Two HS2 questions (speculative)

[30907]

The argument that people won't want to travel from Birmingham to Ashford is a crazy example, when Birmingham or Manchester, or Sheffield, or Leeds, or Liverpool, or Tyneside etc to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Paris, Lyon and a host of other European destinations are very real journey options. ....There's a parallel here for HS1-HS2 to replace a lot of air trips, and that's without even thinking about the merits of night travel.

Sadly, Birmingham (and North thereof) to Paris/Brussels foundered in the 1990s before it had a chance to get going. The low-cost airline boom may have passed (I'm not sure) but until the UK government can be persuaded to relax the passport and security arrangements AND Eurotunnel allow 2-portion trains, running even from Birmingham is a non-starter. It has taken seveeal years for London-Amsterdam to happen, and the return trains still haven't started...

 

[swt_passenger]

The HS2 Ltd report into the HS1-HS2 link is here:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ttachment_data/file/480372/HS2-HS1_report.pdf
The last section of the summary reads

The principle of a rail connection linking HS1 and HS2 remains strategically attractive, and HS2 Ltd remains committed to it if it could physically be achieved at a reasonable and proportionate cost. HS2 Ltd will keep an open mind to this possibility. However, the combination of tight physical constraints and the demands on existing services in this critical part of our national infrastructure make it very difficult to achieve. Longer-term opportunities for a rail connection could be safeguarded by making some provision during the construction of HS2, but lower-cost passive provision options would lead to unacceptable disruption to HS2 during construction of the link. To guard against this, the provision would have to be active rather than passive, and this would come at considerable cost. There are a number of other reasons why future investment in the rail link would be highly unlikely – notably because of the other difficulties with later construction, and the limited capacity that would be available for international services on HS2. Accordingly, neither active nor passive provision for a rail link is recommended.
[\quote]
The usual response to such a detailed report in the forums is to just ignore it and carry on hoping it will happen anyway...

 

[Bald Rick]

The argument that people won't want to travel from Birmingham to Ashford is a crazy example, when Birmingham or Manchester, or Sheffield, or Leeds, or Liverpool, or Tyneside etc to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Paris, Lyon and a host of other European destinations are very real journey options

The issue is that the flows between Birmingham and each of these European cities is not big enough to sustain one train a day. Even if one train went from Birmingham to Munich via Brussels, Köln and Frankfurt, and every air passenger on those routes switched to the train (for a journey of 3-9 hours), there would still only need to be one train a day. But not many people want to spend that long on a train, and not manybwant to restrict themselves to a certain time once a day.

 

[si404]

The argument that people won't want to travel from Birmingham to Ashford is a crazy example, when Birmingham or Manchester, or Sheffield, or Leeds, or Liverpool, or Tyneside etc to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Paris, Lyon and a host of other European destinations are very real journey options.

A direct link however won't serve Central Birmingham, nor Liverpool or Tyneside. And on the other side it will serve Lille and Paris and not those other places. Unless, of course, we go on a model of token daily direct services that are vastly inferior than simply changing once for actual usefulness.

Given the need to change - maybe twice (if you don't instead change in London) - for most through-London journeys, better to improve the change there. And why bother with a through train when most people who'd use it are better served via Euston St Pancras changes?

Even Manchester-Paris travellers would feel the more frequent and faster legs either side of London were almost worth having to change - from the entrance of Piccadilly to the platform at Gare du Nord, the journey time would be barely any quicker. Leeds likewise - going via Sheffield to try and serve as much of the north as possible with a single train will eat into the journey time - you'd be able to check in at St Pancras on a Euston train in the time it takes a Paris train to get to the OOC (and then the added stops on HS1/TGV Nord compared to non-stop StP-GdN trains accounts for most of the wait time at St Pancras, ignoring the less wait time at Leeds for London service).

Yes through trains are sexy-sounding, but it's billions to not really improve much - especially as not many of the journeys being used to sell a link would benefit and would be far better off with a high quality moving walkway that costs £200m rather than £4bn - ie 5% of the price.

PS: Border issues might also mean that the train is pick up only en route to the Chunnel, making it useless for North to Kent (though the other way is fine).

 

[edwin_m]

The issue is that the flows between Birmingham and each of these European cities is not big enough to sustain one train a day. Even if one train went from Birmingham to Munich via Brussels, Köln and Frankfurt, and every air passenger on those routes switched to the train (for a journey of 3-9 hours), there would still only need to be one train a day. But not many people want to spend that long on a train, and not manybwant to restrict themselves to a certain time once a day.

As far as I'm aware, Eurostar is the only train service anywhere that survives entirely on international business. It is lucky enough to have three of Europe's major capitals at the ideal distance for a high speed train to take the lion's share of the passengers from air, so can fill a 400m train every hour or so. That's about equivalent to an A380 every hour, whereas Birmingham-Paris fills a handful of 737 or A321 every day.

Everywhere else international trains serve as domestic trains in the countries they pass through, and a service such as Birmingham-Stratford-Ebbsfleet-Ashford-Lille-Paris every couple of hours might just about wash its face if it could carry passengers between any of those stations. But the security and passport control regulations applied to Channel Tunnel trains (and virtually no others anywhere) effectively rule that out. And that's before Brexit and "taking control of our borders", which isn't going to make the situation any easier and will quite possibly make it a lot worse.

 

[frediculous]

Would the HS1-HS2 link be useful for freight, or will there be a HS2-North London Line link to indirectly connect to HS1? I think a fair number of freight trains use HS1 before switching to the classic network.

 

[JamesT]

Would the HS1-HS2 link be useful for freight, or will there be a HS2-North London Line link to indirectly connect to HS1? I think a fair number of freight trains use HS1 before switching to the classic network.

I don’t think there’s any intention of putting freight on HS2. Given one of the problems with the WCML is trying to juggle services of different speeds, it doesn’t make any sense to build a line for high speed and run slow freight along it. If anything the expectation is that HS2 frees up paths on the classic lines that can be used for freight.

 

[frediculous]

Yes, that makes sense

 

[Bald Rick]

Would the HS1-HS2 link be useful for freight, or will there be a HS2-North London Line link to indirectly connect to HS1? I think a fair number of freight trains use HS1 before switching to the classic network.

Very little freight uses HS1, 1/2 trains a night max.

 

[iainbhx]

The issue is that the flows between Birmingham and each of these European cities is not big enough to sustain one train a day. Even if one train went from Birmingham to Munich via Brussels, Köln and Frankfurt, and every air passenger on those routes switched to the train (for a journey of 3-9 hours), there would still only need to be one train a day. But not many people want to spend that long on a train, and not manybwant to restrict themselves to a certain time once a day.

June 2019

BHX - BRU 10 419
BHX - DUS 22 314
BHX - FRA 29 842
BHX - MUC 18 476

Don't disagree with your overall analysis (and FRA has significant transfer traffic, BRU and MUC has some), but that's a pretty whopping single train a day.

As someone who does business in Germany and lives in Birmingham, just on time grounds, the train has only rarely been a workable proposition and only then to the Ruhr.

 

[randyrippley]

........................I still dont get why you think having the shortest route to Birmingham is a poor objective? Birmingham is geographically north-south halfway between London and the North, It is half way east-west between Leeds and Manchester, you build two links up either side and get some major population centres each side.

Of course the Northern cities are a secondary objective, if you dont build phase 1 to Birmingham, none of the rest of it gets built. If you build phase 2 first for some reason you end up with a bunch of high speed trains then having nowhere to go on the congested network to London.

If you look at how the French have built there LGV network they nearly all were built starting in Paris and incremently working their way outwards.

Northern powerhouse rail is a completely different kettle of fish and the east-west long distance flows are much less compared to the north-south long distance flows.

Birmingham is only half way if you exclude Scotland........if you really wanted to get the track "half way to the north" you'd have to build to Lancaster
Yet another example of how the real geography of Britain gets ignored

 

[Bald Rick]

June 2019

BHX - BRU 10 419
BHX - DUS 22 314
BHX - FRA 29 842
BHX - MUC 18 476

Don't disagree with your overall analysis (and FRA has significant transfer traffic, BRU and MUC has some), but that's a pretty whopping single train a day.

As someone who does business in Germany and lives in Birmingham, just on time grounds, the train has only rarely been a workable proposition and only then to the Ruhr.

I was going off the annual numbers. But I agree on the June monthly numbers, that would be about 1,300 people each way a day. Basically one and a half e320s, or one Class 700

 

[DynamicSpirit]

June 2019

BHX - BRU 10 419
BHX - DUS 22 314
BHX - FRA 29 842
BHX - MUC 18 476

Are those then numbers of people on direct flights, or the numbers of people holding tickets between those destinations? And is it one way or adding both directions? The answers to those questions may change things because, if there are only a few flights a day, then there will be people who choose to change (eg. at Heathrow) or even to get the train to London and fly from there - because there are no direct flights at the times they want to fly. That will bump up the numbers a bit, although I'm sure, not enough to change the point that demand isn't sufficient to maintain a regular train service.

 

[si404]

As someone who does business in Germany and lives in Birmingham, just on time grounds, the train has only rarely been a workable proposition and only then to the Ruhr.

I think that's the case from London too. And even the Ruhr is stretching it - direct trains to Koeln has stalled and not just due to Eurotunnel train restrictions and security/border stuff. DB were never particularly in a hurry beyond test vehicles and Eurostar haven't seemed that bothered, unlike Amsterdam.

 

[Shrop]

There's a lot of negative reasoning in the responses about the possible lack of patronage for the HS1-HS2 link. It's not just about using data from existing travel habits, it's about sound marketing of a better product. It's a simple fact that new by-passes generate journeys, they don't just take traffic off existing roads. Railways are no different in that, but they are different as they have much more of a market to address. Roads take very little from air and rail, whereas a good rail services has huge potential to take traffic from air and roads. This needs a better understanding of travel demand and marketing, trotting out low existing market figures does not adequately address the situation except to those in plodding mode.

 

[Dr Hoo]

There's a lot of negative reasoning in the responses about the possible lack of patronage for the HS1-HS2 link. It's not just about using data from existing travel habits, it's about sound marketing of a better product. It's a simple fact that new by-passes generate journeys, they don't just take traffic off existing roads. Railways are no different in that, but they are different as they have much more of a market to address. Roads take very little from air and rail, whereas a good rail services has huge potential to take traffic from air and roads. This needs a better understanding of travel demand and marketing, trotting out low existing market figures does not adequately address the situation except to those in plodding mode.

"Good" being the most relevant word here. Obviously frequent services for London-Birmingham/Manchester/Leeds, Birmingham-Leeds, etc. that are much faster than any other mode will indeed have huge potential. Very infrequent through services to a limited number of continental destinations that are still slower than flying and would have to be more expensive because of their cost base would not be seen as "better" (at least as long as the aviation alternative is available).

 

[si404]

There's a lot of negative reasoning in the responses about the possible lack of patronage for the HS1-HS2 link.

the issue is far more than a lack of patronage (though even with the study trying to justify it assuming massive growth in demand and the ability to run 3tph each way it was only a trainful of passengers an hour to/from the North) - the lack of paths for trains that don't serve Zone 1 being the biggest - limiting destinations and also capping supply of seats that avoid London (albeit at optimistic demand levels, no not really posing an overcrowding problem!).

I've pointed out the other problems several times and you just ignore them, banging on about the demand issue and how you disagree.

It's about sound marketing of a better product.

The justification of the inferior product (vs a moving walkway under Somers Town or similar) of an HS1-2 track link is entirely marketing - trains from your Northern city to all over the continent sounds great, even of reality falls a long way short of potential.

HS2 is taking a negative marketing hit to not build that link. But even nothing is a better product than something when it comes to that track link between HS1 and 2!

Birmingham-Brighton isn't as easily marketable as Birmingham-Brussels for some reason but the former would be more commonly travelled. Instead of building a white elephant that doesn't actually improve travel between Brum and Brus, why not spent a small fraction of the price and improve both journeys?

 

[6Gman]

There's a lot of negative reasoning in the responses about the possible lack of patronage for the HS1-HS2 link. It's not just about using data from existing travel habits, it's about sound marketing of a better product. It's a simple fact that new by-passes generate journeys, they don't just take traffic off existing roads. Railways are no different in that, but they are different as they have much more of a market to address. Roads take very little from air and rail, whereas a good rail services has huge potential to take traffic from air and roads. This needs a better understanding of travel demand and marketing, trotting out low existing market figures does not adequately address the situation except to those in plodding mode.

Perhaps - for those of us "in plodding mode" - you could suggest what the timetable would look like?

 

[iainbhx]

Are those then numbers of people on direct flights, or the numbers of people holding tickets between those destinations? And is it one way or adding both directions? The answers to those questions may change things because, if there are only a few flights a day, then there will be people who choose to change (eg. at Heathrow) or even to get the train to London and fly from there - because there are no direct flights at the times they want to fly. That will bump up the numbers a bit, although I'm sure, not enough to change the point that demand isn't sufficient to maintain a regular train service.

That's the passengers on the direct flights. As someone who has flown BHX-FRA a lot over the last 20 years (as well over 100 return trips), I'd say most passengers are connecting onwards with Star Alliance carriers, maybe 30% of traffic is O&D, BHX-MUC has far more O&D but there's still a lot of connections, BHX-DUS is mainly O&D, especially since Lufthansa were replaced by Eurowings.

Very few people from Birmingham flying on business to Germany would add the two hours + to their journey to trek to a London airport. Similarly, we have reasonable service flexibility - 4 FRA, 3 MUC and 6 DUS a day - which stops people going to London.

The simple fact is that getting to BHX takes me the same time as it takes to get to New Street, whilst 2-hour check-ins are recommended, business travellers know that BHX isn't that big and if you get access to or pay for fast track security, an hour will do. I can be out of the door at DUS, FRA or MUC and heading for the station there within around four hours of leaving my house. I've left home at 04:30 and been in a meeting in Mainz at 10:00. Even with a direct train service, I'd still be somewhere around Brussels.

There might be a demand for a NightStar from the regions - if you can get me to Frankfurt by 09:00 in a reasonable state, I'd take take that over the alarm going off at 03:30 any day. But the price point would be a killer, it would probably have to be under £500 return and preferably under £400.

 

[Shrop]

the issue is far more than a lack of patronage (though even with the study trying to justify it assuming massive growth in demand and the ability to run 3tph each way it was only a trainful of passengers an hour to/from the North) - the lack of paths for trains that don't serve Zone 1 being the biggest - limiting destinations and also capping supply of seats that avoid London (albeit at optimistic demand levels, no not really posing an overcrowding problem!).

The justification of the inferior product (vs a moving walkway under Somers Town or similar) of an HS1-2 track link is entirely marketing - trains from your Northern city to all over the continent sounds great, even of reality falls a long way short of potential.

HS1-HS2 seems to have become a bit of a prominent topic – that wasn’t the intention when I started this thread. I accept the limitations of a direct link given that Euston to St Pancras is close enough to have a moving walkway connection for a fraction of the cost. Sadly too, although you can travel between many EU countries without customs checks, that has never been the case to and from the UK, and post-Brexit this won’t get any easier. I also accept that night trains will cost so much more than budget flights, and that they would therefore probably price themselves out of the market. A somewhat sorry reflection of the lack of green travel enthusiasm, but a reality nevertheless.

 

[Shrop]

Of course the Northern cities are a secondary objective, if you dont build phase 1 to Birmingham, none of the rest of it gets built. If you build phase 2 first for some reason you end up with a bunch of high speed trains then having nowhere to go on the congested network to London.

Have you looked at the HSUK proposals? The Northern cities are well served, and services to Birmingham are improved, but as countless people have said, spending a fortune to shave not very much time off this section really isn’t worth a lot.

To say “if you don't build phase 1 to Birmingham, none of the rest of it gets built” is completely wrong. Have a look, especially at their maps ... http://www.highspeeduk.co.uk/B00 161222 HSUK Brochure.pdf

 

[Along the bay]

Please let me introduce myself. I joined this site today and have a lifelong interest in railways, although I’ve never been employed in the industry. I’ve just retired from working in transport and traffic management, but mainly with roads. My interest in railways leads me to ask two questions about HS2 and I wondered if anyone on this site could shed any light on them.

Some 15 years ago I was at a presentation about HS2 in Manchester, to Chartered Engineers. During question time, I asked why the route was to run via Heathrow since the M1 corridor route seemed a much more logical choice. I said Heathrow shouldn’t be necessary, but that it would force the continuation to run via the Chilterns, which would lead to masses of objections. The answer was that it had already been decided and very little more, yet lo and behold the Heathrow imperative was later dropped. Nevertheless, despite the M1 corridor offering many advantages including a cost saving of some £20bn, no change has even been considered.

So question 1 – is the refusal to change now that Heathrow has been downgraded, purely because it would be too politically embarrassing to do so (both in Government and among HS2 hierarchy)?

And question 2 – was HS2 considered as complete project, or is the truth that Phase One was considered in isolation with nothing more than lip service to anything beyond Birmingham? This then led to Phase Two being designed with Phase One as a given, which of course makes Phase Two vulnerable and hence the crazy talk that in order to save money, it may only ever go as far as Birmingham. Was it really always a complete project to benefit the country or is any talk of this just a smokescreen to cover the mistake of not actually doing so?

I would be very pleased to learn more about the project from anyone who knows about it!

15 years ago ? It was proposed in 2009 wasn't it ? So 10 years ago.

 

[Shrop]

15 years ago ? It was proposed in 2009 wasn't it ? So 10 years ago.

I'm not sure of the exact date but it was quite some time before I left my job in Manchester, which was in 2008. It was when Greenguage21 was first lobbying.

 

[The Planner]

Pretty sure this one was done to death in the main HS2 thread, awful lot of upgrading of existing tracks and the disruption that causes with no real solutions on how they deal with New St etc... the maps are amusing, especially the West Mids one.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I'm not sure of the exact date but it was quite some time before I left my job in Manchester, which was in 2008. It was when Greenguage21 was first lobbying.

You might be thinking about the Atkins plans of the mid 2000s. I believe that one was meant to go via the M1-I think.

 

[PartyOperator]

Have you looked at the HSUK proposals? The Northern cities are well served, and services to Birmingham are improved, but as countless people have said, spending a fortune to shave not very much time off this section really isn’t worth a lot.

To say “if you don't build phase 1 to Birmingham, none of the rest of it gets built” is completely wrong. Have a look, especially at their maps ... http://www.highspeeduk.co.uk/B00 161222 HSUK Brochure.pdf

They don't really say how they'll get these new trains into New Street. Central Birmingham doesn't have seven 400m-long platforms just sitting idle. If all they're doing is replacing the current WCML trains with new high-speed trains that doesn't do a huge amount for London-Birmingham and would reduce capacity from intermediate points. Unless they're planning on completely rebuilding New Street into some kind of double-decker super-station or reducing the number of suburban and regional trains going to New Street, but either of those would be hugely disruptive.

The whole idea that building on or alongside some of the busiest transport infrastructure in Europe would make this cheaper is quite hard to understand. Their proposal combines going through more populated areas with going to less populated areas. Quite an achievement. Maybe no coincidence the two old guys behind this seem to live in Yorkshire.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Birmingham is only half way if you exclude Scotland........if you really wanted to get the track "half way to the north" you'd have to build to Lancaster

Half way to the north is actually about half way between Abingdon and Carstairs, if one measures from Euston. There's a lot of Scotland left after the central belt! Even within England, half-way is about Madeley on the West Coast or Temple Hirst Junction on the East Coast.

Granted, it's likely to be a very long time before anyone builds a high speed line to Wick, but the notion that Manchester or Leeds is 'the North' of Britain, or even England, is absurd.

 

[PartyOperator]

The UK's centre of population (half of people live south of this point) is slightly south of Derby, and England's centre of population is south of Rugby. Relative to where most people live, Birmingham is in 'the north' of England and Manchester is very much in 'the north' of Britain.

 

[adamedwards]

This document might help inform the discussion about the route as it gives lots of details on why the route was chosen. For example:

"3.3.3 As with the M40 corridor, a surface alignment along the M1 route would encounter a much greater number of major population centres than the consultation route would, including in this case Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes and, in particular, Luton. These three locations have a combined population of over 480,000 people. This would result in unacceptable impacts on communities through major demolitions, severance and noise impacts and therefore this route would require substantial sections of tunnelling. This makes it a substantially more complicated and expensive option than the consultation route.

3.3.4 The cost of constructing this route would be £18.7 billion, £2.2 billion more than the consultation route."

Hope informative.

 

[Bald Rick]

Are those then numbers of people on direct flights, or the numbers of people holding tickets between those destinations? And is it one way or adding both directions? The answers to those questions may change things because, if there are only a few flights a day, then there will be people who choose to change (eg. at Heathrow) or even to get the train to London and fly from there - because there are no direct flights at the times they want to fly. That will bump up the numbers a bit, although I'm sure, not enough to change the point that demand isn't sufficient to maintain a regular train service.

To add to what @iainbhx said (which I totally concur with); these numbers are the total (both directions) number of passengers on direct flights between BHX and the European airports concerned, regardless of where they actually start or end the flying part of their journey. For those that are interlining, the train isn’t going to be an option over that distance. As an (on topic) aside, as BHX expands its destination range - as it surely will post HS2 - some of the passengers interlining via FRA & AMS (and to a lesser extent other airports) will instead be on direct flights.