The next UK HSR (High Speed Rail) project?

[MattRat]

About 30 miles wider!

Yeah, I messed up on that when I went to check the map again, my bad. Although isn't the bigger picture the whole journey, so maybe the train can mae up the difference on it's leg of the journey?

 

[HSTEd]

The ferry used to compete with the Eurotunnel from Dover. Unless the gap is somehow wider?

It's substantially further and what's the ferry's share of foot traffic these days?

Hell even a 3S cableway that took an hour is likely more attractive given its negligible wait times and no need to mess around with loading and unloading.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jan 2022 ==

Yeah, I messed up on that when I went to check the map again, my bad. Although isn't the bigger picture the whole journey, so maybe the train can mae up the difference on it's leg of the journey?

Your ferry leg alone will likely be so slow as to kill the combined journye even if the railway was replaced with a teleporter.

Ferries are not fast. Especially when loading and unloading are considered.

 

[muddythefish]

My candidate would be HSR from Birmingham to Bristol and Plymouth, roughly following the line of the M5. The south west needs better and faster rail links, and it takes so long to get down to Cornwall by road, especially in summer. Won't happen of course, not in sclerotic, penny-pinching Britain

 

[zwk500]

Yeah, I messed up on that when I went to check the map again, my bad. Although isn't the bigger picture the whole journey, so maybe the train can mae up the difference on it's leg of the journey?

If you're taking the bigger picture into account, people will have to get to the train. Most people don't live within walking distance of Euston.

The only way a fixed link becomes viable is if it becomes much cheaper to build an underwater tunnel or much more expensive to fly. Neither of those are particularly likely at the moment. It's a great shame, because as others have said the London-Dublin air corridor is very busy, as is the Holyhead-Ireland freight ferries. In theory a Eurotunnel-type setup would make a lot of sense, but at 50 miles you'd realistically need separate shuttle and HS tunnels as well as vast investment in both Wales and Ireland to connect everything up.

 

[Starmill]

In theory, Parliament might be able to consider a second hybrid bill at the same time if the government were to deposit one in the House of Lords first. But that seems reasonably unlikely to happen.

So, for any work that doesn't fit within the consents processes available under the Transport & Works Act, or Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in the Transport Sector, there is currently a long queue:

High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill
'Northern Powerhouse Rail' Bill
High Speed Rail (West Midlands - East Midlands) Bill

Obviously I don't actually know what their names will be these are just guesses.

The first could still receive Royal Assent in time for 2024 and the end of the session. That leaves the upcoming two Parliaments to pass the latter two. I will be surprised if this is complete by 2030. It could still be done but perhaps 2032 is a reasonable timetable to allow.

Of course the other two mechanisms might be suitable. I don't really know. Would anyone like to pass opinion on short stretches of new build high speed rail being authorised by orders under the Transport & Works Act or through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure process?

It's also worth noting that for projects to proceed in a timely fashion the Transport & Works channel cannot be overloaded with more than a handful of large applications simultaneously. For example I think currently there are four applications of varying sizes under consideration by the Secretary of State?

 

[MattRat]

In theory, Parliament might be able to consider a second hybrid bill at the same time if the government were to deposit one in the House of Lords first. But that seems reasonably unlikely to happen.

So, for any work that doesn't fit within the consents processes available under the Transport & Works Act, or Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in the Transport Sector, there is currently a long queue:

High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill
'Northern Powerhouse Rail' Bill
High Speed Rail (West Midlands - East Midlands) Bill

Obviously I don't actually know what their names will be these are just guesses.

The first could still receive Royal Assent in time for 2024 and the end of the session. That leaves the upcoming two Parliaments to pass the latter two. I will be surprised if this is complete by 2030. It could still be done but perhaps 2032 is a reasonable timetable to allow.

Of course the other two mechanisms might be suitable. I don't really know. Would anyone like to pass opinion on short stretches of new build high speed rail being authorised by orders under the Transport & Works Act or through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure process?

It's also worth noting that for projects to proceed in a timely fashion the Transport & Works channel cannot be overloaded with more than a handful of large applications simultaneously. For example I think currently there are four applications of varying sizes under consideration by the Secretary of State?

I would have thought the plan would be to have all 3 you point out under phase 2b, as that would partly explain the IRP. If it's all still separate, the only excuse at that point is that the Government are tight fisted. Politically it makes sense to have it under one roof to justify the change, unless they've forgotten how to do even that.

 

[Starmill]

I would have thought the plan would be to have all 3 you point out under phase 2b, as that would partly explain the IRP. If it's all still separate, the only excuse at that point is that the Government are tight fisted. Politically it makes sense to have it under one roof to justify the change, unless they've forgotten how to do even that.

I don't think they can because Crewe - Manchester is almost ready, but Manchester - Marsden hasn't even gone to consultation yet.

 

[zwk500]

Of course the other two mechanisms might be suitable. I don't really know. Would anyone like to pass opinion on short stretches of new build high speed rail being authorised by orders under the Transport & Works Act or through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure process?

According to the government, TWAO are not really for tracks longer than a couple of km:

Larger schemes on the national railway network in England(tracks more than 2km) are likely to qualify as ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’ and require development consent under the Planning Act 2008 rather than a TWA order.

Transport and Works Act orders: a brief guide

Outlines the procedures involved in applying for a Transport and Works Act order.

www.gov.uk

The Planning Act 2008 gives further details:

Planning Act 2008

An Act to establish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and make provision about its functions; to make provision about, and about matters ancillary to, the authorisation of projects for the development of nationally significant infrastructure; to make provision about town and country...

www.legislation.gov.uk

Construction of a railway is within section 14(1)(k) only if—

(a)the railway will (when constructed) be wholly in England,

(b)the railway will (when constructed) be part of a network operated by an approved operator,

[F1(ba)the railway will (when constructed) include a stretch of track that—

(i)is a continuous length of more than 2 kilometres, and

(ii)is not on land that was operational land of a railway undertaker immediately before the construction work began or is on land that was acquired at an earlier date for the purpose of constructing the railway,] and

(c)the construction of the railway is not permitted development.

 

[Starmill]

According to the government, TWAO are not really for tracks longer than a couple of km:

Transport and Works Act orders: a brief guide

Outlines the procedures involved in applying for a Transport and Works Act order.

www.gov.uk

The Planning Act 2008 gives further details:

Planning Act 2008

An Act to establish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and make provision about its functions; to make provision about, and about matters ancillary to, the authorisation of projects for the development of nationally significant infrastructure; to make provision about town and country...

www.legislation.gov.uk

Ah ha. So only the shortest of bypasses could be considered through that route, or 'on line' high speed conversion.

But, potentially, a Development Consent Order could authorise a longer byapss in the right circumstances, without the need to organise a hybrid bill.

Thank you.

 

[Bald Rick]

Of course the other two mechanisms might be suitable. I don't really know. Would anyone like to pass opinion on short stretches of new build high speed rail being authorised by orders under the Transport & Works Act or through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure process?

It would have to be DCO. Quite conceivable that it could be used for Coleshill - Kegworth.

 

[Starmill]

It would have to be DCO. Quite conceivable that it could be used for Coleshill - Kegworth.

How interesting.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Years ago , when I had a job - mulled over Heathrow to Reading (there were plans for a new line at one time) - then new build towards Basingstoke skirting the Reading built up area with a grade seperated junction towards Micheldever and serving the Solent conurbation , with 4 tracking towards Bristol Parkway giving the latter and Wales a much faster link......

Both would relieve what is now SWT and FGW inwards from Reading.....sort of route where the volume is (or was) - M4 relief

 

[swt_passenger]

Years ago , when I had a job - mulled over Heathrow to Reading (there were plans for a new line at one time) - then new build towards Basingstoke skirting the Reading built up area with a grade seperated junction towards Micheldever and serving the Solent conurbation , with 4 tracking towards Bristol Parkway giving the latter and Wales a much faster link......

Both would relieve what is now SWT and FGW inwards from Reading.....sort of route where the volume is (or was) - M4 relief

I‘m no expert, but I bet no one ever considered going to the Solent via Brighton…

 

[Shred Metal]

Edinburgh - Glasgow - Belfast - Dublin (- Cork)

spare £trillion anyone?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I‘m no expert, but I bet no one ever considered going to the Solent via Brighton…

Bit tricky with the South Downs and a fairly narrow coastal plain , mostly developed.

Actually "my idea" (a phrase one should shudder over here) - would have been new line to around Wooten Basset junction with 4 tracking of what people used to refer to as the South Wales direct line. Nowadays with no imported coal from Avonmouth , - you could just go for a 140 mph+ upgrade on the existing line and save some £...

 

[MattRat]

Bit tricky with the South Downs and a fairly narrow coastal plain , mostly developed.

Actually "my idea" (a phrase one should shudder over here) - would have been new line to around Wooten Basset junction with 4 tracking of what people used to refer to as the South Wales direct line. Nowadays with no imported coal from Avonmouth , - you could just go for a 140 mph+ upgrade on the existing line and save some £...

There's probably quite a few places like that in the UK. I know there are plans floating about for using old freight lines in Liverpool to bring HS2 in on, for example.

 

[cle]

It's hard to make a dent in London - Bristol Parkway running times with just a 140mph improvement - yes there are some non-stop services but barely off the ground before the pandy, and they'd not be viable for a new build without increasing capacity to the intermediate stations - and tying in some new markets (via Winchester seems more realistic)

Slough, Reading, Swindon, Didcot and Oxford are larger rail markets to London than Cardiff, Bristol and Bath etc... a new line needs to be running 12+ tph - so if the tph are avoiding the demand centres, where are they all going?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

It's hard to make a dent in London - Bristol Parkway running times with just a 140mph improvement - yes there are some non-stop services but barely off the ground before the pandy, and they'd not be viable for a new build without increasing capacity to the intermediate stations - and tying in some new markets (via Winchester seems more realistic)

Slough, Reading, Swindon, Didcot and Oxford are larger rail markets to London than Cardiff, Bristol and Bath etc... a new line needs to be running 12+ tph - so if the tph are avoiding the demand centres, where are they all going?

I agree - and it was just post meeting in Cardiff mulling - (a good while ago) - certainly quicker to South Wales is a personal objective (being from that part of the world) - but I agree an uplift for Solent , Winchester etc is worth a bookmark in any future aspirations.

 

[MattRat]

It's hard to make a dent in London - Bristol Parkway running times with just a 140mph improvement - yes there are some non-stop services but barely off the ground before the pandy, and they'd not be viable for a new build without increasing capacity to the intermediate stations - and tying in some new markets (via Winchester seems more realistic)

Slough, Reading, Swindon, Didcot and Oxford are larger rail markets to London than Cardiff, Bristol and Bath etc... a new line needs to be running 12+ tph - so if the tph are avoiding the demand centres, where are they all going?

Well technically people could also use it who also have access to HS2, like people from Birmingham, except since it's in London it has more political will than just a straight line between Birmingham and Bristol/Cardiff.

 

[HSTEd]

I‘m no expert, but I bet no one ever considered going to the Solent via Brighton…

Did anyone ever have trains with the performance characteristics we have now though?

We have trains that can eat up over three miles every minute in common use globally. Lines with capacity far greater than anything we have in the UK outside of HS2.

The old rules about "direct routes" no longer apply in anything like the same way they used to. Now the objective is to ensure sufficient traffic can be gathered onto the alignment.

Did anyone ever really consider going to Nottingham via Birmingham in the time before high speed rail proposals?

Going to the Solent via Brighton allows the line to unload multiple main lines from multiple termini and still match or beat the existing journey times.
It eats up a lot of the long distance traffic out of multiple termini and Thameslink.

 

[MattRat]

Did anyone ever have trains with the performance characteristics we have now though?

We have trains that can eat up over three miles every minute in common use globally. Lines with capacity far greater than anything we have in the UK outside of HS2.

The old rules about "direct routes" no longer apply in anything like the same way they used to. Now the objective is to ensure sufficient traffic can be gathered onto the alignment.

Did anyone ever really consider going to Nottingham via Birmingham in the time before high speed rail proposals?

Going to the Solent via Brighton allows the line to unload multiple main lines from multiple termini and still match or beat the existing journey times.
It eats up a lot of the long distance traffic out of multiple termini and Thameslink.

HS2 also for the most part helps people get to and from Birmingham quicker. Well, except Leeds becuase apparently spending 2p extra to get to the ECML is too much money for our government, but that's a different story.

Now, while I doubt many people go between Solent and Brighton, or at least enough to warrant the connection on that basis, it is probably best to connect all of that coast together with a straight line, as the entire area is where people go, not just one part. Maybe even tie into HS1 till Ashford to reduce cost (and then turning to Hastings and Eastbourne). Maybe even extend to Exeter to help out travel to Devon and Cornwall too.

Edit: And you could run through services from HS2 to get everyone from there down to those areas, as well as maybe turn Ashford into a proper international station with the ability to transfer to Eurostar.

 

[Irascible]

I did muse about OOC-Plymouth via Southampton, Bournemouth and Taunton ( which dodges some hills & lets you go down a valley to Exeter ) but didn't consider via Brighton too. That'd connect most of the south coast in one go which IIRC is not unpopular and also a pretty awkward journey at times, but no idea *how* popular.

However...sending the southwest via Brighton to get anywhere at all is not particularly attractive to this resident at least either & you can bet there'd be no new link between Taunton & Birmingham if that went through...

 

[Bald Rick]

Did anyone ever really consider going to Nottingham via Birmingham in the time before high speed rail proposals?

Yes, a certain Mr Hudson. Leeds and York too.

 

[HSTEd]

I did muse about OOC-Plymouth via Southampton, Bournemouth and Taunton ( which dodges some hills & lets you go down a valley to Exeter ) but didn't consider via Brighton too. That'd connect most of the south coast in one go which IIRC is not unpopular and also a pretty awkward journey at times, but no idea *how* popular.

However...sending the southwest via Brighton to get anywhere at all is not particularly attractive to this resident at least either & you can bet there'd be no new link between Taunton & Birmingham if that went through...

Well before we can talk about anything in detail we do have to work out what termini we would use since that decides the London station requirements.

There are a few choices I can see:

1. Waterloo and Clapham Junction - the obvious choice since many of the services being relieved, Bournemouth/Portsmouth/Southampton et al are run out of Waterloo so there is likely to be some freed capacity once that traffic transfes. Also preserves existing travel patterns in London. Also Waterloo has some 400m platforms already.
2. Victoria and Clapham Junction - Brighton main Line relief would potentially free some capacity here, and Victoria does have some very long platforms for the boat trains etc.
3. Paddington and Old Oak Common - this is a tough one given the lack of much relief to services out of Paddington, only potentially the Cornwall/Devon trains, but crossrail related shenanigans might be able to shake loose some platforms. The real star of the show here is Old Oak Common, with same station interchange with regular GWML services, Crossrail and HS2.
4. Minor terminus and Clapham Junction - a left field answer might be to use the relief of trains out of Victoria, Waterloo and Thameslink to move everything around and free one of the "minor" termini like Cannon Street or Charing Cross. That would have the advantage of allowing much of the station development to be over the River rather than tearing buildings to pieces, but there would be serious problems with London underground and other access out of them.
5. Euston + OOC - I suppose you could use more Crossrail shenanigans to take over the WCML inner suburbans and put something into Euston, but thats silly even by my standards. Although that would enable the Euston-Kings Cross-St Pancras station complex to become de-facto London Hbf which would have some upsides.

EDIT:
Can anyone comment on the locations of the major bottlenecks, other than platform capacity, of the South London termini?

 

[MattRat]

Well before we can talk about anything in detail we do have to work out what termini we would use since that decides the London station requirements.

There are a few choices I can see:

1. Paddington and Old Oak Common - this is a tough one given the lack of much relief to services out of Paddington, only potentially the Cornwall/Devon trains, but crossrail related shenanigans might be able to shake loose some platforms. The real star of the show here is Old Oak Common, with same station interchange with regular GWML services, Crossrail and HS2.

Old Oak common could also be designed in such a way as to allow through HS2 trains.

 

[XAM2175]

Your ferry leg alone will likely be so slow as to kill the combined journye even if the railway was replaced with a teleporter.

Ferries are not fast. Especially when loading and unloading are considered.

To illustrate this, the construction of the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark cut the travel time for the 11-mile journey across the strait from an hour by ferry to less than ten minutes by rail.

That said, it's just one example and very definitely not carte-blanche to build bridges and tunnels wherever one pleases!

 

[Bald Rick]

Can anyone comment on the locations of the major bottlenecks, other than platform capacity, of the South London termini?

Waterloo (fast lines toward Woking) from the buffer stops to country side of New Malden (hence CR2)

Victoria (Fast lines to Brighton): Windmill Bridge / Croydon (Hence Windmill bridge / Croydon proposal)

Cannon St / Charing Cross: Ewer St / Borough Market Junctions - London Bridge, Lewisham, Orpington - Tonbridge. (But Charing Cross platforms / Cannon St throat are the same limit)

Plus Power supply and station Passenger capacity for all of them.

 

[MattRat]

To illustrate this, the construction of the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark cut the travel time for the 11-mile journey across the strait from an hour by ferry to less than ten minutes by rail.

That said, it's just one example and very definitely not carte-blanche to build bridges and tunnels wherever one pleases!

Doesn't that mean the ferry had an average speed of 11mph? Surely that could be sped up? At 22mph it 'only' takes half an hour. Find a short enough crossing, and it starts to look feasible.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Doesn't that mean the ferry had an average speed of 11mph? Surely that could be sped up? At 22mph it 'only' takes half an hour. Find a short enough crossing, and it starts to look feasible.

There's a lot of faffing about involving putting a train on the ferry rather than running one over the bridge.

 

[MattRat]

There's a lot of faffing about involving putting a train on the ferry rather than running one over the bridge.

I was thinking about it in general. Like with high speed rail to Ireland. Maybe with a 'shorter' distance, say between Scotland and Belfast, you could get a high enough average speed with a ferry for it not to take much longer than a plane?