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Dissertation survey on HS2's effect on commuting in the UK

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AndTHS

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Hi all, I'd be very grateful if anyone could take the time to complete my 2 minute survey on HS2 and commuting. It's really aimed at those who use trains to commute for work and whether HS2 will impact that.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PPSY3R6

Thanks to anyone who completes it and thanks to the mods for allowing me to post this thread.
 
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gordonthemoron

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Whilst I don't understand your reasoning behind your question on using HS2 for commuting purposes (I won't be using it), I will benefit from it (probably) as I expect that services between Milton Keynes to London to be improved on WCML as a result of HS2
 

GrimsbyPacer

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Whilst I don't understand your reasoning behind your question on using HS2 for commuting purposes (I won't be using it), I will benefit from it (probably) as I expect that services between Milton Keynes to London to be improved on WCML as a result of HS2

Don't get your hopes up.
Milton Keynes' services will probably be similar.
Remember all current high speed services through Coventry, Wolverhampton and Stoke need to stay, both north and south bound otherwise an unacceptable loss of services to those places will happen. I can't see slower trains being replaced either.
It will mean that high fare paying passengers use HS2 reducing need for first class on current trains however.
Milton Keynes' position halfway beteeen Birmingham and London benefits the town, that's all at risk now.
 

quantinghome

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Don't get your hopes up.
Milton Keynes' services will probably be similar.
Remember all current high speed services through Coventry, Wolverhampton and Stoke need to stay, both north and south bound otherwise an unacceptable loss of services to those places will happen. I can't see slower trains being replaced either.
It will mean that high fare paying passengers use HS2 reducing need for first class on current trains however.
Milton Keynes' position halfway beteeen Birmingham and London benefits the town, that's all at risk now.

Certainly these cities will continue to be served by intercity trains to London. However, it is highly doubtful that Coventry (for example) would generate sufficient demand post-HS2 to justify the current service frequency and stopping pattern. The current service will not be preserved in aspic.

Once HS2 is open, inter-city services on classic lines will shift emphasis from getting to London as fast as possible to providing connectivity between all major towns and cities on the route. As such I would expect most (if not all) intercity trains to stop at Milton Keynes. You are right that Milton Keynes does benefit from its position between London and Birmingham, but it can't benefit from that fully at the moment as most intercity trains don't stop there.

Would this be an 'unacceptable' reduction in service for Coventry and Stoke? Only if judged on the single criteria of getting to London as fast as possible.
 

telstarbox

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It's a bit pointless asking people all over the UK to complete this when HS2 will only affect certain commuting flows. It might be more useful to interview people on existing services which would be affected by HS2, eg London to Birmingham or London to Manchester.
 

GrimsbyPacer

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Would this be an 'unacceptable' reduction in service for Coventry and Stoke? Only if judged on the single criteria of getting to London as fast as possible.

That's not true. If less high speed runs through Coventry it causes the following problems:
Less frequent services to any WCML stations North or South possibly Milton Keynes too.
Less investment in the city as it's harder to get to thanks to HS2.
Slower services to places on the WCML as commuter services replace highspeed, this won't just effect London travel but Birmingham & Manchester travel too.

HS2 is not well connected to services that currently exist.
they might as well use a maglev instead or at least allow nighttime freight. Poor value and I'll never use it even if I lived near it.
 

NSEFAN

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GrimsbyPacer said:
That's not true. If less high speed runs through Coventry it causes the following problems:
Less frequent services to any WCML stations North or South possibly Milton Keynes too.
Less investment in the city as it's harder to get to thanks to HS2.
Slower services to places on the WCML as commuter services replace highspeed, this won't just effect London travel but Birmingham & Manchester travel too.
Services could still be as frequent to Coventry, only they would stop more often south of there. I don't get why this seems to be such a point of contention. A bigger problem is perhaps the loss of through services to destinations north of Birmingham, but I do wonder how many people this would affect compared to having fewer trains to London per hour.
 
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NotATrainspott

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That's not true. If less high speed runs through Coventry it causes the following problems:
Less frequent services to any WCML stations North or South possibly Milton Keynes too.
Less investment in the city as it's harder to get to thanks to HS2.
Slower services to places on the WCML as commuter services replace highspeed, this won't just effect London travel but Birmingham & Manchester travel too.

HS2 is not well connected to services that currently exist.
they might as well use a maglev instead or at least allow nighttime freight. Poor value and I'll never use it even if I lived near it.

In the current plans there are still two fast ICWC services an hour between London and Birmingham, both calling at Coventry, plus two London Midland-equivalent services running non-stop south of Milton Keynes. What's most important is that there will actually be space on these services for people from Coventry to use them; without HS2, the end-to-end passengers would overwhelm the service. A 110mph 'commuter' service isn't really that different to a 110-125mph InterCity service if both are on the fast lines and you're only going as far as Coventry. We don't know for certain what the new WCML operator(s) would be like so it could even be the case that most fast line services see high-capacity IEP sets, given that in terms of seat numbers they're better than commuter EMUs when run in long formations. In any case, any possible disbenefits to Coventry are minimal compared to the benefits for other places, and as a UK-wide project, HS2 can't be stopped simply because there are some place which won't benefit as much as others. People in Coventry will take a train to Birmingham International and then switch to HS2 if they want to get to the north, and that journey will be significantly faster than it is at the moment.
 
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People in Coventry will take a train to Birmingham International and then switch to HS2 if they want to get to the north, and that journey will be significantly faster than it is at the moment

Aside from the two stations being a mile apart, the only planned trains to stop at the HS2 airport station ar 2ph to Birmingham (very helpful for Cov:lol:) and 1tph to Manchester.

Services could still be as frequent to Coventry, only they would stop more often south of there

What do you mean by stop more often - all stop at Rugby, MK andf Watford or stopping at some of the current LM only stations? Cov actually has 6tph for much of the day if you count the stoppers. Cov needs high frequency express services to London and Birmingham. If there are lots of non-stop trains from MK to Watford you won't get the additional commuter trains.

Cov has a higher use per capita on London services than Birmingham and has had the largest growth of any city in the UK.
 

Voglitz

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Services could still be as frequent to Coventry, only they would stop more often south of there. I don't get why this seems to be such a point of contention. A bigger problem is perhaps the loss of through services to destinations north of Birmingham, but I do wonder how many people this would affect compared to having fewer trains to London per hour.

According to the Andrew McNaughton presentation (11 Feb 2015), services would not be as frequent to Coventry.
 

The Ham

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According to the Andrew McNaughton presentation (11 Feb 2015), services would not be as frequent to Coventry.

According to the INDICATIVE paths in that presentation Coventry could see less services, however with less passengers from Birmingham it would still allow Coventry to have a better service.
 

AndTHS

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It's a bit pointless asking people all over the UK to complete this when HS2 will only affect certain commuting flows. It might be more useful to interview people on existing services which would be affected by HS2, eg London to Birmingham or London to Manchester.
Yes I know. This is just a prototype questionnaire. My actual research will focus on interviews and a much larger localised questionnaire group. The issue with interviewing is finding people who already commute to London from Manchester and then have them make time for an undergraduate for a dissertation that will not be published.

My study will look at Greater Manchester and whether there will be a 'boost' for the North. I am interested in the idea of commuting from Manchester to Birmingham or London as travel time will be greatly reduced. Seeing who is likely to commute countrywide is also of particular interest as I intend to make travel time maps around London. I'll then use this to make a judgement on the likelihood of Birmingham being sucked into the SE economically as a sort of Greater London.

Thanks for the replies anyway guys. It's not the perfect survey, but to get the survey monkey package I'd have to pay £229 so it'll have to do as my prototype. Ideally I would be able to customise the survey based on question answers which would sort out the issue of people from different areas answering. Alas, it is not to be.
 
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Camden

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My study will look at Greater Manchester and whether there will be a 'boost' for the North..
Do you mean two separate measurements there, or just one with those being read to mean the same thing?

Stepping outside of any Greater Manchester bubble for a moment, one thing that I have myself constantly heard complained outside it is that any "boost for the North" is not by any means coterminous with "boost for Greater Manchester" (including net gain).

Looking to other parts of the north, there are those in other areas who consider it will economically (assuming this is what you mean when you say "boost") do them damage as a direct result of it being so very Manchester-centric, and I understand this was shown in a report some time ago. If you're only interested in measuring those who commute from Manchester to London, which it's probably worth remembering will also no doubt capture a good deal of recent arrivals re the BBC rather than actual home grown requirement, then your research could appear to be very flawed if you we're hoping to prove any kind of effect on "the north", as opposed to just Greater Manchester.
 

NotATrainspott

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Aside from the two stations being a mile apart, the only planned trains to stop at the HS2 airport station ar 2ph to Birmingham (very helpful for Cov:lol:) and 1tph to Manchester.

Phase 2 projected service at Birmingham Interchange is 2tph Birmingham, 1tph Manchester, 1tph Scotland and 1tph Leeds. However, once you build the station, there's no reason why you can't stop whatever services you want there. As with all of Phase 1, the benefits of the infrastructure built increase as more and more high speed track is built around the country. Also, the high speed and classic stations are linked by a people mover, authorised by the same Hybrid Bill and built at the same time as the HS2 works, so the actual distance between the two is not that important. In future, once you have fast services to Scotland stopping there, the few minutes you would spend in a people mover vehicle to get from one to another is going to be as meaningless as the few minutes you would spend on an airport's people mover system when you're going to fly significant distances around the world.

What do you mean by stop more often - all stop at Rugby, MK andf Watford or stopping at some of the current LM only stations? Cov actually has 6tph for much of the day if you count the stoppers. Cov needs high frequency express services to London and Birmingham. If there are lots of non-stop trains from MK to Watford you won't get the additional commuter trains.

Cov has a higher use per capita on London services than Birmingham and has had the largest growth of any city in the UK.

No, they would stop at the major WCML fast stations like Rugby, Milton Keynes and Watford, not some of the suburban ones like Hemel Hempstead. As I said, we don't know the specifics of what service operators would exist on the post-HS2 WCML so we can't assume that there would be a clear demarcation in service quality between the 'commuter' WCML fast services and long distance ones, especially when Chester/North Wales and Stoke will almost certainly end up served primarily by HS2 classic-compatibles.
 

Abpj17

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Can't imagine it will affect it much. You might want to get in touch with the relevant rail user groups to try to get to people who actually do the commute now, or credibly might do the the commute.
 
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Phase 2 projected service at Birmingham Interchange is 2tph Birmingham, 1tph Manchester, 1tph Scotland and 1tph Leeds. However, once you build the station, there's no reason why you can't stop whatever services you want there. As with all of Phase 1, the benefits of the infrastructure built increase as more and more high speed track is built around the country. Also, the high speed and classic stations are linked by a people mover, authorised by the same Hybrid Bill and built at the same time as the HS2 works, so the actual distance between the two is not that important. In future, once you have fast services to Scotland stopping there, the few minutes you would spend in a people mover vehicle to get from one to another is going to be as meaningless as the few minutes you would spend on an airport's people mover system when you're going to fly significant distances around the world.

When you take into account walking time from platform to the "people mover" (any transport vehicle is a "people mover":roll:) and then at the other end plus with some of the services listed being only hourly you are looking at 30-80 minutes connection - not meaningless at all. How fast and how much capacity will it have? If it is like the current airport fenicular, then you could be in a queue for a long time.

No, they would stop at the major WCML fast stations like Rugby, Milton Keynes and Watford, not some of the suburban ones like Hemel Hempstead. As I said, we don't know the specifics of what service operators would exist on the post-HS2 WCML so we can't assume that there would be a clear demarcation in service quality between the 'commuter' WCML fast services and long distance ones, especially when Chester/North Wales and Stoke will almost certainly end up served primarily by HS2 classic-compatibles.

Classic compatible services won't cover IC flows from MK northwards and running many fast MK - Watford services as I have already mentioned means there won't be any room freed for these fabled extra 'commuter/local' trains and freight.
 

AndTHS

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Do you mean two separate measurements there, or just one with those being read to mean the same thing?

Stepping outside of any Greater Manchester bubble for a moment, one thing that I have myself constantly heard complained outside it is that any "boost for the North" is not by any means coterminous with "boost for Greater Manchester" (including net gain).

Looking to other parts of the north, there are those in other areas who consider it will economically (assuming this is what you mean when you say "boost") do them damage as a direct result of it being so very Manchester-centric, and I understand this was shown in a report some time ago. If you're only interested in measuring those who commute from Manchester to London, which it's probably worth remembering will also no doubt capture a good deal of recent arrivals re the BBC rather than actual home grown requirement, then your research could appear to be very flawed if you we're hoping to prove any kind of effect on "the north", as opposed to just Greater Manchester.
The study will be looking at the north of England as a whole. I'm doing some work on the brain drain too. However, the main focus is the Greater Manchester area and it's relationship with cities across the UK, not just London. As much as I would like to look at the effect of HS2 across the North in it's entirety it is simply not feasible, hence the localisation. Obviously, HS2 may cause some other areas to supposedly lose out I am looking at the much put forward idea of Hs2 boosting Northern England. Manchester is unlikely to see much improvement at all from HS2. Rather it will encourage movement south toward the capital. Judging by France's high speed rail development it will be Birmingham which will get the secondary boost after London. Ask can be seen in Japan and France high speed rail has caused a boost for the major city at the cost of secondary cities. As so much of the economy is based in the SE I want to look at the possibility that it will simply increase the amount of one way commuter traffic to the South of England. I will use isochron maps to help determine Manchester's economic pull to ascertain the possibility of more commuters travelling South for commute. As a number of studies have shown time is the most important factor in commute for people and HS2 will greatly change the time space compression of the UK. Essentially it will look at the possibility of people having a high paid job in an Alpha city whilst living in the much cheaper Greater Manchester area.
Obviously my essay will also look at the flip side. Maybe there simply isn't the demand for the second phase of HS2 etc.
 
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NotATrainspott

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Classic compatible services won't cover IC flows from MK northwards and running many fast MK - Watford services as I have already mentioned means there won't be any room freed for these fabled extra 'commuter/local' trains and freight.

However, the passenger numbers on MK-North flows aren't going to be anywhere near the London-North flows, so the need for high speed isn't going to be as immense. The plan to have remaining services serve as many flows as possible in one path is pretty much as good as you're going to get. It would certainly be nice for MK if it had non-stop services to everywhere in the country but its passenger numbers simply do not justify special service to the North above and beyond what is already planned.

Running services fast between MK and Watford isn't a problem if those services remove the need for faster services on the slow lines, leading to more consistent timetabling on both slow and fast lines and thus the extra capacity you get from HS2.
 

Voglitz

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Phase 2 projected service at Birmingham Interchange is 2tph Birmingham, 1tph Manchester, 1tph Scotland and 1tph Leeds. However, once you build the station, there's no reason why you can't stop whatever services you want there. As with all of Phase 1, the benefits of the infrastructure built increase as more and more high speed track is built around the country. Also, the high speed and classic stations are linked by a people mover, authorised by the same Hybrid Bill and built at the same time as the HS2 works, so the actual distance between the two is not that important. In future, once you have fast services to Scotland stopping there, the few minutes you would spend in a people mover vehicle to get from one to another is going to be as meaningless as the few minutes you would spend on an airport's people mover system when you're going to fly significant distances around the world.

If that's the case, why did Centro lobby for a £3 billion full monty connection between HS2 and HS1, just to avoid a transfer of a few hundred yards between St Pancras and Euston?
 
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Running services fast between MK and Watford isn't a problem if those services remove the need for faster services on the slow lines, leading to more consistent timetabling on both slow and fast lines and thus the extra capacity you get from HS2.

They won't remove the need for faster commuter services as they a) won't serve Northampton and b) there are no faster services on the slow lines at present anyway for most of the route so you don't get capacity freed by moving anything.
 
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As a number of studies have shown time is the most important factor in commute for people and HS2 will greatly change the time space compression of the UK. Essentially it will look at the possibility of people having a high paid job in an Alpha city whilst living in the much cheaper Greater Manchester area.
Obviously my essay will also look at the flip side. Maybe there simply isn't the demand for the second phase of HS2 etc.

I have been one of your target group, living to the South of Manchester and having a temporary job in Central London.
My observations:
The current HS2 proposals are likely to increase my journey time to London due to a requirement to first commute into Manchester - there not being a proposal for a "parkway" type of station between Manchester and Crewe. Even if my job had been permanent, I doubt I would wish to relocate in this area just to decrease my journey time - more likely to relocate to nearer to London.
If permanently commuting the journey time would be much more critical on 6am to 8am outbound and 5pm to 7pm return journeys. This would likely to lead to a cluster of London commuters living within walking (or one or two stop tram or bus) distance of the HS2 terminal. In Manchester this property market is currently well developed mainly consisting of new build or converted flats and currently well occupied including a substantial number of reverse commuters from London (working in for example Media City) who retain principle residences in the South of England.
Cost of tickets is a primary concern. I considered I did very well with advance tickets with Virgin and do select my journey time based on price of ticket (often travelling late evening).
Much more critical to my choice of journey modes (I do sometimes travel by car) is the level of on board comfort and service. 1 hour 50 minutes in a comfortable first class carriage not more than 50% full with at seat bar and snack/meal service is far more attractive than 1 hour 10 minutes in a high density configuration, even if it was to be at lower cost.
Much more critical to the likely impact is the relative availability of jobs. My experiences in London suggest that many London employers are very concerned about their ability to recruit staff at a reasonable salary - it is very difficult to retain any good employee in London (even recent graduates) at salaries under £30K (£45K employment cost) due to the high cost of housing and travel. In Manchester, £30K would be regarded as a stable employment salary. In London the market is currently being satisfied by overseas workers from other EU countries intending to stay no more than say a couple of years and content to house or even room share. If this source of employees was to be dry up (as there is some signs of it doing so) I think many companies currently in Central London are considering relocating at least part of their operations outside of the Capital. In this respect HS2 might generate viable alternatives in Birmingham and Manchester to rival the current preferred locations, say Berkshire, Milton Keynes etc.
The time advantage of HS2 is very quickly dissipated if your destination is outside the Central London Zone 1 area - for example I regularly travel to a location in Middlesex in Zone 6 where even though there is a 4tph service from Waterloo my total journey time would only decrease from 3 hour 20 minutes to 2 hours 40 minutes even if the full HS2 time saving was available from my local station. Given that the Zone 1 area is essentially fully developed, any commuters from say Manchester are likely to be in substitution for commuters from other locations in South East.

I wish you well with your study and essay
 

NotATrainspott

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I have been one of your target group, living to the South of Manchester and having a temporary job in Central London.
My observations:
The current HS2 proposals are likely to increase my journey time to London due to a requirement to first commute into Manchester - there not being a proposal for a "parkway" type of station between Manchester and Crewe. Even if my job had been permanent, I doubt I would wish to relocate in this area just to decrease my journey time - more likely to relocate to nearer to London.
If permanently commuting the journey time would be much more critical on 6am to 8am outbound and 5pm to 7pm return journeys. This would likely to lead to a cluster of London commuters living within walking (or one or two stop tram or bus) distance of the HS2 terminal. In Manchester this property market is currently well developed mainly consisting of new build or converted flats and currently well occupied including a substantial number of reverse commuters from London (working in for example Media City) who retain principle residences in the South of England.
Cost of tickets is a primary concern. I considered I did very well with advance tickets with Virgin and do select my journey time based on price of ticket (often travelling late evening).
Much more critical to my choice of journey modes (I do sometimes travel by car) is the level of on board comfort and service. 1 hour 50 minutes in a comfortable first class carriage not more than 50% full with at seat bar and snack/meal service is far more attractive than 1 hour 10 minutes in a high density configuration, even if it was to be at lower cost.
Much more critical to the likely impact is the relative availability of jobs. My experiences in London suggest that many London employers are very concerned about their ability to recruit staff at a reasonable salary - it is very difficult to retain any good employee in London (even recent graduates) at salaries under £30K (£45K employment cost) due to the high cost of housing and travel. In Manchester, £30K would be regarded as a stable employment salary. In London the market is currently being satisfied by overseas workers from other EU countries intending to stay no more than say a couple of years and content to house or even room share. If this source of employees was to be dry up (as there is some signs of it doing so) I think many companies currently in Central London are considering relocating at least part of their operations outside of the Capital. In this respect HS2 might generate viable alternatives in Birmingham and Manchester to rival the current preferred locations, say Berkshire, Milton Keynes etc.
The time advantage of HS2 is very quickly dissipated if your destination is outside the Central London Zone 1 area - for example I regularly travel to a location in Middlesex in Zone 6 where even though there is a 4tph service from Waterloo my total journey time would only decrease from 3 hour 20 minutes to 2 hours 40 minutes even if the full HS2 time saving was available from my local station. Given that the Zone 1 area is essentially fully developed, any commuters from say Manchester are likely to be in substitution for commuters from other locations in South East.

I wish you well with your study and essay

Eh? That's most of the point of Manchester Airport/Interchange, which would be closer connected to the motorway network than it is to the airport terminal itself. It would also act as a second hub of the Metrolink network, using the variety of heavy and light rail alignments with tram-trains so that places like Stockport wouldn't have to travel all the way in and back again. Even then, the number of trains to Crewe will increase (e.g. using the proposed extension of the Airport spur to Mobberley) so a same-station interchange would be possible at Crewe.
 

Blamethrower

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I have commuted on the WCML and MML frequently over the last 10 years.

Currently on the MML, it will make no difference, when it is open, will Nottingham/Sheffield services be cut? Or will there be more Meridians (or their replacements) running fast to Bedford?

Currently the EMT trains in the morning are practically empty before Bedford and empty at Bedford on the way home. Perhaps Post HS2 they can alternate between first stop Bedford/Luton/Parkway/Leicester.

The WCML, not sure if I'd ever use that line again due to where I live now. However, I looked at moving somewhere near Balsall Common, Leamington, Warwick, Hampton-in-Arden, Solihull, Kenilworth etc all which become commutable to London in under an hour after HS2.

I definitely think that fast services from MK will be increased post HS2
 

GrimsbyPacer

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I too was concerned for thoses mainlines.
But services should not be cut in my opinion, although they probably will be.

I expect 2 fast WCML services an hour and 1 fast MML service an hour post HS2.
The WCML will need one that serves Wolverhampton, Coventry and North Wales. And another serving Milton Keynes, Stoke and Warrington. That's the minimun they could get away with.
On the MML Leicester, Bedford and Derby aren't served well by HS2 so a service to Sheffield fast (maybe linked to Cross Country) is needed despite faster HS2 trains.

On the East Coast I expect the bigger changes. As Newcastle and Scotland services will be routed via Sheffield, making services south of York mainly Leeds focused, and since Leeds travelers would use HS2 to London I doubt services could be maintained.
 

quantinghome

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I too was concerned for thoses mainlines.
But services should not be cut in my opinion, although they probably will be.

I expect 2 fast WCML services an hour and 1 fast MML service an hour post HS2.
The WCML will need one that serves Wolverhampton, Coventry and North Wales. And another serving Milton Keynes, Stoke and Warrington. That's the minimun they could get away with.
On the MML Leicester, Bedford and Derby aren't served well by HS2 so a service to Sheffield fast (maybe linked to Cross Country) is needed despite faster HS2 trains.

On the East Coast I expect the bigger changes. As Newcastle and Scotland services will be routed via Sheffield, making services south of York mainly Leeds focused, and since Leeds travelers would use HS2 to London I doubt services could be maintained.

I think you are being too pessimistic. Rail continues to experience strong growth, particularly the non-London flows. Hs2 will allow the existing lines to provide a better regular connecting service between main stations. These will have more stops than present fast services, but still provide a decent quick service. I would imagine there would be 4-6 of these per hour on the WCML, 3-4 on MML and ECML.
 
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