Will HS2 make rail travel worse.

[Grimsby town]

The Curzon Street issue is overstated in my opinion. It'll be closer to an expanded Moor Street / the main bus area in Birmingham than arriving into New Street. It'll also have a tram connection. The reduction in journey time should mean the generalised journey time is at the worst the same for people arriving at New Street.

I also don't buy the 'if only we had better intergrated journeys, we wouldn't need faster services' argument. Most public transport services in cities operate at a half hourly frequency so the max you'll save through timetable integration is likely to be 30 mins. Even taking into account the disbenefit associated with waiting, HS2 is likely to give you a bigger saving in journey time. I live in Old Trafford with a very frequent tram service and despite that it's quicker for me to drive into Birmingham City Centre which emphasises we need quicker services.

 

[Roast Veg]

You try it with a dodgy hip joint

With a bad hip, do you not struggle with New Street as it is? I'd suggest booking assistance if mobility is a serious concern.

 

[TXMISTA]

Really ? All GWR services will stop at Old Oak ? Oh dear. Many GWR long / middle distance services are already too slow and multi stop. This will definitely not be an improvement !

I hope there’s scope for the Bristol ‘superfasts’ to return eventually, even if it’s extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future.

 

[uglymonkey]

I'd love to know how it helps Devon & Cornwall. Another stop on a Paddington service?

 

[peteb]

HS2 was thought up pre-pandemic when business trips were part and parcel of life on expenses, first class travel from an office in Birmingham to London and vice versa. It's all changed. There's more working from home despite the government that wants us to go back to the office, and teams and zoom make face to face meetings after a journey almost irrelevant and certainly much more cost effective. So if super expensive superfast trains are to replace fast cheaper services which serve places people want to to travel to (eg Wcml) and connect with then yes HS2 will make things worse. Had it been designed like the TGV network in France, connecting the furthest reaches of the UK then it would have been a triumph but as it is it won't be!

 

[gazzaa2]

While HS2 will be good for the places it serves, I fear that places currently served by fast services will see a degradation. Milton Keynes, Coventry, Leicester, loughborough, Stoke, Stafford. Even Nottingham.
And suburban stations in the west mids will lose the easy connections at New St. Selly Oak - London will involve a lengthy trek to Curzon St. Or they will do M42/M40 instead.

I fear trains to New Street on existing lines will be even more packed to make HS2 connections. Although in theory more capacity is possible.

 

[Rich McLean]

HS2 connectivty to places in the West and South West, plus Heathrow will be better when Old Oak Common opens, as all services, including Heathrow Express and all GWR HSS will stop there. It will also give connectivity straight onto crossrail and into Central London.

 

[py_megapixel]

With a bad hip, do you not struggle with New Street as it is? I'd suggest booking assistance if mobility is a serious concern.

Is assistance actually available for a connection between two different stations?

 

[SynthD]

Perfect is the enemy of good. The complaints I see here can generally only be solved by making other people suffer, often greatly. Birmingham is big, someone will always be some distance from it.

I’m surprised people are still doubting whether stops like Milton Keynes will be more common. That’s flying in the face of a repeatedly mentioned benefit.

 

[mrmartin]

HS2 was thought up pre-pandemic when business trips were part and parcel of life on expenses, first class travel from an office in Birmingham to London and vice versa. It's all changed. There's more working from home despite the government that wants us to go back to the office, and teams and zoom make face to face meetings after a journey almost irrelevant and certainly much more cost effective. So if super expensive superfast trains are to replace fast cheaper services which serve places people want to to travel to (eg Wcml) and connect with then yes HS2 will make things worse. Had it been designed like the TGV network in France, connecting the furthest reaches of the UK then it would have been a triumph but as it is it won't be!

Actually, I think the demand for long distance "super commuting" will increase a lot post pandemic. Many companies are happy with 1 or 2 days a week in the office now; which means commuting very long distances (either back in a day or with a hotel stay) is much more possible now. As such HS2 will enable a lot of that.

 

[peteb]

Actually, I think the demand for long distance "super commuting" will increase a lot post pandemic. Many companies are happy with 1 or 2 days a week in the office now; which means commuting very long distances (either back in a day or with a hotel stay) is much more possible now. As such HS2 will enable a lot of that.

That might hold true if one lived close to a HS2 station but for most people the time taken to chug into Birmingham, then transfer, then get on a HS2 train (I assume there will be a short boarding check in procedure), will negate the time savings over conventional trains from say Warwick Parkway or Birmingham International. Even from Kidderminster it's still faster to just sit on Chiltern all the way, (and work for that time at a table seat) rather than change trains in the city centre. So if those sort of services are reduced or removed as a result of HS2 then that's not good. I can leave my house and be on a Chiltern train in 10 minutes, then 2 hrs 40 later I am at Marylebone. If I drove to a HS2 station at BHX that will take an hour in early morning traffic assuming no motorway hold ups, then park and check in (takes time to park), then 45 minute train to Euston.......it's going to be possibly marginally quicker but I've achieved nothing in terms of work except a brief bit on HS2. Then driving back in the evening ......no thanks!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'd love to know how it helps Devon & Cornwall. Another stop on a Paddington service?

It's a bit unrealistic to expect one new single railway line to benefit every single location in the country! And yes, HS2 is too far away from Devon and Cornwall to be of much benefit to them. But it's not going to disbenefit either. The extra Old Oak Common stop will be more convenient than Paddington for people changing to Crossrail to get into a lot of central London locations, and will also allow easy interchange to get to Heathrow. And people travelling from Devon/Cornwall to the North of England will generally find their journeys are speeded up by changing to HS2 at Birmingham.

Even from Kidderminster it's still faster to just sit on Chiltern all the way, (and work for that time at a table seat) rather than change trains in the city centre. So if those sort of services are reduced or removed as a result of HS2 then that's not good. I can leave my house and be on a Chiltern train in 10 minutes, then 2 hrs 40 later I am at Marylebone.

Did you forget to mention that there are only a couple of direct trains a day that do that? So your logic only works if you are able to leave at a very precise time in the morning! I doubt that works for many people!

Post HS2, you'll presumably get the same train from Kidderminster, and then change to HS2 at Birmingham. It'll take you 5 minutes to walk from Moor Street to Curzon Street, you'd probably have a 10 minute max wait for a train to London, and that train will take 45 minutes AND get to you to a London terminus that has much better tube connections than Marylebone. Even if you add an extra 10 minutes for general faffing at Birmingham, that's still going to be way quicker than your current journey. And you'll be able to do that any time of the day.

You also have to remember that your train from Kidderminster comes at a cost: It's fast because it does loads of fast running or skip-stopping between Moor Street and London. That may be good for Kidderminster residents, but it's pretty rubbish for people who live along the Chiltern line between Birmingham and London, who just see most of the trains pass through their towns without stopping, preventing them from being able to get a decent rail service. I would expect that post-HS2, those trains will revert back to doing that the line should be doing: Serving the towns along the Chiltern line, which won't suit the small minority of people who want the fastest possible direct train from Kidderminster to London and aren't willing to change at Birmingham, but will provide a much more frequent rail service to many more people.

 

[fishwomp]

It's a bit unrealistic to expect one new single railway line to benefit every single location in the country!

I think everyone agrees with this. The point is that if you accept this as true, and you intend to benefit the country as a whole, then the obvious consequence is that building one railway is by design a failure no matter where it goes. So, better make sure that that spending is not disproportionate..

And yes, HS2 is too far away from Devon and Cornwall to be of much benefit to them. But it's not going to disbenefit either.

Other rail projects not being funded, and services being cut in the future to pay for it..?

The extra Old Oak Common stop will be more convenient than Paddington for people changing to Crossrail to get into a lot of central London locations, and will also allow easy interchange to get to Heathrow.

This part true. So one station in London..

And people travelling from Devon/Cornwall to the North of England will generally find their journeys are speeded up by changing to HS2 at Birmingham.

A 30 mins interchange time between New St arrival and Curzon dep.. rules out a lot of journeys, except to Manchester.

 

[peteb]

It's a bit unrealistic to expect one new single railway line to benefit every single location in the country! And yes, HS2 is too far away from Devon and Cornwall to be of much benefit to them. But it's not going to disbenefit either. The extra Old Oak Common stop will be more convenient than Paddington for people changing to Crossrail to get into a lot of central London locations, and will also allow easy interchange to get to Heathrow. And people travelling from Devon/Cornwall to the North of England will generally find their journeys are speeded up by changing to HS2 at Birmingham.



Did you forget to mention that there are only a couple of direct trains a day that do that? So your logic only works if you are able to leave at a very precise time in the morning! I doubt that works for many people!

Post HS2, you'll presumably get the same train from Kidderminster, and then change to HS2 at Birmingham. It'll take you 5 minutes to walk from Moor Street to Curzon Street, you'd probably have a 10 minute max wait for a train to London, and that train will take 45 minutes AND get to you to a London terminus that has much better tube connections than Marylebone. Even if you add an extra 10 minutes for general faffing at Birmingham, that's still going to be way quicker than your current journey. And you'll be able to do that any time of the day.

You also have to remember that your train from Kidderminster comes at a cost: It's fast because it does loads of fast running or skip-stopping between Moor Street and London. That may be good for Kidderminster residents, but it's pretty rubbish for people who live along the Chiltern line between Birmingham and London, who just see most of the trains pass through their towns without stopping, preventing them from being able to get a decent rail service. I would expect that post-HS2, those trains will revert back to doing that the line should be doing: Serving the towns along the Chiltern line, which won't suit the small minority of people who want the fastest possible direct train from Kidderminster to London and aren't willing to change at Birmingham, but will provide a much more frequent rail service to many more people.

But our conversation was about people travelling into London to work 1 or 2 days a week thus requiring one of the three direct Chiltern trains from Kidderminster in the morning rush hour. And if you look at the timetable the Kidderminster trains do stop at a fair few stops between Leamington and London. And try walking from Moor Street to Curzon Street its 10 minutes minimum, having to queue to get out through the turnstiles at Moor Street. Hopeless if its wet, no cover, and still impossible to "work" on the train until on HS2.

The economic dis benefits of disconnecting an area with a population of over 100,000 (and due to expand) and removing reasonably fast direct links to London should not be underestimated.

 

[The Planner]

But our conversation was about people travelling into London to work 1 or 2 days a week thus requiring one of the three direct Chiltern trains from Kidderminster in the morning rush hour. And if you look at the timetable the Kidderminster trains do stop at a fair few stops between Leamington and London. And try walking from Moor Street to Curzon Street its 10 minutes minimum, having to queue to get out through the turnstiles at Moor Street. Hopeless if its wet, no cover, and still impossible to "work" on the train until on HS2.

The economic dis benefits of disconnecting an area with a population of over 100,000 (and due to expand) and removing reasonably fast direct links to London should not be underestimated.

Moor St to Curzon St is not 10 minutes. The exit of Moor St will be next to the front of Curzon St

 

[Trainbike46]

I wonder why so many people assume things about how HS2 will work that have no basis in any public announcements, and don't seem to make sense from the perspective of the future train operator? I'm thinking of the people in this thread who assume HS2 will be reservations compulsory, or who assume a check-in procedure will exist, for example.

 

[takno]

But our conversation was about people travelling into London to work 1 or 2 days a week thus requiring one of the three direct Chiltern trains from Kidderminster in the morning rush hour. And if you look at the timetable the Kidderminster trains do stop at a fair few stops between Leamington and London. And try walking from Moor Street to Curzon Street its 10 minutes minimum, having to queue to get out through the turnstiles at Moor Street. Hopeless if its wet, no cover, and still impossible to "work" on the train until on HS2.

The economic dis benefits of disconnecting an area with a population of over 100,000 (and due to expand) and removing reasonably fast direct links to London should not be underestimated.

Your argument was that the pandemic was going to mean an end to first class business-account travel. In view of the fact that HS2 isn't targeting premium travel, people engaged by pointing out that the pandemic may well lead to more long distance travel.

You now (via some inaccurate nonsense about check-in procedures) have landed on the slightly astonishing idea that all the business travel will be from Kidderminster to London, and that this important market can't be bothered to make literally the easiest possible change from conventional rail to HS2 in the whole country. Moor St through platforms are probably closer to the HS2 platforms than platform 1a is to 12b at New Street

 

[BingMan]

My life will never be so chaotic or regulated that I would have to pay a premium to arrive somewhere half hour earlier.

The emphasis on station to station speed is a bit of a canard. When you add in the time taken to get get to and from those stations
For example my journey from home in NW Derbyshire to my family near Leeds takes about three hours and ten minutes. If some super train was able to reduce the Manchester to Huddersfield leg from forty minutes to twenty minutes the saving on my journey time would be about 10%. Not worth the expense

 

[The Planner]

Lots of people saying journey time decreases are of no interest to them. That will save a nice chunk in the enhancement pot going forward for the industry as we can just maintain what we have.

 

[Snow1964]

Actually, I think the demand for long distance "super commuting" will increase a lot post pandemic. Many companies are happy with 1 or 2 days a week in the office now; which means commuting very long distances (either back in a day or with a hotel stay) is much more possible now. As such HS2 will enable a lot of that.

Whilst I don’t disagree with the idea of one or two days a week long distance commuting, I think HS2 will turn out to be in the wrong place for that kind of thing. Because people with money (and well paid jobs) will move to where quality of life for family is better.

If your office is based in centre of Birmingham, probably going to live somewhere like Devon coast, Lake district or south Cotswolds.

Similarly if office is in London, not likely to live in centre of Birmingham, or centre of Manchester, but might choose to live near Dorset Coast, or Bath, or Peak District etc

HS2 isn’t really going to help unless it gains some early morning local trains that somehow join it then race to the major city, with return trains in early evening. A through train from local railhead, not a connection. Which doesn’t seem to be what is planned.

 

[Ken H]

We are told cross country needs to serve manchester, aberdeen, penzance because changing is so difficult. But now we are tol HS2 will be wonderful and people travelling from off the HS2 network will be willing to make complicated changes to save a few minutes on the trunk haul. Cant have it both ways...

 

[Gareth]

Moor St to Curzon St is not 10 minutes. The exit of Moor St will be next to the front of Curzon St

They seem to be essentially the same location to me. I think they're missing a trick by not considering it a massive expansion of Moor Street.

 

[takno]

Whilst I don’t disagree with the idea of one or two days a week long distance commuting, I think HS2 will turn out to be in the wrong place for that kind of thing. Because people with money (and well paid jobs) will move to where quality of life for family is better.

If your office is based in centre of Birmingham, probably going to live somewhere like Devon coast, Lake district or south Cotswolds.

Similarly if office is in London, not likely to live in centre of Birmingham, or centre of Manchester, but might choose to live near Dorset Coast, or Bath, or Peak District etc

HS2 isn’t really going to help unless it gains some early morning local trains that somehow join it then race to the major city, with return trains in early evening. A through train from local railhead, not a connection. Which doesn’t seem to be what is planned.

Not everybody would choose to live somewhere as boring as the Lake District, and certainly not everybody could, but if they do then the train to London should be sped up plenty by HS2. In fact the post Covid changes are about people moving less, so they can get a mostly-remote job in Birmingham or Manchester and stay in their current homes in London (or most of the Southeast), or vice versa.

 

[Gareth]

No one's commuting from the South East to Birmingham or Manchester. The idea is quite comical.

 

[Snow1964]

They seem to be essentially the same location to me. I think they're missing a trick by not considering it a massive expansion of Moor Street.

If you are going to have two stations virtually adjoining then give them same name, and number the platforms as one long sequence. There is a reason why it was done at London Victoria even if it appears to be almost two separate concourses, same reasons still apply

 

[Gareth]

Manchester Piccadilly P13/14 is a similar situation also.

 

[Ken H]

No one's commuting from the South East to Birmingham or Manchester. The idea is quite comical.

they do from South Warwickshire. And they certainly do from Doncaster. I believe Bristol too. Started with the general speed up with HST in the late 70's. And more motorways, like the M40.
My neighbour moved from London to the Yorkshire Dales during Covid. His job is still in Central London. But he does rare treks to the office. Is that not commuting?

 

[CW2]

Really ? All GWR services will stop at Old Oak ? Oh dear. Many GWR long / middle distance services are already too slow and multi stop. This will definitely not be an improvement !

Very few people travelling into Paddington are actually destined to the immediate Paddington area. The vast majority are passing through onto other parts of London. So the additional connectivity offered by Old Oak Common will be an overall improvement - and an end-to-end journey time reduction for many people.
I can see that journey patterns might not be entirely symmetrical, i.e. in the morning people would alight at Old Oak Common to connect there for their end destination, whereas in the evening people might prefer to go via Paddington to join their train before departure, ensuring a seat.
It is likely that in time Old Oak Common will be significantly busier than Paddington.

 

[BayPaul]

HS2 will introduce masses of additional capacity, modern trains, reduced journey times, more frequent departures throughout the day, a more reliable service due to fit for purpose infrastructure, and almost certainly more cheap fares as they'll need more advances to fill it.

It will connect to good central locations in the largest rail markets across the country, with good onward connections.

Everything I've seen suggests it will be very profitable, even taking account of the capital cost, so won't be a drain on resources, in fact is likely to provide additional money for upgrades of the classic network, especially where it will help drive passengers on the metro networks of the cities it serves. I think it is likely to be the start of a new 'age of the train' as it is the one rail investment that has the genuine ability to attract motorways full of people away from their cars.

It will also free up oodles of capacity on bypassed lines, allowing much enhanced services on metro lines and to intermediate places.

No, journeys won't get worse, they'll get much, much better.

I really can't understand the hate for HS2 on here. Yes, there are flaws - the dropping of the eastern leg, not connecting to the Birmingham to Bristol line, and not calling Curzon St 'Moor Street High Speed' for example, but they are fixable, and almost certainly will be in time.

 

[Ken H]

HS2 will introduce masses of additional capacity, modern trains, reduced journey times, more frequent departures throughout the day, a more reliable service due to fit for purpose infrastructure, and almost certainly more cheap fares as they'll need more advances to fill it.

It will connect to good central locations in the largest rail markets across the country, with good onward connections.

Everything I've seen suggests it will be very profitable, even taking account of the capital cost, so won't be a drain on resources, in fact is likely to provide additional money for upgrades of the classic network, especially where it will help drive passengers on the metro networks of the cities it serves. I think it is likely to be the start of a new 'age of the train' as it is the one rail investment that has the genuine ability to attract motorways full of people away from their cars.

It will also free up oodles of capacity on bypassed lines, allowing much enhanced services on metro lines and to intermediate places.

No, journeys won't get worse, they'll get much, much better.

I really can't understand the hate for HS2 on here. Yes, there are flaws - the dropping of the eastern leg, not connecting to the Birmingham to Bristol line, and not calling Curzon St 'Moor Street High Speed' for example, but they are fixable, and almost certainly will be in time.

if it will be so profitable, why didnt the private sector take it up?