HS2 Northern Branches Discussion

[Invincibles]

Maybe we should be learning from the Chinese with the station designs and requirement for photo ID to travel.

I am about to take the Beijing to Shanghai line where my bags will be scanned, my ticket has my passport number on and my passport will be checked before I board the train. A huge number of passengers will be checked onto the train in a matter of minutes and the same will happen at every intermediate station. Access to platforms is prevented until just before the train is due to leave and the platforms are checked once the train has gone to ensure no one remains. Bigger stations have more than one platform in each direction to ensure plenty of time between each face being used.

It might be a big leap from where we are now in the UK for train travel but I do not think it is completely unworkable to introduce all the checks necessary for Schengen.

Back to the topic I also believe that parkway type stations are the best way forward, with spurs into city centres only where absolutely necessary. I always feel Stockport gets a lot of passengers onto London trains in this way (though there is never any way of knowing for most passengers I usually see football teams boarding at Stockport instead of Manchester Piccadilly)

 

[steamdrivenand]

In an ideal world, it would. However bare in mind that the lines will basically end on the mainlines not that far from these cities.

But surely you design with the future in mind, even if it's a long way off. The A500, built years ago around Crewe, even has a roundabout with just a third stub exit/entrance for a link road that doesn't exist yet.

The Crewe proposal for a WCML tie in is 20, if not 30, miles too far south from the optimum location for serving Liverpool - let alone Scotland. Scotland services would gain lots from going via Manchester rather than joining the WCML at Crewe (not least two birds, one stone, less passenger trains needed on the WCML n of Preston).

Better via a connection further north, so some actual benefit could be had from phase-2. Crewe can be served via the chord at Lichfield either by one of the two Liverpool services, or by the London-end of a 2x200m classic-compatible split-join at Birmingham Int (bonus of also being able to keep serving Stoke, Stafford and Stockport post-phase 2).

I'm not saying that Scottish trains (or maybe even even Liverpool trains) come off at Crewe for all time. If you extend the spine to Scotland of course the HS trains continue on that. However a link into Crewe gives you options and flexibility, at least for Compatible stock, whereas no link keeps the lot penned on one line and large areas of potential customers unable to use HS at all.

Why? What does that serve other than some small villages between Crewe and the edge of the urban area (which would be served with two main-route stations).also better with a connection further north - ideally Culceth, but central Manchester wouldn't be too bad - certainly better than Crewe.You don't need a station there. You are forcing services to either run a lot further on classic lines, or head west north west only to head back north east (ie Manchester services would gain at least 15% over a more optimal routing)

Isn't that what Compatible is all about? The Captives blast from one metro-centric station to another whilst the Compatibles blast up and down part or all of the line but serve classic destinations at either or one end or off the middle somewhere. Manchester would still get its full fat HS2 experience.

Err what are you smoking - the chuffing main route is going to have to go that way - especially if coming from the Crewe area. The Airport area is the only candidate still standing for the Outskirts station.

The spine route can go on west of Holmes Chapel and Knutsford and east of Lymm with as I say an HS link to the airport and an HS link into central Manc. This means there's no need for a high cost through running route from airport to central Manc and no need for a similar northward urban extension if the line heads to Scotland. You halve the urban work involved and all the environmental and political etc issues.

That would be repeating the one mistake of HS1's routing. HS2 is far more clever than creating a wide path of destruction (thanks to islands sandwiched between the two routes) to avoid creating another, but far narrower in total area destroyed, corridor. OK, the M6 in Staffs is far from being as bad for that as the M40 in Bucks and Oxon, however HS2 Ltd strongly believe that creating such islands is a very bad move (though they might not get their way - they look as if the foot is going to come down and they have to build the we-wouldn't-even-want-it-magicked-there-for-free Heathrow branch that does nothing but sap capacity and give the average user a longer journey on Crossrail than changing at Old Oak).

I agree creating a strip of land between motorway and HS line is bad, so maybe where that occurs they integrate the two with no attempt at an 'island' strip. The other solution is to work out the optimum environmentally workable minimum gap and work to that.
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Maybe we should be learning from the Chinese with the station designs and requirement for photo ID to travel.

I am about to take the Beijing to Shanghai line where my bags will be scanned, my ticket has my passport number on and my passport will be checked before I board the train. A huge number of passengers will be checked onto the train in a matter of minutes and the same will happen at every intermediate station. Access to platforms is prevented until just before the train is due to leave and the platforms are checked once the train has gone to ensure no one remains. Bigger stations have more than one platform in each direction to ensure plenty of time between each face being used.

It might be a big leap from where we are now in the UK for train travel but I do not think it is completely unworkable to introduce all the checks necessary for Schengen.

Back to the topic I also believe that parkway type stations are the best way forward, with spurs into city centres only where absolutely necessary. I always feel Stockport gets a lot of passengers onto London trains in this way (though there is never any way of knowing for most passengers I usually see football teams boarding at Stockport instead of Manchester Piccadilly)

If the only trains that run through the Tunnel are Captives that run from purpose built HS stations then it should be easy to design in systems for security and immigration controls. The problems only arise if you spread the availability of direct Tunnel travel to non HS stations. Potentially that could be an enormous number of stations with few trains per day which make those control issues completely uneconomic.

I think we're also at risk of forgetting that the whole point of joining Schengen is to actually remove controls and security. So inside Schengen we could have a much wider Tunnel using network with no big security costs etc BUT with a potential big risk of exploitation in all sorts of ways that probably wouldn't be acceptable.

 

[Manchester77]

You shouldn't have to show yours passport just to use a high speed line
If it goes international then yes but just from Manchester to Birmingham for example then it's a bit excessive

 

[JohnB57]

I think we're also at risk of forgetting that the whole point of joining Schengen is to actually remove controls and security. So inside Schengen we could have a much wider Tunnel using network with no big security costs etc BUT with a potential big risk of exploitation in all sorts of ways that probably wouldn't be acceptable.

I've been keeping an eye on this thread and hope you don't mind a view from the sideline.

Firstly, Schengen is aimed at removing border controls, not eliminating any necessary security checks, so tunnel traffic would still be contingent on security facilities being available at the point of departure. Border checks as such are, as someone posted earlier, pretty cursory anyway and the tunnel too vulnerable without stringent security. Schengen wouldn't change that and I think security check free journeys into Europe are a pipedream.

Secondly, signing up to Schengen would also require a similar agreement from our only current land neighbour, Ireland - and if Mr Salmond is successful at some future time, Scotland too. Not an obstacle, but one more issue to consider. However, my opinion is that the benefits of Schengen to the UK and Ireland are so marginal that it's not worth the costs that would be incurred in segregating areas in airports etc.

Having been a regular commuter to Europe by road, rail and air - usually in combination - my view is that the facilitation of multi mode journeys should be a priority rather than a blinkered air or rail or road approach.In that context, the unpopular HS2 Heathrow link perhaps looks a bit more enticing.

 

[steamdrivenand]

I would agree that it is draconian to involve passengers in a full security/border check just because they happen to need to travel from Manchester to Birmingham at a time when the relevant HS train happens to be Tunnel bound. Maybe there's a way round it by segregating sections of the train until after its last UK stop.

Multi-modal is good and lets face it the vast majority of train journeys utilise a minimum of two forms of transport. I still feel that UK rail hasn't properly adapted to the car let alone air transport, although if you're at an airport already and there's a flight to nearer your destination I can't figure why you'd want to go by rail, even HS, in most circumstances.

It would've been handy in the case of one journey I did though. We were staying at a hotel not far from BTM and took a bus out to a misty Bristol Airport which was fogbound. So we caught a bus back to our start point in order to catch a train north. Now an HS station at Bristol Airport would've been a great timesaver. Surely that means that the only time the HS2 line to Heathrow will get a decent loading will be in inclement weather when it'll be packed out?

 

[Haydn1971]

Having been a regular commuter to Europe by road, rail and air - usually in combination - my view is that the facilitation of multi mode journeys should be a priority rather than a blinkered air or rail or road approach.In that context, the unpopular HS2 Heathrow link perhaps looks a bit more enticing.

The consultants who deliver projects globally as well as in the UK have been telling the DfT that for at least three decades - you need to integrate modes, free/cheap car parks at railway stations, opportunities for car share meeting points near motorway junctions, motorway buses into city centres from motorway corridors (park & ride for longer distance), rail and motorway links directly into airports rather than half hearted attempts years later, integrated ticketing across the whole of the UK, so many ideas, so little being listened to be the paymaster at the DfT

 

[Philip Elliott]

The consultants who deliver projects globally as well as in the UK have been telling the DfT that for at least three decades - you need to integrate modes, free/cheap car parks at railway stations, opportunities for car share meeting points near motorway junctions, motorway buses into city centres from motorway corridors (park & ride for longer distance), rail and motorway links directly into airports rather than half hearted attempts years later, integrated ticketing across the whole of the UK, so many ideas, so little being listened to be the paymaster at the DfT

All those options assume use of a car...

 

[steamdrivenand]

All those options assume use of a car...

And your point is what?

That the DfTRANSPORT consider that cars aren't transport?

That cars don't count?

That the millions of car drivers and users don't deserve consideration?

 

[tbtc]

But the HS would bypass Crewe, Stoke etc, passing about 6 or 7 miles east of Crewe and maybe slightly further west of Stoke through relatively easy engineering-wise country. It would skim the eastern edge of Stafford because of where it starts at Lichfield, paralleling the M6 (but not necessarily on top of it), thereby not adding a further transport corridor with additional noise pollution etc issues.

I'm not really sure where York comes in this discussion as it's well north east of Leeds where the HS2 plans will terminate for the present.

I maybe didn't make myself clear.

I was trying to echo Haydn1971's point about HS2 being a whole new service and therefore shouldn't be wedded to the need to serve traditional "railway towns" like Crewe - this is a fast service between the biggest cities.

I was mentioning York as an eastern equivalent - when HS2 is built to Newcastle/ beyond I can't see any justification for a wide diversion between Leeds and Newcastle to serve York (just like I agree that there's no need to serve Crewe etc on the western side).

But enthusiasts are a fairly "c"onservative bunch, so a lot seem to want HS2 to parallel existing lines (something I don't entirely agree with).

 

[HSTEd]

I was mentioning York as an eastern equivalent - when HS2 is built to Newcastle/ beyond I can't see any justification for a wide diversion between Leeds and Newcastle to serve York (just like I agree that there's no need to serve Crewe etc on the western side).

The terrain will cause the line north of Leeds to deflect towards York anyway.
It only adds a very short length of track to serve York once you do that.

And York is the largest population centre in that area of the country. It has a population of 200,000 and there are no other large population centres closer than Leeds really.
It is a very different scenario to Crewe.

 

[tbtc]

The terrain will cause the line north of Leeds to deflect towards York anyway.
It only adds a very short length of track to serve York once you do that.

And York is the largest population centre in that area of the country. It has a population of 200,000 and there are no other large population centres closer than Leeds really.
It is a very different scenario to Crewe.

It would slow things down to divert from the "direct" route to serve York.

If you want to slow HS2 down to serve places with 200,000 people then you might as well also divert the line to serve Milton Keynes and to serve Coventry and to serve Wolverhampton and... all of a sudden you've just built a parallel WCML without the proper high speed aspect - either do "HS" properly or don't bother.

 

[steamdrivenand]

I maybe didn't make myself clear.

I was trying to echo Haydn1971's point about HS2 being a whole new service and therefore shouldn't be wedded to the need to serve traditional "railway towns" like Crewe - this is a fast service between the biggest cities.

I was mentioning York as an eastern equivalent - when HS2 is built to Newcastle/ beyond I can't see any justification for a wide diversion between Leeds and Newcastle to serve York (just like I agree that there's no need to serve Crewe etc on the western side).

But enthusiasts are a fairly "c"onservative bunch, so a lot seem to want HS2 to parallel existing lines (something I don't entirely agree with).

Well it's going north/south so it's always going to parallel the main lines going in the same direction just at a closer or further extent. To some extent the decision to send a single line to Birmingham is a radical and possibly short-sighted step as it could limit future capacity and the denizens of eastern England are just as deserving of an HS service as those of Brum.

I keep saying it but so far some people aren't recognising that an HS spine line/s are the best way to go with spurs leading off to serve major transport hubs. Some may be HS only (Captive) offering the fastest service between major centres and others are Classic spurs providing the ability for Compatibles to link with the rest of the network. However taking high speed lines right through established major urban centres is asking for huge trouble. Getting in and out on a spur that only penetrates one quadrant of an urban centre is enough aggro. let alone tackling a through corridor.
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The terrain will cause the line north of Leeds to deflect towards York anyway.
It only adds a very short length of track to serve York once you do that.

And York is the largest population centre in that area of the country. It has a population of 200,000 and there are no other large population centres closer than Leeds really.
It is a very different scenario to Crewe.

Well if you're not going up in the mountains of east Staffordshire then you'd be rude not to have a spur to Crewe NB not the main spine line through Crewe.

York serves itself, but there's very little else round it, only villages. Crewe on the other hand serves Sandbach, Nantwich, Stoke and Newcastle under Lyme to some extent plus Winsford, Middlewich, even Holmes Chapel. None of them as big as York but they add up to a heck of a lot more.
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It would slow things down to divert from the "direct" route to serve York.

If you want to slow HS2 down to serve places with 200,000 people then you might as well also divert the line to serve Milton Keynes and to serve Coventry and to serve Wolverhampton and... all of a sudden you've just built a parallel WCML without the proper high speed aspect - either do "HS" properly or don't bother.

That's what I'm saying.

The spine goes up the country with spurs springing off to serve places. HS spurs for the likes of Brum, Manc, Manc Airport and Leeds, Classic spurs for the likes of York (if HS2 goes that far north), Crewe etc. So HS is done properly between the so called major centres and Compatibles serve the rest of the network but travel at HS when on appropriate track.

 

[LE Greys]

Well it's going north/south so it's always going to parallel the main lines going in the same direction just at a closer or further extent. To some extent the decision to send a single line to Birmingham is a radical and possibly short-sighted step as it could limit future capacity and the denizens of eastern England are just as deserving of an HS service as those of Brum.

I keep saying it but so far some people aren't recognising that an HS spine line/s are the best way to go with spurs leading off to serve major transport hubs. Some may be HS only (Captive) offering the fastest service between major centres and others are Classic spurs providing the ability for Compatibles to link with the rest of the network. However taking high speed lines right through established major urban centres is asking for huge trouble. Getting in and out on a spur that only penetrates one quadrant of an urban centre is enough aggro. let alone tackling a through corridor.
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Well if you're not going up in the mountains of east Staffordshire then you'd be rude not to have a spur to Crewe NB not the main spine line through Crewe.

York serves itself, but there's very little else round it, only villages. Crewe on the other hand serves Sandbach, Nantwich, Stoke and Newcastle under Lyme to some extent plus Winsford, Middlewich, even Holmes Chapel. None of them as big as York but they add up to a heck of a lot more.

The fun on that happens elsewhere.

That's what I'm saying.

The spine goes up the country with spurs springing off to serve places. HS spurs for the likes of Brum, Manc, Manc Airport and Leeds, Classic spurs for the likes of York (if HS2 goes that far north), Crewe etc. So HS is done properly between the so called major centres and Compatibles serve the rest of the network but travel at HS when on appropriate track.

And if you're travelling from Birmingham to Manchester? Or Peterborough to Leeds? Or Kettering to Sheffield?

 

[Philip Elliott]

And your point is what?

That the DfTRANSPORT consider that cars aren't transport?

That cars don't count?

That the millions of car drivers and users don't deserve consideration?

The key word is 'ALL' - it excludes everyone who doesn't have a car

 

[Haydn1971]

The key word is 'ALL' - it excludes everyone who doesn't have a car

That is because that are many options for non car modes already, walking, cycling, buses, trains, rail, riverboat, cable car....

 

[Philip Elliott]

Hang on, you said the DfT should be looking at integrating modes. Are you seriously suggesting that the railways and the buses as a rule are integrated? Yeah right....

There are plenty of park and ride schemes. It is a lot easier to access the rail network by car than by bus.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Indeed. a cursory glance at the list of current railway stations sees a goodly number of them now ending in "Parkway".

 

[Holly]

... More you look at it the more likely it seems that International trains will only be available from OAC.

Presumably that will happen with Phase 1.

Possible through trains replacement of "change at OAC to/from the Continent" in Phase 2 will be demand driven. A through checked baggage service will then help a lot because porters can move baggage between trains faster than passengers can.

 

[HSTEd]

I thought having access to your bags throughout your journey was a major advantage of rail compared to say aircraft.....

 

[Haydn1971]

There are plenty of park and ride schemes. It is a lot easier to access the rail network by car than by bus.

Any ideas on what they should be doing then ?

 

[JohnB57]

A through checked baggage service will then help a lot because porters can move baggage between trains faster than passengers can.

This is never going to happen. What you're suggesting is not a porter service, it's airport style baggage handling and simply not the way the a modern railway can operate.

 

[Holly]

What you're suggesting is not a porter service, it's airport style baggage handling and simply not the way the a modern railway can operate.

Amtrak does.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Amtrak does.

But alas, Amtrak is not really a 'modern' railway!

 

[JohnB57]

Amtrak does.

Special facilities at all origin and destination stations? Additional secure luggage capacity on trains? Origins and destinations in many different countries? Security checks for baggage after check in?

Can't see it.

 

[33Hz]

DB does too.
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May need to 'Google search' this...

Change at Crewe as HS2 hub plan gathers pace

 

[JohnB57]

All I could find on the DB website was: -

"Whether on holiday or on business, anyone having to travel with luggage is pleased to receive a helping hand. We have many and help you with our luggage and package transportation services within Germany"​

Which involves booking a courier service through DB who will collect your baggage from home and deliver it to you at your destination. Not really what we're discussing.

I'm a huge fan of DB and would love to think they had a solution to the problem of international checked in baggage, origin to destination. But I couldn't find it.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Which involves booking a courier service through DB who will collect your baggage from home and deliver it to you at your destination. Not really what we're discussing.

Were not facilities similar to what you state above ever offered in Britain by "The Big Four" in the grouping period 1923 to 1948 ?

 

[steamdrivenand]

I can remember a 'holiday trunk' being collected from home in Ruislip and waiting for us at our destination in the West Country when our family arrived. It must've been early '50's, so under BR, not 'The Big Four', although I'm sure it was a carry over service from their day.

With the plethora of courier services about these days it would be easy to organise and TOCs could sub-contract to City Link etc.

BTW has anyone else noticed that the burgeoning of courier companies following de-regulation means that everywhere is visited by half a dozen, or more, courier vans a day? When it was regulated there was just one visit from Parcelforce which was surely much more ecologically friendly?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Were not facilities similar to what you state above ever offered in Britain by "The Big Four" in the grouping period 1923 to 1948 ?

Right up until the 60s.
That's how my trunk got to my student digs and back.
Collect and deliver, collect and pick up from station at far end, or take to near station and have it delivered at far end.
You used the Red Star office at stations.
(Another service you would have thought would make money for the TOCs today).

 

[steamdrivenand]

It's odd isn't it that TOCs these days seem totally fixated on shifting passengers or freight to the seeming exclusion of everything else. The passenger TOCs even seem grudging about providing decent catering. Businesses in other industries actively look for activities they can run in conjunction with their core activity in order to gain extra profit with relatively little cost input.
Only yesterday I was looking to hire a car from Lancaster Station for a weekend break. Twenty years ago I booked a car from that very station via a service advertised by BR Inter City. Today Virgins website says there's no hire car service at Lancaster, so I've had to book one independently.