising at 60mph is going to have no trouble keeping up with a stopping passenger train which hits a maximum speed in excess of 100mph.

My local line in South Australia has a single track broad gauge commuter line running alongside the standard gauge national network. The modern DEMUs with 375kW of power in each car (and geared for 90 km/h with EMU-like acceleration) are much faster than the national freight trains going up the sustained 1 in 45 gradient, but even a well-loaded 1500 metre long steel train requiring 3x 3300kW AC locomotives will easily beat the commuter train over the segment run in parallel thanks to the station calls.

 

[Voglitz]

No, the 'fast' lines would become 'medium' lines, with HS2 as the 'fast' lines instead. You wouldn't have any non-stop services using the tracks.

The Andrew McNaughton 'released capacity' slide number 13 shows that Fast lines would not be used as a second pair of Slow lines.

How would you improve metropolitan transport then? Manchester already has a well-fleshed out tram system and its heavy rail system is being electrified right now.

Like other provincial conurbations, Manchester's public transport system is not very good. There'd be lots of scope to improve it, with funds reallocated from HS2.

Do you mean spending billions on underground railways which aren't actually necessary for areas with the sorts of population density and land values that they have?

No.

Three fast paths along the Stockport corridor.

One fast path along the Stockport corridor in the peak.

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H00342/2015/04/14/advanced

Does this freight service need to stop? It certainly isn't stopping everywhere and anywhere along the WCML like a stopping passenger service would.

Whether it 'needs' to stop or not, it was scheduled to run at 0 mph, on the southern part of the West Coast line. Slower than a passenger train.

Which is wonderful, except freight and slow passenger service do run at approximately the same speed, so your point is meaningless.

If freight trains 'ran at approximately the same speed', there wouldn't be a need to loop them. As Prof McNaughton's slide demonstrates, with HS2, the number of West Coast Slow lines passenger trains would not change much; so there is no additional capacity for freight. If you think that's a meaningless point, that's too bad.

How would you cut journey times from Greater Manchester to Greater London?

I presume you mean, "How would you cut rail journey times from Greater Manchester to Greater London?"

Like 99-odd % of the population, I don't make that journey, so it's not really a concern to me. It seems fast enough as it is.

All the indications are that travel time is not even a concern for most of the people who do make the journey. Furthermore, there's no sign of those people who aren't satisfied with the journey time, being willing to bear the cost of reducing it.

You can't rebuild the Mancunian rail network so that everywhere and anywhere has frequent non-stop services to the centre; you have to accept that some places will take many minutes to reach from the city centre.

In which post did I say that you could rebuild the Mancunian rail network so that everywhere and anywhere has frequent non-stop services to the centre?

By your logic, the only people we should invest in are those using London's buses since even more people use those than use the Tube.

That's your logic, from your extrapolation.

Which would be wonderful, if you want only a small increase in capacity. If you want to get much more capacity, your business case starts to go down and down. None of the upgrade proposals provided as many extra seats in total as HS2 while retaining comfort and journey times.

Unfortunately, there's no business case for carting air around at 200 mph. As was previously demonstrated, it's possible to vastly increase capacity on the existing tracks. According to the McNulty report, the existing rail network could be handling double the current passenger and freight volumes by 2030.

But we're not subsidising long distance rail commuting,

Rail commuting is very heavily subsidised.

any more than it is already necessary as a consequence of providing a service that people can use anyway.

What does that mean?

HS2 commuters would be just as common as those commuting on long distance services today; a Manchester-London fare on HS2 would cost more than a distance taking the same time along the GWML.

How do you know? Have you got a crystal ball?

 

[NotATrainspott]

The Andrew McNaughton 'released capacity' slide number 13 shows that Fast lines would not be used as a second pair of Slow lines.

The fast lines would be used for 'medium' services which call at basically all major stations along the route. I'm not suggesting they would duplicate the slow line service pattern.

Like other provincial conurbations, Manchester's public transport system is not very good. There'd be lots of scope to improve it, with funds reallocated from HS2.

So how are you going to spend the money then? Metrolink can only cost so much, and it's basically all you need. Realistically, the maximum amount of money you can spend in these places is far smaller, because the demands of the place are significantly different. For example, there's no need to build an Underground to take passengers transferring from mainline stations to the centre (as there is in London) because the mainline stations are already close enough to the centre for many people to be able to walk, and the rest would be fine transferring to a tram. The same applies across all non-London cities.

One fast path along the Stockport corridor in the peak.

The three paths freed up by Phase 2 would be used by alternative services where seats would not be taken up by long-distance passengers to London.

Whether it 'needs' to stop or not, it was scheduled to run at 0 mph, on the southern part of the West Coast line. Slower than a passenger train.

If freight trains 'ran at approximately the same speed', there wouldn't be a need to loop them. As Prof McNaughton's slide demonstrates, with HS2, the number of West Coast Slow lines passenger trains would not change much; so there is no additional capacity for freight. If you think that's a meaningless point, that's too bad.

And that's because the current slow line timetable isn't able to be properly consistent, because the slows have to take services which skip stops because there's not enough capacity on the fast lines to take them. Just because something is the case at the moment doesn't mean that would be the case after HS2 is built, since the point of HS2 is to allow massive change on the WCML.

I presume you mean, "How would you cut rail journey times from Greater Manchester to Greater London?"

Like 99-odd % of the population, I don't make that journey, so it's not really a concern to me. It seems fast enough as it is.

All the indications are that travel time is not even a concern for most of the people who do make the journey. Furthermore, there's no sign of those people who aren't satisfied with the journey time, being willing to bear the cost of reducing it.

99% of the population aren't going to be interested in a vast majority of projects the Government can invest in, but that doesn't mean you don't do it. Journey times aren't a problem today because people don't actually consider life with shorter ones - the sorts of things that are enabled by faster journey times aren't things which are obvious today. When you have shortened journey times, you get effects that are difficult for most people to predict, and these aren't going to be bad ones. If they would be, then there would be a case in making the railways slower once again.

In which post did I say that you could rebuild the Mancunian rail network so that everywhere and anywhere has frequent non-stop services to the centre?

You're criticising HS2 because it won't speed up journeys within Greater Manchester, despite these being somewhat unrelated.

That's your logic, from your extrapolation.

No, you're arguing that HS2 is worthless because it doesn't help most of the people in this country. With that line of argument, the only schemes which are worth investing in are the ones which directly affect the largest number of people possible.

Unfortunately, there's no business case for carting air around at 200 mph. As was previously demonstrated, it's possible to vastly increase capacity on the existing tracks. According to the McNulty report, the existing rail network could be handling double the current passenger and freight volumes by 2030.

Oh dear goodness. Is this the best you can do?

Surprisingly enough, there's plenty of space for the rail network AS A WHOLE to carry twice as many people by 2030, because the rail network includes lines like Stoke-Derby or Newcastle-Carlisle. If passenger numbers double as a whole, dealing with the extra passengers on these lines would consist of doubling up trains to be a mere two or four carriages each. Doubling passenger numbers on the WCML means you would need to run either twice as many trains or make them twice as long, and that's just not going to happen.

Rail commuting is very heavily subsidised.

As is basically everything in life. If you want ideological purity about subsidies, there's plenty of bigger fish to fry.

What does that mean?

People using the rail network is a good thing because they're not driving around in cars, polluting and taking up space in car parks. If we want people to be able to use trains at all, we need to subsidise them. When we subsidise them, it inevitably means that some people find it appropriate to use them to commute to and from work. Is that really a problem? Does everyone need to live within walking distance of their workplace?

How do you know? Have you got a crystal ball?

Because the HS2 business case assumes as much. Ticket prices aren't based on journey times; they're based on distances and then some yield management is applied. One hour out of Paddington will take you to Swindon but one hour out of Euston on HS2 will take you to Manchester Airport. Since HS2 tickets will be in line with current ticket prices on the InterCity operators, a Manchester ticket will cost you significantly more than a Swindon one, so the amount of commuting that will happen over that distance will be comparatively much lower. A 12:00 ticket tomorrow from London to each costs £26 and £80 for Swindon and Manchester, respectively, while a yearly season ticket costs £8,000 or £14,000, respectively.

 

[Voglitz]

So how are you going to spend the money then? Metrolink can only cost so much, and it's basically all you need.

The vast majority of journeys in Greater Manchester are not made by Metrolink. It might be basically all you need, but it probably isn't what most Mancunians need.

For example, there's no need to build an Underground to take passengers transferring from mainline stations to the centre (as there is in London) because the mainline stations are already close enough to the centre for many people to be able to walk, and the rest would be fine transferring to a tram. The same applies across all non-London cities.

I didn't suggest building an Underground to take passengers transferring from mainline stations to the centre. Although plenty of cities on the Continent, of similar size to British ones, do have underground metros.

The three paths freed up by Phase 2 would be used by alternative services where seats would not be taken up by long-distance passengers to London.

According to Figure 6-4 of the PFM Assumptions report, there would be one Stockport corridor long distance path freed up in Phase 2.

And that's because the current slow line timetable isn't able to be properly consistent, because the slows have to take services which skip stops because there's not enough capacity on the fast lines to take them. Just because something is the case at the moment doesn't mean that would be the case after HS2 is built, since the point of HS2 is to allow massive change on the WCML.

The PFM Assumptions report modelled the use of the WCML, after HS2 is built. In the report, there is no sign of any freight capacity uplift on the southern West Coast route from HS2.

99% of the population aren't going to be interested in a vast majority of projects the Government can invest in, but that doesn't mean you don't do it. Journey times aren't a problem today because people don't actually consider life with shorter ones - the sorts of things that are enabled by faster journey times aren't things which are obvious today. When you have shortened journey times, you get effects that are difficult for most people to predict, and these aren't going to be bad ones. If they would be, then there would be a case in making the railways slower once again.

What might be a problem, is spending £50,000,000,000 to knock 2 hours off a journey most Mancunians would not even make once in a whole year.

You're criticising HS2 because it won't speed up journeys within Greater Manchester, despite these being somewhat unrelated.

Please stop misrepresenting my position. I'm criticising HS2 because, compared to alternative investments, it is high cost, high risk, and poor value for money.

If "speeding up journeys" is an objective of the importance you seem to think it is, it would make more sense to improve transport within provincial cities - rather than transport between London and those cities.

No, you're arguing that HS2 is worthless because it doesn't help most of the people in this country. With that line of argument, the only schemes which are worth investing in are the ones which directly affect the largest number of people possible.

HS2 is high cost, high risk, and poor value for money. My line of argument is that HS2 is a top-down scheme backed by politicians, special interests, and rail enthusiasts, rather than by the general public.

Oh dear goodness. Is this the best you can do?

Surprisingly enough, there's plenty of space for the rail network AS A WHOLE to carry twice as many people by 2030, because the rail network includes lines like Stoke-Derby or Newcastle-Carlisle. If passenger numbers double as a whole, dealing with the extra passengers on these lines would consist of doubling up trains to be a mere two or four carriages each. Doubling passenger numbers on the WCML means you would need to run either twice as many trains or make them twice as long, and that's just not going to happen.

If ~1,500 million passenger journeys are made in 2015, and passenger volumes are to 'double by 2030', that would mean another 1,500 million need to be accommodated in fifteen years. The vast majority of those extra journeys are not going to be between Stoke and Derby, or Newcastle and Carlisle. They would be on commuter routes into the big cities, and on the main lines.

People using the rail network is a good thing because they're not driving around in cars, polluting and taking up space in car parks.

There's no evidence that travel by HS2 would be less polluting than by car, or more space-efficient.

If we want people to be able to use trains at all, we need to subsidise them.

Why do we need to long distance subsidise trains, but not long distance coaches, for example?

Does everyone need to live within walking distance of their workplace?

Who suggested that everyone needs to live within walking distance of their workplace?

 

[Geezertronic]

What might be a problem, is spending £50,000,000,000 to knock 2 hours off a journey most Mancunians would not even make once in a whole year.

So is the approach against HS2 moved from it only being a London to Birmingham line to only being a London to Manchester line? I'm confused, what about the other destinations that would benefit from HS2 apart from Birmingham and Manchester? Have these been forgotten about again? And I wonder how many Mancunians do the current WCML journey more than once in a whole year?

Living as I do in Birmingham I am unlikely to use Thameslink and CrossRail even once in a whole year, nor the Northern Hub and East-West Rail proposals, and the same can be said for most large infrastructure projects that don't involve the M1, M4, M5, M11, M25, M42 etc... but I am not against these for the reason that I won't benefit from them

 

[AE]

There's no evidence that travel by HS2 would be less polluting than by car, or more space-efficient.

Genuine quote from the article ...

"At present, if you look at a modern lightweight diesel car, fully laden, and a modern 125mph train, also fully laden, there is not actually very much difference between energy consumption."

Disregarding all of the caveats surrounding how full trains are compared to cars, doesn't that mean that the train uses energy more effectively, since it uses a similar amount of energy per person but gets you to your destination in less time?

 

[The Ham]

Genuine quote from the article ...

"At present, if you look at a modern lightweight diesel car, fully laden, and a modern 125mph train, also fully laden, there is not actually very much difference between energy consumption."

Disregarding all of the caveats surrounding how full trains are compared to cars, doesn't that mean that the train uses energy more effectively, since it uses a similar amount of energy per person but gets you to your destination in less time?

One thing overlooked in the article is that it takes a lot of power to produce a car. If a car does 100,000 miles over its life the energy used to make it is the same as it uses to drive around. Before anyone says about cars that have done 200,000 miles and so cars can use less power than suggested above you also need to consider the cars that get written off a lot sooner.

Compare this to trains which can do millions of miles over their lifespan, meaning that the energy used to produce the trains is likely to be smaller per mile than cars.

 

[DownSouth]

Compare this to trains which can do millions of miles over their lifespan, meaning that the energy used to produce the trains is likely to be smaller per mile than cars.

You would hope a rail vehicle would be good for at least 2 million miles, given that a rail vehicle is roughly 20 times the weight of a car and so would consume roughly 20 times the energy in construction.

 

[AM9]

You would hope a rail vehicle would be good for at least 2 million miles, given that a rail vehicle is roughly 20 times the weight of a car and so would consume roughly 20 times the energy in construction.

And carries 10 times the number of passengers (in practice the average number of passengers of a car is probably somewhere between 1 & 2) so maybe the ratio is more like 20.

 

[The Ham]

You would hope a rail vehicle would be good for at least 2 million miles, given that a rail vehicle is roughly 20 times the weight of a car and so would consume roughly 20 times the energy in construction.

2 million miles over 30 years would work out at about 350 miles a day if a train works for 200 days a year. Over a 10 hour day it would need to clock up 35 miles an hour. Based on those figures I would suggest that 2million miles would be achievable.

 

[Noddy]

Genuine quote from the article ...

"At present, if you look at a modern lightweight diesel car, fully laden, and a modern 125mph train, also fully laden, there is not actually very much difference between energy consumption."

Are 91s and a rake of Mark 4s a modern train? I would say they're 1980s technology. I presume the IEPs (for example) will be more energy efficient?

 

[HSTEd]

A modern 125mph train will leave the car in the dust.
Pendos manage 88mph in service average.

And a 140mph Javelin averages 100mph with rather shorter stop intervals.

 

[Ironside]

So now we almost certainly have a new conservative govenment intent on building HS2 will that be enough to ensure that the bill goes through parliament? Obviously some conservatives will oppose it but will Ed Milliband or his replacement change their mind on the subject?

 

[quantinghome]

So now we almost certainly have a new conservative govenment intent on building HS2 will that be enough to ensure that the bill goes through parliament? Obviously some conservatives will oppose it but will Ed Milliband or his replacement change their mind on the subject?

No. HS2 has proven to be a complete non-issue in the election. Anti-HS2 candidates have not performed at all well. The independent in Westminster North stood on an anti-HS2 platform got 63 votes. The Greens have failed to gain any seats, and it's just been announced that Nigel Farage has lost in Thanet South.

So where are we? The minor anti-HS2 parties have failed to make any inroads in terms of seats, and the independent anti-HS2 candidates have completely failed as well.

As well as snuffing out several political careers in the big (or formerly big) parties, this election has clearly signified the end of the anti-HS2 movement as a significant force (which in truth it never was in the first place).

 

[Busaholic]

No. HS2 has proven to be a complete non-issue in the election. Anti-HS2 candidates have not performed at all well. The independent in Westminster North stood on an anti-HS2 platform got 63 votes. The Greens have failed to gain any seats, and it's just been announced that Nigel Farage has lost in Thanet South.

So where are we? The minor anti-HS2 parties have failed to make any inroads in terms of seats, and the independent anti-HS2 candidates have completely failed as well.

As well as snuffing out several political careers in the big (or formerly big) parties, this election has clearly signified the end of the anti-HS2 movement as a significant force (which in truth it never was in the first place).

Ed Balls, who was known to be lukewarm to the project, lost his seat. Note that B. Johnson, in his acceptance speech, spoke of 'mitigating the effects of building HS2' on Londoners and, with Cameron already having announced his departure before the next election, the jockeying for position as next leader starts right now.