Reopening Railways/Reinstating services as an alternative to HS2?

[Jorge Da Silva]

Would it be worth reopening railway lines closed during BR as an alternative to HS2? Lets assume the price tag is £80bn for HS2, using that money would it be worth reopening rail lines or reinstating services (such as Manchester-London via MML) instead of HS2? If so, which ones?

 

[Weekender]

Surely everybody is now aware that if HS2 is cancelled, the money is lost as far as railways are concerned.

 

[tbtc]

What routes though?

I mean, the vague OP sounds lovely in theory but which routes would provide anything like the benefits of HS2?

You mention Manchester - MML - London, so is that the line through Bakewell? Would that be requiring an additional pair of tracks from London to Derby to accommodate the increased frequency (given that there are already plenty of trains on the line, so many that the EMT services had to be reduced to accommodate all of the Thameslink trains)... how fast would you be building a line twisting through Bakewell so that it was competitive with the existing Manchester - London services? Or is this via the Hope Valley (where the freight already gets in the way of two and a half passenger services per hour but it might take five years just to redouble the short chord at Dore)? Where's the capacity at Piccadilly for all this? And the capacity at St Pancras?

Everything sounds good in theory, and would probably be popular amongst a nostalgic electorate, but eventually you get to a stage where you have to accept that (a) there's precious little spare capacity on existing lines and (b) it's much simpler to build brand new alignments than try tinkering with existing lines (look at how long the short bit of track at Dore is going to take).

Or would the idea be to provide an alternative to HS2 by focussing instead on lines like Aberystwyth - Carmarthen?

 

[tasky]

The government doesn't have a pot of money sitting around that it's deciding to spent on HS2, that simply isn't how public finances work. A business case is built for HS2 and bonds are issued to borrow to build it, on the basis that the benefits of the project cover the costs.

Without HS2 those bonds would not be issued. If you can come up with a rail project that has similarly high benefits, you can do that too - you don't need to cancel HS2. That is mostly a question of political will.

But cancelling HS2 isn't going to make £80 billion pounds appear in a government bank account somewhere that you can splurge on other things.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings the public seem to have about government finance, and you can probably mostly blame the David Cameron government and George Osborne for talking about the public finances in this way constantly in order to sell austerity. But it isn't true.

 

[Polarbear]

Whilst there may well be some lines that could be reopened, there’s no way that they could provide anywhere near the benefits that HS2 can do.

Additional services on reopened lines would also require significant extra capacity at junctions & stations. That would also cost a significant sum of money.

Finally, as most (if not all) the London terminals are near to or at capacity, this would also need to be addressed.

Hard to see all of that coming out of a budget of £80bn.

 

[Journeyman]

Cue comments about reopening the GC, bonus points if you perpetuate the "continental loading gauge" myth.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Cue comments about reopening the GC, bonus points if you perpetuate the "continental loading gauge" myth.

See City Metric's reason why it is not alternative.

 

[Journeyman]

See City Metric's reason why it is not alternative.

I've never thought it was alternative for a second - it's a dead duck. It's just a lot of enthusiasts seem desperate to get it back.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

I've never thought it was alternative for a second - it's a dead duck. It's just a lot of enthusiasts seem desperate to get it back.

Also its not much cheaper. Lots of tunnels required, potentially a new terminal, underground stations, no Birmingham, no Leeds the list goes on. JUST BUILD HS2

 

[JKF]

In the absence of HS2 you could probably promote a reasonable case for upgrades on lines serving the same places, e.g. ECML upgrades such as grade separation & new build sections (the bottle neck at Welwyn viaduct perhaps), or similar schemes on the WCML (if they exist!). It doesn’t suddenly make nonsense like rebuilding the Waverley route viable.

The greatest gains for high speed lines are fast sections into termini built without conflicts, which are potentially the most expensive sections to construct. It seems to take forever to get into places like Manchester Piccadilly, Leeds or some London termini. HS1 style tunnels from platform to city perimeter would make a significant difference to journey times.