Restarting HS2a

[Grimsby town]

Despite the fact HS2 would massively improve local rail services in her constituency on both the Mid Cheshire and Crewe Lines.

She constantly moans about the lack of services on the Mid-Cheshire line but also opposes the one project that would allow more services on the Mid-Cheshire line....

 

[The Mercian]

Most people don't catch trains.
Like these people in Northamptonshire

Latest HS2 delay 'extends the agony' says Northants villages

People living near the route face disruption for at least another nine years.

www.bbc.co.uk

So we just don’t build anything then? Of course we’ve got this horribly wrong in terms of impact and HS2 Ltd and the DfT and Govt in general have managed it appallingly badly but it should never deflect from why we’re building the bloody thing in the first place.

 

[Farigiraf]

Most people don't catch trains.
Like these people in Northamptonshire

Latest HS2 delay 'extends the agony' says Northants villages

People living near the route face disruption for at least another nine years.

www.bbc.co.uk

They don't catch trains because there's no decent train service. There's no decent train service because they object to it whenever the opportunity comes up! Mind boggling some of the logic that gets onto the national news.

 

[The Mercian]

She constantly moans about the lack of services on the Mid-Cheshire line but also opposes the one project that would allow more services on the Mid-Cheshire line....

Logic never was Esther’s strong point. She’s as thick as mince. I used to be a constituent and the replies I got to a couple of letters raising some minor queries beggared belief. I think she also opposes the Airport Western connection as well <rolls eyes>

 

[Nottingham59]

They don't catch trains because there's no decent train service.

Unfortunately for that argument, there's no decent train service because there's no railway. These villages are miles from the nearest station. Nobody who needed to catch trains regularly to London or elsewhere would ever choose to live there.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2026 ==

She constantly moans about the lack of services on the Mid-Cheshire line but also opposes the one project that would allow more services on the Mid-Cheshire line....

Do you really believe that HS2 phase 2b would lead to increased services on the Mid Cheshire line? Who will pay for it? If there's such a demand, why are the current trains all 2 coaches, even in the morning rush hour?

 

[Farigiraf]

Nobody who needed to catch trains regularly to London or elsewhere would ever choose to live there.

I fail to believe that they'd never have a reason to regularly travel to Banbury, Northampton or MK. On all of these occasions, they drive. If there were a railway, they'd take the train. I understand that argument if one buys a house in the deepest Highlands or on the Isles of Scilly, but rural Northamptonshire is not really a well-known key retirement spot, most people there have either lived there for generations or live there because it's cheaper to get a house in the sticks and commute in to the nearest large town. I'm not saying that supporting HS2 would directly lead to them gaining a railway station, but a general pro-rail infrastructure national mindset would allow for a rolling program of reopenings which would eventually reach rural Northamptonshire as well.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2026 ==

Do you really believe that HS2 phase 2b would lead to increased services on the Mid Cheshire line?

HS2 to Crewe would move the plans for reinstating passenger services through Middlewich further up the priority list. This would give 2tph between Northwich and Stockport. Plus there are plans for a station in Cheadle which would bring increased frequencies.

If there's such a demand, why are the current trains all 2 coaches, even in the morning rush hour?

Northern are notorious for having a DMU shortage practically all across their network. Those 2-cars at rush hour can be very overcrowded. Plus I'm sure many people who currently drive would take the train if it was more frequent.

 

[Grimsby town]

Do you really believe that HS2 phase 2b would lead to increased services on the Mid Cheshire line? Who will pay for it? If there's such a demand, why are the current trains all 2 coaches, even in the morning rush hour?

I'm 100% there would be an additonal service if there was capacity. It was included in Arriva bid for Northern in 2016. I expect there's a lot of suppressed demand from the short formed trains and poor frequency. There's also the potential for additonal stations between Altrincham and Stockport. There's unlikely to be demand to run it through to Chester but it's pretty ridiculous that commuter towns like Knutsford to only have 1 train per hour to the largest cities in the country.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

HS2 to Crewe would move the plans for reinstating passenger services through Middlewich further up the priority list. This would give 2tph between Northwich and Stockport. Plus there are plans for a station in Cheadle which would bring increased frequencies.

How would HS2 bring Middlewich up the priority list? As I understand it, the things stopping Middlewich are (1) the expense of converting/reopening the line to passenger trains, (2) the single track between Altrincham and Stockport, and (3) the lack of spare capacity into Manchester Piccadilly. Of those, HS2 to Crewe will have no impact on (1) or (2) and is likely to make (3) worse by increasing demand for paths for long distance trains from the South into Piccadilly.

Besides, if you want increased frequencies to Northwich, you don't need Middlewich to do that: Just run an additional hourly Manchester-Northwich service. Except we can't because problems (2) and (3) above.

 

[AlexSJW]

She seems to know more about Monty Python than about the overflowing West Coast Mainline, the need to relieve it and the need to keep the UK economy going..

From mid 2025 document:
Instead of high-speed rail
Northern transport schemes that will work

As No10 transport adviser, the author repeatedly asked for evidence
that the WCML would soon be full, but was never given any. Avanti
West Coast runs 48 trains every weekday from Manchester to London,
providing just over 27,000 seats in this direction each weekday. The
Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, says that in 2023/4 there were
3.4 million rail journeys between Manchester and Camden (the London
borough in which Euston, the WCML terminus, sits.) That is an average
of 9,300 per day.
...
...
Thus across the average day only about a third of the service’s current
seating capacity from Manchester to London is used. At 2 per cent growth
per year, it would take 53 years, not the claimed 12, to fill it. Of course,
more passengers will join at intermediate stops (though Manchester is by
far the busiest); some trains will be busier than others; there are slightly
fewer trains at weekends; and about 4,700 of the 27,000 seats are first
class, though first class passengers are also included in the 9,300 daily
total.

The figures clearly do not, however, support any claim that the WCML
is full, or nearly full, or is going to be full any time soon. Indeed, some
services on the line have recently been reduced (the number of fast trains
from London to Birmingham has been cut by about a third since 2019,
for instance.)
-------------------
An analysis based on Office of Rail and Road figures for 2023/24, the WCML is not at full passenger seating capacity. On average, only about one-third of the current seating capacity on services from Manchester to London is utilized. The figures provided suggest it would take 53 years, at a 2 percent annual growth rate, to fill the current capacity between Manchester and London. More information is available on the Office of Rail and Road website.

 

[JamesT]

From mid 2025 document:
Instead of high-speed rail
Northern transport schemes that will work

As No10 transport adviser, the author repeatedly asked for evidence
that the WCML would soon be full, but was never given any. Avanti
West Coast runs 48 trains every weekday from Manchester to London,
providing just over 27,000 seats in this direction each weekday. The
Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, says that in 2023/4 there were
3.4 million rail journeys between Manchester and Camden (the London
borough in which Euston, the WCML terminus, sits.) That is an average
of 9,300 per day.
...
...
Thus across the average day only about a third of the service’s current
seating capacity from Manchester to London is used. At 2 per cent growth
per year, it would take 53 years, not the claimed 12, to fill it. Of course,
more passengers will join at intermediate stops (though Manchester is by
far the busiest); some trains will be busier than others; there are slightly
fewer trains at weekends; and about 4,700 of the 27,000 seats are first
class, though first class passengers are also included in the 9,300 daily
total.

The figures clearly do not, however, support any claim that the WCML
is full, or nearly full, or is going to be full any time soon. Indeed, some
services on the line have recently been reduced (the number of fast trains
from London to Birmingham has been cut by about a third since 2019,
for instance.)
-------------------
An analysis based on Office of Rail and Road figures for 2023/24, the WCML is not at full passenger seating capacity. On average, only about one-third of the current seating capacity on services from Manchester to London is utilized. The figures provided suggest it would take 53 years, at a 2 percent annual growth rate, to fill the current capacity between Manchester and London. More information is available on the Office of Rail and Road website.

What document is this from? Who is the author?
It's a very disingenuous argument to take the passenger numbers going end to end and spread that across the entire day's services to declare it's not full. It grudgingly acknowledges some passengers use intermediate stations and some services are busier than others. An empty train that gets to Euston at 2pm is no use for the traveller who needs to be in London at the start of the working day.
The other point is that WCML is full in terms of number of trains. Avanti may not necessarily be full and standing, but LNWR are. There's no space in the timetable to fit in more LNWR without taking away some Avanti. Which destinations would you suggest don't deserve their current level of service?
This is just relitigating Phase 1 again. The solution that has been identified is to take the non-stop express services off the WCML to free up space for more local and freight trains.
The question now is what to do with them once they get North of Birmingham. Just dump them on the WCML at Handsacre, some other scheme to bypass the bottlenecks there, or perhaps carry on and build the already designed scheme that gets to Crewe...

 

[HSTEd]

The Avanti ticketing regime is notoriously bad at actually utilising the capacity of the trains however.

Enormous peak fares and all that.

 

[absolutelymilk]

The Avanti ticketing regime is notoriously bad at actually utilising the capacity of the trains however.

Enormous peak fares and all that.

The alternative is either lowering the peak fare and having even more severe overcrowding on the busiest services, or moving to the LNER model which is not particularly popular on here...

 

[HSTEd]

The alternative is either lowering the peak fare and having even more severe overcrowding on the busiest services, or moving to the LNER model which is not particularly popular on here...

You could also increase the number of peak pricing bands.

 

[Trainbike46]

The alternative is either lowering the peak fare and having even more severe overcrowding on the busiest services, or moving to the LNER model which is not particularly popular on here...

No, this isn't correct. The solution is to make more advance fares available on those services that are quiet. This requires neither the reduction of the peak fare nor the abolition of the off-peak fare.

Though given how absurd some Avanti peak fares are, and the damage they are doing to the image of the industry as a whole, lowering some of them may be a good idea.

 

[Peter Sarf]

From mid 2025 document:
Instead of high-speed rail
Northern transport schemes that will work

As No10 transport adviser, the author repeatedly asked for evidence
that the WCML would soon be full, but was never given any. Avanti
West Coast runs 48 trains every weekday from Manchester to London,
providing just over 27,000 seats in this direction each weekday. The
Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, says that in 2023/4 there were
3.4 million rail journeys between Manchester and Camden (the London
borough in which Euston, the WCML terminus, sits.) That is an average
of 9,300 per day.
...
...
Thus across the average day only about a third of the service’s current
seating capacity from Manchester to London is used. At 2 per cent growth
per year, it would take 53 years, not the claimed 12, to fill it. Of course,
more passengers will join at intermediate stops (though Manchester is by
far the busiest); some trains will be busier than others; there are slightly
fewer trains at weekends; and about 4,700 of the 27,000 seats are first
class, though first class passengers are also included in the 9,300 daily
total.

The figures clearly do not, however, support any claim that the WCML
is full, or nearly full, or is going to be full any time soon. Indeed, some
services on the line have recently been reduced (the number of fast trains
from London to Birmingham has been cut by about a third since 2019,
for instance.)
-------------------
An analysis based on Office of Rail and Road figures for 2023/24, the WCML is not at full passenger seating capacity. On average, only about one-third of the current seating capacity on services from Manchester to London is utilized. The figures provided suggest it would take 53 years, at a 2 percent annual growth rate, to fill the current capacity between Manchester and London. More information is available on the Office of Rail and Road website.

Those are average daily figures. They do not reflect what happens on the peak services morning and evening on intercity.
They also do not reflect the fact that the full and standing LNWR services cannot be increased without removing some/many of the faster intercity services.

If the passengers wanting a full day at their destination London can be persuaded to travel off peak and get less done at their destination then all well and good.
But so far the more expensive fares in the peaks to entice passengers on to off peak trains are not achieving that.

 

[AlexSJW]

What document is this from? Who is the author?
It's a very disingenuous argument to take the passenger numbers going end to end and spread that across the entire day's services to declare it's not full. It grudgingly acknowledges some passengers use intermediate stations and some services are busier than others. An empty train that gets to Euston at 2pm is no use for the traveller who needs to be in London at the start of the working day.
The other point is that WCML is full in terms of number of trains. Avanti may not necessarily be full and standing, but LNWR are. There's no space in the timetable to fit in more LNWR without taking away some Avanti. Which destinations would you suggest don't deserve their current level of service?
This is just relitigating Phase 1 again. The solution that has been identified is to take the non-stop express services off the WCML to free up space for more local and freight trains.
The question now is what to do with them once they get North of Birmingham. Just dump them on the WCML at Handsacre, some other scheme to bypass the bottlenecks there, or perhaps carry on and build the already designed scheme that gets to Crewe...

I gave the document's name.
Far too many trains are carrying fresh air rather than people.

Those are average daily figures. They do not reflect what happens on the peak services morning and evening on intercity.
They also do not reflect the fact that the full and standing LNWR services cannot be increased without removing some/many of the faster intercity services.

If the passengers wanting a full day at their destination London can be persuaded to travel off peak and get less done at their destination then all well and good.
But so far the more expensive fares in the peaks to entice passengers on to off peak trains are not achieving that.

From the same document...

Much overcrowding on the North’s railways is caused by the practice of
running extremely short trains. Of the 43 trains departing Leeds in the
weekday peak hour between 5 and 6pm, around half, 21 trains, have only
two or three carriages. Around a third of the express trains between
Leeds and Manchester each day have only three carriages. The rest only
have five or six carriages. Almost no train anywhere in the North, apart
from those to London and a small minority of cross-country trains to
Birmingham and Bristol, has more than six carriages.

The 5-6pm hour at London’s busiest terminal, Waterloo, also sees 43
train departures, but of these 37 have eight carriages or more and only
one has less than four carriages. Indeed, very few trains of any kind in
south-east England are shorter than four carriages. All London’s Elizabeth
line trains have nine carriages.

Significant improvements in capacity can be achieved quite quickly by
running longer trains, using hundreds of carriages of modern rolling stock
that are now in storage doing nothing, and by delaying the retirement of
some existing trains. Around 500 carriages, fully compatible with current
standards and some as little as seven years old, are currently in storage or
due to become surplus shortly with no other uses planned for them.
As mentioned before, more than 80 per cent of trains on the
Manchester-Birmingham-Bristol services run by CrossCountry currently
have only three or four standard-class carriages. Last year, around 18 of
the same class of train – the class 221 Super Voyager, with a total of at
least 72 carriages - were made surplus from Avanti West Coast by the new
Evero fleet.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I gave the document's name.
Far too many trains are carrying fresh air rather than people.

Not on the WCML in my experience. Most trains I travel on are generally full. The exceptions tend to be late night trains (and although I haven't used them, I imagine early morning trains heading away from London would be similar), and the London-Chester trains (and I think there is an argument for sending some of those somewhere else). The London-Manchester trains I've been on have invariably been very full.

 

[AlexSJW]

Not on the WCML in my experience.

I gave the figures and where they came from. Unfortunately your experience does not tie up with reality.

 

[Peter Sarf]

I gave the document's name.
Far too many trains are carrying fresh air rather than people.


From the same document...

Much overcrowding on the North’s railways is caused by the practice of
running extremely short trains. Of the 43 trains departing Leeds in the
weekday peak hour between 5 and 6pm, around half, 21 trains, have only
two or three carriages. Around a third of the express trains between
Leeds and Manchester each day have only three carriages. The rest only
have five or six carriages. Almost no train anywhere in the North, apart
from those to London and a small minority of cross-country trains to
Birmingham and Bristol, has more than six carriages.

The 5-6pm hour at London’s busiest terminal, Waterloo, also sees 43
train departures, but of these 37 have eight carriages or more and only
one has less than four carriages. Indeed, very few trains of any kind in
south-east England are shorter than four carriages. All London’s Elizabeth
line trains have nine carriages.

Significant improvements in capacity can be achieved quite quickly by
running longer trains, using hundreds of carriages of modern rolling stock
that are now in storage doing nothing, and by delaying the retirement of
some existing trains. Around 500 carriages, fully compatible with current
standards and some as little as seven years old, are currently in storage or
due to become surplus shortly with no other uses planned for them.
As mentioned before, more than 80 per cent of trains on the
Manchester-Birmingham-Bristol services run by CrossCountry currently
have only three or four standard-class carriages. Last year, around 18 of
the same class of train – the class 221 Super Voyager, with a total of at
least 72 carriages - were made surplus from Avanti West Coast by the new
Evero fleet.

Well this thread is about HS2 Phase 2a and that is to address capacity between the Trent Valley and roughly Crewe/Stoke for similar reasons to HS2 phase 1. Not really Manchester or greater Manchester.

But yes Manchester could pay/ask for longer peak trains rather than waiting for HS2 phase 2b. But I think rolling 2b up with a faster route Liverpool across Manchester and onwards to Leeds (Northern Power House Rail) is also of benefit to the larger area of North not just Manchester.

But for HS2 Phase 1, which gets touched on the argument, the relief is for more trains not lengthening because many are 8, 10 and 12 car already.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Feb 2026 ==

I gave the figures and where they came from. Unfortunately your experience does not tie up with reality.

Experience might well be nearer to reality than a report that does not distinguish between peak and off peak.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I gave the figures and where they came from. Unfortunately your experience does not tie up with reality.

Are you saying all those times I was on packed trains, I was imagining it?

 

[AlexSJW]

Manchester trains stop at Stoke, yet the Stoke figures tend to be rolled into the Manchester figures.

Office of Rail and Road figures for 2023/24, the WCML is not at full passenger seating capacity. On average, only about one-third of the current seating capacity on services from Manchester to London is utilized. Far too many trains on the WCML track carrying fresh air. Manchester does not need three trains an hour during the day for sure. If they have problems in peak hours then add the odd train or make them longer. Liverpool urgently needs three train per hour to London at peak times.

All this: the Manchester trains are rammed to London, is propaganda to get the unneeded phase 2A built. The only section needing retaining is the Fradley to Hixon section, which will add value in forming a section of a Stafford byass. The rest can be binned.

I prefer hard facts myself.

 

[JamesT]

Manchester trains stop at Stoke, yet the Stoke figures tend to be rolled into the Manchester figures.

Office of Rail and Road figures for 2023/24, the WCML is not at full passenger seating capacity. On average, only about one-third of the current seating capacity on services from Manchester to London is utilized. Far too many trains on the WCML track carrying fresh air. Manchester does not need three trains an hour during the day for sure. If they have problems in peak hours then add the odd train or make them longer. Liverpool urgently needs three train per hour to London at peak times.

All this: the Manchester trains are rammed to London, is propaganda to get the unneeded phase 2A built. The only section needing retaining is the Fradley to Hixon section, which will add value in forming a section of a Stafford byass. The rest can be binned.

I prefer hard facts myself.

If you prefer hard facts, you could perhaps not misrepresent them.
It is not that a third of seating capacity is used on services from Manchester to London, it's that a third of the seats are used by travellers going from end to end. It says nothing about the utilization to and from the intermediate stops. Nor does it say anything about utilization in the opposite direction.
There. Is. No. Room. For. More. Trains.
You're not adding the 'odd train' for Manchester, if you want three trains per hour for Liverpool then you have to lose another service.

 

[Noddy]

I gave the document's name.

That document is written by a journalist, not a transport planner, on behalf of a conservative think tank that is rated by Open Democracy as one of the least transparent think tanks in the country (rated the lowest grade E if anyone is interested).

In the documents acknowledgment it states: The author gratefully acknowledges the help of Trevor Parkin, of the Stone Railway Campaign Group. In what follows, we draw heavily on the group’s analysis of the effects of reinstating HS2 Phase 2, and its proposed alternative to reinstatement, which it and we have called HS2 Phase 1+. We also share large parts, though not all, of the group’s analysis of and proposed alternative to Northern Powerhouse Rail. All conclusions, recommendations and judgments are, however, our own. No other individuals or groups are acknowledged. Forgive me if I don’t trust a document which has clearly just copied and pasted a local anti-HS2 groups homework, and hasn’t consulted anyone else to give the document even the slightest hint of not being completely biased.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The
Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, says that in 2023/4 there were
3.4 million rail journeys between Manchester and Camden (the London
borough in which Euston, the WCML terminus, sits.) That is an average
of 9,300 per day.

That phrasing seems to suggest that it's counting rail journeys where the origin and destination were within Manchester and within Camden. If that's the case, What about, say, someone travelling from, say, Manchester to Brighton, or Blackburn to London, or Manchester to Stratford etc.? The London-Manchester Avantis are likely to have quite a few people who are connecting to other services at one or both ends and therefore not actually travelling between Manchester and Camden.

And the thing you seem to be missing is that you're never going to get 100% seat occupancy because the times people want to travel at vary hugely through the week, but the frequency you can put trains on doesn't. On that kind of long distance route, a train at 5am or 9pm is likely to have loads of spare seats compared to a train in the middle of the day. Similarly a train on a Monday afternoon is likely to less full than a train on Friday afternoon. If your aim is for each train to be 100% full then you'd have to run substantially fewer trains on Monday than on Friday, which would mean you have loads of spare capacity for trains on Monday. For those kinds of reasons, the line being at full capacity (defined by, the point at which you're starting to turn passengers who want to travel away because you have no spare seats at the times they are willing to travel) is going to happen well before every train is packed out.

 

[AlexSJW]

That phrasing seems to suggest

It suggests nothing, being hard data.

All conclusions, recommendations and judgments are, however, our own.

But hard data is hard data, and that was given.

It is not that a third of seating capacity is used on services from Manchester to London, it's that a third of the seats are used by travellers going from end to end.

Are you being serious when you write that?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It suggests nothing, being hard data.

Now you're being evasive You have not provided clear information on what precisely those figures are measuring. All we have to go on is the somewhat ambiguous description that I have just drawn attention to: Ambiguous because the description of the data doesn't really make it clear which people it is counting (And talking about passengers to 'Camden' is a quite unusual way of presenting rail passenger data which in itself immediately raises suspicions).

You keep talking about 'hard data' but if you can't explain what that data is measuring or adequately respond to a perfectly reasonable query about whether it is actually measuring what you claim it is measuring, then it isn't hard data at all (at least within this context).

 

[Noddy]

It suggests nothing, being hard data.

But hard data is hard data, and that was given.

Hard data is never ‘hard data’ when it comes from an unreliable source. I suggest you listen to More or Less to get an understanding of how data can be manipulated by bias or to give a predetermined answer. In this case the bias or aims of the unknown funder of the report and/or the amateur campaign group which the ‘analysed’ the data.

 

[AlexSJW]

Hard data is never ‘hard data’ when it comes from an unreliable source.

I gave the gvmt source.

Now you're being evasive You have not provided clear information on what precisely those figures are measuring.

They may be unpalatable to you, but what the figures represented was very clear.
-----------------
phase 2A is best dropped except for the section Fradley to Handsacre.
As it stands:

• Drop the Handsacre branch onto the WCML.
• Then use HS2 from Fradley to the Colwich-Stone line at Hixon.
• Just before Stone Liverpool and Scots trains diverge onto new track to the WCML north of Norton Bridge,
• Manchester trains continue via upgraded line via Stoke, the shortest route, not via Crewe over to the west. Stone, Stoke and Manchester are all above each other, nth-sth.
• That gives an extra 17 miles of high speed track meaning three quarters of the line from London to Manchester is high-speed track.
• High speeds are then possible to just outside Stone.
• Upgrade the line from Norton Bridge to Crewe to 140mph.
• Make WCML all 4-track north of Crewe to at least Weaver junction.
• Journey times to Liverpool and Manchester are then excellent.

This is politically and publicly acceptable. Sorted.

 

[The Planner]

I gave the gvmt source.

They may be unpalatable to you, but what the figures represented was very clear.
-----------------
phase 2A is best dropped except for the section Fradley to Handsacre.
As it stands:

• Drop the Handsacre branch onto the WCML.
• Then use HS2 from Fradley to the Colwich-Stone line at Hixon.
• Just before Stone Liverpool and Scots trains diverge onto new track to the WCML north of Norton Bridge,
• Manchester trains continue via upgraded line via Stoke, the shortest route, not via Crewe over to the west. Stone, Stoke and Manchester are all above each other, nth-sth.
• That gives an extra 17 miles of high speed track meaning three quarters of the line from London to Manchester is high-speed track.
• High speeds are then possible to just outside Stone.
• Upgrade the line from Norton Bridge to Crewe to 140mph.
• Make WCML all 4-track north of Crewe to at least Weaver junction.
• Journey times to Liverpool and Manchester are then excellent.

This is politically and publicly acceptable. Sorted.

How much cheaper would that be compared to 2A? considering what would be needed in terms of resignalling all of Crewe and the costs of 4 tracking Crewe Weaver? Norton Bridge to Crewe at 140 vs 125 gives you a massive 1 minute saving.

 

[Noddy]

I gave the gvmt source.

No. You have quoted a report which is claiming a figure for London to Camden only, at the exclusion of other journeys.