Hmm, I'll click on this thread and see whether people are discussing a new fast alignment from Exeter to Newton Abbot, which could provide a much faster service (currently around twenty five minutes to do a distance that's around seventeen minutes as the crow flies)...
...or will people be discussing through services from Waterloo to Okehampton like they had back in the Good Old Days...
...I wonder
"in theory"?
Journey times from Waterloo/ Exeter to Plymouth would be longer via Okehampton than via Dawlish.
Looking at the times...
Current Exeter - Plymouth services take fifty-something minutes for fifty-something rail miles (about forty five miles by road) . Not exactly "fast" for that distance, but let's call it 55 minutes as a benchmark.
Exeter St Davids to Okehampton is about 45 minutes (looking at proposed timings for the recent HST charter plus the Summer Sunday service).
Bere Alston to Plymouth is about 25 minutes.
So even if you build "HS4" through the undulating Devon landscape and get from Okehampton to Bere Alston in the blink of an eye, you're going to be taking well over an hour from Exeter to Plymouth via the "scenic" route.
Realistically, you're probably talking closer to an hour and a half that way (given that it'll probably take over twenty minutes to cover twenty something miles).
Any time saving from somewhere in the South East to Exeter will be cancelled out by the longer journey via Okehampton.
It'd still be faster to change at Exeter (for a current InterCity service via Dawlish).
If there's a market from Portsmouth/ Southampton to Devon then that should stand/fall on its own feet though - I'm not against that (I just don't agree that it adds anything to your Okehampton idea).
We used to have such services (in the Wessex Trains days) IIRC.
It'd still be slower going via Okehampton though
What demand is there to get from Honiton to Okehampton or from Tavistock to Cranbook? Look at the local commercial bus services (or lack of).
Agreed
The idea that we can give up on maintaining a resilient service to Torbay... but that we need to spend tens of millions of pounds to avoid the need for hypothetical Waterloo - Plymouth services to need to reverse at Exeter...
I've no problem with direct services from Plymouth to places like Yeovil/ Basingstoke.
There's no reason why you need a new line through Okehampton to justify reintroducing SWT services to Exeter though.
Who are you quoting?
The population of Newton Abbot and Torbay justify a reliable service to the nearest cities. A fast new alignment from Exeter to Newton Abbot provides that (and a much faster service plus more capacity). Patching up Dawlish provides that. A route through Okehampton doesn't solve that.
Although journey times could be half an hour longer, with the current GWR services only planned to be running hourly then it could still be quicker to get to Plymouth going via Okehampton, or at the very least offer people the chance of leaving a bit later to arrive a bit sooner, which could be more convenient.
You also have to remember that the fewer changes people need to make the more likely they are to undertake a journey. As such even if it meant leaving a bit earlier to get there people would be willing to do so.
Then there's cost, the route via Salisbury is normally cheaper, so people would use that in exchange of a small time penalty (although this could lead to a small drop in income for GWR, given the rate of passenger growth that would soon be overtaken by new passengers using their services).
Then there's the issue of capacity, the are probably limited extra paths available or if Paddington and also limited train lengthening options. As such, if there is an alternative route where getting a seat is more likely then that could allow passenger growth to continue. It is why a more direct route is going to struggle to be beneficial, as it wouldn't remove much of a bottle neck, so there wouldn'tbe scope for additional services without doing other works.
Personally my view is that HS2 is a good thing and would like to see HS3, 4, etc., However, in this case a new faster line doesn't justify the extra cost. It has nothing to do with whether I think that it would be lovely to reopen a closed route. In fact, I think that reopening could at a future date mean that there is a better case for the faster line as there would be more people travelling between Exeter and Plymouth (and possibly other improvements to reduce journey times via the B&H).
We are potentially in a time where going forward where with rail growth we could see the need for significant ongoing improvements to increase capacity on our rail network. I am not convinced at this time the faster route provides this whilst the Okehampton route can help with this more (at least for those traveling from further afield).