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No, but there is the LGV around the East of Paris (forget the correct name...), which gives good connections from Lille Europe and points North and east of, towards the South and West. Not a clockface timetable, but certainly enough services to be useful, its much easier to change at Lille Europe if travelling from St Pancras rather than having to get across Paris between the terminal stations, we have travelled that way a few times. The only issue is the classic line section which fills in the gap at the Southern periphery of Paris to the east of Massy TGV which is a 20 minute crawl through suburban stations if you are travelling towards Bordeaux or Rennes for example. The services south to Lyon and beyond are dedicated LGV all the way so Lyon is around 2h 45m from Lille. Lille - Rennes is around 3h 30m, and Bordeaux, Lyon, and Marseille are all served. There are also stations at CDG Airport and Marne-le-Vallee Chessy on the eastern edge of Paris on the LGV which most services stop at.
It does seem like a mistake. I get it regarding practicalities but to seal off a connection to HS1 for all time seems a bit weird.
As someone said upthread (I think) building a link from hs1 to hs2 for javelin services that the odd regional Eurostar could use might have been better. We never did think of say, extending javelin trains to Heathrow or somewhere like that.
Kent as a geographical county largely has its population concentrated on the outskirts of London plus on the North Coast of the county along the route of the old A2 thus Dartford, Gravesend, The Medway Towns (and just to the South Maidstone), Canterbury and the Thanet Conurbation (Margate etc.) The south of the county is relatively sparsely populated.
All the North Kent Line stations out to Gillingham have a direct service to Heathrow and will have to OLd Oak Common via the Elizabethan Line with one easy change at Abbeywood. The rest of the way out to Ramsgate its a same platform interchange to Thameslink at any of the Medway Town stations and then the easy change at Abbeywood.
if you wanted to improve connectivity from Kent to heathrow and Old Oak Common I suggest you,d look at extending the Elizabethan Line out to Gravesend or possibly the medway Towns with some sort of travelator from Northfleet to Ebbsfleet International as the crow flies its a few hundred yards. Not only would it be better than reversing Javelins in St Pancras, I would mind betting it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than central london tunnels. Kent as a county already has good connections to the north via St Pancras (ECML, MML).
Kent as a geographical county largely has its population concentrated on the outskirts of London plus on the North Coast of the county along the route of the old A2 thus Dartford, Gravesend, The Medway Towns (and just to the South Maidstone), Canterbury and the Thanet Conurbation (Margate etc.) The south of the county is relatively sparsely populated.
All the North Kent Line stations out to Gillingham have a direct service to Heathrow and will have to OLd Oak Common via the Elizabethan Line with one easy change at Abbeywood. The rest of the way out to Ramsgate its a same platform interchange to Thameslink at any of the Medway Town stations and then the easy change at Abbeywood.
if you wanted to improve connectivity from Kent to heathrow and Old Oak Common I suggest you,d look at extending the Elizabethan Line out to Gravesend or possibly the medway Towns with some sort of travelator from Northfleet to Ebbsfleet International as the crow flies its a few hundred yards. Not only would it be better than reversing Javelins in St Pancras, I would mind betting it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than central london tunnels. Kent as a county already has good connections to the north via St Pancras (ECML, MML).
Or extend the Elizabeth line to Ashford where you can change onto Eurostar if they reopen the international platforms. Either option does seem a lot cheaper than more tunnels under London.
Or extend the Elizabeth line to Ashford where you can change onto Eurostar if they reopen the international platforms. Either option does seem a lot cheaper than more tunnels under London.
No you couldn't. The centre platforms are after the junction for the ramp. The only option for a train from the west calling at the centre eastbound platform is to continue to the east. The only way to reverse at Stratford from the west is to run wrong-rail from St Pancras - which would decimate the available frequency.
Not quite correct. There is a medium sized empty box where the customs and border control stuff would be. It’s been a while since I’ve been in there, but last time it was for an event for about 200 people and it was cosy. It is definitely nowhere nearthe size for a train load of passengers to be processed before departure.
Not quite correct. There is a medium sized empty box where the customs and border control stuff would be. It’s been a while since I’ve been in there, but last time it was for an event for about 200 people and it was cosy. It is definitely nowhere nearthe size for a train load of passengers to be processed before departure.
As ive said before the HS1 to crossrail connection at Stratford doesnt work for me. I think it would be even worse connecting to Eurostar with luggage. if youre coming off the Elizabethan line you are far, far better making the 4 mins thameslink journey from farringdon to st Pancras than a fairly long walk through the subway at stratford then battling your way the length of the packed Westfield Shopping Centre.
How challenging would it be to have unground walkway between St Pancras and Euston? Granted it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither would a rail tunnel. It is hard to tell one the real distance, but would it be any worse then walking between Heathrow T5 and the far end Satellite terminal.
I do it a street level, however can understand why many don‘t. Mainly rain and having to cross very busy roads.
How challenging would it be to have unground walkway between St Pancras and Euston? Granted it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither would a rail tunnel. It is hard to tell one the real distance, but would it be any worse then walking between Heathrow T5 and the far end Satellite terminal.
Fairly, given you've got the Sub-surface lines of the Underground underneath Euston Road and the vaults of the British Library between it. It's presumably possible, but you have to go deep, because IIRC Crossrail 2 has entrances from both stations.
You can avoid the very busy road crossings by turning right left out of Euston and then turning right head along Phoenix Road behind the Francis Crick Insitute (my preferred route as it's a straight line from Euston to St Pancras with a zebra over Eversholt st) or the marginally quicker route through Brill Place.
What appears to have happened is that you aren‘t considering any of the challenges to your proposal, and just repeating back your proposal to us all as the answer to those challenges.
The “interchange penalty” is used by the Passenger Demand Forecast Handbook to estimate how passengers are deterred by a bad interchange such as switching from the Thameslink or Eurostar or Javelin or Kings X or Great Eastern networks to reach Euston.
Switching terminals from Euston to a combination of St Pancras or Stratford or other HS1 stations adds 47% more passengers for about 70% of London and the south east of passengers trying to travel HS2 or most GWR routes. That’s 20 to 30 million extra passengers per year paying £60 fares in the 2040s. Billions extra.
But Domestic services would get 15 million extra passengers a year if HS2 trains could reverse at St Pancras to terminate at those unused HS1 platforms at Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford.
You have said this three times today, and about 6 times in total. Repeating something in a Trumpian style does not mean it is true. Where are these “70%” of passengers coming from, and where are they going? What are the current passenger numbers per year for some example flows, and what does improving the connections - in most cases quite marginally - do to those flows? Given that the entire revenue of the Avanti WCML operation is in the order of £1bn pa, it seems extraordinarily unlikley that your proposal would generate ‘billions extra’.
Can you answer this with some detail without simply repeating what you have already written several times?
After OOC trains would call at St Pancras, reversing just as high speed ICE trains do at Frankfurt within 4 or 5 minutes to use HS1 to terminate at either Stratford or Ebbsfleet or Ashford’s pairs of unused platforms.
I have said twice, and others have said more times, that it is not possible to terminate trains at Stratford from the west, nor is it practical to adjust the track layout to do so. Why are you ignoring this obvious flaw to your proposal when it has been pointed out several times?
And again (sigh), repeating something multiple times does not make it correct.
To make the ‘existing’ link to the NLL (not NNL) would need rather more work that replacing a couple of bridge spans - which in central Camden is not by any means simple. For one thing the first GC trains to pass each other at Primrose Hill would collide due to the track separation not being fit for GC. All the tracks would need moving, all the signalling replaced, all the OLE replaced (much of which will be out of gauge anyway) all the structures replaced - including the viaduct that runs right through the middle of Camden, which is very definitely not gauged for the GC KE (Kinematic Envelope - you have checked this, right?). And you still need provision for conventional freight and passenger services to operate between Camden Rd and Camden Junction in the WCML. Yet again, why are you ignoring this?
Finally, I’ll give you one more thing to think about. The line speed from St Pancras round the link to the NLL is 40km/h (25mph), and would be lower still to accommodate the significant extra pointwork needed to access the domestic platfroms. The linespeed on the NLL through Camden and on to Primrose Hill is 20mph due to the alignment. It would also be about 600 metres further to the bufferstops on P11-13 at St Pancras (and a further 200 metres to the bufferstops on the Eurostar platforms) from OOC than it is to the buffer stops at Euston HS2. The Euston layout is designed specifically to accommodate the acceleration and braking potential of the trains: 60km/h from the bufferstops, then progressive increases to 160km/h at the same point where your proposed portal is at Primrose Hill. The tail end of a train from Euston will be doing 140km/h + by that point, whereas the tail end of a train from St Pancras will be doing 30km/h, nearly 3km (and over 4 minutes) into its journey.
The HS2 time from Euston to OOC start to stop is 5 minutes. Even using the current linespeeds at St Pancras, ie not the reduced speeds due to the necessary changes to the layout, the time from St Pancras domestic platforms to OOC by your proposal would be, by my estimate, 8.5 minutes, ie 3.5 minutes worse, plus another half minute if using the international platforms. (These times are naturally estimates and may be out by 10% or so, but they are calculated on the same basis so are directly comparable as the error margin will be the same for both).
What allowance have you made for the lost revenue and socio-economic benefit from all the HS2 passengers heading to central London via St Pancras due to this time loss?
A final plea - can you please try to answer these points without resorting to repeating what you have already written several times?
How challenging would it be to have unground walkway between St Pancras and Euston? Granted it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither would a rail tunnel. It is hard to tell one the real distance, but would it be any worse then walking between Heathrow T5 and the far end Satellite terminal.
I do it a street level, however can understand why many don‘t. Mainly rain and having to cross very busy roads.
I would say that if you want to get a service from St Pancras and you are travelling from Glasgow and you have access to Queen Street you are actually better off travelling via Edinburgh instead of via Euston. I agree that its faster by about 20 mins via Euston but how critical is that likely tobe when your train from St Pancras only runs once an hour? Certainly in my case travelling from Glasgow to Rye where my marshlink train is only hourly off a connection from HS1 its much easier to change at Edinburgh and Kings Cross and I cant really see that it would be less so for Eurostar.
I must admit, the current walk wouldn’t put me off. I am fortunate I can do it. I am not sure if I couldn’t walk that far if as you say I would choose to go to KX, or just get a taxi.
How challenging would it be to have unground walkway between St Pancras and Euston? Granted it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither would a rail tunnel. It is hard to tell one the real distance, but would it be any worse then walking between Heathrow T5 and the far end Satellite terminal.
I do it a street level, however can understand why many don‘t. Mainly rain and having to cross very busy roads.
Quite challenging. It was considered in the options report I have linked to up thread. The issues are:
1) the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line runs directly under Eversholt St at a depth of about 10 metres
2) both the British Library and Francis Crick Institute have multi storey deep basements - well over 20 metres deep
3) Crossrail 2 has safeguarded the land underground between the above mentioned buildings
4) the four tunnels of the Northern and Victoria lines run roughly parallel to the Euston Road, passing more or less under the ‘outdoor concourse’ of Euston itself.
5) Levita House, halfway along (the imposing Edwardian block of flats) is listed.
6) The Thameslink tunnels, immediately east of Midland Road, and again about 10 metres down to the “crown” which is actually mostly a whacking great concrete box.
I did once propose a zig-zag route that missed most of this, but with the unfortunate by-product of requiring the demolition of 39 Chalton St roughly halfway to create an emergency escape. No one saw the funny side of my little joke.
I will be interesting if Crossrail 2 will sort this anyway (if it ever gets built) in the same way as you can now walk from Liverpool Street to Moorgate via the Elizabeth line. Not sure if anyone actually does that walk.
But thanks for the info above, I didn’t think it would be that easy, just don’t have the knowledge of what is actually where. All I knew is we have utilities, tube lines and buildings. If you have to go that deep to get around all these issues, then most people will stay above ground anyway.
How challenging would it be to have unground walkway between St Pancras and Euston? Granted it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither would a rail tunnel. It is hard to tell one the real distance, but would it be any worse then walking between Heathrow T5 and the far end Satellite terminal.
I do it a street level, however can understand why many don‘t. Mainly rain and having to cross very busy roads.
Honestly you might be better off with an urban ropeway solution. The British library at least reduces the number of dwellings that would be overlooked by it.
Although it might fall foul of sightline restrictions.
The Crossrail 2 design does accommodate it, but as you say it’s a long way down, and it requires passing through gatelines either end as with Liverpool St / Moorgate. No doubt it would be considerably quicker at street level. Even more so when Euston gets rebuilt and there is a direct entrance onto the east side halfway along the platforms.
If the OOC - Kings X - Stratford route had been possible/made possible then Stratford gives connections to East London, Essex and Kent, Kings X serves Central & South London, Surrey, Sussex and North London via Thameslink, and also European services. OOC gives connections to West London, Heathrow, and points west. It also gets away from the 'dump everyone at the edge of the central area' with the pressure this puts on underground services in the central area. Combining this up with an extended HS1 domestic service must take pressure off the London terminals and the central area public transport. Once the connections exist people will use them, and journey opportunities which were previously 'too much trouble' become possible, so either new journeys, or mode switch from car.
Hang on a minute, just because Thameslink has stations in a county it doesn't mean that county is well linked because of Thameslink.
Take for example Surrey, with a population of 1.2 million people, Thameslink serves a few stations in and around Sutton and then with an off peak frequency of 2tph.
I will be honest, I think historians in two or three generations time will look unfavourably on the HS2 project. Escalating costs, reduction in scope, missed oportunities will be the key words.
I think you may be right on this, but I suspect that very little will be related to the non provision of the HS1/HS2 link.
I also think (assuming 20 years per generation) that there's a fair chance that most of the Northern branches which have been cut would be restored (or at least some alternative provision created).
As 3 generations (which based on the above assumption would be 60 years time) is on a par with when the Beeching report was published (62 years ago).
If the branches are ultimately built, then the level of controversy would be much reduced. Potentially being closer to the use of Pacers than the delivery of the Beeching cuts (i.e. likely to be more geographically limited and more closely linked with interest in the railway than more widely an issue).
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I thought I’d already replied to you on this. I’ll try again here.
The “interchange penalty” is used by the Passenger Demand Forecast Handbook to estimate how passengers are deterred by a bad interchange such as switching from the Thameslink or Eurostar or Javelin or Kings X or Great Eastern networks to reach Euston.
They allow about an hour to walk the route and make it in time for their second train.
Switching terminals from Euston to a combination of St Pancras or Stratford or other HS1 stations adds 47% more passengers for about 70% of London and the south east of passengers trying to travel HS2 or most GWR routes. That’s 20 to 30 million extra passengers per year paying £60 fares in the 2040s. Billions extra.
So not 70%, rather 47% of 70% and as I suspected including London.
You will need to show your working, as places like Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton, Berkshire and the vast majority of Surrey are significant populations within the Southeast.
Even West Sussex (and to a lesser extent East Sussex) which is served by Thameslink, has a lot of the county which isn't near a Thameslink station (or the station isn't frequently served, such as Littlehampton).
That's before you consider the market share for London (which is included in that value), where many stations on the Elizabeth Line wouldn't see an increase (almost regardless of where there was a Central London station) as they would likely change at Old Oak Common.
At the least, I'm very sceptical that by changing the station from Euston to St Pancras we would see HS2 useage increase from 100 million passengers a year (predicted passenger numbers using all HS2 services when we were looking at the full network) to 133 million passengers a year (47% of 70% is 32.9%).
Especially given that 30% of passengers are expected to join/leave HS2 services at Old Oak Common rather than Euston. This means that by being located at St Pancras there would basically be 3 passengers for every 2 which HS2 expected to use Euston.
If that true, that's a massive failure of HS2 to identify that.
After OOC trains would call at St Pancras, reversing just as high speed ICE trains do at Frankfurt within 4 or 5 minutes to use HS1 to terminate at either Stratford or Ebbsfleet or Ashford’s pairs of unused platforms. Birmingham shuttles don’t need cleaning at each end of their HS2 45 minute journeys so they could use a double slot to terminate at St Pancras. Others would need 20 to 40 minutes to add resilience in their terminations on HS1 platforms.
8 to 10 minutes to get a train with 1,100 seats to enter the platform, clear the passengers off, before then announcing the platform for the next trainload of passengers to then join the train and the train be ready to go back out to Birmingham again sounds very optimistic to say the least.
Some XC services at Birmingham require 7 minutes and they are likely to have a smaller percentage of people getting on/off (and far fewer people needing to clear the platforms).
I must admit, the current walk wouldn’t put me off. I am fortunate I can do it. I am not sure if I couldn’t walk that far if as you say I would choose to go to KX, or just get a taxi.
Make the cable cars look like old Ford anglias and have the route pass over St Pancras and land in the road between Kings Cross and St Pancras. Convert Euston to look like Gringotts Vaults you'd have tourists queuing for miles. You could borrow some gold bars from the basement of the network rail offices where they are stored for the rail industry's next 500% overspend project.
The issue I have is that in London we dump everyone at the edge of the central area, making onward connections more difficult, and putting more pressure on infrastructure within the central area. The more you can spread these connections out the better. I take your point about Thameslink, but it does help.
Connectivity from King X/St P to Waterloo and by inference to places served from Waterloo has always been a problem, its one of the more fraught journeys between London terminals with no direct tube link. I've done the journey a number of times over the years, from the mid 80s to recently, and its a pain. But given geography and existing lines there are no easy solutions.
However, having two high speed lines less than 1 mile apart at their closest, and yet making no provision to link them in some way just doesn't make sense, and even worse not building in the option 'to do it later' I think will be seen as short sighted.
Did the original studies even consider the option to carry on Eastwards using the HS1 infrastructure as suggested here and build the terminal at maybe Ebbsfleet where there is more space, land is cheaper, and construction would be easier as you start with pretty much a clean slate. Even now a quick look at Google maps shows quite a bit of open space around Ebbsfleet International station, with just car parks in close proximity.
However it is all speculation, as the bird has well and truly flown.
Was that an option in the past. I could certainly see some benefits to the underground Euston Terminal (which I am sure had an exit) at St Pancras continuing onto Stratford and Ebbsfleet via HS1. But I also see a massive cost so if it was a possibly I can see why it didn’t happen.
Hang on a minute, just because Thameslink has stations in a county it doesn't mean that county is well linked because of Thameslink.
Take for example Surrey, with a population of 1.2 million people, Thameslink serves a few stations in and around Sutton and then with an off peak frequency of 2tph.
You will need to show your working, as places like Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton, Berkshire and the vast majority of Surrey are significant populations within the Southeast.
Even West Sussex (and to a lesser extent East Sussex) which is served by Thameslink, has a lot of the county which isn't near a Thameslink station (or the station isn't frequently served, such as Littlehampton).
That's before you consider the market share for London (which is included in that value), where many stations on the Elizabeth Line wouldn't see an increase (almost regardless of where there was a Central London station) as they would likely change at Old Oak Common.
Thameslink doesnt serve any stations in Surrey with the Loop as it is entirely in Greater London. It does however serve Mersthram, Redhill, Earlsfield, Salfords and Horley all in Surrey.
Every station in West Sussex has a same platform connection to Thameslink at Places like Crawley, Haywards heath, East Croydon.
The majority of stations in East Sussex have the same add Norwood junction. The east coastway stations and marshlink stations east of Eastbourne would travel to St Pancras via HS1.
Having said that if you are South of the M25 and want to travel to Euston you will most likely travel to Victoria and then get the tube, the high frequency means in real life its possible to get from Victoria to Euston in under 15 mins.
However, having two high speed lines less than 1 mile apart at their closest, and yet making no provision to link them in some way just doesn't make sense, and even worse not building in the option 'to do it later' I think will be seen as short sighted.
I really don't understand where this hand-wavey "these things are similar so we must connect them" drive comes from. Everything comes at a cost, and in the case of crayoning a line between StP and OOC, quite a big one. Benefits have to be better articulated than "but they're so close together", othwise it's just a white elephant.
Should we reinstate Waterloo->Waterloo east for the same reason? How about turning Windsor into a big loop?
Even if you wanted to make the argument that we should link HS1 and HS2 on a continental gauge link (there might be an argument to be made there, not convinced it holds up, but open to it), I think it's a hard case to make that knocking over half of Camden is the most effective answer.
If you are worried about cross London connectivity for passengers from HS2, I think building the London terminus at Clapham Junction instead would be a better option that trying to bodge a through station onto HS1.
The “interchange penalty” is used by the Passenger Demand Forecast Handbook to estimate how passengers are deterred by a bad interchange such as switching from the Thameslink or Eurostar or Javelin or Kings X or Great Eastern networks to reach Euston.
They allow about an hour to walk the route and make it in time for their second train.
The issue I have is that in London we dump everyone at the edge of the central area, making onward connections more difficult, and putting more pressure on infrastructure within the central area. The more you can spread these connections out the better. I take your point about Thameslink, but it does help.
Connectivity from King X/St P to Waterloo and by inference to places served from Waterloo has always been a problem, its one of the more fraught journeys between London terminals with no direct tube link. I've done the journey a number of times over the years, from the mid 80s to recently, and its a pain. But given geography and existing lines there are no easy solutions.
However, having two high speed lines less than 1 mile apart at their closest, and yet making no provision to link them in some way just doesn't make sense, and even worse not building in the option 'to do it later' I think will be seen as short sighted.
Did the original studies even consider the option to carry on Eastwards using the HS1 infrastructure as suggested here and build the terminal at maybe Ebbsfleet where there is more space, land is cheaper, and construction would be easier as you start with pretty much a clean slate. Even now a quick look at Google maps shows quite a bit of open space around Ebbsfleet International station, with just car parks in close proximity.
However it is all speculation, as the bird has well and truly flown.
The issue with connectivity between Waterloo and Kings Cross is likely to improve significantly (being optimistic in my Wording here) when Crossrail 2 is built.
Part of the modelling always assumed that Crossrail 2 was going to be built, the fact that it's been pushed back in terms of priority isn't going to help with interconnectivity.
Anyway my point was kind of a joke, in that the suggestion is that about 30% more people would use HS2 if there was a direct connection to HS1.
