SE High Speed via Faversham

[HSTEd]

Honestly, I wish we had more, longer, platforms at St Pancras.

But the service was added as an afterthought, as people have noted above.

As a result we have a poorly utilised and yet very expensive high speed line.

 

[43066]

Honestly, I wish we had more, longer, platforms at St Pancras.

But the service was added as an afterthought, as people have noted above.

As a result we have a poorly utilised and yet very expensive high speed line.

Passengers arriving into the equally inadequate platforms on the far opposite side of the station to the SE services would also agree with this.

 

[STINT47]

If they need to increase capacity they could run more double sets. When I went out the other Saturday there were plenty of single sets out without hers sat in sidings around the network

 

[Benjwri]

There’s also the question of what you want to happen to the trains and paths? There isn’t significant overcrowding on Victoria or St Pancras trains, so this suggests people are able to get the trains they want. Why would you want to make people change trains, since presumably the paths would be used for Victoria trains, which would likely run far more empty as people would change to HS1 to get to London.

What also happens to the Class 395s? There are the right amount to run the current service, and not the space at St Pancras to significantly increase frequency, so would the trains just sit empty, or be sent elsewhere? The only possible use for them I could see is sending them to an ECML operator followed by a cascade of some 80xs to GWR to give them some more 9 cars, but even then the benefits are doubtful and the top speed of the 395s would be wasted.

 

[AM9]

The trains have been running the service since 2009 and between the 2012 Olympics and the start of the pandemic, they were getting reasonable loads, both in the peaks and off peak. They provide a good level of comfort in standard class which exceeds some of the first class offerings, which is probably why some passengers are quite happy to use the trains despite the higher price, - although the off-peak fares are not much more via HS1 than the classic route. Judging the viability of the service post COVID-19 is probably a little premature, but comparing it with other routes from London doesn't make it look that expensive.
There's no more wastage on the Javerlin service than any other mainline in the south-east, as the CTRL exists, and is paid for by Eurostar services. Were the Javelins to disappear, there would be empty paths along the line. I detect a level of envy here but the 395s are very unlikey to run anywhere else.

 

[Horizon22]

All that said, the service is well used, with a SE director telling me a few years back that the company wished more stock had been ordered (COVID may have changed that).

I just personally find it quite wasteful having them crawl along main lines. Think back to the rounder days, a journey in excess of 3.5 hours and yet only a little over an hour of which was truly high speed

But where else would they go? The high speed line eventually runs out and it would be even more wasteful - not to mention the capacity issues - terminating everything at Ashford.

If anything the recent reduction to 1tph HS service to the Medway towns has gone down very badly but then again Southeastern are making a lot of timetable reductions.

 

[HSTEd]

Ideally, given Eurostar's service is not that much more than 1-2 per hour, we'd have 10+ 400m trains running out of St Pancras onto HS1 each hour.

St Pancras' HS1 platforms would become a station on par with Cannon Street or even Charing Cross.
Unfortunately we can't have 400m trains and we only have 3 comparatively short platforms available.

I'd almost suggest sacrificing one of the Eurostar islands but I doubt that would ever go over well with Eurostar et al, even if we could get fencing up to handle the security issues.

I'd definitely agree that cutting back these services is a bad idea - if anything they should be expanded to take up more of the South Eastern system's longer distance traffic from Kent.

 

[Trainlog]

Yes as since the running of HS1 to North Kent a fair amount of people have been using it to access Stratford and St Pancras directly, and these trains do have a following as they can get quite packed and many people do get out in the places hs1 has created for them. If you look at a station from Faversham to Rochester you will see that though many might get on the Chatham mainline, some on the Thameslink via luton, still a lot of people get on the Javelin service as there is a lot of demand for it still despite having those 2 London bound services already there.

There is demand from North Kent to East London as it means that the GEML is a short walk away without needing the Tube for Startford and For St Pancras we all know there are 3 terminus stations in short distance of each other (St Pancras itself, Kings X and Euston), Many use Stratford for West Ham games up there, Despite Kent having a couple of large shopping outlets some go to Westfields in London, some mentally prefer it over the slow crawl out of Victoria as it feels like its actually going somewhere rather than a painful stop start train before its even reached the Kent border, and there is the straightforward answer of commuting.

From the London point of view many like the idea of the Kent coast being in easy access, the Medway campus hosts 3 universities, and you have got general attractions such as for example Rochester.

 

[cle]

A lot of Londoners are visiting the likes of Whitstable and Margate which have become cool in the last few years too. Or moving there and doing partial commuting.

 

[AM9]

All that said, the service is well used, with a SE director telling me a few years back that the company wished more stock had been ordered (COVID may have changed that).

I just personally find it quite wasteful having them crawl along main lines. Think back to the rounder days, a journey in excess of 3.5 hours and yet only a little over an hour of which was truly high speed

A trip round the loop would take about 2h47m, a distance of just under 180 miles. Of that trip, about 44% of the distance is on HS1 and it takes just 35% of the time, which for the many passengers making the journey is worth the additional cost. I would estimate that none of those passengers live within walking distance of Ebbsfleet and not that many of them at Ashford, so the 'wasteful' (as you call it) running at 100mph or less on the mainline is not wasted as far as the paying passengers are concerned.