What to do with HS2 and NPR

[takno]

Do we really want a country in which towns a couple of hundred miles from London deteriorate into more dormitory towns for the bankers and their servants? And what happens if the City of London, after various political changes, loses some of its huge international significance and comes to generate rather less wealth and employment?

It cuts both ways. There's a whole lot of people who live in London and London Suburbs with a range of valuable experience, and it can be really difficult to get them to move to a different area of the country. If you can open up other parts of the country for key staff to commute northwards a couple of times a week then you open up employment for thousands of people who work with them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There is far, far more to central London employment than "bankers".

True, but almost all the work people commute considerable distances for is office work (though not just banking). You definitely see a different demographic on a LO or the Bakerloo from Harrow than you do on the LNR semifasts.

 

[miami]

Do we really want a country in which towns a couple of hundred miles from London deteriorate into more dormitory towns for the bankers and their servants? And what happens if the City of London, after various political changes, loses some of its huge international significance and comes to generate rather less wealth and employment?

That would be the case if it was daily commuting.

If you're spending 6 days a week in Wigan and popping down 2-4 times a month to London to maintain networks, you're shifting income from London and spending it in Wigan.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That would be the case if it was daily commuting.

If you're spending 6 days a week in Wigan and popping down 2-4 times a month to London to maintain networks, you're shifting income from London and spending it in Wigan.

Indeed. But if you're popping down 2-4 times a month you don't need a high speed railway for it - a 2-3 hour journey time down to London is quite adequate for that purpose, and WCML IC capacity can be boosted "around the edges" e.g. by all trains being maxed out in length.

Other than London-Scotland, I just can't see a case for high speed in the UK a a thing in its own right - the distances just aren't long enough. And if (when, more like) Scotland secedes, that former case is destroyed. I'm all for south WCML capacity if it is needed, and if you're going to build a new line it might as well be HS as it doesn't add much to the cost, but as far as I'm concerned if the capacity isn't needed (and there is to me a good chance it won't be) the time saving is not in my view worth the money alone, and I'd bin it off in favour of improving electrified transport links in and around our cities.

 

[Ianno87]

Indeed. But if you're popping down 2-4 times a month you don't need a high speed railway for it - a 2-3 hour journey time down to London is quite adequate for that purpose.

Psychologically, it could make the difference between getting back from your London meetings in time to get your kids to bed, or not. Or doing the school run then jumping on the train. For example.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Psychologically, it could make the difference between getting back from your London meetings in time to get your kids to bed, or not. Or doing the school run then jumping on the train. For example.

If you are going down to London 2-4 times a month, that simply is not important enough to justify the money. Your family life will be so much improved by not daily commuting (so you'll be able to spend time with the kids from the point you log off at about 5-5:30 rather from about 7pm when you get home from London) or living in the expensive South East (e.g. a bigger house or nicer garden) anyway.

 

[takno]

Indeed. But if you're popping down 2-4 times a month you don't need a high speed railway for it - a 2-3 hour journey time down to London is quite adequate for that purpose, and WCML IC capacity can be boosted "around the edges" e.g. by all trains being maxed out in length.

Other than London-Scotland, I just can't see a case for high speed in the UK a a thing in its own right - the distances just aren't long enough. And if (when, more like) Scotland secedes, that former case is destroyed. I'm all for south WCML capacity if it is needed, and if you're going to build a new line it might as well be HS as it doesn't add much to the cost, but as far as I'm concerned if the capacity isn't needed (and there is to me a good chance it won't be) the time saving is not in my view worth the money alone, and I'd bin it off in favour of improving electrified transport links in and around our cities.

Do you not think that there's a case for international high-speed travel then?

 

[Ianno87]

If you are going down to London 2-4 times a month, that simply is not important enough to justify the money. Your family life will be so much improved by not daily commuting (so you'll be able to spend time with the kids from the point you log off at about 5-5:30 rather from about 7pm when you get home from London) or living in the expensive South East (e.g. a bigger house or nicer garden) anyway.

You could be a single parent where being around for the kids every day is not just desirable, it's *essential*. And now the London jobs market is open to you.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do you not think that there's a case for international high-speed travel then?

From the regions of the UK? No. It will never come close to matching travel times by air. Even halving the London-Manchester journey time won't stop it being the case that getting to anywhere other than Paris or Brussels from the UK regions by train is basically a full-day journey and always will be. And with increased immigration and customs burden, Regional Eurostar will never, ever be a thing, however nice it might be.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Jan 2021 ==

You could be a single parent where being around for the kids every day is not just desirable, it's *essential*. And now the London jobs market is open to you.

Manchester to London with HS2 will be 67 minutes, according to a quick Google. But you need to add on getting to your London destination, and to Manchester Piccadilly or Manchester Airport HS2 station from where you live. With a roughly 45 minute journey time on the train, a London commute from Bletchley takes roughly 2 hours door to door, so let's be generous and use that. So if you drop the kids off at school for 9 and drive straight to the HS2 station and assume no waiting time, you're going to get to your destination office for 11am. Let's be generous and assume you leave the kids at a school childcare arrangement until say 6. So you have to leave the office by 4 absolute latest. In reality stick half an hour on each end for slack as missing your train could be rather expensive and there is waiting time.

That gives you a day in the office of 11:30am to 3:30pm.

Lop an hour out for lunch (even if it's a business lunch) and that gives you basically a 3 hour business day, or rather half-day.

That simply is not worth it. HS2 or no, you're going to want to be leaving home around 6am and getting a train back around 6-7pm to make maximum use of the day. So if you're a single parent of a young child, either way you're going to need a babysitter. And if your kids are old enough not to need a babysitter until 8pm, they won't need one until 9pm, either.

What will give single parents access to the "London jobs market" (which will in reality be "the jobs market" on jobs where remote work is possible; location will be less important) is good quality full-fibre broadband and remote working. Not HS2.

As for capacity in the North, the network is full when I'm seeing 240-260m 12-car trains knocking around. I'm not, I'm seeing lots of short DMUs knocking around the place (Blackpool-Manchester is literally the only place I'm seeing anywhere near South East train lengths all day with 6.331). Electrification, platform extensions and rolling stock is needed much more than NPR is[1], as well as improvements in our woeful city transport systems. Leeds needs trams. Manchester needs an U-Bahn made out of some of the Metrolink lines. Liverpool needs trams and some Merseyrail extensions. Preston might like trams, but a fleet of electric buses might do. And so on.

[1] Castlefield needs fixing, but you could put a line under Manchester without building the rest of it.

 

[Purple Orange]

Where I work we are expecting people to be in the office 50% of the week on average. Long before HS2 comes along, the realistic opportunity arises to get a London based job and spend a couple of days in the old smoke. HS2 will realistically bring City jobs to Birmingham, Manchester, Crewe, etc. on a more feasible basis.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Where I work we are expecting people to be in the office 50% of the week on average. Long before HS2 comes along, the realistic opportunity arises to get a London based job and spend a couple of days in the old smoke. HS2 will realistically bring City jobs to Birmingham, Manchester, Crewe, etc. on a more feasible basis.

HS2 is not going to come at the sort of cost that makes 3 times a week commuting viable from the North West, so that can be forgotten about - and nor should it, as we should not be subsidising unsustainable lifestyles with that level of travel.

Birmingham would come into range time-wise, but an annual season Brum-Euston with a Travelcard is twelve grand. At that price you're getting into very high-paid jobs only, not the average. HS2 is not going to offer a 5 grand (to give a fairly high South East price) annual season from Manchester to London; just no chance.

The way to spread the work around is remote working and encouraging businesses to relocate.

 

[Gareth]

Commuting hundreds of miles a day can't be efficient, regardless of the journey time. If we're going to persist with London being the only place that really matters in the country, then we're simply going to need to build more houses in London and the South East. That means increased densification in London, including building taller buildings, complete with the infrastructure required to go with it; plus either building more new towns in the South East or expanding existing ones along with the likes of Brighton, Oxford & Cambridge.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Commuting hundreds of miles a day can't be efficient, regardless of the journey time. If we're going to persist with London being the only place that really matters in the country, then we're simply going to need to build more houses in London and the South East. That means increased densification in London, including building taller buildings, complete with the infrastructure required to go with it; plus either building more new towns in the South East or expanding existing ones along with the likes of Brighton, Oxford & Cambridge.

Agreed. The model that will bring "London jobs" out to the regions doesn't involve commuting of any form, rather it involves occasional business travel, maybe a few times a month. HS2 is not necessary for that model.

In and of itself the UK is simply not big enough to need it. The benefit is de-facto 6-tracking the south WCML, but if that turns out not to be needed...

 

[Purple Orange]

HS2 is not going to come at the sort of cost that makes 3 times a week commuting viable from the North West, so that can be forgotten about - and nor should it, as we should not be subsidising unsustainable lifestyles with that level of travel.

Birmingham would come into range time-wise, but an annual season Brum-Euston with a Travelcard is twelve grand. At that price you're getting into very high-paid jobs only, not the average. HS2 is not going to offer a 5 grand (to give a fairly high South East price) annual season from Manchester to London; just no chance.

The way to spread the work around is remote working and encouraging businesses to relocate.

What’s wrong with travelling to London 2-3 times a week or indeed once with an overnight stay? If it is financially viable, it’s a good option to take.

And yes it will be the higher paid jobs, but that’s kind of the point. It brings other regions within range.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What’s wrong with travelling to London 2-3 times a week or indeed once with an overnight stay?

Because repeated long distance travel is unsustainable. And definitely not a good reason to build an extremely expensive railway.

 

[Purple Orange]

Because repeated long distance travel is unsustainable. And definitely not a good reason to build an extremely expensive railway.

I don’t think it would be the only reason to do so.

 

[eMeS]

NPR ? Sorry, I'm being a bit thick.

 

[Gareth]

Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Yes, it's seriously called that.

 

[HST43257]

Because repeated long distance travel is unsustainable. And definitely not a good reason to build an extremely expensive railway.

Could we, instead, try to build up to having 4 or 5 London-like centres for jobs? We could focus on long, high(ish) frequency shorter distance commuting?

Im thinking Birmingham, Manchester/Liverpool (combined), Leeds, Newcastle, Derby/Nottingham (also combined)

 

[Halifaxlad]

Could we, instead, try to build up to having 4 or 5 London-like centres for jobs? We could focus on long, high(ish) frequency shorter distance commuting?

Im thinking Birmingham, Manchester/Liverpool (combined), Leeds, Newcastle, Derby/Nottingham (also combined)

Careful, the recent National Infrastructure Commission report that basically make recommendations along the lines of doing that by focusing on improving regional links got badly slated in the press!

 

[miami]

The reason to travel (for white collar jobs) is to keep contact with customers, collegues, and suppliers.

Milton Keynes was built as a regional centre, it's full of London commuters commuting daily over unsustainable infrastructure.

Jobs concentrate in central locations because if you want to change your job it's more likely you'll be able to find a suitable one at the right time in a city than in the middle of nowhere. If you work for BT as a network operator in Oswestry, good job finding a new job in west Shropshire if you want to change. Likewise if you create a new job in Oswestry good job finding a qualified member of staff looking for a job.

Remote work means you don't need to travel every day in many situations, but you still need to travel

If you are going down to London 2-4 times a month, that simply is not important enough to justify the money.

Says the person arguing for better travel opportunities from his back door.

Many people in my part of Cheshire work in London, but it's a long old slog driving to Crewe, train to euston, tube to london bridge, tube to docklands, and back. Saving 2 hours on a day trip makes a big difference. Euston is so badly placed for pretty much anything other than Bloomsbury, and getting on the tube at rushhour is ridiculous.

For travel to heathrow the best solution is to hire a car one-way.

Opening high paid career opportunities in London to more of the country stops the brain drain. People born in Solihull, Sandbach, Stapleford and Skelmersdale will no longer have to move from the towns they grew up in to get started on their careers in graduate schemes, they'll have the same opportunities those born in Stevenage and Sandwich do without having to move their lives to London and lose their support networks.

More and more middle class jobs have moved out of towns and centralised in cities, with most graduate schemes in London.

UK regions hit by brain drain: Exodus of talent to London adds to

For Britain to prosper, cities must prosper. They are engines of growth

www.independent.co.uk

"Huge numbers of young adults move to London from Britain’s other cities and never return home, according to a report revealing the extent to which the capital drains talent from the rest of the country."

Once someone is moving somewhere for a job, there's little keeping them in the UK at all (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...brain-drain-as-skilled-britons-head-to-the-eu). After all if you're 2 hours from your family by living in London, you might as well live in Amsterdam or Berlin or Geneva.

On the other hand if you only need to travel to an office once or twice a week and can do that comfortably at speed, you can live with your support network, choose the job in London instead of Berlin, and spend your income in local shops, cafes, days out etc.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Says the person arguing for better travel opportunities from his back door.

You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that HS2 is about additional south WCML capacity, and that other things such as quicker London-Manchester journeys are just a nice side effect but are not worth the money alone. If that south WCML capacity is no longer needed because London commuting won't come back to the extent it was there before, so for example it will be adequate to operate an all-week Saturday service with maybe 6 trains in each direction running as 12-car rather than 8, then the case for HS2 is poor and it should not be built.

The suggestion of still rejigging Euston is that there are a number of platforms that won't take 12.350 or 11.390, so it'd be much easier to operate the station if they could.

 

[miami]

HS2 is about much more than just additional capacity for milton keynes commuters.

And making any guess about the use of railways for the next 50, let alone 100 years, seems a mugs game

 

[Bletchleyite]

HS2 is about much more than just additional capacity for milton keynes commuters

It was. But that (and other related benefits, such as more classic IC services serving MKC and Watford Junction, and improved Trent Valley local services) was the key reason for it being good value.

It does not represent good value for money simply to speed up what is quite a short journey. HS all the way to Scotland might, but when Scotland secedes (and I do firmly believe it to be a when), demand from there to London will plummet.

 

[quantinghome]

Do we really want a country in which towns a couple of hundred miles from London deteriorate into more dormitory towns for the bankers and their servants? And what happens if the City of London, after various political changes, loses some of its huge international significance and comes to generate rather less wealth and employment?

No. But that's an entirely fictional scenario so I'm not worried about it.

I do want a country that finally realises that make do and mend with Victorian infrastructure is not going to cut it anymore. I do want a country with rail infrastructure that reflects today's and tomorrow's needs rather than trying to modify a network built to take coal wagons doing 30mph. I do want a country where door-to-door journeys between major cities are quicker by rail than by car.

 

[Halifaxlad]

If demands does plummet (not that I believe so myself) at least they're might be more paths availble for a potential connection with the GWML.

 

[JonathanH]

If demands does plummet (not that I believe so myself) at least they're might be more paths availble for a potential connection with the GWML.

Are you suggesting HS2 trains go into Paddington, reverse at Royal Oak or some significant new curve is built?

 

[Ianno87]

It was. But that (and other related benefits, such as more classic IC services serving MKC and Watford Junction, and improved Trent Valley local services) was the key reason for it being good value.

It does not represent good value for money simply to speed up what is quite a short journey. HS all the way to Scotland might, but when Scotland secedes (and I do firmly believe it to be a when), demand from there to London will plummet.

However, interurban non-London connectivity on the southern WCML remains lacking whilst long distance services remain prioritised on the same infrastructure.

Flows like Watford and Milton Keynes to Rugby and Coventry ought to be more frequent than once per hour without the need to travel via Northampton. Which HS2 still releases.

Plus the freight capacity benefits.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Are you suggesting HS2 trains go into Paddington, reverse at Royal Oak or some significant new curve is built?

They're is not much point in that!

Yes I am suggesting if demand plummets and frees up capacity that a chord between HS2 to connect it with the GWML should be considered/built!

 

[JonathanH]

They're is not much point in that!

Yes I am suggesting if demand plummets and frees up capacity that a chord between HS2 to connect it with the GWML should be considered/built!

Can you pinpoint on a map where you think this chord could be built, where there is a suitable place for a connection off HS2, even as a fantasy idea. I'm just intrigued as to the idea as I don't think it is possible (and certainly not in anyone's plans). HS2 is in a tunnel from Old Oak Common to West Ruislip - I guess you could try coming down the line of the M25 but that is a major piece of construction.

However, I'm not even convinced it would be the highest priority if 'demand plummets'.

London tunnels | High Speed 2

www.hs2.org.uk

Northolt tunnel​

Northolt tunnel is the second longest tunnel on the Phase One route. The tunnel will carry passengers from Old Oak Common station 8.4 miles under London to West Ruislip. We will need four tunnel boring machines to build this tunnel and when they finish, they will be extracted at Green Park Way vent shaft.